good mix. But in this match, the advanced biology, physics, and chemistry questions? They just. Kept. Coming.
What’s the name of the aqueous solution in which the concentration of OH– ions is greater than that of H+ ions?
When a cell engulfs a particle by extending its pseudopodia around the particle, this is known as what?
Normally, Hedgehog would have rung in on questions like these. But Hedgehog wasn’t there. Every time a science question came up, Felix, Sai, and I looked at one another to quickly confirm that none of us knew the answer. And then we’d look at Jesse who would be blank-faced and sweating, staring at the moderator as if he were about to morph into Satan, horns, forked tongue, and all.
The best thing to do when we didn’t know the answer was to admit that we didn’t know. We’d lose the chance to earn points, and possibly the other team would get them if they answered the question. But it was much worse to throw a wild guess out there, because a wrong answer earned an interrupt penalty of five points deducted from our score and time for the rival team to confer and answer without time pressure. It was the Quiz Bowl equivalent of giving the other team a free throw.
Unfortunately, Sai got nervous when we didn’t know the answer, especially multiple times in a row, so he’d impulsively buzz in with a half-assed response and earn an interrupt penalty. Annnnd that happened twice before the torturous first round finally ended.
Meanwhile Jesse just sat there. We were down twenty points by the time it was done. The other team, a Purdue team I’d never competed against, weren’t that great, but they were still mopping the floor with us. It would be embarrassing if it weren’t much, much worse.
We had a break between round one and round two. Jesse walked off to a corner of the room, and I made a beeline for him.
He looked like he was about to cry. Or maybe tie on a hair shirt to punish himself. “I’m sorry, Dobbs. I can’t believe I sucked that hard. You guys were right. The dean forcing you to take me on your team is going to ruin your shot this year.”
He looked so miserable that my own disappointment evaporated. I could see how much Jesse hated letting me down. I got a flash of the way he tried so hard to help his parents. I was not going to let him beat himself up over this.
I put a hand on his arm. “Listen, we all blow it now and then. The first match I went to, I was so bad, I thought for sure they’d throw me out of the Quiz Bowl world in perpetuity.”
“Yeah? But you were probably, like, twelve,” Jesse said bitterly.
I’d been thirteen, as it happened. But I wasn’t gonna say that. “Last year, Sai got pissed at Felix over some comment he made at breakfast, and he refused to buzz in for an entire two rounds. I about killed him.”
Jesse’s expression didn’t lighten.
“Just relax,” I told him. “I know you know the answers to some of these questions.”
“I did!” he agreed fervently. “Like the one about the cell eating the particle. But I just…I thought maybe I was wrong, or it was some kind of trick question, and I psyched myself out of answering. I didn’t want to buzz in and be wrong.”
I nodded. “I get it. But if you are wrong, it’s not the end of the world. Sai was wrong a couple of times today. And they really don’t have trick questions in Quiz Bowl. So if you think you know the answer, you’re probably right.”
Jesse shook his head. “You should have Jax replace me in the next round. I’m just gonna let you down.”
I seriously considered that. I wanted to win, damn it. But I knew if we put Jax in now, it would be a mistake in the long run. Jesse would walk away from today hating Quiz Bowl, and he’d never come back. That could not happen. We had to have an ALA guy on our team, or we could lose the house and the chapter, and the only ALA that the Quiz Bowl higher-ups would accept at this point was Knox.
I rubbed his arm. “Hey. Don’t give up on me, you bruiser. Come on. That round was unusually skewed toward science. Chances are, round two won’t be. And anyway, you’ve got this. Just relax and…and pretend we’re