The last two VA games for the day are still won by the VAs. But even that didn’t suffice to fully appease Olivia’s anxiety. What could I have done differently outside of that game? I might not know all that much, but usually I don’t buzz in when I know I don’t know the answer... This tournament can’t end soon enough; at least four more games await us tomorrow.

  After the seventh game ends, all 3 parochial teams come together on the hotel’s ground floor. One of Lacassine’s players notices that something is amiss with Olivia.

  “What’s the matter? It seems like quiz bowl made you sick!” Reese, the black female Cardinal (i.e. Lacassine player) points out to her.

  “I caused VA to lose a game!” Olivia starts crying. “I’m Olivia, and you?”

  “Reese. If it can cheer you up, Lacassine is three and four. Also, the Cardinals have a big talent imbalance!”

  “To be fair, you guys don’t have any consistent sources of talent. You might have a math team, but even that isn’t always the best source of quiz bowlers...”

  “Quiz bowl is, at Lacassine, the only place where academically-oriented kids who don’t excel in math can be themselves at school, and we don’t feel the pressure of winning you do!”

  “This is nothing new to me. We are the outliers... It’s not that I’m a bad player per se, it’s just that I happen to be the special topics player on a VA team in win-now mode! And that tends to make every little mistake in games feel like a nightmare!”

  “Don’t forget: not everyone can be as smart as even you! It’s a common mistake people at our level often make...” Reese adds.

  And I’m the first to admit that I’m not the smartest cheerleader in the world, much less the smartest girl in the world… Olivia sighs.

  “Reese, I feel like the town ramped up expectations on me because I scored the winning tossup at State! Even if we win, I hope the parish understands that we might not be able to repeat next year, especially when Cindy and Joaquin both graduate this year!” Olivia keeps venting before they go to the food court.

  “VA… seventeen post-pandemic HSNCT runs, one of the main quiz bowling powerhouses in the Deep South. Several top-ten finishes, but we never won it all. Our best finish was fifth place in both 2025 and 2040!” Thomas tells the two girls about the failed dreams of VA quiz bowling. “Fingers crossed then…”

  “Here’s the deal: we’re going to eat what we couldn’t get at home. We don’t travel out of state often, so make it count! After lunch, we’re all going to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights!” the Hathaway Hornets’ coach tells the players from all 3 teams before going to the food court.

  Probably because that place is of some interest to quiz bowlers and the College Football Hall of Fame or the World of Coca-Cola isn’t… Jim ruminates on why they organize a joint excursion to that place, which is relatively close to the Marriott Marquis.

  But before then, Olivia, who never ate a sushi in her life before, decides to try some, and hence eat at Yami Yami, in the Peachtree And same goes of Reese, too…

  “A platter of sixteen sushi pieces, and two veggie spring rolls?” Olivia tells the cashier when their turn arrives.

  After Olivia’s turn ends, Reese places her order. “Miso soup for me!”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes!” Olivia answers for the two, and then receives a number.

  “It’s the first time I ever left the state. Before then, the furthest I went from home was New Orleans...” Reese confesses to her.

  “For a quiz bowl tournament, I guess...”

  “LQBA Fall Invitational South”

  Once they receive their order, the two girls get seated next to their respective teammates, who, like them, eat meals they couldn’t eat at home otherwise. Like Joaquin, who eats beef satay next to Olivia.

  “How do you like the sushi?” Olivia asks Reese, who just finished eating the first piece.

  “It’s... different. I don’t regret eating it” Reese then takes a second piece.

  She then texts Ned about her experience of the HSNCT, while keeping quiet about having caused VA to lose a game against Moscow #263.

  Olivia: Ned, I apologize for being a poor lover. I might have left you alone during the baseball state tournament, because it meant so much to you, but I myself focused too much on quiz bowl

  Ned: I don’t blame you. You play on a team in win-now mode

  We lost to Lutcher in the semi-final of the state tourney. She was, like, whatever at the time, and shrugged off our loss. But going from non-competitive cheer to a quiz bowl team in win-now mode is a massive adjustment. That said, I’m partly to blame, too. I needed to get my act together outside of sports, Ned ruminates on what he did after the baseball season ended.

  Olivia: I’m going to buckle down and win VA the HSNCT! For our love!

  Ned: In two days, we’ll finally be available for each other again

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Olivia turns to a Reese who’s almost done eating her share of sushi, along with the miso soup, while having fallen behind in eating her own lunch.

  “How do you feel about playing at the HSNCT?” Olivia asks the Cardinal. “You know about how I feel...”

  “It’s rough. Playing quiz bowl at this level is a test of nerves, too!”

  “I know that all too well” the blonde cheerleader hurries in eating her share of sushi.

  After lunch ends, the group ends up going to the museum by foot. Upon arriving at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, a while later, they realize there’s a sizeable line for tickets that the NCCHR staff doesn’t usually get on weekends. When their turn arrives:

  “Twelve student tickets and four adult tickets please…” Flo tells the cashier.

  “Your student IDs please!” the cashier asks the Jeff Davis Parish players.

  One by one, they show their student ID cards to the cashier, and they all seem to be in order. Once all the players have their IDs verified, the adults get a receipt for 12 tickets at senior prices and 4 adults.

  They realize, after buying their tickets, that some other teams in the morning HSNCT prelims also had the same idea, as they all seem to recognize at least one team that they played. Just not necessarily the same team for each contestant.

