The following day at school, a devastated Becky cries in the hallway, wearing the purple basketball jersey in full view of her friends.

  “My season is over! We had a chance to get this… Danish player to get fouled out of the game! But I was an idiot, and I got fouled out instead!” Becky laments in front of the trio of cheerleaders.

  “Yeah, their cheerleaders kept yelling stuff in Danish, as well as even bring a cart full of Danish pastries at center court when they won that game!” Lexie’s ears are still ringing from the numerous allusions to pastries made by the Rebels’ fans during that game.

  “They kept yelling Pastry! Pastry! Over and over whenever Matilde had the ball!” Adriana adds to the cacophony. “Never did cheering at a basketball game made me so hungry!”

  “Becky, there’s always next season. And, of course, hoping that the others improve, too. Then again, so do I” Olivia tells her after listening to the cheerleaders venting. “At least you all got the opportunity to get your homework done in full on the road and, for you, Becky, you made some headway towards the intro and outro?”

  “Yes. I guess, Ned and Todd pushed you to complete your part faster than usual…” Becky points out. “To produce work at that level in a group project, in the past, you took much longer than a single weekend. But your part is good” She’s left wondering what impact their social studies teammates had on Olivia.

  I guess, Becky doesn’t question my academic prowess. However, now that the season ends, I hope she steps up to the plate in class, and same goes for both Adriana and Lexie, for the whole cheer team, really, Olivia muses while she’s happy for Becky finally getting on with the group project.

  By the end of the day, at the start of the cheerleading practice, the cheerleaders attend the boys’ basketball team playoff bracket release, along with both teams’ coaches. And some band members, too, especially those who date boys’ basketball players or cheerleaders. Assembled in the band room, all these people eagerly await the bracket release, with the band conductor running a little late.

  “Remember: in boys’ basketball, usually, the higher seed wins, so I don’t expect much from this team” Lexie thinks out loud when the band conductor finally arrives.

  They all watch the first playoff bracket appearing on-screen, live from the LHSAA central office in Baton-Rouge, that of Division I Non-Select. Then Division I Select.

  When Division II Non-Select’s turn arrives, a few minutes later, everyone’s eyes are wide open, and the boys’ basketball coach zooms in on VA’s position in the bracket as soon as he could find it.

  “And the Venomous Agendas will begin the boys’ basketball Division II Non-Select state tournament…” a band drummer rolls a drum, while the basketball coach pauses. “On the road, with the twentieth seed, we will be playing the Minden Crimson Tide!”

  The band conductor, as well as Annette, both step forward, making a joint statement addressed to band and cheer about that game.

  “For those who want to go support the Venomous Agendas on Friday night, we’re going to leave school early for the game, and we will issue excuse notes for all those who go. Please be advised that we’re going back to Jennings in the dead of night” the band conductor begins the announcement.

  “Also, if you don’t want to travel with the basketball team for the game, we won’t force you” Annette concludes the announcement.

  Joy… the team is going to cross the state almost in its entirety, as we did for Pearl River, albeit north-south as opposed to east-west, Adriana sighs, upon hearing the announcement.

  When the announcement ends, everyone vacates the band room, while the cheerleaders are assembled in their usual practice room, along with Annette.

  “All remaining practices for the school year are for those traveling to boys’ basketball games only” Annette announces to the cheerleaders.

  “Will there be one last home game this season?” another cheerleader asks.

  “It’s very unlikely since teams are re-seeded at the conclusion of a playoff round. It would require eight teams seeded below twenty to win their first-round games, or four of these to advance to the quarterfinals, even if there weren’t eight of these in the second round” Lexie explains to another freshman.

  Before the practice proper begins, Annette turns to Olivia. “I want to see you after the practice. Speaking of which, do you plan on going to Minden on Friday night?”

  “No. I have quiz bowl practice while you will be on a bus with the basketball team…”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  And Olivia changes her clothes back to her regular clothes, then retreating to the library to get her homework done. Fortunately for her, the workload is not too stifling, and she can get them done in the time a cheerleading practice takes. So, in the time she has left, she pores over quiz bowl sets, and then proceeds to read them indiscriminately, clue by clue, answer line by answer line.

  Jim sees her pore over a somewhat older Red Army high school set and comments about the limitations of using Red Army sets to practice. These questions are a little hard at times, especially early in tossups.

  “So it seems like you’ve been practicing after all!” Jim whispers in her ear. “While Red Army high school sets are mostly representative of what awaits you at quiz bowl-State, since, on average, Red Army regular high school sets lie between SCT-Division II, on which State runs, and the HSNCT, it’s true except for one subject”

  “What do you mean, Jim?” Olivia rolls her eyes, with bad memories of their first meet.

