Silencing the Queen

She's a national champion. They call her the Silencer.

Three years. Nobody has ever dared interrupt her.

For forty minutes, I hadn't said a single word.

Then I took a drink.

The whiskey slid down my throat and into my stomach, searing the whole way like a line of fire.

I sat there with the flask in my hand, my usual fog of a brain gone suddenly, obscenely clear.

Across the debate floor, the best debater in the country curled one corner of her mouthwaiting to watch me, a shut-in with crippling social anxiety, stammer and fall apart in front of three hundred people.

I grabbed the mic. I met her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later.

She wasn't smiling anymore.

CHAPTER 1

"Reidy! Reidy, let's GO!"

Trey kicked my dorm door open while I was hunched over my laptop, chasing a bug.

I'm Reid, by the way. Twenty-one, a junior in computer science. Terminal-stage social anxiety. My natural habitat is the two hundred meters between my dorm and the dining hall, and if it weren't for Trey, this one specific idiot, I would have gone my entire life without setting foot anywhere near a debate hall.

He was drenched in sweat, eyes bloodshot, like he'd just broken out of a pyramid scheme.

"What happened?"

"The debate! Our college's tournament!"

"Not my problem."

"Our fourth speaker got food poisoning! He's puking his guts out! The match starts in forty minutes!"

I didn't even look up. "Find someone else."

"There's no one left!" Trey grabbed my chair and hauled it backward. "I called every guy in the whole college with a pulse. They're either off campus or they've straight-up blocked my number!"

"So don't call me either. I can't even get through my own name in a class intro"

"You don't have to talk!"

He clamped both hands on my shoulders, his expression terrifyingly earnest.

"You just sit there. Be a cardboard cutout. Fourth speaker is the closing statement anyway. If the first three win it, you don't have to say one single word!"

"And if they don't win?"

Trey went quiet for two seconds.

"Then you say a little something?"

"You want a shut-in to say 'a little something' in front of a few hundred people?"

"I am BEGGING you, man!" He dropped straight to his knees. "The dean's making a huge deal out of this one. I'm the team captain. If we forfeit, my scholarship's finished!"

I looked at his face, one bad second away from crying.

I wanted to swear at him.

Then I looked at the busted running shoes next to his knees and understood that this guy had genuinely lost his mind.

"...I really just sit there and don't say anything?"

"Yes! Yes! Absolutely yes!"

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at the debate table in the Braxton main auditorium.

In front of me: a solid wall of faces.

Three hundred, easy.

My hands started to shake.

The second speaker, Grant, leaned in and dropped his voice. "You're the guy who's just here to fill a seat?"

I nodded.

He looked me up and down. Opened his mouth. Closed it again.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing it's just, the other side's pretty strong."

"How strong?"

"Three-time national champions."

I turned and looked at the opposing bench.

Four of them. Sitting straight, faces loose and easy.

Especially the girl in the fourth seat.

Someone slid a note down the table to me. I looked down.

Fourth speaker: Marlowe. Two-time national best debater. In the circuit they call her the Silencer. Her closing statements have never once been interrupted.

Because no one dares.

CHAPTER 2

Hair pulled back into a ponytail. A clean, sharp profile. The corner of her mouth tilted faintly up. She spun her pen through her fingers in one lazy little flourish.

My hands shook harder.

I snuck a hand into my bag.

There was a flask in there. Whiskey. I'd bought it that afternoon. The plan had been to crack it open tonight with some food-truck tacos behind campus.

No tacos tonight, apparently.

The moderator started reading out the rules, his voice arriving from somewhere very far away.

My entire brain was occupied by a single thought:

Trey, you absolute bastard. When you were on your knees, why didn't you mention the other side is the national champion?

The motion: Whether the development of AI will cause mass unemployment.

We were the affirmative.

Through the first three segments I didn't open my mouth. I sat there pretending to take notes.

What I actually wrote on the page was: kill Trey. Kill Trey. Kill Trey.

But things were worse than I'd pictured.

The other side was terrifying.

Their first speaker's opening case tore our framework to confetti. Data precise to two decimal places, logic linked chain to chain to chain. I just sat there, brain hung.

Our first speaker's voice was shaking when he tried to answer.

By the open round, it was a full-on massacre.

Their second and third speakers took turns, and our three got hounded into retreat. The crowd's faces slid from anticipation to pity.

Marlowe barely spoke the whole time.

She just sat there. Now and then she'd glance down and write a line or two. Now and then she'd look up at one of our debaters, that faint smile never once leaving her mouth.

Not mocking.

Just absolute, unhurried certainty.

Like a cat watching a mouse.

Not even bothering to unsheathe a claw.

Grant kicked me under the table.

I looked down at the note he pushed over:

We're done. We're losing too hard up front. Can you please say something in the closing? Even two lines. Otherwise this is going to be humiliating.

The corner of my mouth twitched.

Say something.

You want to know the last time I spoke in front of more than five people?

Junior year of high school. A class presentation.

I was reading off my slides, and by the third line my tongue tied itself into a knot. The whole class laughed for five straight minutes.

I never opened my mouth in public again.

But now, not-talking wasn't an option.

I looked at the score. I looked at Marlowe's unhurried face. I looked at Trey out in the crowd, on the verge of tears.

My hand went into the bag.

Found the flask.

The cold metal against my palm was, for no reason I could explain, steadying.

I was going to humiliate myself anyway.

Might as well borrow a little courage first.

Using the desk as cover, I twist off the cap and take one low, quiet swig.

Whiskey.

It burns from the back of my throat all the way down to my stomach.

Like someone's poured a basin of boiling water straight into my skull.

Five seconds.

CHAPTER 3

The garbage swirling around my head, three hundred people are watching, you'll stammer, they'll laugh, all of it evaporated