#kotlc garwin

    Garwin absentmindedly flicks through the decks of Quizlet flashcards he’s been through at least a hundred times as teachers mill about the gym co-opted into a facsimile of a classroom. It’s not as though there are so many spelling-addicted nerds in this school that all of them couldn’t fit into a single actual classroom, but apparently this will look better on Canyon Crest’s Instagram page, so everything gets to become a logistics nightmare. 

    The nightmare has moved on from a never ending line of folding chairs, despite there only being need for forty-eight between the student participants and the proctors scoring each of their tests, and now it gets to feature the all-powerful ‘No Signal’ glyph plastered across the center of a projector screen, gleaming solidly as though taunting everyone that has contributed to causing this exact moment. 

    It’s still a long fifteen minutes until the proceedings are to officially begin at five-thirty, and the participants, told unsuccessfully to show up twenty minutes before anything interesting was to happen, have finally started to filter in. Shannon in-his-Spanish-class-Sophomore-year Turing and Gerry don’t-make-eye-contact-don’t-make-eye-contact Barker are among the first to join him. Let’s just say that it’s not particularly surprising they’ve arrived at the same time or that they choose to sit next to each other on the bleachers, quite noticeably not leaving room for Jesus.

    Garwin is only privy to their…canoodling…by the sheer coincidence of being at school the entire time at Science Olympiad practice. Even then, he was kicked out of there at five, leaving him to stake his claim to the most choice of homogenous plastic chairs. 

    It turns out, it doesn’t take long for Garwin to grow bored as his attention refocuses on the Quizlet cards that are his lifeline this evening. Thankfully, he’s saved from actually having to study—perpetually remaining in a state of pretending to study—as more victims file into the gym, slowly filling up the chairs. Even Shannon and Gerry realize at one point or another that they will be forced to disentangle their limbs as they stake out their own seats. 

    Gerry flashes Garwin a half smile as he passes, choosing the seat a row ahead to Garwin’s left. It takes everything in himself to not glare back. It seems as though one of them has moved on from that particular breakup a bit more than the other. Garwin is under no obligations to be civil, but it is generally good practice. 

    Especially when he finds Abraham James’ eyes boring daggers into his back. To be completely fair, Garwin didn’t realize when their English project meetings turned into dates. He still can’t exactly tell where the line lay. Though, in hindsight, the fact that they continued after the project was due should have been a better indicator than it was. 

    Garwin doesn’t recognize the swarm of likely freshmen that filter into the gym together, laughing boisterously and he’s stuck with the realization that he’ll be leaving the Science Olympiad team’s future in at least some of their unworthy hands. Not all of them, of course, but there’s only so many people around here that are willing to spend their free time studying instead of literally anything else. 

    And, actually, now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure one of them is actually on the Division B—sixth through ninth grade—Scioly team. Bethany, her name might be? It doesn’t really matter, but it helps to prove his point.

    Garwin turns away, his focus returning to the Quizlet deck that he hasn’t been through in its entirety once this evening, and he notices John from-his-Sweeney-class Shelley. AP Environmental Science isn’t a particularly difficult subject and the reason the scores are so bad is because everyone universally agrees upon this and chooses to not study, but the teacher makes the whole thing an unbearable pain in the ass. As such, the class becomes more about surviving the teacher, and, before long, the class and teacher are interchangeable. 

    Then Victor and Clay—god knows what their last names are—come bounding into the room, and let’s just say that just because they’ve somehow managed to get into Garwin’s calc class, there’s no way it didn’t involve copious amounts of teacher bribery because there’s no way either of them should be allowed to do the derivative of y = x. 

    At this point, the cycle of people showing up and Garwin vaguely recognizing most of them has dulled to extraordinary lows, so much so, in fact, that he’s opened up the Quizlet designed for last year’s countries round. It would have been as advertised on the can except whoever made the list wasn’t informed that Czechoslovakia isn’t a country anymore, so instead it got to be the round of countries along with one former country. Capital cities—between Ouagadougou, Phnom Penh, and Ljubljana—could be fun though. Transliteration from one language to another always has such wonderful results. 

    Garwin’s phone clock ticks over to 5:35 before the triumphant calls of victory echo throughout the gym at the technical difficulties being resolved, blazing a rectangle of bright white title slide of a presentation into everyone’s retinas. The proctors waste no time in fanning out to their assigned locations, and Garwin is surprised to see that all of the seats are filled—no, that’s not right. There’s still one left empty, being presided over by the wrathful eye of Sweeney. Whoever is the unlucky soul to arrive last is going to be in for a bad time, and Garwin feels a tinge of pity in the darkest recesses of his chest. 

