I return the gesture, adding a thumbs-up for good measure, which causes one of them to snort. If Greg and I were sharing summer camp cabins with these little clichés, we might wake up to them beating us both with bags of oranges.

“Should we—I don’t know—try to retaliate?” Greg asks. The paper bag is back in action, blowing like a respirator between every other word. “I could make myself throw up on one of them on that stage.”

“Nah, that wouldn’t be very sportsmanlike,” I say after gently closing the door.

“That’s how the Trinity team got disqualified two years ago, remember?” Yadira points out.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Well,” I start, “I don’t know about you guys, but I would settle for their complete and total humiliation in front of their own school.”

Greg and Yadira both look at me like the words aren’t coming out of my face correctly.

“Is this a ‘Go, team!’ pep talk, Halti?” Yadira asks. “From you?”

“No, no. No ‘Go, team’ on this end,” I say. “We’re not those singing pricks from Glee. More of a ‘Let’s screw them to the bottom of hell.’ I just don’t like these guys. We’re smarter, prettier, and way more prepared than they are! So let’s beat them so hard they experience mild trauma whenever they even step on the Upper West Side.”

Yadira snorts. “Fine by me. But just out of curiosity: how pretty are you inside your own head?”

“Beyoncé could write an album covering the topic,” I answer very seriously.

She bursts out laughing, and I even manage to get a little smile out of Greg.

“Well, hear, hear!” she says, sitting up, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s rock this moldy bitch.”

Credit where credit is due, the St. Celeste debate team is very prepared today.

They came in third last year, which is by all accounts a failure at this level. Parents that spend fifty thousand dollars a year on their kid’s competitive education don’t do it for a tiny bronze trophy. This year, they have the bombastic confidence of handsome young white men of good families, which is to say infinite.

The first round is on Greg. The prompts are pulled out of a glass bowl today. “An argument for gentrification.”

It’s the sort of devil’s-advocating prompt that they love to spring up at competitions. How quickly can debaters think? How cogently can they make their argument? How many inches to your side can you bring the audience?

Greg’s smart. That’s a complete given. He limits the scope of the argument to small businesses and the increase in lifestyle that comes with gentrified neighborhoods. He’s visibly shaking the entire time, and there are a few throat-clears and yawns in the audience, but he stays focused and takes us through his flawless, monotonous arguments.