The Long-Awaited Math Team Runoffs

Gretchen and I were the first ones in the classroom yesterday. I was really surprised that Dino did not make it here earlier than Gretchen, but then I remembered that he had health now, instead of gym, so he would not be able to get out of class earlier and climb up three flights of stairs before the last bell rang, as he must have done prior.

Melissa came here as well, and said, "I was thinking about not coming, but I had been mean to Owen lately, so he made me come here instead of him."

This Owen-goading was apparently something she and Irving shared with great interest.

Micro also came, although he said that he would be on the team regardless. He did say that he did the practice problems, because he didn't want to get all zeros.

We then heard Kathrya and Genie outside, so Gretchie and I went outside as well. Somewhere here (along the line of time), Tea also shouted out from some random place (I didn't hear her, but Gretchie did), and Dino walked past us as well.

So that was basically the attendance for the last runoff of the year. Irving also came sometime later, as well as Mario and his Princeton sweater.

We started soon afterwards, with Gretchie, Tea, and I (and Dino and Micro, I presume) each taking our 1-2-3/4 rounds. Round one was a miserable existence. There were plenty of mental addition/subtraction math, which I am most horrible at, and, judging by the scores, everyone is also rather horrible at. Round two was okay, but not that much better. Round three (for those who took it) was fair, but I tended to make weird mistakes, and yesterday was one of those days. Round four was surprisingly easy for some reason, although I suppose having known calculus was the only reason why I even knew how to solve the last question (although the concept was mentioned in precalc, and Argon told me today that he also got it right with deductive reasoning).

Dino chose not to do a fourth round, and Irving and Mario only did two rounds each (Mario had taken another round earlier). Melissa disappeared some very long time ago. So by the end of the fourth round, only Gretchie, Micro, Tea and I were left. I went over to the table with the scored rounds to see what I got, and saw that Argon (who had taken the rounds earlier during his semi-free) had gotten the same number of points in rounds one to three, except his round one and two points were the reverse of mine. Dino also had gotten the same score in rounds one and two as us. Micro nearly got a perfect in round three, so he had the highest round three score out of all of us, but he rather miserably failed the first two rounds, thus prompting Gretchie and I to later speculate what would happen if Irving and Bryant (he, along with Tybalt, was also not at the runoffs due to track practice) did the "easiest" rounds one and two instead of their five and six, which right now only they and Mario and Tybalt can do.

Anyway, later yesterday night, while I was writing my English essay, Tea told me on Google chat to "go on Facebook and tell Dino that I do not carry messages" (along with her numerous lines of "Ginny? GINNY? Fine, be that way" that somehow made itself into a separate chat log). I asked her why, and she said something about the runoffs.

Before I had even finished typing "Dino, Tea asked me to tell you that—" Dino asked, "How did you do on the runoffs?"

Strange. He had never cared how I did before, but since we had already established that he was a strange boy, I indulged him and told him my scores. He responded with a single-word response of "nice."

The next day (which is really just today), Tea said that Dino told her that he had gotten a total score of fourteen. Which was absolutely ridiculous, because even though I did not remember how well he did on round four, he had gotten the same as me on the first two rounds, and my total (round four replacing round three) score did not even reach fourteen, despite having gotten a perfect in round four.

(The fact that his supposed score is one point higher than mine is also very suspicious.)

Oh, Dino and his lies.

So, Tea asked me why I like Dino. This piece below was written yesterday, but the theme fits, and I hope it will serve as a sort of explanation.


If I could have one dream and never wake up, please make this a dream, because then it would be all too real and I would not lose a thing, not the happy memories not the tragic moments not the laughter not the pain not one bit not anything.


I am reconsidering what Ritchell means to me. I cannot help it, I am a writer, and I look for the metaphor everywhere I go, and everything I do. I had once thought that if I made everything into an allegory of something else, I would be able to figure out why the good things come and go, and why the bad things always linger in the background.

Likewise, Ritchell became part of my goal to create the ultimate symbol, the epic that would have a real-life meaning that I could comprehend and then pass on. I made a mental list of all of his qualities, some from my memories, some from my imagination, but most from this world that was out of my control. This was the world Fate created and Allison Saint-Cross tried to destroy, and so Ritchell was just as contradicted, just as hard to understand, just as lost.

Ritchell was a combination of the real and the unreal, but to call him anything less than real would be unfair, just as it would be to call him anything less than surreal. I could tell anyone on the street the tangible traits Ritchell possessed, and receive some blank stares along with some hints of recognition. Just as well, I could say, there exists such a person, and describe Ritchell until he could not be any more clear in my head, and no one would have ever heard of him, even if I never bring up his name.