    He’s ended up neither winning nor losing the lottery with Faber. It could be better, but Garwin’s never been particularly proficient at English on the macroscopic level, so it’s difficult to put in any more than the bare minimum of effort. 

    It’s nice that whoever planned this managed to coerce the principal into being the official announcer. It would be even nicer if Garwin genuinely believed that Morgan could spell USA. Not the fully spelled out version—the acronym itself. 

    “I would like to start by congratulating each and every one of you for making it this far. You’ve had to beat two thousand other students just to be in this room today.” He pauses for unnecessary dramatic effect. “I’m sure all of you are familiar with the rules for this evening, but just in case you aren’t, there will be four rounds. The first two are the theme rounds of Literary Devices, followed by Fossils. This is followed by a round where you will be presented with a word and have to identify whether or not it is misspelled before correcting it. The final two will then go head-to-head in a general knowledge round.” 

    Morgan shuffles his index cards before continuing, “Each word inside of the theme rounds will be read by me, followed by a definition and its language of origin, before I repeat the word once more. This will be read twice. If, for whatever reason, you need it read again, please raise your hand. After that, you will hand your paper to the proctor and the correct answer will be revealed on the slides. If your answer matches the slide, you get a point. The fifteen of you with the greatest number of points will go on to the second round, the six will go on to the third round, and, like I said, the top two will enter the fourth round. Points carry across rounds, so one bad round can still hurt you even after it’s over. Is all of that clear?”

    Nods slowly wobble out across the almost-crowd of students. Morgan waits five seconds longer than reasonably necessary before switching from his index cards to a stack of papers that invariably has all the answers. 

    “Before we start, just to make sure we all get the process, there will be a practice question. Your word is Chicago. Its definition is ‘a midwestern city located on the shores of Lake Michigan, also known as the Windy City.’ It originates from the Canadian French form of an Algonquian word. Chicago.”

    Morgan repeats all of that, being thoroughly tuned out by Garwin, who is instead wondering who is enough of a slut for College Board to use their practice question as the inspiration for the practice question for this. God, it would be so funny if this counted as copyright infringement. 

    The slide clicks over to the proper spelling, and Garwin passes over the scrap of unofficial paper over to Faber, who dutifully struggles to read his handwriting as he places the tiny plus in the left margin. One whole nanopoint. Garwin has never been so proud of himself. 

    “If everyone is good, let us begin with the first round. The first word is enjambment. Its definition is ‘the running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines. Lines stride over more than one line.’ It originates from French. Enjambment.”

    In the amount of time for Morgan to read that all again, pass the paper over, click the slide, and confirm that Garwin did, in fact, spell ‘enjambment’ correctly, he’s nearly ready to take his pencil and see what happens if he pushes it into his eye socket. 

    “Polysyndeton,” Morgan takes his sweet time stretching out each syllable. “The repetition of conjunctions in close succession. For example, from page six of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, “the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew.” It originates from Latin. Polysyndeton.”

    If it wasn’t nerd behavior to have a favorite rhetorical device, that would certainly be one of Garwin’s top choices. What does it do? Nobody knows. But it’s fun to use and fun to say, especially in front of people who don’t know what polysyndeton is so it sounds like he’s making up fancy new words for no reason, which is enough for him. 

    After the whole end-of-word housekeeping is over, Morgan flips through the pages on the pedestal in front of him, and Garwin could swear it’s an IPA chart. Not—not the beer kind of IPA. Not Indian pale ale. International phonetic alphabet. It’s basically a pronunciation guide on steroids. This next one is sure to be a hell of a word.

    “Caesura.” 

    Hm, what do you know? An absolute clusterfuck of a word that starts with a hard C sound and almost certainly doesn’t look like it should if the frantic IPA reference is any indication.

    “Pauses that occur within lines of poetry, either grammatical or rhetorical. It originates from Latin. Caesura.” 

    Something tickles at the back of Garwin’s memory, but he can’t access it, even when given the entirety of Morgan’s reread to try to unlock its secrets. He’s left with transcribing it as kaysuera which looks so inherently, viscerally wrong. The reveal of the proper answer is equal parts ‘that still looks painfully wrong,’ ‘I guess that does look more reasonable,’ and ‘holy shit I was thinking about the pronunciation of Julius Caesar. The Ides of March were two weeks ago. You have no reason to be thinking about his assassinated ass this evening.’

