To Join a Club

 It had been a week since my senior year began. Not much had happened since then. The lectures pretty much were the textbook verbatim. It was like there was no need for the teachers to be present at all. After school, I just went straight home, only doing my homework, eating, and then sleeping. Basically, I had been pretty bored. The only thing I looked forward to was hanging out with Lego, Mona, and Aito during lunch. Lego still called our group the Lunch Bringers Society since we all ate lunch together. There were the occasional harsh glares from Mona and Aito whenever Lego bantered, but all in all we were enjoying ourselves. Aito had evolved from using one or two words to almost an entire sentence. Mona loosened her speech by using contractions. Lego hadn’t changed, but that was okay too.

However, today was different: I was finally getting motivated. As for why, that was due to the message that came over the school intercom this morning:

“Good morning students. Organizations (which included clubs) affiliated with the school can begin organizing on school grounds after the final bell. Rooms for each organization can be found on the bulletin boards located by the center stairwell. Please contact your advisors for access to any equipment.”

Clubs! I screamed in my head. Clubs were one of the few things on my list to try. I was planning to spend at most a week in each one and figure out whether it made me happy or not. I had doubts, but there was no harm in trying them all. So when the final bell rang, I got out of my seat and…

began cleaning the classroom.

I was on cleaning duty today. I wouldn’t be able to leave the classroom until after I finished. That’s fine I thought, though I was still grinding my teeth together. The quicker I got this done, the faster I could get to the club.

Pick up the chair. Flip it over. Put it on the desk. Move over. Pick up the chair…and thirty desks later I was done. Time to head over to the whiteboard.

Erase, erase, erase, erase, erase…and now the whiteboard was clean. Well, erased, but close enough. There wasn’t anything else to do since the janitor cleaned the floors, so I was done. It only took me around ten minutes. I went back to my desk, grabbed my bag, and left the classroom.

The hallway was almost completely empty. Most of the students had probably left for the day or with a club. I turned right and made my way to the center stairwell. It was only forty steps away, so it barely took any time before I was in front of the bulletin board. There were a few things already pinned to the board:

Looking for a tutor in class 1 or 2. Student is in class 2-4. $60 an hour. Call XXX-XXX-XXXX for more information. (That notice had been sitting there for a year now, so I didn’t know why it was still up.)

Adventuring Club Petition. Club consists of creating quests or challenges where students traverse through the entire school. Please leave a signature to allow our club to come to life. (I was pretty sure the school would never allow this to happen. Plus, there was still only one signature out of the fifty required to create a club.)

Term Event Calendar: 20th Annual Senior Breakfast, 5th Annual Game Tournament, 7th Annual Talent Show, 3rd Annual End-of-Term Party (Some of these are interesting, so I took a picture for later.)

I then spotted the room list for organizations. I wanted to try out the ‘Math Games Club’ this week. I always thought I was pretty decent at math. I passed the portion on the class 2 entrance exam quite easily, which contained high level and obscure topics only a select few graduate college students would know. Though, my main knowledge base wasn’t the math content, but the shortcuts to solve each problem. The best way to work is with little effort, I always told myself. Because of that, I tended to answer most questions within ten seconds. So, I moved my finger down the list until it hovered over what I was looking for:

Math Club: Class 3-3

Class 3 was across from the center stairwell, so I started down the stairs. The afternoon light shining through the windows gave the stairwell an almost regal appearance. I heard my footsteps echo on each step. It wasn’t long until I was on the third floor, and not even ten steps later, I was in front of class 3-3. I heard some voices leaking through the closed door. They must be in the middle of a game. I quietly opened the door, trying not to disturb. I heard a familiar voice speaking in a very commanding tone.

“46,956,” the familiar voice answered. It was Mona. She was sitting at a desk, hand on a red buzzer, staring directly at a little girl, stating the answer indifferently.

