In the months to follow, Camden ends up using horse race betting to discipline Myriam, knowing she cannot bet on horse races independently. Also, as a mathlete, Myriam proves adept at algebra and probability, thanks to her experience of horse betting. At the same time, he cut the prices of school space rental so that he could rent it out more. Enough to see an increase in rental revenue.
And yet, they could reconcile quickly, since she mostly is on her good behavior. By the time the quarter horse season begins in late April, she got her bankroll increased to $100, especially since she posted a few hundred dollars in profit over the thoroughbred season.
Just after the announcement that Jennings Middle is going to merge with the high school on the same campus, and henceforth be known as Venomous Agendas High, in June, Camden receives an email from the new superintendent. Which prompts Camden to call him:
"Mr. Superintendent, this is Camden, Lacassine's principal. May I ask why you're asking us for our dealings with our signage vendor as well as the model?"
"The parish is planning on replacing all other schools' signage for LED screens so that they can raise advertising revenues outside of sports games, and we also want to renegotiate the service contract so the whole parish is serviced by the same vendor" Glen explains to that principal.
The parish's new superintendent sounds oddly familiar to him, probably because he worked with him in a different capacity. He then talks about his relationship with the existing vendor for their own sign, despite the decision to purchase the LED sign was made under his predecessor.
However, it's clear that the superintendent believes him to know who else to put on the bid committee for that specific purchase. Especially since the superintendent only nominated the parish's head of IT to be on the committee.
"While I'm willing to find the two bid committee members you need, I expect a finder's fee for the time I'm putting into this"
"How much are you asking for?"
"At least two hundred dollars so that we can get a math team up and running"
I may as well ask Brianna about who served on the school board when the purchase was made, and then I'll pocket the finder's fee, which will go directly into our bankroll, save for $200 that will then be used in lieu of Title IX money. For years, there were requests for a math team, but no willing girls, going as far back as my predecessor. However, this parish has the best mathletic role models high school girls could ask for, Camden seems to have a lot on his mind.
He then proceeds to call Brianna, asking for her help:
"Hi Brianna, it's about LED signage"
"What is it now?" Brianna asks her.
"Because the parish has no experience of LED signage, outside of Lacassine, the parish wants people who were involved in the original decision for Lacassine to purchase LED signage. The superintendent is planning to have every school in the parish equipped with LED signs"
"What do you mean?"
"The documentation I could find was signed by the principal of the time, but only one detail was left out: the names of the other people on the bid committee"
Brianna then produces two names, the people on the school board who knew best about LED signage and advertising, along with their email addresses, so the superintendent could get in touch with them. What Glen has yet to realize is that outfitting all schools in the parish with LED signs would face the problem of the mounts: no two sign mounts are the same in the parish.
So I don't expect to be paid until a decision has been made by the parish, nor do I expect the finder's fee to be nearly as high as for private sales. However, every dollar counts for the bankroll. I would love to give Myriam a bigger bankroll while maintaining mine at the same level, he thinks, while handling administrative, end-of-year paperwork in his office.
Once he returns home that day, before the pair begins betting on horse races, Camden has a new announcement to make to Myriam:
"Myriam, in light of your profit-and-loss record as a bettor at this point of the quarter horse season, I might be willing to increase your bankroll to two hundred dollars. However, there are two conditions to meet: first, that you try out for the quiz bowl team, assuming there's enough interest among the middle school student body at VA for a MS quiz bowl team"
"But daddy, I feel like MS quiz bowl will suffer the same fate as HS quiz bowl..."
"What do you mean?"
"Even if the new principal made the middle school quiz bowl team open-entry, because of the merger, I feel like a lot of people will shy away from it if they feel it's not for them" Myriam retorts, knowing that quiz bowl is very intellectually intense.
Then Jacob knocks on the door of Myriam's bedroom, disturbing the two. He doesn't seem to be very happy...
"Dad, I feel like you spend more time with Myriam than with me!" Jacob complains to his father about something going wrong.
"Fine, I'll go do the errands with you rather than with Myriam in the future..." a frustrated Camden answers his son.
"But what was the second condition?" Myriam asks her father after Jacob storms off her room.
"The second condition is about how fast the parish pays the finder's fee for the LED signs"
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Best-case scenario: the whole parish will be serviced by the same vendor as Lacassine currently is, and there might be some economies of scale. And I would be paid at the end of the bidding process. This means I can't increase her bankroll until at least early July, Camden starts thinking about when he can possibly increase Myriam's bankroll. Right now, I feel like I might have created my own monster, and that I'm the only one standing between her and full-blown gambling addiction. However, I didn't believe it was problematic enough to require aid for either her or me, since neither one really suffered because of it. I may as well try to pitch quiz bowl to the Lacassine community.
In so doing, he writes an announcement calling the Lacassine community for rising high schoolers willing to form a quiz bowl team. And maybe ask parents of interested players to make contributions. But it could prove difficult to get 4 interested players from a pool of "only" 180-200 students. Especially when considering that Lacassine never had any real reputation for academic excellence. Nor was Lacassine that different from other schools that size in this region: they were historically reluctant to engage in stuff such as quiz bowl.
He then amends his request for a finder's fee to include the cost of a brand-new buzzer system as well as money to get a quiz bowl team up and running. And competing at tournaments. That's a lot of money to ask right there, I'm not sure the parish can accommodate the entire request, but better have the parish pay for the math team than nothing at all if the parish proves unable to fund all 3 requests. Last year we cut into professional development and sold unusable supplies to fund more pressing needs than extracurriculars.
