“And, before you ask, I asked to join the quiz bowl team”

  “Olivia, you might not have realized it, but I didn’t ask you to join the quiz bowl team simply because you date me, nor to obtain any favors from them. You might a little too confident at times, but you’re smarter than your role in cheer gives you credit for”

  “The only reason why my parents even let me do cheer is because it takes pressure off me in class!”

  “Never did I hear such a thing from our football opponents! Then again, you never told me about cheer taking pressure off you!”

  As much as it pains me to admit it, our sports opponents just aren’t nearly as competitive as we are academically, Ned sighs.

  “I just never had the opportunity to tell you so”

  The two eat one heart-shaped chocolate apiece, in front of each other. How cute. After they’re done eating the chocolates, she’s herded back home by her parents.

  When the family returns home, Olivia can tell her parents are unhappy about something happening at the game.

  “What did I hear after the game?” Olivia’s mom asks, steam about to burst out of her ears. “You asked to join the quiz bowl team? Why?”

  “Because, as a cheerleader, we mostly toil to support other teams. In quiz bowl, I’d be in the thick of it”

  “This late in the quiz bowl season? You might learn something that could help you in class, but are you comfortable with not amounting to much as a quiz bowler?” her dad asks her.

  “What do you mean, I won’t amount to much in quiz bowl? Cheer season ends as soon as the boys’ basketball season ends!”

  "Quiz bowl-State is in one month, and the High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT) is in three! That's very little time to prepare!"

  Let’s face it: neither basketball team is going deep into the basketball state tournament. Both teams are middle of the pack, and would be lucky to make it to the quarterfinals, Olivia’s dad muses while his daughter has yet to realize what she got herself into.

  “I know that it’s a tight schedule. But this means I must study smarter to get to where I can contribute!” Olivia then receives Flo’s response about practice schedules, as well as the HSNCT release form. “Quiz bowl practices are on Mondays and Fridays”

  “Ask yourself if Annette will allow you to miss two cheer practices per week for quiz bowl ones!” her mom yells at her.

  Olivia then asks just that from Annette, knowing that, for the rest of the season, until Memorial Day, she’ll have quiz bowl practices.

  “More importantly, Monika left the team!”

  “Monika was a special topics player. She was a major contributor to the VAs finishing in the top-five last year. But without Oleg or Monika, it’s hard to tell whether VA can repeat, with or without you as the new special topics player!” her dad tells her about the implications of Monika leaving the team.

  “On top of that, joining the quiz bowl team will negate what you hoped to get by being on the cheer team, that is, less academic pressure. By now, everyone in town knows about quiz bowl’s intellectual intensity, and often treat quiz bowlers differently” her mom lectures her about quiz bowlers’ lives out of the game.

  “What do you mean, quiz bowlers are treated differently?”

  “You’ll have endless requests for help, and people will want to cheat off you!” her dad explains to her. “It’ll take a bit to get used to”

  “What makes you think that you can withstand the intellectual pressure of the game?” her mom asks her.

  “I feel like I just wasn’t challenged that much in my academic life. I never really rocked the boat, I mostly did what I was asked, without worrying about grades”

  “If you want, I invite you to watch past VA games on YouTube, especially those in past HSNCTs” Olivia’s dad then shares, via text, a link to last year’s VA game against Hathaway. “You’ll get a better idea of what’s required of you to perform at the level expected of VA this season, and how quiz bowl plays out!”

  “Also, why do you act as if you knew for sure that you’re going to play on the quiz bowl team?” her mom asks her as Olivia starts watching the Hathaway-VA game clip.

  “You said it so yourself that quiz bowl is very intense intellectually to play. The intensity caused a lot of would-be quiz bowlers to balk at playing, and they were looking left and right at school for potential takers for days! And unsuccessfully!”

  “You’re not… unremarkable, but you’re not a star student either!” Olivia’s mom comments on her daughter’s academic prowess.

  After this discussion ends, Olivia resumes watching the quiz bowl game clip, hoping to glean some clues about what makes her future teammates worth playing with. And also what the game really is about: asking what, to the untrained eye, feels like paragraph-long trivia questions, and then answering bonus ones if the paragraph-long one was answered correctly.

  She then finishes what schoolwork she has left due for tomorrow, and spends what little spare time she has to learn about the rules of quiz bowl.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  However, her mind seems to be playing some tricks on her while asleep, as she turns in her bed:

  Olivia was summoned an empty principal’s office, seemingly punished for… libel?

  “Olivia, it appears that you slandered the quiz bowl team in front of the cheer squad!” Norman’s voice yelled at her.

  “I only announced my intention to play for the quiz bowl team; how is that libel?”

  “You claimed the current cheer squad only played a supporting role in others’ successes! Do you not realize the hard work that was put into it?” the off voice kept yelling at her.

  “Which makes this a little harsh: we work so hard, enduring several practices per week, and we get none of the glory!”

  “For the past 20 years, VA had no cheer squad, since the principal during the pandemic disbanded the cheer squad as a cost-cutting measure. However, the current superintendent believed that VA’s recurring misfortunes on the gridiron might be reversed if the VAs had a cheer squad!” Norman’s voice echoed.

  “I joined cheer so that it would take pressure off me in class! People think cheerleaders are dumb, and hence stop pressuring us in class!” Olivia’s oneiric self yelled at… Norman’s voice.

