Four more contestants were disqualified, one after another. It was down to me and some brainiac who kept nervously cracking his knuckles.
"Contestant thirteen," came the booming voice.
I stood.
When the judge looked at the computer screen this time, he took his time. He called all the other judges over. They conferred, then sat down again, looking back and forth to one another. When the head judge got on the microphone, he didn't offer me a word to spell. He offered me his apologies.
"I'm sorry, Miss DeFido . . . but the rules are very strict," he said. "We have no choice but to give you the word that comes up on the screen. You understand?"
I nodded.
"There's nothing we can do about it."
I nodded.
He took a deep breath and said, "Please spell... grotesque."
And this time there was unrestrained laughter in the audience; the chuckling, twittering voices of students, and parents, too. This was no accident. Somewhere out there, I knew, there was one kid, or two, or a whole gaggle of them who were secretly gloating over having somehow pulled this prank.
I knew what I had to do. Holding my head as high as I could manage, I spelled the word.
"Grotesque," I said. "G-0. . .w I leaned closer to the microphone. "T-0..." I grabbed the microphone stand like a rock star. "H-E...I looked out over all those people in the audience. "L-L. Grotesque."
Silence from the judges. Silence from the audience.
Finally, the head judge leaned toward his microphone. "Uh... I'm sorry," he said. "That is incorrect."
Then, in the front row, a newspaper photographer stood up and brought his camera to his eye.