    That’s one point lost to the ether, but Garwin has to accept it and move on. There are many more points to be gained, so he can’t quit now. 

    “Metonymy. The use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated, such as ‘crown’ in ‘lands belonging to the crown.’ It originates from Latin. Metonymy.”

    This one is a return to form, which is to say that it made its way into Garwin’s Quizlet deck. He fills in the empty line with half a mind before he goes back to the doodles on the scrap paper that he has discovered are far more interesting than this competition. 

    As he’s having this exact thought, almost like he planned it in advance, Sophie Foster comes barrelling into the room, a deep blush splattered across her cheeks as she settles into the Sweeney seat, breathing heavily. Of course she’s been invited here. 

    In a cruel twist of fate, it was already decreed in the original rules handbook email—the same one that Dorktionary here inevitably did not read long enough to find out what time this was to start—that any late arrivals would not be extended the privilege of making up any missed words. That means, if he’s counting correctly, he’s three points ahead of the special Sophieflake, and, with any luck, she may get eliminated before that photographic memory becomes a real threat. 

    Her first real word, and, by extension, Garwin’s fifth follows quickly. “Synesthesia. A subjective sensation or image of a sense other than the one being stimulated. It originates from Latin. Synesthesia.”

    There are about fifty percent too many of the letter ‘s’ in there, but Garwin’s fairly certain that he’s managed to predict the most likely balance on the scale from too many to not enough. It’s soon revealed that this confidence is not unfounded with the answer being revealed to match his own. The image of the jumping powerline gif that makes sound fades from his mind as he refocuses himself for the next word. 

    “Synecdoche. A figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole, such as ‘fifty sail’ for ‘fifty ships’, or the whole for a part, such as ‘society’ for ‘high society.’ It also originates from Latin. Synecdoche.”

    Faber’s mouth curls into a smile, underlined with just enough malice for Garwin to question every life decision that brought him to this place. He knows that they went over synecdoche—and its much more reasonably spelled brother, metonymy—in class, but if it weren’t for the blessed gift of Quizlet, he would have been lost to the abyss. 

    He turns in the paper, and Faber seems to take pleasure in striking it out even before the answer is revealed. ‘Synechdoche’—the version Garwin submitted—is close enough to ‘Synecdoche’ that it should be accepted. It’s not like he went absolutely, unequivocally excessive with the letter ‘h’ like that one day in his Physics class following the Synecdoche lesson. At least he didn’t turn in Shyhehchhhdhohchhheh, and that should be worth at least half a point. A pity point, perhaps. A nanopoint. A pity-induced nanopoint. 

    Before Garwin composes enough of his simmering thoughts into a full-blown three hour video essay, the next word is upon him, and whoever built this list was not interested in pulling punches. 

    “Chiasmus. An inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases. For example, from stanza 34 of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem ‘The Traveller,’ ‘to stop too fearful, and too faint to go.’ It originates from Latin. Chiasmus.”

    This one quite notably did not appear in Faber’s poetic devices extravaganza, and, as such, it did not migrate to the All-Knowing Quizlet. Garwin gets to guess the spelling, which is more likely to turn out painfully. 

    When the answer is revealed, Garwin’s relief is nearly strong enough to be described as his soul leaving his body. There is no corner of himself that he wouldn’t sell in exchange for a point. 

    “Epistrophe. Repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect, such as in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’ It originates from Greek. Epistrophe.”

    Garwin makes gratuitous eye contact with Faber as he passes over his answer. It’s Faber’s fault that he was assigned a group presentation on “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop, whose form is entirely built upon its use of epistrophe. Sestinas are absolutely labyrinthine, and if Garwin has to explain it again, his eyes are going to rot out of his skull. 

    “Onomatopoeia. The naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it, such as buzz and hiss. It originates from Latin. Onomatopoeia.”

    Maybe the person who made this set is more than a bit of a sadist. That many vowels next to each other is pretty much a linguistic orgy. 

    It also makes the properly spelled word carry an inherent sense of misspelling, which is far more significant. Somehow Garwin manages to pull every single one of those vowels out of his ass in the proper arrangement to gain a point, fanning the flames of his already overblown ego. 

    “Believe it or not, we’re at our final word.” Morgan smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.     

“Epistolary. Written in the form of a series of letters—for example, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. It originates from French. Epistolary.” 

