Twenty-four #2
We couldn't talk about it further because it was time for the competition to start. I did not have anything else to say, anyway. My siblings would probably get on Benji since I told them about our mall adventure together, so I doubted that I needed to worry about him anymore.
This round of Thinkfast wasn't like the last. We didn't have to shout our answers when it was our turn.
Instead, we had to take a test and they would average you and your partner's score together.
I learned that was how the round was structured weeks ago, but my hands still shook when the test paper was handed to us.
I had lately been doing more poorly than normal on tests. I was working on ways to fix it, but the anxiety I had from knowing I wasn’t doing well only added to the tension. Tests were becoming a nerve-wracking thing for me, so one being part of the competition wasn't fun.
They gave us forty-five minutes to answer forty questions. That was only enough time if you knew how to solve the problems without any hesitation or error. Some of the questions I knew off the top of my head, some I had to think about for a minute, and some that I had never seen a day in my life.
I looked over my shoulder to see how Javier was doing. I tried to do it discreetly to avoid being accused of cheating, even though we were all given separate tests to eliminate it.
If Javier was stressed, then he was certainly not showing it.
His shoulders were relaxed as he wrote on the paper with ease.
I focused my attention back to my own test so that I try to be as calm as him.
It didn't help that the room was extremely cold.
The hairs on my arms were sticking up and I was shivering, yet everyone else seemed fine. I was way too in my own head.
The forty minutes went by in what felt like two. I had managed to finish half of the questions confidently, a couple I guessed on, and the rest I had no clue what I was looking at.
We had an hour to kill while the judge scored all the tests. Principal Montgomery let us wander by ourselves while she chatted with some of the principals from our rival schools. We walked to the food court as there wasn't really anywhere else to go.
"You don't look happy," Javier pointed out as we sat down at a table.
I scratched the top of my head. "How do you think you did?”
"Not terrible, but I didn't understand all of what was on there," he admitted. He propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. "What about you?"
"Alright, I guess." Though, ‘alright’ may have been too optimistic.
Waiting for them to score the tests felt like torture.
I would rather know how I did immediately so that I could get the emotions over with, whatever they may be.
Instead, I had to sit with the possibility that I did great, as well as the possibility that it was an absolute train wreck.
The negative feelings outweighed the positive ones.
Not knowing how we did was gnawing at me. All I could do was sit with the tight feeling in my chest as I thought the worst.
I was also nervous about me scoring super low and Javi scoring super high.
If that happened, then I would be the reason for our badly averaged score.
He would blame me for bringing our average down, and that was the last thing I wanted.
It wasn't even that I needed my score to be higher than his, I just didn’t want to be the one to cause our failure.
"Did you want to eat something while we wait?" He asked me.
I asked Easton for money that morning and he gave it to me. He didn't give it to me until I explained in detail why I needed it, but he gave it to me, nonetheless. But for once I didn't really want to get anything.
I rubbed my hands against my thighs. "Honestly, I'm so nervous right now that I don't even want to eat."
Javier leaned toward me. "I'm nervous too, but the test is designed to be difficult. Neither of us should expect perfect scores."
"If not us then somebody else will have a perfect score."
"Thinking like that is not going to make you feel better."
A part of me envied his positive outlook on everything.
I couldn't bring myself to think like that.
All I could think about was the ugly feeling of losing and everyone knowing I'm a failure.
Mrs. Montgomery was going to announce our place in this round in morning announcements at school, and I would hate for her to have to announce something low like eighth place.
I scoffed. “You sound like my friends. They all tell me to think happier thoughts. I wish it were that simple.
Javier gazed into the distance. “I’ve always been a positive person, but it was Diane who got it in my head that dwelling on failure gets you nowhere.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Really? Diane of all people?”
He nodded once. “Yeah. She’s always found the silver-lining in life, it’s who she is. I guess that’s why even after I cheated on her she wanted to make it work.”
Wait, cheated? Javier cheated on his ex-girlfriend. That must have been why they broke up, but I was utterly shocked. He was the last person I ever expected to cheat, and I couldn’t believe he was admitting it to me so casually.
“You cheated on Diane?” When Javier gave me a regretful nod, I had to hold back the urge to gasp. If he cheated then it had to be with someone important. There was no way he cheated for a one-time fling. “With who?”
Javier’s eyes locked with mine and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, you.”
I blinked. “Me?”
“It was when I brought you home after the party. Not the Halloween party when you spent the night at mine, but the one before that. You were drunk and coming on to me.”
I lowered my head in embarrassment. My drunk-self lived to embarrass the hell out of me.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you, but I did stop it pretty soon,” he told me. “I thought you remembered.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember most of that night.”
“Oh. Well, you don’t have to worry about me kissing you again. Not while you’re drunk, anyway.”
I was most definitely looking forward to that.
"Do you want to come after school?" Javi asked, a hopeful glint in his eyes. "Since you're riding home with me anyway."
"I'm still grounded, remember?"
He frowned. "Still? It's been a week."
"Macy holds grudges." Not only that, but she said our punishment would last two weeks.
Much to my demise, her relationship with Daniel didn't end after that night.
It seemed to be going pretty well, I knew this because Macy would strut around the house with a blissful smile.
Hopefully that meant that she would be in a good enough mood to give me my freedom back sooner rather than later.
But wait, Macy had a date tonight. That meant that she would be out of the house for the majority of the night.
If I went to Javier's house, then I would have no way of knowing when Macy would get back unless I asked the twins to cover for me. After the last conversation I had with them, I didn’t want to ask them for any favors, so that was out of the equation.
However, if Javi came over to my place, then I could listen out for Macy.
I could send him off before she figured out anyone had set foot in the house.
"But you could come over by mine," I suggested. "As long as you're okay with sneaking out. Also, my siblings might be there and depending on their mood they'll either be unbearably annoying or they will act like we don't exist."
"Going behind your aunts back again? Are you rebelling?" Javi's tone was playful.
I couldn't help but chuckle. "We all go through that phase, don't we?"
"Not me, I’ve been a perfect child. Anyway, sure. I'll come over."
The rest of the hour went by incredibly slowly and my anticipation grew worse as it did.
When it was finally time to hear the results, I was ecstatic.
They didn't announce it in front of everyone.
Instead, they gave us each back our test papers and they had written what we scored individually and then what we placed with our partner.
Mrs. Montgomery insisted that we didn't look at the score until we brought it over to her. She wanted us to reveal our place together. Javi and I received our test and held it face down so that we could do the reveal with the principal.
"Are you guys excited?" she chirped when we were finally standing in front of her.
Javier nodded so I mimicked him, but I was anything but excited. My stomach was churning and my chest felt tight. Now that I was able to see what I had gotten, I didn’t want to anymore.
Despite my apprehension, I flipped the paper over at the same time as my partner. The first thing I saw was our place. Fifth. Principal Montgomery did not hold back her disappointed sigh.
Then I saw the individual score. Alright, I never expected it to be 40/40. I knew that wasn't a possibility when there were multiple problems that I didn't know how to do. But 18/40? That wasn’t even half right.
But I didn't let myself immediately crumble at the sight of the score.
Maybe Javi scored just as low. Like he said, it was designed to be difficult.
But I looked to my right to see his paper and written on it was 24/40.
It wasn't a high score, but it was a good number of points higher than mine.
That meant that if I had done just a little bit better then we probably would have placed higher.
I brought our score down.
"It's okay, boys." Our school principal gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Fifth isn't bad and that doesn't take you out of the running. We just have to show up and show out next round."