Chapter 163: the voice behind the story

Chapter 163 — The Voice Behind the Story

Roxanne waited until Adrian and Maya had finished comparing notes on the announcement before she spoke. "Be honest with me," she said. "Did either of you put my name down for the reading session?" Adrian shook his head and said he had simply assumed she would want to present the written portion, since the words were hers. Maya admitted she had thought the same thing, mostly because Roxanne had written the story and seemed like the obvious choice. Roxanne had expected to feel annoyed, but what she felt was closer to dread.

"Writing something doesn’t mean I want to stand in front of a room and explain it," Roxanne said. Adrian didn’t argue the point. He only asked whether she would rather one of them read it instead, and the offer was so plainly sincere that it made her feel worse for snapping. She told them she needed time to think, and Maya nodded and said that was fair.

The next afternoon she brought the problem to Nora during their workshop, sitting across from her with the announcement open on her phone. Nora reminded her that she had already read her own work aloud at the Winter Arts Evening and had managed it without fainting. Roxanne agreed that was true, but she explained why this felt different. Her earlier story had been hers alone, and she had only needed to care about it. This one belonged to three people, and she didn’t want to stand up and accidentally make it sound as though the photographs and illustrations had been decoration for her sentences.

"Then don’t present it as yours," Nora said. "Present it as theirs too. All of you can talk about your own parts." Roxanne liked that more than she expected, though a stubborn knot remained in her stomach whenever she pictured herself holding the pages and reading the excerpt in front of strangers.

She spent the walk back to her dorm turning the idea over. At the Winter Arts Evening she had stood behind a lectern with a story that felt like a private room she had agreed to open for an hour, and the applause had been a relief more than a pleasure. This time the story wasn’t a room at all. It was a table the three of them had built together, and she couldn’t tell whether that made standing behind it easier or harder. By the time she reached her door she had decided only that she wouldn’t answer until she had seen the pages laid out as a presentation.

That evening she went to the arts room, where Adrian had spread three printed photographs across the table: the archway, the empty chair by the window, and the sunset at the gates. Maya had finished two illustrations and was still shading the third, her tongue pressed between her teeth in concentration. They talked through how to present the work as a sequence instead of a single long reading. Adrian would explain the photographs, Maya would speak about the illustrations, and Roxanne would read the opening and the final paragraphs. She agreed to try it once at rehearsal and decide afterward. Before they finished, Maya suggested a rule that none of them would change anything in another person’s section without talking about it first, and all three shook on it with exaggerated seriousness.

They rehearsed two days later in an empty classroom, with the desks pushed against the walls and a row of chairs standing in for an audience. Adrian went first and spoke about the archway with an ease that annoyed Roxanne a little, since he sounded as though he had been doing it for years. Maya followed, losing her place twice while describing her color choices and recovering both times with a laugh. Then it was Roxanne’s turn. She began the opening paragraph and heard her own voice speeding up, each sentence tumbling into the next, until she stopped halfway through and lowered the pages. "I sound like I’m trying to finish before anyone can listen," she said.

"You sound nervous," Maya said gently. "That’s different from bad." Adrian leaned forward on his chair and suggested she pause after the opening and let the audience look at the first photograph before she went on. "The picture does some of the work," he said. "You don’t have to rush to fill the silence." Roxanne took a breath and began again, and this time she let each sentence finish before starting the next, and the quiet after the final line felt less like a gap and more like a place for the story to land. Adrian gave a small nod, and Maya mouthed a silent cheer from the front row.

Nora slipped into the classroom with a folder of workshop handouts just as they began the last run-through, and she stayed by the door until it was over. "The second reading was much better," she told Roxanne afterward. "You stopped apologizing for it." Roxanne asked whether the story sounded believable, and Nora thought for a moment before answering. The protagonist felt like someone who had really lived at the academy, she said, and her favorite part was the moment when the girl drops her bag on a chair to save a seat for her friend. Roxanne realized the small habits and the quarrel over borrowed notes had done more for the story than any grand farewell could have. The thought steadied her, and for the first time that week she pictured the reading and didn’t flinch.

When the others began gathering their things, Roxanne stayed behind to collect the pages from the desks and square their edges. Adrian lingered by the door with his camera bag over one shoulder and asked whether she was still comfortable reading at the session. She noticed that she didn’t reach for a hedge or a maybe. "I am," she said. "But I want it to stay a group effort, with all of us up there." Adrian agreed at once, and a moment later Maya’s message appeared in the group chat confirming the rehearsal schedule for the rest of the week. Roxanne saved the final draft to her laptop and backed it up twice, out of habit.

That evening a new announcement went up on the academy noticeboard, and she stopped to read it on her way back from dinner. The reading session would include students from both academies, faculty members, and representatives from the student literary magazine. She read the last line twice before the final detail registered, which was that the audience would be allowed to ask the writers questions after each presentation. Roxanne turned away from the board and stood in the corridor for a moment. Somewhere behind her a group of students laughed about something unrelated, and the sound made her own worry seem very private. Reading the story, it seemed, had only been half the challenge.