"MVP, MVP, MVP," Eddie kept chanting under his breath right behind me as we walked around campus, waiting for the scores to go up. He started to get louder in the hopes that someone, anyone else, would join in. Hisako just looked at him, rolled her eyes, and kept on going, "MVP, MVP."
"Stop," I said, nudging him backwards with my elbow, "Ruth got the best score out of all of us, and you actually won a competition."
Eddie scoffed and gave me a shove from behind, likely from being a downer. He was clearly feeling much better than he had been when we'd all gotten started that morning. At least that was good to see, "Are you kidding me? You got two scores over an eight. I couldn't have done that. I bet nobody else competing in this thing could have done that," He said, "And if there was, they didn't. You did."
He had a point. Maybe I had some kind of perfectionist streak that I hadn't known about until that moment. It would have explained why I was never satisfied with my own accomplishments, no matter what I did.
While I pondered along that line of thinking, I noticed Eddie straighten up and change his posture entirely. Looking back ahead to see what had nearly tripped him up, I noticed Miss Pryde at the back of the school, near where we would have split up to head to the separate boys and girls dorm buildings.
"Outstanding," Miss Pryde said, clapping her hands together. The smile she had on her face had enough light on it to charge me into overload. Not really, but you know what I mean, "I know it's just the first day, but your score this time already looks like a night and day difference from last time around."
I was able to catch a glimpse of our amassed scores as they flashed up on the board for a few seconds.
Overall Solo Event Score: Paladins – 8.5
"Thank God," Hisako muttered, though she too was pleased with what we'd gotten so far. She was just trying to play it cool.
"So you're happy with that?" I asked Miss Pryde.
"Oh, very much so," She gestured her head back toward the board again, "Look."
1st Place: New Mutants – 9.1
2nd Place: Paragons – 8.7
3rd Place: Paladins – 8.5
4th Place: Hellions – 8.4
5th Place: Chevaliers – 7.9
It was close. Damn close. Any slip-up and we weren't so much as getting a top three podium spot, but we just squeezed in there. It likely wouldn't stay that way, as this had been just the first day, the first leg of events. I couldn't believe it. I'd expected that we'd easily outdo what the team had done during their last Field Day, but sheesh.
Eddie had to rub his eyes to make sure what he was seeing was real. The look of joy on his face, it was worth all of the hard work we'd put in so far, "Wait-wait-wait. How are we so close to the top spot?" He asked, overjoyed.
"Look," Hisako pointed out as the team scores per event rolled past again, "Everything the Hellions didn't get 10s on, they got lower scores than us. How'd that work out?"
That was just the best. I started to laugh from a good, healthy place. I'd thought Julian had chosen events for his team well. It only seemed that way because half of their scores were tens. In reality, he'd just stuck his shoo-ins in the events that they would dominate in and let the others do whatever else just to get marks to cover.
I suddenly felt much better about losing to Julian earlier, "Ha! The Hellions min-maxed like a son of a bitch!" I crowed victoriously. It was a good day.
Hisako gave me a big pat on the back, "You actually booked us well in the solo events. Way to go, Bel."
Miss Pryde's eyebrows rose in interest, "Bellamy chose the events?" She asked, sounding intrigued, "And everyone else was okay with that?"
All of the others just seemed to look at her as if to ask 'why not?'
"It clearly worked," Eddie said, "He even picked two events he could do well at. If he wasn't here, we probably would have stuck Hisako with the strength competition and I would have doubled up and taken the flying contest to try and make up points off of it. Our score would have been butchered."
"Accentuate the positives, hide the negatives," I said, trying to explain my way of thinking for which event I decided to keep us out of altogether, "No one needs to know what we suck at and how bad we suck at it."
As far as they knew, we didn't suck at anything. With a good-to-great spread of scores across the board, no one would have known what to expect from us later on. Which was great, because we didn't necessarily know either.
The important thing was, we had a chance heading into day two, and at the moment, nothing else mattered.
…And just like the day before, why did I feel like I was missing something important?