“C-correct,” the little girl stuttered. She seemed surprised, like she didn’t expect Mona to get the answer. The other students were quietly murmuring.

“How did she do that?”

“It only took her a second.”

“She has to be cheating.”

“Three digit multiplication that fast…”

“Her hands are empty, she had to have done it in her head.”

“But that’s impossible.”

The little girl wiped the look of shock off her face and continued, still slightly stuttering. “I-in a elimination round knockout, Mona wins game 1 of ‘Speed Math’.”

Mona seems pretty good. I observed. Mona then saw me standing at the door. Her blazé attitude turned a bit more cheerful as she waved her hand, signaling me to come over. I sat down at the empty desk next to hers.

“Hey Mona.”

“Hello.”

“So what was that about a knockout?”

“I won in the first round.” Mona leaned her chin into the palm of her right hand. She didn’t seem particularly interested in her achievement. Maybe it’s something anyone can do.

“Is that impressive?”

“Not really. The students can’t do fast math. It’s a bit boring.” Ah, so anyone can do it. No wonder she looks so impassive about it. However, as soon as I looked around, I saw that the rest of the students weren’t too pleased about her snide remark. They looked like they were about to set off fifty mini-volcanoes in here. Soon enough, the students burst.

“Oh yeah? Now it’s on!”

“That was just a fluke, I’ll win this time!”

“We’ll beat you, Crimson Witch!”

“You were just lucky this time!”

“You’ve got nothing on me!”

So, Lego isn’t the only one who calls Mona the ‘Crimson Witch’. I was about to ask Mona about it. She had sat up straight, a calm glare with a plastered smile on her face. Maybe, I shouldn’t… I decided to ask Mona about the game instead. Her glare subsided a little as she went on to explain the rules of Speed Math:

The host asks a math related question.

The first person to push the buzzer gets to answer.

If the answer is right, the person gets a point. If wrong, someone else can push the buzzer to answer instead.

The first five questions act as an elimination round. People who answer a question correctly move onto the main round.

Any person is eliminated from the main round if they fall three points behind anybody ahead of them.

Last person remaining wins.

The little girl, who was the host, started up the next round. “Okay, this time we’ll be adding calculus questions to the mix.” The students boiling a few minutes ago at Mona now had their heads down on the table. Apparently, they weren’t very good at calculus.

I placed my hand over the buzzer sitting on the desk. I told Mona “Good luck,” to which she said, “You as well.” It was about to get technical.

The host asked the first question, “What is 8,415 divided by 34?” Before I even had time to process the question, “Bzz.” Mona had pushed the buzzer.

“495 / 2, or 247.5.”

“T-that’s c-c-correct.” I looked at her stupefied. She just answered a question most humans needed a calculator for in her head, in half a second. I think I understand the shock of everyone else now. Mona turned to me, her head on the desk, slipping back into her dispassionate attitude.

“I was hoping that question would’ve been harder.” You were hoping for harder?!? What kind of superhuman are you?? I thought back to one of the other students calling her the ‘Crimson Witch.’ Maybe this was where she got the nickname from.

Two more questions passed by: one about length of chords in circles, the other on conditional probability. Mona took a few seconds on each to answer each, but ultimately got it correct before anyone else. At this rate, she would get another elimination round win. Mona didn’t even seem happy that she was winning again. Her head was still on the desk like she wasn’t having fun at all, just trying to pass the time. Then came the fourth question.

“What is the work done by the vector field F(x,y) = y dx + x dy + z dz along a closed ellipse?” To most people that were listening, that question made absolutely no sense. However, this time, only a moment passed, “Bzz.” The host’s look of shock was massive. The other students were even more flabbergasted. Best of all, Mona’s emotionless expression turned into surprise as she raised her head and looked at me. I had pushed the buzzer.

“0,” I answered. The room was silent for only a few seconds as the host tried to recompose herself.