    Garwin’s eyes narrow. He just recently finished reading the Dracula Sparknotes for his independent reading project. If it sounds like he has a lot of different English projects that are somehow all simultaneously relevant, well, that’s because Faber assigns a lot of shit. Including a 500 word essay that’s due tomorrow by 8 a.m.. Garwin hasn’t started it yet even if he should have because that would involve planning ahead, and he can’t have that. 

    The time between rounds is agonizingly long as each of the papers is copied into a spreadsheet to calculate the nine that are going to be forcibly ejected from existence. Sophie is not among them, much to the horror of literally everyone who ever existed. Shannon is, however, much to Garwin’s delight and Gerry’s dismay. She finds a nice place on the bleachers to make her new home because she obviously can’t be more than ten feet from Gerry at any given moment. 

     Garwin hasn’t realized until now that Melanie Thompson—his one and only ill-fated girlfriend from sophomore year that, if nothing else, forced him to go through a self-realization character arc into polyamorous homosexuality purely out of spite—is here. Or rather, was here would be more accurate. 

    John from APES is also eliminated, looking thoroughly dejected. He was probably just here for the dinosaur round. Maybe Garwin won’t be forced to sit through another spinosaurus monologue tomorrow. 

    “Our next round is the fossils round, and in addition to the names being read by me, I’ve been informed that images have been prepared on the slides. After this round, we will pause for a five minute break. Is everyone ready?”

    Significantly fewer heads are available to nod at this question, though it is kind of funny watching from the corner of Garwin’s eye Shannon nod from the bleachers. Like the opinion of her eliminated ass matters anymore. 

    “All right. Your first word is Astraeospongia, a genus of saucer-shaped Silurian fossil sponges having 6-sided stellate spicules and important as Paleozoic index fossils. It comes from Greek for ‘star sponge.’ Astraeospongia.” 

    The picture of a limestone-looking glob made of tiny stars appears on the screen. Garwin thanks those lucky stars that a word bank for only this round was published long ago, because scientific names would be a goddamn nightmare without it. Still, the vowel threesome is a bit tricky. It narrowly balances itself out by listening to Morgan struggling to pronounce the definition during both reads.

    He just as narrowly gets the point for that one, and refocuses his mind for the next one as a fishy-looking guy crawling out of the water appears on screen. Put simply, it’s friend shaped despite it being the reason we all pay taxes. 

    “Tiktaalik, a Devonian transitional fossil between lobe-finned fish like Panderichthyes and amphibious tetrapods like Acanthostega, discovered by Neil Shubin in Alaska. It comes from Inuktitut for ‘large freshwater fish.’ Tiktaalik.”

    This list was so clearly written by someone who was deep in a Dinosaur Train revival phase and was nowhere near expecting Morgan to be the one reading out these definitions that absolutely cannot be from a reputable dictionary. They don’t read like dictionary definitions. 

    Garwin nearly shoves his fingernails through his palm at missing the double a. There’s no reason he should’ve missed that. 

    “Arthropleura. Carboniferous millipedes that grew up to 2.5m long as a result of the higher oxygen levels present in the atmosphere at that time. It comes from Greek for ‘jointed ribs.’ Arthropleura.”

    The thing on screen is kind of like that one Wild Kratts episode where a king cobra looks them in the eyes, but 120% more millipede and 10% less threatening, with a similar cartoonish rendering of old CGI. 

    It’s also 1200% larger than it should have ever been allowed to become. The Carboniferous might have boasted 30% oxygen levels compared to today’s 21%, but that’s excessive by even those Meganeura-infested levels. 

    Garwin is almost so caught up in his musings that he forgets to submit his answer, but he gets it turned in just in time. 

    “Lambeosaurus. Herbivorous members of the family hadrosauridae that are known for their hollow crest and lived during the Late Cretaceous. Its name comes from Lambe’s lizard, from Lawrence Lambe and Greek. Lambeosaurus.”

    Garwin finds himself essentially putting the letters into a blender and unable to untangle them into an answer that makes sense. Eventually, he just erases the whole thing and calls it a ‘Lame-o-saurus’ because, well, it’s a hadrosaur. They don’t deserve respect. The only ornithischians who do are the ceratopsians because bird-hipped coolness is proportional to the number of stabby horns a dinosaur has, and Kosmoceratops wins that contest with almost no contest. It would be a good spelling word too. 