"What's going to happen if the parish doesn't pay for the quiz bowl team down there in Lacassine?" he starts questioning himself about how his attempts to mix in the school needs with his own needs for bankroll money could go. "Must I pay for the buzzer out of my own, and my daughter's, winnings? I can't break the promise I made to my daughter in that profits she earned from her bets will be used to save up for her college education! Doing so would mean betraying her trust! Unless, perhaps, I ramp up my playing schedule with her until I can afford to buy the buzzer Lacassine needs!"
"Why would Lacassine need a buzzer?" Brittany questions him after hearing buzzer.
"We want to start a quiz bowl team; if VA could, in just a few short post-pandemic years, go from a total nobody in the quiz bowl world to a nationally ranked powerhouse, Lacassine could at least pry a state championship berth. However, tournaments are often short buzzers, so we get a discount by bringing a buzzer. Buzzers can last for years"
"Who does Lacassine have that could be of use on the buzzer?" a clueless Brittany asks him.
To this, he draws a blank. His experience working with VAs told him that, just because a student excels at a given area does not mean that student will play quiz bowl well. Even in their area of academic specialty.
"While I have an idea of who's strong enough to represent the Cardinals (i.e., Lacassine) in quiz bowl, I have no idea of who can play best"
But while he waits for the district's answer, he wastes no time, the next day, in ramping up his gambling schedule. He does so, believing that, at least statistically, more betting equals more profit, for both him and Myriam.
"It appears that a complication arose at work, I'll need to pay for it myself, and, until this complication is paid for, profits from your bankroll will no longer be used to save for your college education" Camden explains to Myriam in a stern voice.
"How much are we talking?" a clueless Myriam asks him before she starts researching the forms of the race.
"Six hundred fifty dollars" Camden calculates the cost of buying Lacassine a high-visibility buzzer system, while not showing her what that buzzer system is. "On the flip side, if we can earn an extra hundred dollars in profit until signups are open for the middle school quiz bowl team, or the parish's finder's fee is paid, whichever happens first, then I can raise your bankroll early" Camden tells her, in an attempt to motivate her into playing more and better.
"Yay!" Myriam, overjoyed at the prospect of getting an allowance raise early, shouts.
The two pick a racetrack and start betting online on horse races in earnest. They take the time to make their analyses on the race, and they pray that this race is the start of a sequence that will lead them to earn an extra $750. Even if said sequence could span multiple days, or weeks even.
Of course, the buzzer seems to be the most expensive request to make to the parish central office, and, as such, in Camden's mind, is the least likely to be honored. But at the same time, he made a promise to Myriam that seems to put him on the clock, forcing him to bet more than he would have liked.
"Honey, can you please ask when the middle school quiz bowl team signup period opens? That way we'll both have a clear deadline to achieve our OTB goals" Camden asks her, having forgotten something important in the heat of a betting cycle.
"Sorry about that" Myriam then checks VA's extracurricular calendar, and then draws a blank.
While her dad watches the race on which the pair bet, she writes an email to the quiz bowl coach, on her dad's cellphone, regarding the date on which the signup period for middle school opens.
Might not be the most reliable way to raise money for anything, but intensive horse betting is the best one I have at my disposal! If this means I must spend ten or more hours per day to get to the $750, Myriam or not, so be it. However, Myriam cannot play more than a certain number of hours per weekday, Camden starts despairing at the amount of work and/or luck necessary to get to the $750 objective. Especially given his tendency to count his losses against it. Playing with Myriam will, statistically, get me to the $750 faster, but is forcing her to play longer than she would like a good idea?
---------------------
For the weekend to follow, Camden and Myriam end up betting on horse races for very, very long hours. So long that, on Sunday night...
"Myriam, time to go to bed!" Brittany yells at her in the middle of a betting cycle.
"Mom, I can't safely stop what I'm doing now!" Myriam claims while she is about to talk about a future profession that has some sort of clearly defined limit within which your work has an "all-or-nothing" element to it. "I can always wait until I die in-game, but I don't want to do so on purpose, it would be poor etiquette"
"OK, one last game"
Yay, some breathing room to finish what I started. On Saturday, I played a whopping 14 hours, not even that sufficed to get to the $750. We began the day at $436 net, we managed to earn another $300 today, we're only $14 short, Myriam is then praying that this race will get the family to get to the $750. As do his father, as soon as the And they're off signal is given. Which Brittany wouldn't hear about since Camden is watching the race on headphones.
"Yesterday was just brutal. All we did was eat and bet on horse races; may this one race prove the right one!" Camden yawns in front of his daughter, while his energy is dwindling.
"And yet, we made it!" Myriam hands the results of the race to her sleepy father shortly thereafter.
He promptly withdraws the $650 that the brand-new buzzer will cost him from his betting account, while Myriam goes straight to the bed.
By July 6, Camden is informed that the winning bid for the parish's LED sign supply amounts to having the entire parish on the same service contract as previously, but he only got the $200 in startup funds for the math team. No money for quiz bowl. There will be a math team next year at Lacassine. Must I coach and/or bankroll the quiz bowl team, if any, out of my own pocket? The remaining quiz bowl expenses are going to be entry fees and travel expenses.