Ambition

Short Short by Sydney Marler, 9th Grade, Burroughs High School
2015 Met Awards - Second Place for High School Fiction

Ambition. I spelled it out.

A-M-B-I-T-I-T-I-O-N. Ambition.

No, that wasn’t right. I promptly scribbled a note of it in my overflowing book of words. Most of the kids at my school had something of a mixed opinion about me. Jealousy was what I perceived most keenly. The other part was when they clapped for me when I won awards; that was the part I liked best. I had very few friends, mostly due to my inability to even entertain the superfluous thought of becoming ‘one of them’. After all, I would become their boss someday. It was best to see it from the other side; to reason that they all wanted to become me so badly, that they had given up all attempts to befriend me. It was better to look at it this way. So much easier. I couldn’t exert any energy on friendships anyway; I had a spelling bee to win.

I was something of a prodigy from the beginning. I was always tearing through stacks of books and my parents could never keep up with the demand.

“Laura’s going places!” my Pap would say. He was so proud of me. My mother would always take me to play groups and show all the other mothers what a smart little girl I was, and the others would complain about how their children were having daily tantrums. My mother glanced at me powerfully with a shimmer in her eye and in that moment, I became proud too.

The day of the spelling bee came and I was flipping through my notebook for the final time. The other competitors were sitting nervously on their chairs, facing the entire school. I wondered what they were thinking. Did they even prepare? This should be an easy victory for me. I remembered then that Charles was studying hard too. My heart sunk as I realized I had no idea where I stood.

My feet were twisted around the chair. One foot, delicately clothed in a flat shoe, made a resounding tapping on the cafeteria stage. It echoed anxiously across the cafeteria, somehow mixing with the dull hum of middle school children sitting below me. Suddenly the bow on my flat became entangled in the portable metal chair. The chair collapsed and I knew I was falling before I started falling. I made a frantic grab for the notebook; but it was too late and I wasn’t fast enough to catch it. The notebook splattered hard all over the stage and I was on the ground; tears quickly running down my puffy face. I wasn’t injured, although I was hurt.

The cafeteria was completely silent. I desperately wanted them to do something, anything. Laugh! Someone just start laughing! I’m begging you! I wished in those moments; but no one did.

Finally, after several excruciating seconds, several boys began to pick up the papers that had fallen out of my loose notebook. Noise gradually escalated into the cafeteria again and I indignantly set up my chair. I took a seat on its hard metal surface as the troupe of boys began to hand me the missing pieces of my notebook. One of the boys was Charles. I didn’t say a word.

The elderly teacher began calling us up one by one. Verboten. Colloquial. Intractable. Formidable. I knew instantly when my competitors were wrong and I visibly cringed. One of my competitors recognized this pattern and began crying when I cringed. Poor kid.

It was finally my turn. I carefully untangled my nervous legs from the metal chair. I wasn’t one to make the same mistake twice. In what seemed like forever, I made my way to the podium and pulled down the microphone. I turned to look at the teacher expectantly.

“Ambition”, she delivered. It was a dagger, my kryptonite, my silver bullet. I nearly sunk to the floor.

“A-M-B-I-T-I-T…” There it was. I saw my parents in the background; their eyes widened. I looked at my competitors and to my surprise they looked… indifferent. This was it. This is what death feels like, I thought.

“-I-O-N” I finished, nervous, shaking, and yet anew.

With the sound of the buzzer, I walked off the stage.