    The answer is revealed and Garwin gazes into the doodled hadrosaurid dinosaur’s blank eyes, contempt written plain across his face. 

    “Merycoidodon. An oreodont that somewhat resembled a pig in appearance and was native to North America during the Eocene to the Miocene. It comes from Latin for ‘ruminating teeth.’ Merycoidodon.” 

    That’s a bit of a departure from form. Paleozoic drug-induced fauna is consistently more interesting than ‘pig but slightly to the left.’ Garwin can only hope that the Cenozoic doesn’t take up too many words. Merycoidodon is a little annoying to spell at first, but once figured out, it’s stored quite nicely in the back of one’s knowledge bank. Garwin pulls it successfully out of said knowledge bank. 

    “Ichthyosaurus. Extinct marine reptiles of the Early Jurassic specialized for aquatic life by a streamlined body with a long snout, limbs reduced to small fins for steering, and a large lunate caudal fin. It comes from Greek for ‘fish lizard.’ Ichthyosaurus.”

    Fish lizard. What a bunch of absolute buffoons. It’s literally just a game of taking the stems and duct taping them together. Ichthy- could be difficult if it wasn’t ingrained in his psyche. Maybe that Quizlet was doing more harm than good. 

    “Coprolite—”

    Garwin stops listening, giggling to himself. You people put dinosaur shit on the list? And, more importantly, what the fuck is the middle vowel? Garwin eventually settles on ‘copralite’ which, unfortunately, single handedly dashes his dreams for receiving a point for a properly spelled word. 

    “Coelacanth. Extant lobe-finned fish that first evolved in the Devonian and are more closely related to mammals than to ray-finned fish. It comes from Greek for ‘hollow spine.’ Coelacanth.”

    Coelacanth is one of the words that just doesn’t sound like how it is spelled. Now, how it’s spelled is still a mystery, but coelophysis—a Triassic theropod dinosaur—implies that it’s somewhere near coelocanth. That still looks inherently wrong, but the oe vowel combination is not going to look normal anytime soon. 

    It’s also not going to get Garwin a point anytime soon, because he managed to not get the point for flipping the ‘a’ to an ‘o’. Can’t copralite and coelocanth just switch letters and everything balances out? Garwin’s spiral into depression has to wait, though.

    “Eurypterus. Silurian arthropods commonly called sea scorpions, though they are not true scorpions of the order Scorpiones. It comes from Greek for ‘wide wing’ or ‘broad paddle.’ Eurypterus.”

    A Jaekelopterus appears on screen where a eurypterus should be. They’re both sea scorpions, it just so happens that the former is three whole meters of sea scorpion compared to Eurypterus’s estimated maximum length of two feet. It could also technically be another genus like Pterygotus. The important part is that the picture is wrong and therefore this is all a lie. 

    Jaekelopterus, despite its not being in the officially published word bank, would be an absolutely lovely word to spell in one of these. Make the others suffer. Garwin is so consumed by the thoughts of this suffering that he nearly forgets to submit his own, correct, spelling of Eurypterus, which would have been a painful mistake. 

    “And we have already arrived at the end. Your final word is Sacabambaspis.” Morgan pronounces each syllable slowly, as though afraid of butchering its pronunciation. To be fair, he probably would be if he cared that much. “A genus of jawless, armored fish that lived during the Ordovician period, named after the village of Sacabamba, Bolivia. Sacabambaspis.”

    Whoever was given the responsibility to control the slides waited for Morgan to stop speaking before revealing the little doofus. Words are insufficient to describe how silly the little guy looks, but a defining feature is the eyes look like googly eyes. They have one fin—the tail fin that looks like it could be very accurately recreated in play-doh—the whole thing looks like it could be recreated in play-doh. And, of course, it doesn’t have a jaw, and instead it has a triangular mouth that hangs open. 

    Bothriolepis swallowed mouthfuls of mud and digested the organic matter inside, and Sacabambaspis doesn’t look far from that, although Placoderms like Bothriolepis existed in the Devonian, not the Ordovician. They’re united by their distinct look of never experiencing a single thought in their lives, which, honestly, sounds kind of pleasant. It certainly sounds more pleasant than this drudgery of spelling words. There’s not even a justifiable reason why this is a useful skill. Spellcheck exists and getting ruthlessly clowned upon by a Discord server can still happen because the stupid QWERTY keyboard is designed to be convoluted because people were typing so quickly, they’d jam the goddamn typewriters. 

