Chapter 154: my own words

Chapter 154 — My Own Words

Roxanne read the coordinator’s email for the fourth time and still found the same sentence waiting at the bottom. Students whose work is selected will read their pieces themselves. It sat there politely, like a trap with good manners.

She had been pleased. For a full minute that morning she had been simply and uncomplicatedly proud. Now she was considering whether a person could ask a friend to read their story for them, and whether that friend might have a better voice, and whether the friend could be bribed with pastries.

The door opened, and Isla came in with a travel bag over one shoulder and the faintly rumpled look of someone who had slept on a train. She had been home for the weekend, and she had come back thinner around the eyes but steady on her feet.

"You’re making a face," Isla said, dropping the bag.

"I’m not."

"You’re making the face you make when a lecturer says the word group project."

Roxanne turned the laptop around. Isla read the email, then read it again, and her mouth began to twitch.

"I wanted people to read it," Roxanne said.

"Congratulations. They want to hear it too."

"That’s the problem."

"You volunteered. Nobody forced you to submit." Isla sat on the end of the bed and kicked off her shoes. "You really are determined to make every good opportunity difficult."

"It’s a gift."

"It’s exhausting. I missed you." Isla leaned over and hugged her briefly, sideways, and Roxanne let herself be hugged. They could talk about the weekend later, when Isla was ready. For now it was enough that she was back.

The workshop room was bright and cold that afternoon. Nora was already there, hunched over her notebook, and she looked up with an expression so stunned that Roxanne stopped in the doorway.

"The magazine shortlisted mine," Nora said. "Properly shortlisted. Mr. Ellery told us last week, but now there’s a letter. It says they might publish it."

"Nora, that’s wonderful."

"It’s terrifying." She pressed both hands over her mouth, then lowered them. "People will read it. Strangers. People from my lectures. They’ll know I wrote it."

"You put your name on it."

"I know. I’m an idiot."

Roxanne sat down beside her. "I’ve been chosen for a reading at the Winter Arts Evening. Out loud. Myself."

Nora’s eyes widened with sympathy and then a flicker of relief at not being alone. "I’d struggle with that too. It’s different, isn’t it? Letting someone read your writing quietly, in their own head, versus standing there and handing it to them."

"On a page, I can hide behind it."

"Out loud, there’s only your face." Nora fiddled with a pencil. "What if we practised? On each other. Before anyone else hears it."

Roxanne considered the offer. It was not rescue, and it was not advice. It was two people agreeing to be nervous together. "Yes. Please."

After the session, they found an empty classroom on the second floor, where the desks had been stacked against one wall and the blackboard still showed the ghost of someone’s equation. Roxanne stood at the front with her pages. Nora sat in the middle of the room with her hands folded, looking as solemn as a judge.

She began to read. The first paragraph went smoothly. By the second, she heard something she had never noticed on the page. A sentence about the grandmother’s kitchen ran on for so long that she ran out of breath in the middle, and another used the word quiet three times in a row. She stumbled in the third paragraph and stopped.

"Sorry. That one doesn’t sound right."

"It reads fine," Nora said. "But it’s too long to say. Try breaking it after the teaspoon. Let the reader hear the tap."

Roxanne marked it. She read the paragraph again, and this time the break fell exactly where the grandmother’s spoon would have rung against the cup, and something in the room seemed to settle. She went on to the end, a little steadier, with a pencil in her hand to catch the loose sentences.

Then it was Nora’s turn. She stood, which she plainly regretted at once, and held her pages close to her chest before lowering them. She read more quietly than she spoke. Her words carried feeling, though, and Roxanne felt it settle on her like a hand on the shoulder. But Nora raced through the hardest paragraph, the one in which Edda stood in the kitchen and could not name a single thing she wanted.

"Slow down there," Roxanne said gently. "That’s the line that matters. Let it sit."

Nora took a breath and tried again. This time she let the silence after the line stretch, and the room held it.

At lunch the next day, Tessa dropped a tray on the table and demanded news. Roxanne told her about the reading.

"You’re becoming a full-time performer," Tessa said, pointing a fork at her. "First the showcase, now this. Soon you’ll be signing autographs."

"It’s different. It’s my story."

"What’s it about?"

Roxanne gave a short, careful summary: a girl, a shoebox, a spoon, a grandmother. Tessa listened with her chin on her fist.

"Is the grandmother based on someone you know?"

It was innocent. Tessa asked it the way she asked anything, with simple interest, and Roxanne still felt the question land somewhere tender and unprotected. She had not known the story could be looked through like a window. She said she was mostly making it up, and asked whether anyone had seen the otter, and Tessa launched happily into a long tale about its missing eye.

But afterwards, walking back to class, Roxanne wondered how much of herself was tucked between the lines, and whether strangers would find it.

She was crossing the courtyard that afternoon when Lucien stepped out of the student council building with a folder under his arm. He fell into step with her without speaking until they reached the corner.

"Are you attending the Winter Arts Evening?"

"I’m reading at it." She hadn’t meant to tell him. "A piece of my own writing. I’m not sure I should."

"Do you dislike the story, or dislike being watched while you share it?"

She thought about it honestly. "The second."

He nodded as though that were a reasonable thing to dislike. "The audience can only respond to what you choose to give them. You do not owe them an explanation beyond the work."

"You don’t have to explain every sentence to the audience," she said, in a fair imitation of his voice. "That’s easy for someone who gives speeches all the time."

"I do not enjoy speeches."

"You’re very convincing."

A faint smile crossed his face. "I did not say I was good at enjoying them."

That evening she sat at her desk and read the story from the top, pencil moving. She cut a clause, softened a line, and broke the long sentence where the spoon tapped. Then she stood up and read the opening aloud to the empty room, feeling foolish, then less foolish, then very slightly proud.

She would do it. But if the coordinator allowed an excerpt, she would read only the first part and leave the rest for people to find on the page. She wrote an email confirming her participation and asking how long the reading would last. She pressed send before she could hover.

Nervousness came first, cold and quick. Then, close behind it, something steadier. She had made the decision herself.

Just before bed, her phone buzzed with a message from Nora.

I have a problem.

What happened?

The literary magazine wants to publish my story. They also want to interview me.

Roxanne smiled at the irony.

Another message arrived before she could answer.

And I think I’m going to say yes.

Roxanne typed: Then we’ll both have something to be nervous about.