  As soon as they set foot into the exhibits, the players realize that they’re learning the finer points of what their history courses describe. Jim then turns to Olivia, giving her some advice for what is to come to her next year:

  “Olivia, I strongly advise you to take notes since these will be of use to you in both AP US History and AP US Government!” Jim tells her.

  “I’m taking AP US Government next Winter by the way. Thank you, I appreciate it”

  This means she’ll be spared the worst of taking AP US Government with the debaters: they tend to take it in fall of their sophomore year, and, while they dominate the course, they’re insufferable in it. They’re not as horrible in AP US History, though, Jim muses.

  Reese overhears the two talk about this visit’s implications for both AP US History and Government. “And we can’t take AP courses ourselves. It seems like, at Lacassine, dual enrollment is the way to go for advanced coursework, and even then, we need to take either night classes at McNeese or online courses!”

  “To be fair, neither Hathaway nor Lacassine have the resources to even offer APs to begin with!” Eddie, the captain of the Hathaway Hornets’ quiz bowl team, tells them.

  “And it seems like teachers ask everyone whom they deem gifted to give quiz bowl a shot!” Reese vents.

  “Same at Hathaway” Eddie answers the Lacassine player.

  “Whereas VA is the parish’s academic crown jewel, everywhere else seems to focus on sports!” Olivia retorts before she continues her visit of the domestic exhibits.

  Speaking of the domestic exhibits, the main ones include Martin Luther King’s Voice to the Voiceless, as well as Rolls Down Like Water. Looking at each of these exhibits reminds her of the whole Social Studies group project about slavery in Antebellum America. And, of course, how the human rights remnants of that era still lingered a century or more later.

  And she’s also made to feel like some of these civil and human rights activists weren’t appreciated at all when they actively fought for what they believed was right, and only became appreciated long after the fact. You two can be grateful for the ungratefulness of past figures, Lexie’s voice rings in Olivia’s head as she passes in front of the stall dedicated to Brown vs Board of Education. And, of course, the whole desegregation that ensued.

  After a while in the museum’s exhibits, she has come to realize that ungratefulness is a common trait, or portrayal (and sometimes both, depending on the activist), of civil and human rights activists, and across eras. It also becomes clear to her that what was covered in class about civil and human rights was very, very shallow. Especially when she moves from one of the domestic exhibits to the international one, Spark of Conviction. Joaquin meets Olivia at its entrance:

  “Civil and human rights are a global issue, and they were caught in the crossfire of the culture wars…” Joaquin tells her as soon as the two enter the international exhibit.

  At some point, some other countries had it far worse than we did, with vastly different cultural as well as techno-economic contexts, Olivia muses as she learns the checkered state of what they themselves take for granted and other countries might not in the civil and human rights arena, and vice-versa. But today, a few of these countries have it better than we do in some respects. Mind you, not always the same from a country to another, and it holds in abortion, as well as LGBTQIA+ rights, too.

  When their trip into the NCCHR ends, the players come to a variety of eye-opening conclusions.

  “Damn… by sticking to quiz bowl packets, there’s just so much context that I’m missing!” Olivia starts realizing the shortcomings of her quiz bowl training approach.

  “And how isolated we really are from the greater world…” Reese also has her own Eureka moment. “In this farmland on which we live, we were kinda used to one way of thinking, one way of doing things…”

  “Speaking of which, our opponents at the HSNCT are often caught in an arms race of achievement, and they want to attend the most prestigious college they can get into. However, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t attend an elite college” Cindy harangues the other 11.

  “Regardless of where you attend college, you’ll all need to leave your respective hometowns for it. So while finances are going to be a decisive factor, you’ll all get a shock if you attend. Sometimes, it’s a bubble of privilege, other times it’s about demographics, others still it’s about ideology” Flo harangues all 3 teams.

  “Let’s back up a bit. Olivia seems to be on to something. If you’re careless in your training, and make no effort to understand what makes the clues significant, then all the quiz bowl packets in the world, civilian or military, won’t be of much use to you once you stop playing!” the Hornets’ quiz bowl coach refers to Red Army packets as military packets.

  I guess, this is the price I’m paying for playing on a team in “win-now” mode. Sure, training as I had in the past 3 months means I can pull some semblance of weight in games, but just knowing things can only do so much, Olivia muses as they return to their hotel room, again, by foot. But maybe I can ease up somewhat on the packet reading and, over the summer, focus on understanding the underlying concepts behind clues and answer lines better. For the time being, however, I must focus on the HSNCT.

  And yet, at night, after an uneventful visit to Emory the bus driver takes them to after dinner, Olivia gets a request from her teammates back in their room.

  “Olivia, can you please perform your cheer routines?” Joaquin begs her.

  “There’s very little tumbling I can do with the space available in this room, so I need to make do with it!” Olivia warns her quiz bowl teammates before she starts performing.

  Olivia has talent, but there’s only so much you can do solo in cheer as far as I watched cheerleaders at football or basketball games, Joaquin thinks about how the space limitations would make him feel like no one on the quiz bowl team saw what she’s truly capable of in cheerleading.

  “I might have attended football or basketball games, but only if our sports opponents brought their quiz bowl teams in tow, in which case they play their games before the sport!” Cindy now realizes that Olivia doing cheer carries implications for next season. “But you have some talent”

  Olivia emails Annette about the implications of hosting quiz bowl games as the first part of home football or basketball games for her next cheer season. About which one she would need to prioritize then.