The Regional Qualifier
The first competition is always the one that tells you who you actually are under pressure.
Debate || Competition || Alex || Jamie
The regional qualifier was at Roosevelt High on a Saturday in early December, which meant Jamie and I had been partners for three months and had spent those three months building an affirmative case that was, by any technical measure, very good, and that was, by the more important measure that Mrs. Callahan had described in her paper, actually believed by both of us. I had not used those words — I had not said I believe this to Jamie or to anyone. But I had argued it from life for two months, had progressively peeled back the technical scaffolding until what remained was the argument that came from inside instead of from a framework. I had a pulse. Mrs. Callahan had confirmed this in the most recent practice round with a look over her reading glasses that was the closest she came to saying good job.
We arrived at Roosevelt at seven-thirty in the morning, early enough that the school had the quality of a building not yet inhabited by its usual self. The teams were gathering in the auditorium — Jefferson and twelve other schools from the district, the whole small ecosystem of competitive debate with its particular social atmosphere of people who were intelligent enough to be confident and young enough to still be terrified. I registered us. Jamie stood beside me with their coffee, scanning the room with the alert, unguarded attention they brought to every new environment, cataloguing it. “Franklin High,” they said, quietly, nodding across the room. “Their team won state two years ago. They’re technically excellent and they argue like they know it.” “Can we beat them?” I said. “Yes,” Jamie said, without hedging. “If we argue like we believe it.” They looked at me. “Do we believe it?” “Yes,” I said. And I meant it. Not technically — actually.
We won four rounds and lost one. The loss was to Franklin, who were in fact technically excellent and who argued from a framework so tight it was almost beautiful, and who we lost to by two points out of a possible ten, which was close enough to make the loss informative rather than deflating. In our affirmative round against a team from Lincoln, I gave the constructive speech that was the first-person argument I had written and revised for two months, and I gave it at full commitment — not managing it, not performing it, actually meaning it — and when I sat down Jamie looked at me with an expression I would remember specifically: not pride exactly but something adjacent to it, the look of someone watching another person do the thing they were capable of and doing it completely. We advanced to the next round as the second-ranked team in the district, behind Franklin by the two points. “Second,” I said, walking to the car. “We’re good enough to go to state,” Jamie said. “We’ll be better by February.” They were right. They were usually right about the things that mattered. “Hey,” I said, when we reached the parking lot. They turned. “Thank you,” I said. “For making me argue it for real.” They looked at me. “You did that,” they said. “I just kept asking the questions.” “You kept asking the questions,” I agreed. “That’s not nothing.” They smiled — the warm one. “No,” they said. “It’s not.” We drove home in the December rain, and I thought about second place, and state in February, and the questions Jamie kept asking, and the answers that were becoming harder to keep inside the careful architecture of the third index card, blank now except for the word Soon, and Soon was beginning to feel like a specific date rather than an indefinite promise.