    The five minute break that follows is much more like eight, and when it does end, the pool is narrowed down from fifteen victims to a mere six. Sophie is among the survivors, as is Abraham. Gerry seemingly got evaporated, bringing Shannon with him. Bethany did as well, but she’s taken Shannon’s place on the bleachers, watching each and every one of those remaining left alive, and it wouldn’t be surprising if she was responsible for a massacre in order to make herself the winner by default. 

    “Our next round will be a little different. We have a list of ten words, nine of which are typos from student papers and one of which is spelled properly. It is your job to identify if the word is spelled incorrectly, and then fix it. Is all of that clear?”

    In other words, it’s the most annoying type of true or false question. Garwin nods, calculating his chances across those remaining. There’s only one he doesn’t know, and he’s mostly convinced Victor and Clay got their hands on the answer key, because there’s no other justifiable reason they should have gotten this far. 

    Morgan takes this opportunity to go sit down, leaving the running of the slides to whoever was doing it already. There’s no need to read out atrociously spelled words. 

    The first is resluts. 

    Off to a great start. Garwins eyes narrow, thinking back to last year when he corrected this exact typo. It wasn’t, however, a student typo. It was a teacher typo, but it doesn’t make any sense that a US History teacher would be choosing the words. Maybe there was a Google Form for favorite typo submissions. Or maybe it’s a common enough transposition that none of this means anything. 

    Garwin corrects resluts to results and passes the paper back to Faber for grading, even if he already knows in his heart that he’s successfully gained that point. 

    The answer is revealed, and the slides click to an absolutely gorgeous second word: mauntaim. 

    It takes a second to realize that it once used to be mountain before it got corrupted. How it got corrupted will forever be a mystery because spellcheck should have caught and corrected it long before it made its horrible way to these slides. 

    Mountain, believe it or not, is not particularly difficult for Garwin to spell properly as he turns it in for a point. 

    The third word is regrettably less simple: Carribean. 

    Garwin can’t help but wonder if that was at all inspired by last year’s countries round, even if it isn’t a country in itself. It still has enough double letters to make everyone regret their life choices, but not much more than that. It’s just that seeing it on the big board makes Garwin question himself. He closes his eyes, trying to spell it without the pulsating insistence of that arrangement of letters, but it has slipped from his mind at the suggestion of the other. 

    It’s not the one spelled correctly, but he marks it as such. There’s something inherently wrong with it, but he can’t quite figure out what it is, let alone how to fix it. When the slide switches to the answer, Garwin buries his head in his hands, unable to cope with how he could have ever been so stupid. It’s Caribbean, goddamnit. He should have known that. 

    Wallowing in self-pity can only do so much good as the slides march forward. Diptheria. 

    Okay, first of all, what student has to write out ‘Diptheria’ and how is it possible that Coyle actually noticed that it was spelled wrong? Garwin isn’t convinced that Coyle even knows how to spell it properly, and he’s the one in charge of teaching microbiology. 

    It’s that exact class in microbiology that has impressed upon Garwin’s mind that it’s spelled diphtheria and it’s caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. He doesn’t remember much else. Pseudomonas fluorescens is fluffy and causes fin rot in fish. Does that count? 

    The slide ticks forward, and the disappointed groans are deafening. Little miss perfect Sophie Foster seems to be the only other one unaffected. Disappointing, but to be expected. 

    The next word is broccoli.

    That is, in fact, spelled correctly, and Garwin checks off the appropriate place on the sheet. He’s not sure who thought broccoli would be a difficult word, but he’ll take the point where he can get it after a five-second crisis where he has to question his entire belief system to triple check that it’s right. 

    And then the slide changes to colckwise. 

    Garwin has a very different kind of crisis seeing that. The kind of crisis that is accompanied by an aneurysm—which would be a lovely word for the next round. The kind of crisis that is also accompanied by vividly painful memories of his physics teacher telling him about a typo one of his former students, who is now a teacher here, made during a curriculum mapping meeting. On a whiteboard. This was not induced by a keyboard. 

    It’s pretty clear that it was just out there to make him angry because the proper spelling of clockwise is a single transposition away, and it turns out that it worked better than it had any right to be. 

    At least the next one, quater, is a funnier typo all around. 

    It’d be even funnier if he hadn’t found it on a college website. His lord and savior Yale would never do him dirty like that. It’s not even on a quarter system, so there’s next to no reason to even encounter the issue. 