  And use their athleticism to grab boys left and right… Olivia’s mind raced while visions of past and present female VA quiz bowlers began circling around her:

  “You want to join the quiz bowl team? Ask yourself how it would feel to carry the burden of representing an extracurricular’s entire world on the buzzer!” Sadie asked Olivia, cackling.

  “What do you mean, I’d be made to shoulder the burden of representing an extracurricular’s entire world on the buzzer?” Olivia’s oneiric eyes opened wide, almost as if they were about to pop.

  “You weren’t even born when it happened, but… into the HSNCT playoffs, I was made to feel like I represented the entire debate world. You, on the other hand, won’t need to make it deep into the HSNCT to feel that way!”

  “Yeah, VA is in win-now mode, how do you plan to measure up to past VA quiz bowling legends such as Imélie, Anna, Sadie or even Marcia, Nadine or Lilina? To say nothing of second-rate players, such as Audrey, Myriam, Marissa or Josiane?” Monika asked, as she was about to grab Olivia’s oneiric self by her blonde hair.

  “At best, you’ll end up being like Flo: a rental player!” Cindy jeered at Olivia.

  “I’ll read past question packets by any means necessary!” Olivia pled with the other ghosts.

  “Please keep in mind that Red Army questions tend to…” Marissa got interrupted.

  “Red… Army?” Olivia gasped. “Why does the military sell or write quiz bowl questions?”

  “Red Army questions tend to have more obscure answer lines! In fact, the Red Army, as a question supplier, is a military entity in ownership only”

  But then Norman’s voice resurfaced, along with a stern-faced vision, right in the middle of the group of tormentors posing as female quiz bowlers.

  “Let’s just back up a little bit. While there’s glory in quiz bowl, cheer achieving the same level of glory is probably too expensive. For the cost of one cheerleader, we could probably finance the entirety of the high school quiz bowl team’s regular season, inclusive of State, and that’s with the cheerleaders only doing home games, in what you put it as “only” a supporting role in other sports’ successes!” Norman lectured the cheerleader.

  Norman then showed her both teams’ budgets. The quiz bowl team has no uniforms, no gear, no registration fees, no special training, only travel from and to tournaments, and their entry fees. They get their practice material for free.

  “Do you have any idea of how expensive competitive cheer is?”

  At this point, Olivia awakens from this nightmare. It might be a nightmare, but if what Norman said was true, then I have a better idea of why I feel condemned as a cheerleader. More than ever, I might have a reason to do quiz bowl!

  The following day, Olivia is in class with Becky and Ned where, in social studies, the new group project is assigned to them.

  “For the next two months, you’ll work on a group project about material in this course. You will be assigned a topic and a team by me. As tempting as it might be to just copy-paste AI files, I advise you to make first draft without AI, before making the junction between parts!” The social studies teacher then goes over the project’s requirements and key dates, before posting the teams and topics.

  Because the teacher deemed necessary to form what’s believed to be balanced teams, and Ned’s involvement in baseball could prevent him from contributing as much as the teacher would like, Ned is deemed weak for the time being. He’s teamed up with Becky and Olivia, who might be able to contribute more later, but the fourth one is not someone the other three interacted much with.

  They then spend the rest of the period working on the project. Slavery in Antebellum America for us, Olivia reads their assigned topic.

  “Olivia, now that you’re on the quiz bowl team, you’re expected to contribute to the main body. In the past, you might have been able to get by in groups with doing introductions and conclusions in group projects, but this isn’t going to fly anymore!” Todd, the fourth team member, warns Olivia.

  If you only do intros and conclusions, you only engage with the material superficially. But why am I stuck with three athletes? Todd sighs.

  “Because I need to focus on basketball, at least until Monday, I’ll do intro and conclusion!” Becky announces, before turning to Olivia, over whom she towers. “You cheered on me at every home game, we’re going to need all the help we can get to beat Pearl River! Like giving me a break until at least that game ends, little quiz bowler!”

  “If that’s how it’s going to be, I’ll do the socioeconomic context!”

  Pearl River... Rumors have it that they rely on the international exchange markets, year in and year out, in girls’ basketball, Becky muses while that second-round basketball game consumes her. Speaking of which, I could always tell the other cheerleaders I know to add a new chant: “Down with the international exchange markets! Down with Pearl River!”

  “No, I’ll do the socioeconomic context! The baseball season is about to start!” Ned believes that the baseball season is going to force his hands more than quiz bowl will force Olivia’s, going into the project.

  “I guess, one of us must do the abolitionist movement, and the other, how westward expansion led to tensions between North and South!”

  “You’re a quiz bowler now! You can’t do schoolwork like your old cheerleader self did anymore!” Todd doesn’t realize what’s coming next to him.

  “I still had relatively good grades. Not perfect by any stretch, but... you seem to be implying that cheerleaders were poor students! I took advantage of the stereotype to keep my academic pressure under control, though! Fine, I’ll do the abolitionist movement!”

  “If you don’t already know, quiz bowlers are expected to keep their grades up at all times!”

  “If you actually knew the cheerleaders of both us and our big sports rivals, you’d know that, academically, they’re students like any other! You’re going to have good students as well as those for whom no-pass, no-play is a concern!” Becky tries to defend Olivia. “Quiz bowl leans top-heavy, I’ll grant you that”

  And then they start looking into sources for their respective parts of the project, with Becky abstaining for now. Olivia pays close attention to how industrialization of the North was a key driver of the emancipation movement and how that caused tensions. The rest of the year is going to be unpleasant because of this unorthodox mix, unless I earn grades within what’s expected of quiz bowlers.