Chapter 149: Her name on the page

Chapter 149 — Her Name on the Page

Nora caught Roxanne at the workshop door the next afternoon, notebook clutched to her chest, and announced the news in the voice of someone reporting a weather warning.

"Submissions for the literary magazine close in three days."

"Are you going to send yours?"

"I’ve been thinking about it. I keep finding reasons to wait. The middle still needs work. The title is wrong. I might have a cold coming."

"You don’t have a cold."

"It could develop."

Roxanne perched on the edge of a table. "Are you worried the story isn’t good enough, or that people will know you wrote it?"

Nora opened her mouth to say the first and visibly discovered it wasn’t true. "The second," she admitted. "Writing it privately is fine. Imagining people from my lectures reading it, knowing it’s mine, is something else."

"You can revise the middle without hiding your name."

"People might not like it."

"That’s possible."

"You’re supposed to encourage me."

"I am. I’m just not going to promise that everyone will love it."

Nora rolled her eyes. "You’re terrible at motivational speeches."

"I’m excellent at honest ones."

The session that afternoon found Nora quieter than usual, folded into her chair with her sleeves pulled over her hands. Mr. Ellery tapped his pencil against his knee and asked everyone to share what they were working on. Pippa described a scene involving a haunted laundry room. Corin murmured something about trains. When the circle reached Nora, she said she was considering sending a story to the magazine, and nothing more.

"They get dozens of submissions every term," a boy across the circle remarked, not unkindly. "Sometimes more. It’s a lottery, really."

Roxanne saw the light go out of Nora’s face. She sat very straight, and the doubt arrived almost audibly. Roxanne said nothing. She did not speak for her, and she did not rescue her, though the urge rose and she held it down like a hand pressed flat on a table.

Afterward, while the others stacked chairs, she asked quietly, "Do you still want to send it?"

"Yes," Nora said. Then, "I’m not sure I’m ready."

"Then decide whether you’re waiting until you’re ready, or waiting until you’re no longer afraid. Those aren’t the same thing."

Nora looked at her for a long moment, and did not answer, but she did not leave the room either.

That evening Roxanne opened her calendar and frowned at it. The workshop’s next two sessions collided with a training session and a study block, and a small, familiar panic stirred at the sight. She could drop something. She could drop everything, and be rid of the pressure. But she recognised that choosing out of overwhelm was not the same as choosing, and she closed the calendar and went to find Mr. Ellery in the morning instead.

"I’d like to stay in the workshop," she told him, "but I can’t take on any extra responsibilities. No leading sessions. Just taking part."

He tapped his pencil on his knee. "That is a perfectly respectable thing to do. People do it all the time. It’s called being a participant."

"I thought it might be."

"Stay as long as you like." He looked pleased, as though she had solved a minor riddle. "Writing is better when nobody is in charge of it."

She walked away lighter. She could enjoy this without organising it, and the thought was as strange and pleasant as a window left open.

At lunch she ran into Serena, who was carrying a tray with the poise of someone who had never once spilled soup. Serena asked how the showcase had settled and whether Roxanne had returned to her normal routine.

"More or less. I’ve joined a writing workshop."

"Have you?" Serena sat down opposite her. "I read the literary magazine, you know. Occasionally. When the cover is not too self-important."

Roxanne told her, without names, about a friend considering a submission. Serena listened with her head tilted. "If she would like another reader, I would be glad to look at it. Only if she wants. Some people hate being read by a person with opinions."

"I’ll pass it on. I won’t pressure her."

Serena smiled, plainly approving. "That is exactly the right answer."

Two days later Nora found her on the steps outside the library, and her face was set with grim determination, like someone about to jump into a cold lake.

"I’m doing it."

"Good."

"I rewrote the middle. Cut a whole scene. Edda stops explaining herself at last." Nora held up the notebook, then a printed copy, covered in crossings out. "And I’ve chosen a title. The Space I Left Empty."

"That’s a good title."

"It’s the first one that didn’t make me wince."

They sat together on a bench in the library courtyard, and Nora balanced her laptop on her knees. The submission form was plain and unglamorous, a few boxes and a button. She filled in the title, attached the file, and stopped at the last field.

Author name.

Her cursor blinked. Roxanne looked politely at a pigeon.

"I could use a pseudonym," Nora said.

"You could, if you genuinely wanted one."

"I don’t know what I want."

"You told me, the other day."

Nora breathed in. She typed her name, all of it, first and last, and before she could think about it she pressed the button.

A grey box appeared. Thank you for your submission.

Nora stared at it as though she expected the sky to open.

"That’s it?" she said.

"That’s it."

"I thought I’d feel different."

"You might tomorrow."

"What if they reject it?"

"Then you’ll still have written it."

Nora laughed, a little shakily, and closed the laptop. "You’re getting better at motivational speeches."

"Don’t tell anyone."

She left Nora with the pigeon and her own astonishment, and went into the library to return a book. By the entrance stood a small display of student publications, pamphlets and bound collections and a row of old editions of the literary magazine. Roxanne picked one up for no reason except that the cover was a warm, faded green.

She read a short piece standing at the display. It was about a girl who hated the academy’s formal dinners, the stiff chairs and the endless forks, and secretly loved the music that played behind them. It was funny, and a little sad, and it ended with her humming under her breath in an empty corridor.

Roxanne read it twice. She found herself wondering what she might write, if she wrote. Not a story about rejection, or royal protection, or the Moonstones. Something else entirely, something she had not thought of yet. She made no promise to herself. She only let the possibility sit there, like a seed on a windowsill, and put the magazine back where she had found it.

Back in her dormitory that evening, Isla’s bed was neatly made and empty, and the room felt larger without her. Roxanne had just kicked off her shoes when her phone buzzed.

Heard you’ve joined the writing crowd. Should I be worried you’ll start writing embarrassing stories about me?

She typed back: Only if you give me enough material.

The answer came almost at once. Then I have a proposal. You write the story, and I’ll supply the material.

Roxanne shook her head, smiling at the screen.

Another message arrived before she could reply.

Actually, I need your opinion on something. Can we talk tomorrow? Just you and me.

She waited for the joke. A line about capes, or greatness, or a dramatic horse. She watched the little dots appear, and vanish, and appear again.

Nothing followed.

For once, Liam did not add one.