    Then the slide turns to Green Papper, and Garwin feels the rage of a thousand suns boiling inside his chest and an undeniable urge to laugh and cry at the same time. The fact that it’s two words instead of just the one is mildly annoying, which is to say absolutely infinitesimal against the flood of Papper’s horror show. 

    It, um, isn’t difficult to fix the problem to pepper. Garwin hopes everyone else that has gotten this far has an equal lack of difficulty. It would be concerning if they did.

    The next is Illiniois. 

    Back to skirting around the countries round. Illinois already has enough vertical lines to make it look like the living embodiment of simplified loss.jpg, but adding one more bonus one can’t hurt that much. You just have to blame the French transliteration for what it has become. 

    The last, and almost least, flicks onto the screen. Liscense. 

    Garwin nearly throws his pencil down in utter defeat. It looks almost like it could be right, but he knows for a fact that it has to be wrong. Broccoli was correct, it had to be, so liscense has to be wrong. Do why doesn’t it look it? 

    He massages his temples before succumbing to the peer pressure and marks it as spelled correctly. If he hadn’t sold his soul to college apps, it would have left him at that moment. 

    Faber looks at Garwin, plainly disappointed in the abilities of his student, as he gets up to give the master of slideshows all of his final scores. The screen in the front switches to a spreadsheet of each competitor’s scores in each round, and Garwin watches and waits as they come filtering in.

    Morgan steps up to the podium once again, staring at the board like he’s new to public speaking. If he hadn’t been principal since the beginning of the last school year, Garwin might give him the benefit of the doubt, but he has no doubt left over. Morgan has absorbed all of it, and that means Garwin is allowed to make his own mental snarky commentary. 

    “As you can see behind me, our two finalists are—” Morgan pauses for dramatic effect, probably waiting for a drumroll that doesn’t come “—Sophie Foster—” he pauses for applause that doesn’t exist “—and Garwin Chang!” 

    Not sure why they’re in that order when they’re literally tied at 23 points out of 30 possible each, but you do you. Alphabetical order would have been reasonable. 

    The silence is deafening, despite that being a tremendously overused cliche. The only sounds are of chairs being moved so that the eliminated can either leave or make a home on the bleachers to watch the final tedious showdown. The one person he doesn’t know spends more than a standard amount of time staring at the back of Sophie’s head, his cobalt eyes glinting in the fluorescent lights. 

    Neither Garwin nor her majesty cephalosaurus are willing to move from the places they staked out so long ago. They’re logistically important, not a parasocial attachment formed through a weakly-held belief in luck. 

    “The person at the end of this fifteen-word round that has the most points will be the winner. The first tiebreaker will be the points scored in this fourth round, then the number scored in the third, and so on and so forth. I’ll read each term, definition, and language of origin twice before revealing the answer. Is that clear?”

    Garwin’s neck is starting to get tired from all the nodding. This is not difficult to understand. 

    His brain also locks down into emergency mode, fueled only by enough spite to want to destroy Sophie like the pathetic child she is. There almost isn’t enough space for commentary between all of the letters bouncing around in the alphabet soup of his mind.  

    “Eviscerate. To take out the entrails of, disembowel. It comes from Latin. Eviscerate.”

    “Syzygy. A roughly straight-line configuration of three or more celestial bodies in a gravitational system, such as a lunar or solar eclipse. It comes from Greek. Syzygy.”

    Garwin curses those lined up stars for choosing such a word to describe themselves. 

    “Acknowledge. To recognize as genuine or valid. It comes from Old English. Acknowledge.” 

    “Fluorescent. Bright and glowing as a result of luminescence that is caused by the absorption of radiation at one wavelength followed by nearly immediate reradiation usually at a different wavelength and that ceases almost at once when the incident radiation stops. It was coined by English mathematician and physicist Sir George G. Stokes. Fluorescent.”

    It would be so funny if his middle name was also George. It would be even funnier if Garwin manages to transpose the ‘u’ and ‘o’ and fail just now that he’s so close to triumph.

    “Bureaucracy. Government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority. It comes from French. Bureaucracy.”

    “Sesquipedalian. Given to or characterized by the use of long words. It comes from Latin. Sesquipedalian.”

    Garwin’s going to have to remember that one for Faber tomorrow. If a word doesn’t have thirty percent more letters than strictly necessary, you better believe Faber has never said it in his life. 

    “Sovereignty. Supreme power especially over a body politic. It comes from Middle English. Sovereignty.”

    Something something James Madison something something AP Gov. 

