HONK! HONK!

"What up!" Havana calls from the rolled-down passenger window with a less-than-impressed Yasmin accompanying the seat. "Hop on in, y'all!"

"Oh Em Gee!" Mallory runs to the car, all giddy and jumpy as she 360s the exterior. "You are seriously the coolest person ever, you know that?"

"Ah, stop, you flatter me," Havana responds, again in that awk-y shy manner. Mal and I take our places in the back seats, marveling at the cream-tan interior that adorns it. And what a roomy vehicle it is, too, which is great for me because I'm not one to sit very "lady-like" according to society. I'm sorry, but closing my thighs hurt! Still, I use my jacket to "cover up" so to speak. 

"Seatbelts, everyone!" Havana instructs us. 

"Oh, please let this be a normal field trip!" I clasp my hands, channeling my inner Arnold.

"With the Soms? No way!" Mallory completes my joke, channeling her inner Wanda.

"Not the Magic School Bus!" Havana laughs as she starts to drive. "Wait wait, so if I'm Ms. Frizzle, and you're the students, then that must make you the lizard," she speaks to Yasmin with her eyes to the road. 

"Her name is Liz!" Mallory giggles. "Pfft, the lizard."

"Who's actually a Chameleon," Yasmin chimes in unamused. Guess she isn't an MSB fan. I glance out the window as Havana's music plays; Aaliyah's "One in a Million" riffs through the speakers as the roads cling onto the calm before the 5:00 off-work traffic storm. The colors in the trees have started to shift ever so much, even as the sky remains blue as ever despite the autumn air. Spirit High is about a twelve-minute ride from here, so not much time to savor the views, but it's serene. 

"So, how long have you had it?" I ask Havana.

"What, Rosé?" Havana asks. Mal and I exchange looks.

"Rosé?" Both of us ask, on the brink of giggling. 

"Hell yeah!" Havana proudly confirms. "Don't be speaking bad about my baby, now."

"Your baby?" Mal chuckles. "Wow, not even Jhene named her car, let alone refer to it as her 'baby'."

"Now, Mal, let Havana care about her 'baby'," I smile, trying to not let it show in my voice that I support the naming. I don't know, seeing someone like Havana name her car is endearing in a weird way. 

"Anyway, I've had her only for a couple of months now," Havana goes on. "It was my grandma's car but she got sick of it, for whatever reason, so she let me have it!"

"It was supposed to be mine," Yasmin chides. 

"Oh stop," Havana shakes her head. "Maybe when you finally get a license, she'll let you have the Mercedes."

That has Mal and I's eyes wide. We thought the Cadillac was already unexpected, but a Mercedes? Given what Havana's told me of her grandmother's dating history, I wonder if she happened to stumble upon some dirt on her past lovers' past and received an abundant payout for her silence. Just what kind of lifestyle do these two live?! Before we can think any more about it, the song changes.

"Oh, turn this up!" Havana turns the dial-up. What a jarring change from the calming, romantic nature of "One in a Million" to the booming crassness of Juvenile's "Back That Thang Up" (as the radio will call it, at least). Mal immediately gets jumpy and smiley, and then the two of them start rapping in their best testosterone-filled vocals. I can't quite believe what I'm seeing: I'm both frozen in shock but heavily amused at the same time! Without me immediately being aware, my body starts jamming along to the music and the off-putting rapping. The only time I ever publicly "dance", even whilst sitting, is not in public at all -- I only ever do it when I'm over at Mal's place, and even then I do more of the watching than the dancing when Mal really gets in her element; or if I'm alone in my room when I have the chance to play my music. I feel as though I've been put in a trance, but I'm not exactly complaining.

"Uh, trying to concentrate here?" Yasmin complains for me. She goes to turn the dial down, but Havana swats her hand away.

"Hey, music is good for concentration!" she yells over the music.

"Okay, but not this kind!" Yasmin shouts back. "It's math decathlon, not ASS decathlon!"

I widen my gaze and clamp my hand over my mouth, where I see Mal hasn't noticed as she wildly bops her head around. I used to think that the most surprising thing about Havana and I's budding friendship was the friendship itself, but now I see that it's actually finding out these different sides of Yasmin. She never seemed the easily annoyed type, but I guess being the cousin of Havana Sommers will push a button or two or thirty. Thing is, even when the music dies down to Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker" (a song I enjoy a hell of a lot more, no offense), Yasmin's face is still soured with annoyance. An annoyance I'm not sure has anything to do with Havana or the music at all, but who am I to pinpoint the cause like I'm some sort of Nancy Drew?

When we approach Spirit High's entrance, I feel chills running up and down my spine. The word "spirit" is incredible in its many variations: a feeling of excitement, the biblical, the airline, and one time out of childhood curiosity, alcohol. However, this school gives me "spirit" vibes as in the haunted, the Halloween-y, the spooky. In this one area of the city, the blue skies are doused in those spinning dark clouds you'd see in a TV show, I've seen at least three rats so far just on the outside, and call me dramatic, but I heard a witch's cackle in the distance. I don't see it for much longer, though, because Havana parks at the StoreMart up the street. 

"What? You didn't think I was leaving my car over there, did you?" Havana says as she shuts the engine off. "Don't worry, it's only like a five-minute walk."

