I thought, for a split second, that maybe I was in the double-booked room too. The chance was microscopic, but it wasn’t improbable.
As soon as I saw Dillon and Henry waiting at the door marked 643 with another Dalton girl—all of them glowering—I realized that I belonged to this fight too.
“Management gave you a new room,” Rose lied to Dillon, passing keycards to the blond-haired sixteen-year-old.
The second I approached, her brows knotted in confusion.
“Dude.” Dillon nudged my arm. “They double-booked us with these Dalton girls.”
I didn’t take my eyes off Rose. “I heard.” I grabbed Dillon’s keycards and passed them back to Rose.
Realization washed over her face.
This was my suite too. And no one ever took what was mine. Not unless I willingly gave it to them, and I wouldn’t just give her this room. I didn’t want to cram in the same bed with Dillon and Henry. I wanted the living room, the extra desk, the couch, more quiet space to study.
But so did Rose.
“Just switch with us,” Rose tried it this way. “It’s the polite thing to do.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because you’re a girl?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Richard.”
“Rose.”
She let out a small growl. “What do you want for it?”
My brows lifted. Be careful, Rose, was my first thought. I knew she was fourteen, if this was her first year competing, and maybe, just maybe, she was willing to do anything to win.
Maybe she was just like me.
“Let’s play a game,” I said, dropping my duffel on the ground. “The winner will take the suite. The loser gets the smaller room.”
“Smaller room?” I heard Henry huff behind me, realizing that Rose was going to fool him into switching.
“What kind of game?” Her voice was frosted with ice.
“Trivia.” It took us another ten minutes to sort out the details. All six of us wrote down categories on slips of paper and put them in Dillon’s baseball hat. Only Rose and I would compete. Dillon and Henry knew my IQ was higher than theirs. And both girls, Lydia and Anna, pointed immediately to Rose. Whether they were scared to go against me or whether she was merely smarter than them, I didn’t know yet.
“Who’s going first?” Dillon asked, holding the hat.
Rose opened her red handbag on the crook of her arm and acquired a quarter. “We’ll flip.” She called tails, and I lost to chance. But I wouldn’t lose to anything else.
She plucked a paper from the hat. “Egyptian Mythology.” According to our rules, we had to create questions without using any reference material.
I wondered if she could even do this part.
I waited. And her eyes met mine in a harsher glare. “God of wisdom and learning,” she challenged.
My lips twitched into a smile. “Thoth.”
She knew I was right, but her shoulders still pulled back, not giving up.
“Is he right?” Dillon asked Henry who sat on the ground with his laptop propped open.
“Yeah,” Henry said into a surprised laugh.
Dillon patted me on the shoulder. “Good job, Cobalt. Keep it up.”
Off the same category, I asked her, “Wife of Akhenaten?” I watched her think about it. I could stop here, stump her with little information, ending the game quickly. Or I could test her, to truly see how much she knew.
I wanted to prolong this.
So I added, “Step-mother of Tutankhamen, known for attempts to change polytheistic religion to mono—”
“Nefertiti,” she cut me off.
She was right.
It was my turn to pick the next category at random. I read the paper aloud, “Medical Terms.”
Her chest rose and fell heavily.
I couldn’t hide a burgeoning smile. “Rapid breathing,” I challenged.
“Tachypnea,” she retorted. “Stop smiling.”
“Now she doesn’t like smiling.”
“Not all smiling.”
“Just mine then?” I questioned.
“Mainly yours.” It was like she was saying, don’t think you’re that special.
I rubbed my lips, trying not to laugh. “And what’s mine like?”
She glared. “Like you’ve already beaten me. Like you’re halfway up my skirt. Like you’re the ruler of every free nation and every free man. Shall I go on?”
“Please do,” I said, amused. “I was wondering what else I rule. Could it be every free animal? Or just the ones in zoos?”
“Oooh,” people heckled. More students had gathered around us, not only from Faust and Dalton but other schools. They packed around the balcony and hallway, having to cram in while we continued this game.
She ignored me and challenged, “An abnormal growth of tissue caused by the uncontrolled and rapid multiplication of cells.”
“A tumor.”
“Also known as you,” she retorted.
“Oooh,” the crowds jeered again.
I actually laughed. And that merely wound her up all over again. I could practically read her enraged eyes that said, shut up.
Fifteen minutes passed and both of our questions were becoming more difficult. We drew closer together somehow, only a couple feet separating us as we spewed questions and answers to star constellations, composers, aesthetic theories, philosophy and American history.
She was much smarter than I initially thought. Perhaps, even, the smartest competitor I’d encountered in my adolescence. She liked facts, random knowledge, as much as me.
“Your turn, Richard.” She said my first name with spite, venom seeping into each letter, as though she was slaughtering the syllables. I didn’t care to correct her, to tell her that everyone called me Connor. I was taken by her passion, so I wouldn’t stop her. Not once.
I looked down at my slip of paper. It was in neat, precise cursive. It had to be her handwriting. “Characters from Shakespeare’s Plays.”
She tried to force back a smile.
So she liked Shakespeare. “Sir John Falstaff,” I told her a character. Now she had to name the play.
Without a beat, she answered, “The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.” She was quick to ask me a question. We no longer waited for Henry to confirm answers that we knew were correct. “Ariel?”
“The Tempest.” I assumed it must’ve been her favorite.
She plucked the next paper. “Birthplace of Ancient Civilizations.”
I tried not to gloat since she was already heated. I was the one who wrote down that category.
She took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling, racking her brain for a trivia fact. “Mesopotamia…1800 to 1686 B.C.” Her voice was quieter, more uncertain about this category than the others.
“Old Babylonian,” I told her in a hushed voice too. It felt like we were the only two in the hallway for a minute. Our eyes met, and I could see the defeat in hers before I even asked a question. She had no confidence in this subject.
I waited to ask her something. There was a long string of silence except for Henry’s fingers hitting the keyboard.
“He’s right,” Henry exhaled.
Every Faust boy cheered. The Dalton girls and guys whispered amongst themselves and tried to pump Rose with encouragements.
I didn’t want to bring her down as much as I wanted to build her up, but I also liked to win. And I wouldn’t lose this game. “Crete, 3000 to 1100 B.C.”