Chapter 148: don’t read the last page

Chapter 148 — Don’t Read the Last Page

Nora arrived at the workshop room after classes with a thin grey notebook, and she did not take it out of her bag. She sat down across the table from Roxanne, lined up three pencils by length, and talked about the previous session instead. Corin’s quiet idea about the train. Pippa’s arrows. Whether Mr. Ellery owned any shirt without ink on the cuffs.

Roxanne did not ask about the bag. She had learned that one the hard way, from the other side of a table. She sharpened a pencil she did not need and listened to Nora circle the subject like a cat circling a bath.

It took twenty minutes. Then Nora unzipped the bag, drew out the notebook, and slid it across the wood with two fingers, as though it might go off.

"You can read all of it," she said. "Except the last page."

Roxanne raised an eyebrow.

"Those are the terms."

"Accepted."

The story followed a young woman named Edda, who spent years becoming the person everyone needed. She remembered birthdays and carried spare umbrellas. She finished other people’s sentences and other people’s projects, until one evening she stood in a quiet kitchen and could not name a single thing she wanted for herself.

Roxanne read slowly. It was better than she had expected. It was not perfect, and some sentences leaned on each other like tired people, but the voice was sharp and unsentimental, and Edda felt like someone Roxanne had walked past in a corridor. In one paragraph, Edda laughed at a joke she hadn’t found funny, just to keep a room warm, and Roxanne’s stomach turned over with recognition.

Across the table, Nora pretended to organise her pencils. She had organised them four times. Every few seconds her eyes flicked up to Roxanne’s face and away again.

When Roxanne finished the last page she was allowed, she closed the notebook gently and kept her hand on the cover.

"Tell me," Nora said, too lightly.

"The conflict feels real. Edda isn’t a martyr, she’s tired and a bit resentful, and that makes her believable. The dialogue is strongest when she stops pretending to be fine. The scene with the umbrella is wonderful." She hesitated. "The middle drags a little. Three scenes in a row, she feels the same thing and explains it in slightly different words."

Nora’s face closed like a door. It happened so fast that Roxanne almost missed it.

"So it’s boring."

"No. Her struggle is interesting. I just think the scenes need to move forward instead of explaining the same pain again."

"So you think it’s bad."

"I think it needs work."

"That’s what people say when they think something is bad."

"Not if they’re willing to spend ten minutes explaining how to make it better."

Nora stared at her. Then, slowly, her shoulders came down by a fraction. "Usually people either say it’s lovely without reading it, or they stop halfway and hand it back."

"I read it all. Except the last page, as instructed." Roxanne opened the notebook again and pointed. "Here. Edda forgets her own umbrella because she gave the spare away, and she stands in the rain not even annoyed. That paragraph does more in six lines than the middle does in six pages. If the middle sounded like that, you wouldn’t need to explain anything."

Nora read the paragraph, her lips moving slightly. She said nothing. But she took a pencil and made a small mark in the margin, and Roxanne decided to count that as a victory.

When Roxanne reached for the notebook to turn back toward the front, Nora’s hand landed on it first. She slid it back across the table and tucked it against her chest.

"You said you wouldn’t read the end."

"I’m not going to." Roxanne held up both hands. "I promised."

Nora looked surprised, as though she had expected to defend the notebook with her body. She sat very still for a moment, and then said, in a smaller voice, "The ending’s on the last page. I don’t know whether I want to show you, because I’m not sure I like it myself."

"What bothers you?"

"It’s too hopeful. After everything Edda goes through, it feels like I’m lying."

Roxanne thought about it carefully. "Hope doesn’t have to mean everything is repaired. It might only mean she stops waiting." She paused. "Maybe she doesn’t need everyone to understand her. Maybe she just needs to stop asking permission to become herself."

Nora looked at her thoughtfully, and did not open the notebook, and did not say no either.