“Y-yes, t-t-that’s r-r-right,” the host eventually managed to stammer out. I got my first point. I turned to look at Mona, who in turn was still looking at me. The confusion on her face was evident, but she was more excited than sad or annoyed that I had beat her to the answer.

“How did you know the answer so quickly?”

“I didn’t,” I promptly responded. I had no idea whether the answer was right or not. I just knew that work done by a vector field along a closed curve was zero if the field was conservative. It was one of few shortcuts I stumbled onto while searching the internet. I didn’t check whether the vector field was conservative though, and I told her as such.

Mona’s quizzical expression turned into excitement as she leaned back and started to laugh: a cackle that lived up to the name of a witch. Her normally calm expression morphed into that of a devilish grin. The air in the room felt heavier, like it was trying to suffocate me. All she said was, “Interesting.” She sat up straight and put her hand over the buzzer. Her look grew serious as if she was taking me as a threat. I mean, it was an educated guess! How was I supposed to know that I would guess right?

Mona ran away with the last question on Lagrange Multipliers. Finally, the main round began. Mona versus I. The witch against luck. How could I not have seen this as a one-sided battle? However, when I looked over at her face, she was excited. Even if it was only guessing, she looked like she was having fun losing more than winning. It was like she finally had a challenge to overcome. So, I decided to put my all into winning this match. Not to mention, I was starting to enjoy myself too.

The main round began: a fight between math concepts you had never heard and will never hear again. I was off to a rocky start. Mona successfully answered the question on Set Theory without so much as a second thought. I picked up the next question on cube roots of three digits numbers. Mona retaliated with two more on polar coordinate conversion and solving the equation. I responded in kind with an inverse square root. I then answered the next two on matrix operations, putting me ahead of Mona for the first time. However, Mona quickly brought it back with simple addition. It went on like this for five minutes. Mona was answering questions based on her speed and knowledge. I was using quick and dirty shortcuts. I came close to winning once, but I was immediately pulled back by a few quick answers from Mona.

Eventually, Mona beat me with a score of 25 to 22. I was amazed I lasted so long. Shortcuts are overpowered even in real life. I turned towards Mona, congratulating her on the win. She looked at me with a refreshed smile, her previous boredom nowhere to be seen. She seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself.

“Hey Lucas…” Mona started. Her eyes were gleaming. The refreshed expression on her face turned into one of greed, her fingers stroking her chin.

“Yes?”

“Let’s play another game!” Welp, here we go again. I let out a slight smile.

“Bring it.”

“The winner is Mona!” the host announced, no longer stuttering at our fast reaction times. I came back to the Math Games Club for the entire week, participating in a total of seventy games. Mona had beaten me in the elimination round forty times and twenty-nine times in the main round. I only ended up winning the 53rd game with ten points by sheer luck. However, Mona was even more excited, like she now had a wall to overcome. Though, she had beaten me in the elimination round every game after that. Although I found this fun, this game was going to be my last, since I wanted to try out different clubs. I told Mona so as well.

Mona’s excited expression became a bit downcast as she mumbled, “Okay.” However, she never asked me to stay. I think that was her way of being respectful for holding me there. It was not as if I didn’t enjoy the club. It just didn’t make me feel truly happy. Mona and I made our way out of the classroom as club activities ended for the day. We walked down the center stairwell in silence. She was still looking sad. It’s probably since I’ll be leaving the club. I was the only one to get into the main round after all. I think she was a bit scared since none of the other students were ever able to beat her. It was like she didn’t want to lose the excitement that we had.

We reached the first floor and walked down the quiet hallway. Although the club didn’t make me truly happy, the moments I spent playing with her did. Whether it was true happiness, I’m not sure, but I soon found myself looking at her and saying–

“Let’s play again sometime.”

Mona kept looking ahead for a few seconds. She then suddenly stopped: her head lifted as her eyes opened wide. I looked at her and she looked at me back. We stared at each other for a little while. We both then started to smile.

“I look forward to it.”