We all exit the car, and it takes me a moment to pull Mallory away from it. I reminded her that we would be back after the meeting. The brisk air whooses up my jacket, which is admittedly too small for me now. I've had it since I was 11, as with many of my clothes I got between the ages of 11-14. Mallory warms up my shoulders a bit, which feels really good and tickly, but something feels missing from it. I wish that we weren't walking so that I could just stand and be wrapped in her embrace, like when Havana lent me her letterman those weeks ago. Albeit the jackets fet a hell of a lot warmer after that cry; like, the kind of cry that leaves you shivering mad that any sort of bundling feels like God's gift to the world. It was quite roomy in there, too; my arms were swallowed up by the sleeves, and it hung so loosely on my body that it would've fallen had I not clung to it so tightly, especially on our walk to the gas station. Yeah, that "better use of the money" she mentioned? We used it on gas station coffee (well, I used it on the coffee, a vanilla flavor -- Havana used it on hot chocolate because turns out, she's not a coffee enjoyer). After that, we just sat on the curb outside and watched the cars go by. 

"How's the jacket?" she asked me, taking another sip of her cocoa. 

"Warm," I simply replied. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Havana smiled. At the time I didn't think there was much to "mention" because I hadn't even asked for the jacket in the first place. But then again, I never asked for Havana, of everyone in the whole world, to be my tutor in the first place (obviously down the line I would but that's neither here nor there). Now I'm walking alongside her and Mal, the two people I wanted to keep the furthest away from each other, to go to a practice match -- not even the real thing. And it's only been less than two months. How the tables have turned, truly. Yasmin walks much further ahead than the rest of us, my guess being that she's been here before, so Havana slows her pace a bit to keep up with Mal and me since we have no idea where to go. 

"Do you do this a lot, these practice meetings with other schools?" Mal asks Havana.

"Well, in the last year we have," Havana says. "It was actually my idea to branch out."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, see I wanted to approach it the way that you do in sports," Havana goes on. "I mean just personally speaking, in theory the team could've kept practicing all on their own because it's not as rigorous --"

"Or dangerous," I chime in.

"Ha, not wrong there," Havana chuckles. "But see, at least in sports you have multiple games a season, and you never really take a break when you think about it. In the math decathlon, we'll have a few competitions, but they don't occur until the next semester, so we used to not meet up until January, even. Ah, but what good does that do to wait when we can get started now?"

"Makes sense," Mal nods.

"And not only that but why not make it a collaborative effort?" Havana continues. "So I proposed that we should do these mock matches so not only do we have an idea of who the competition is and what they bring to the table, but honestly? It just makes things a lot more fun. Sociable!"

"Because that's something as logical and by-the-book as math needed -- sociability," I note, amused.  

"And why not?" Havana smirks. "Worked out for the two of us, right?"

"Oooo, she's got you!" Mal jests. The blood rushing to my face wants to burn a hole in it so badly. I don't even have a rebuttal for it, even in the ironic twist that I'm the math in this equation (pun?). Thank goodness there's no time to continue because now we've come to the entryway of Spirit High. A worn-down, rusted plaque of "HOME OF THE KNIGHTS" hangs over us (quite literally, as droops at an angle that, God forbid that screw comes loose, could swing and decapitate a student). Opposed to our school, it seems that after-school life here is generally dead (fitting), because weirdly enough, I don't see as many of their students as I do ours when we walk in. Wow ... looks like the last-minute campaign worked out for the Fireside High team. 

"Ah, there goes the team!" Havana waves at Stewart, Marnie, K.D., and Yasmin, who caught up to them before us. "I'll see you guys inside!"

"Good luck!" Mallory yells to her. I shoot Havana a thumbs-up of encouragement. Looks like we have to wait out here until the teams are set up and ready to go in the theater. I land my eyes on an ice cream machine, so I tug on Mal's shirt sleeve to redirect her attention. Once she notices, we both run over real quick to grab a quick snack. The machine is damn near empty and seems a bit neglected with the rampant cobwebs forming inside. Luckily for us, it seems the Spirt High students aren't fans of sherbet, so Mal and I grab two, and I do mean grab; as soon as Mallory put in her first quarter, a bar just dropped from the slot at the thud of the coin. So, she did it again, and boom, one more bar. What a steal and I don't just mean the feeling I have about it. Before long, we hear the rumble of students making their way into the theater, so we follow suit.

"Eee, I'm excited!" Mal squeals as she eats her sherbet. "Aren't you?"

"I guess," I answer. Truth be told, I am excited -- quite excited actually. The thing is, I can't pinpoint why. Maybe it's because Havana tried to keep me away from it initially, so it feels as if I'm entering some top-secret event. Maybe it's because I'm eating my favorite frozen treat with my favorite friend. I'd even say that it's just the feeling of being here to support a team that isn't sports-related, even with the irony of having two athletes on the team. Mal and I end up taking seats in the third row from the stage; I'd say there are about 40 of us here. Not sure how much an actual competition draws, but this seems like quite the crowd as it is. On stage, there are two tables set up, and a podium in the middle. On the left is Spirit High's team, which consists of an unnerving quad of three white kids and a mixed Black guy, who seems to be their leader. On the right is our Fireside High team, with Havana standing across from the Spirit guy, which makes her the leader. Someone not present with them? Yasmin. Huh, I wonder where she went.

Havana looks around to find us, and once she locks eyes with Mal's giddy waving, she waves right back. Now, I can't exactly tell who she directed this at, but after the wave, Havana winks. I don't know if Mal noticed, but I sure did. 

Huh. Cool.