  “The Red Army famously has a reputation of being considerably harder in geography. Like who the hell asks questions about locations such as Kherson at this level? Kherson might appear in a civilian collegiate set, and even then…” Jim points to the geography question below what Olivia was currently reading.

  “Let’s back up a bit. SCT-Division II? What’s that? I heard about the HSNCT for years, and that VA qualified for it in the last twelve years!”

  “The SCT, or Sectional Championship Tournament, Division II, is normally a college set used at the junior varsity level, but NAQT deemed its use appropriate for late-season high school quiz bowl tournaments, like State. It’s often considered the hardest high school set you’ll encounter outside of the HSNCT”

  “Quiet…” the librarian tells the two.

  Which makes Olivia leave the library, along with Jim, who returns home. Olivia sighs, upon realizing that she’s on the right track in her quiz bowl practicing. And, of course, it’s almost time to meet with Annette.

  “Olivia, I’m a little concerned about the pressure you appear to be facing now that you started playing quiz bowl!” Annette starts the meeting.

  “I’m a new player, quiz bowl has a learning curve, perhaps veteran players are more used to the realities of the game, both on and off the buzzer. As much as I’m willing to give quiz bowl a chance, I really hope people at school give me adequate time to get up to speed!” Olivia bursts in tears.

  “In high school, I was in a similar situation to you, but with mathletics instead. While I joined mathletics because of my then-boyfriend… I was a cheerleader first and foremost at the time, but my saving grace was that, at Elton, mathletics flew under the radar, unlike quiz bowl here”

  “I get it, Elton didn’t care about mathletics”

  “I was Elton’s lead flyer as a senior. What I would tell you is just to train smarter and also study smarter, too. It will serve you better in the long run than any self-sabotage attempt you could contemplate. Also, people assumed that I was on the math team because I dated a mathlete, and not because I had any real math talent!”

  Annette appears to be taking a trip down memory lane. Making it to the final at the VMC as a senior was the highlight of my high school life outside of cheerleading. Getting my butt kicked in mathletics by Krista and, later, Gen and Marcia, were, however, my most unpleasant memories of mathletics. These three girls were freaks.

  “You’re describing my life before I even played quiz bowl in the first place! Like me, you used your position as a cheerleader to take academic pressure off!” Olivia exclaims.

  “You can’t keep your emotions bottled up forever! Just be cautious in how you plan to study for quiz bowl, and don’t overdo it. There’s only so much you can learn in three weeks. That said, it’s not a question of intellect with you. One last thing: in quiz bowl games, try to push aside your role in cheerleading”

  “Thank you… I guess”

  Olivia leaves the teachers’ room and is met by Becky, who also stayed behind at school to do homework after hitting the weight room.

  “If you want, I could always go to quiz bowl-State with you. Same goes for Adriana and Lexie” Becky tells her. “I owe you a favor because you let me do intro and conclusion in the social studies group project and focus on basketball!”

  “What do they ask in return?” Olivia dreads the response of her close friend.

  The two cheerleaders get out of the dressing room, about to return home. They overhear Olivia’s question in the distance and make a detour to answer it.

  “Let’s say that you bring Danish pastries for lunch at quiz bowl-State!” Adriana makes her request to Olivia.

  “Have a specific flavor in mind?”

  “Why?” Adriana asks her.

  “Adriana, if I bring Danish pastries for lunch at quiz bowl-State, I may as well have enough of these pastries for not only the four of us, but Ned, too! And the regular quiz bowlers as well, and this means at least two packs of such!”

  “That’s true! The local groceries sell Danish pastries in packs of four…” Lexie adds to the comment about Danish pastries.

  Lexie gets an earworm about Pearl River’s cheerleaders chanting “Dansk! Brod!” in an incoherent Danish. Which she somehow slips:

  “Dansk! Brod!” She makes her best imitation of a Pearl River cheerleader chanting such.

  “There are three flavors available: apple, lemon and strawberry, so I may as well buy all three. Also, Dansk! Brod! Lexie, what does that even mean?”

  “Danish! Bread!” Lexie answers.

  “You three make me feel like, somehow, the Rebels’ best player made Denmark’s national U-sixteen or U-eighteen team, and they rubbed it in your faces during that game!” Olivia points out to them.

  “They never talked about that specifically, but from what little I know about Denmark, they just aren’t that great at girls’ basketball!” Becky tells the trio.

  “Yeah, if that was the case, it would explain a lot of things I saw at that game!”

  Olivia then takes a note on her phone about the need to buy all 3 flavors of Danish pastries she could get, the day before quiz bowl-State.

  “See you tomorrow then!”

  It’s only after she returns home that she manages to process what happened in the library with Jim, and how that differed from when they first met. When I first met Jim, he was a jerk towards me. I mean, everyone needs to start somewhere, but now he appears willing to make up for his poor behavior of last week? And all it took was me reading practice questions?