    “Convalescence. To recover health and strength gradually after sickness or weakness. It comes from Latin. Convalescence.”

    “Vicissitudinous. Marked by or filled with the quality or state of being changeable. It, once again, comes from Latin. Vicissitudinous.”

    Wow, it’s almost like English was heavily influenced by French—quite noticeably a romance language—when William the Conqueror fucked shit up during the Battle of Hastings, 1066. 

    “Cubicuboctahedron. A convoluted shape where square faces and its octagrammic faces are parallel to those of a cube, while its triangular faces are parallel to those of an octahedron. It comes from Greek. Cubicuboctahedron.” 

    Someone involved in this folded their word of the day calendar into one of those. That probably doesn’t logically work that way, but neither does the word cubicuboctahedron.

    “Vacuum. The emptiness of space or a device creating or utilizing a partial vacuum. It comes from Latin. Vacuum.”

    Ah. A double-u that isn’t a ‘w.’ It’s almost like Garwin learned how to spell it in 4th grade and never looked back. He’s not sure anymore why there was spelling involved in a science class, but that doesn’t erase the useful part of the memory. 

    “Entrepreneur. One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. It comes from French. Entrepreneur.”

    Or, more accurately, the DECA team when they aren’t underage drinking. 

    “Feign. To give a false appearance of, or induce as a false impression. It comes from Middle English, after a very long line from proto-indo-European. Feign.”

    You know, some pie sounds really good right about now. 

    “Committee. A body of persons delegated to consider, investigate, take action on, or report on some matter. It comes from Latin. Committee. 

    “And for your last word of the night: borborygmus. Intestinal rumbling caused by moving gas. It comes from Latin. Borborygmus.” 

    Garwin was doing well until that point—hell, he thought he was doing well including that point, but boborygmus is not borborygmus, ruining his streak and hope for a perfect round. Still, maybe it’ll be enough to put Blondie back in her place. She’s a godforsaken twelve-year-old. She has no right to be anywhere near a high school, let alone being in half of his classes. He’s taking six APs at the same time right now, and his only other hour of the day is a study hall so he doesn’t devolve into a serial killer. 

    But it can’t be, can it? 

    The universe has divinely selected Sophie motherfucking Foster as its lord and savior, superior to all other beings that have ever been created or will be created. 

    Which is to say—she got a perfect score. Of course she did. Why should he have ever expected anything less?

    Garwin forces himself to breathe, somewhere between seething anger and complete despondency. But there’s no use getting mad when the game was rigged from the start. This just means he can refocus on Science Olympiad. Yeah. State is on Saturday. That might be a good idea. 

    And, well, it’s hard to feel anything other than mild annoyance while doing a titration until he starts drinking the titrant, and at that point, the HCl has already burned through his esophagus, so he has larger problems than losing at a pathetic little spelling bee. 

    Garwin picks up the shattered remains of his dignity, and kindly gets the fuck out of there. He’s spent enough hours in this hellhole for a single day, and now he gets to go do homework. Yippee. 

    As he returns home, he gets the day’s mail from the mailbox, and his breath catches in his throat. 

   For some inscrutable reason, he almost forgot that today was Ivy Day, and now the Yale logo is staring at him mockingly. He doesn’t even bother unlocking the door before tearing the envelope open. 

Dear Garwin Chang,

    The Yale Admissions Committee has completed its evaluation of this year's candidates, and I am genuinely sorry that we are not able to offer you a place in the Class of 2016.

    I realize that this decision may come as a real disappointment. I hope you will understand that the decision reflects the extraordinary range of talents represented in our applicant pool and not a judgment about your own abilities or potential. Of the nearly twenty-nine thousand individuals who applied to Yale this year, most are fully capable of doing outstanding work and making a unique contribution to a campus community. It is painful to us that we must turn away so many superbly talented students. 

    You may be tempted to ask what was lacking in your application. In truth, it is usually difficult for us to point to obvious weaknesses when so many applicants have demonstrated real achievement and potential for the future. Our decisions say far more about the small number of spaces available and the difficult choices we make than they do about a candidate's personal and academic promise.

I hope that the replies you receive from other colleges this spring will soon erase any disappointment regarding Yale's decision, and that you will go on to great success in your educational pursuits. 

Sincerely, 

Leto Kerlof

Leto Kerlof

Magnate of Undergraduate Admissions

    Tears well in his eyes, blurring the world as he fumbles for his keys. He wants nothing more than to crawl into his bed and live there for an eternity.