At the workshop’s next session, Mr. Ellery asked them to read their scenes aloud. Nora volunteered to read a supporting character, a small, tart part with four lines, and she read it flatly and fast. She did not offer a word of her own story.

When a boy fumbled a line, delivering a joke as though he were apologising for it, Nora cleared her throat. "Try waiting a beat before the last word," she said. "Let them get there first."

He tried it. The line landed, and the room laughed. Mr. Ellery tapped his pencil on his knee in delight.

Roxanne watched Nora across the circle. She was sure of herself when she talked about timing and rhythm, as long as it was someone else’s page. When they stacked chairs afterward, Roxanne said, "You could read a section of yours here someday."

"Maybe," Nora said, and then, "Not yet."

"Not yet is fine."

It was the following afternoon, passing the library steps, that Roxanne saw Nora cornered by two girls she vaguely recognised, who had spent the term borrowing Nora’s lecture notes.

"I only need yesterday’s," one of them was saying. "I missed it, and you always have them."

"I haven’t finished organising them," said Nora.

"You always organise them."

"I know. Not this time."

"After everything I’ve done for you," the girl said, with a small, wounded sigh, "I’d have thought you’d just share."

Roxanne was moving before she had decided. "She doesn’t have to hand over her notes. You can ask someone else, or ask the lecturer."

The girl’s mouth thinned. She looked at Nora, then at Roxanne, and left with a sniff, dragging her friend behind her.

Roxanne turned, expecting thanks. Nora’s face was pale and furious.

"I didn’t need rescuing."

"I was trying to help."

"I know."

"Then why are you angry?"

"Because I wanted to say no myself." Nora’s voice shook. "I was saying it. It was working, a little. And then you stepped in, and now it looks like I can’t speak for myself."

Roxanne stood very still. The words went straight to a place she knew well, the memory of other people deciding what she needed and arranging it for her without asking. She had hated it every time. And she had just done it.

She did not explain that she had meant well. "I’m sorry," she said. "You’re right. I should have waited and let you finish."

Nora’s jaw loosened. "Thank you."

The air between them stayed stiff, and neither of them pretended otherwise. They walked back toward the workshop room in a silence that was neither comfortable nor hostile, only unfinished.

They sat at the empty table again, with the late light coming slantwise through the window.

"Next time I’ll ask first," Roxanne said. "Before I step in."

"I could have explained without snapping at you." Nora fiddled with a pencil. "I’m not used to being on that side of it. Being the one who says the difficult thing."

"You did it well. The girl just didn’t like it."

"That does seem to be the usual result."

A small, reluctant smile tugged at Nora’s mouth. The tightness between them eased, though the disagreement did not vanish. It simply stopped being the only thing in the room.

Nora drew the notebook out of her bag and set it on the table. She turned it over and opened it to the final page, and then, after a long breath, pushed it toward Roxanne.

The ending was not dramatic. There was no grand reunion, no apology from the people who had overlooked Edda, no sudden revelation. She simply stood in the same kitchen, the same quiet room, and stopped waiting for anyone to decide whether she deserved a place in the world. She put on her coat, and went out, and the last line was only a description of the street.

Roxanne read it twice. Then she looked up.

"I like this ending."

Nora narrowed her eyes. "Because it’s good, or because you feel guilty?"

"Because you finally let her do something, instead of thinking about doing it for three pages."

Nora laughed, startled, and snatched the notebook away. "I’m taking that as a compliment."

"You should."

They packed up as the light went gold. At the door, Nora hesitated, holding the notebook against her chest with both arms.

"I’m thinking of sending it to the student literary magazine. I haven’t decided whether to put my name on it."

Roxanne did not tell her what to do. She had learned that much, at some cost, within the past hour. "What would you choose if you weren’t worried about what everyone would think?"

Nora considered it, and her answer came slowly. "I’d put my name on it."

"Then that’s your answer."

Nora’s grip tightened on the cover. "But I’m still scared."

Roxanne smiled faintly. "You can be scared and send it anyway."