I see traces of Ritchell everywhere, everywhere I go, but he is never quite there.

I thought I had seen Ritchell just the other day, that chilly November. He was standing by the tallest oak tree in the park, and he had those eyes that I instantly knew belonged to Ritchell. I walked over to him, introduced myself, and asked for his name.

"Matt," he said, and that was the end of that. He had Ritchell's voice, and his composure. He was Matt Ritchell, then, I concluded. Names meant nothing anyway, unless you were Allison Saint-Cross, but even then, names meant much less than the ones bearing the names.

We stood in the park, sharing memories as if we had experienced them together and were merely trying to help the other recall the little details, like the fresh basil sprinkled onto the bowls of tomato soup served at the county fair, or the slightly purple-blue flower hanging onto its stem in the middle of December, amidst a blanket of snow. He was my Ritchell, if Ritchell were ever mine to begin with, and I grew confident with every song we sang those wintry months.

But Nephria had a legend as ancient as the walls of its buildings and as enduring as the air and roads and the blood spilt on those roads. It was known as Prescott's curse, and it came every winter with the snow and left every spring when the snow disappeared. If there had to be one reason why Allison Saint-Cross could try to destroy this world and still be honored as a hero, it would be because of Prescott's curse, and it would be because although Fate had no sympathy, Allison was only imperfect.

So April came, with its rainy solemnity and childish stubbornness, and April went, and summer came and summer went, and I thought I saw Ritchell again, many times, but when I looked again he was gone, and I had many times wondered if he had struck a deal with Chronos and could transport himself through time and space as easily as the apathetic redhead could.

Come November again, I met Avery Kanswell, who said he knew Ritchell, knew him by heart, knew everything there was to know about him. I asked him, were we talking about the same Ritchell? And Kanswell replied, "There may be many people called Ritchell, but there is only one Ritchell. You and I both know that."

I nodded, not because I thought he was right, but because I knew this would be the best explanation I would ever have as to why Ritchell could transcend the laws of Fate that even Allison could only envy to achieve. I asked Kanswell if he knew where Ritchell was, and Kanswell said I should know, if only I tried hard enough. I told him I saw Ritchell everywhere, but that did not help me very much, because just as he was everywhere, at the same time, he was nowhere.

And then I saw Ritchell. He had Ritchell's eyes, he had Ritchell's composure, he had Ritchell's air of presence. I wanted to say something to him, but just as I could see him everywhere and know that he was there and not there at the same time, I could see him here and not be able to make him hear a single word I said.

I stood from afar, observing my masterpiece evolve, sure to encompass the symbolism I knew was in his very state of being. I had groaned when I read other writers' papers, with their confusing microcosms and stories within stories that I could not understand, but now I pursued my metaphor with the same vigor, because this would be the one. This would be the classic, the one that would hold true throughout time, the one constant that could transgress every rule and limitation that made all of us keep faith in Fate but still yearn to believe in Allison.

Then one day, I woke up from my reveries and really saw Ritchell, and I realized that I had always been comparing Ritchell to that spectrum between Fate and Allison, and trying my hardest to ensure that Ritchell was perfect, because he was the closest I had to someone as intangible as Fate. But Ritchell was imperfect, just like Allison, just like Prescott, just like Chronos, just like everyone else. It was because Ritchell was imperfect that he could transcend time and space, because he could be everywhere at once, because everywhere was just like him, because everywhere had his essence and state of being. He was, in part, the perfect metaphor I had been searching for, but in part, he was not, because everyone else could just as well be that metaphor and play the role just as well, just as wholeheartedly, just as outstandingly, breathtakingly, tragic.

Ritchell was not the metaphor; he was only a part of this world that was so alike and so different that everything could be a metaphor for everything and describe the situation so fittingly yet be nonconforming enough to not resemble the original.

Ritchell was a metaphor for the dreams and broken memories and feathered hopes and everything else that resided in this world that Fate had created and that Allison had not yet destroyed, and those things were metaphors for Ritchell and everything he said and did and believed.

And somewhere amidst this revelation, I realized that Ritchell was both the fleeting good and the lingering bad, the very mystery I had been trying to unravel. He was not an explanation. He was simply another example of what I had observed a long time ago, and he presented the truth in such a obscured, juxtaposed way that I had no choice but to face it and ignore that cowardice that had accompanied me ever since I had first begun on this journey.

I'm not perfect, but I keep on trying, 'cause that's what I said I would do from the start.