Chapter 164: questions we didn’t prepare for

Chapter 164 — Questions We Didn’t Prepare For

Maya had written her list of possible audience questions on a sheet of lined paper and taped it to the edge of the arts room table, where it curled slightly in the draft from the window. Some of the entries were easy enough: what inspired the story, how they had chosen the photographs, and why they had used illustrations instead of more photographs. Adrian read down the page with his chin propped on his fist and said they were overpreparing. Roxanne disagreed, because she had no intention of standing in front of a hall full of people and being caught completely off guard.

"We should at least know what we’re going to say," Roxanne said. Adrian leaned back until his chair creaked. "And what if someone asks why the sky is blue?"

"Then I’ll let you answer."

"Wonderful. I’ve always wanted to represent science." Maya pointed out that they couldn’t prepare for every possible question, and that the list was only meant to keep them from freezing. Roxanne conceded the point, though she copied three of the questions into her notebook anyway, just in case.

They ran through the answers aloud, and halfway through the second pass Maya put down her pencil and asked something that wasn’t on the paper. "Why does she leave? She finally found a place where she belongs, so why would she go?" Roxanne took a moment before answering. She said that finding somewhere you belong didn’t mean you had to stay there forever, and that a place could shape you without being the place you ended up. Adrian liked the answer but thought the story hadn’t earned it yet. The protagonist seemed to accept the opportunity instead of choosing it, he said, and the reader ought to see her make up her own mind. Roxanne reread the paragraph where the girl received the news and rewrote it so that she hesitated, argued with herself, and then wrote her reply to the offer before she could talk herself out of it. It was a small change, but the whole scene felt sturdier afterward.

The next afternoon they showed a few pages to Nora in the corner of the library, and she read the ending twice with her lips pressed together. When she looked up, she said she thought the protagonist wasn’t leaving because she was finally ready. She was leaving because she had finally stopped waiting for someone to give her permission. Roxanne felt her first instinct rise to correct her, since that wasn’t what she had meant at all. She took the pages back and read the final paragraph again, slowly this time, and found the evidence sitting right there in the girl’s hands closing around the suitcase handle before anyone had told her she could go.

"What made you see it that way?" Roxanne asked, and Nora pointed to the line where the girl walks through the archway without looking back to check whether anyone is watching. They talked for a while about how a story could belong to the person who wrote it and still mean something different to the person who read it. Roxanne found she wasn’t bothered. If anything, she was a little pleased that the ending had more in it than she had put there on purpose.

Back in the arts room, Adrian raised another question he thought someone might ask, which was whether the story was based on their own experiences. Maya said someone almost certainly would. Roxanne looked at the table for a moment and said she didn’t want the presentation to turn into a discussion about her personal life. Adrian nodded before she had finished. They agreed to answer honestly and briefly, that the story was fiction but drew on feelings many people recognized, and to steer the conversation back to the creative process if anyone pressed. Roxanne appreciated that he hadn’t tried to coax anything more out of her, and she told him so in the offhand way she told him most things.

On the last evening they stood in the middle of the empty classroom and ran the whole presentation from start to finish. Adrian explained how the photographs found something different in ordinary places, and Maya described how her illustrations linked the images into one continuous story. When it was her turn, Roxanne read the opening passage and tripped over a sentence in the middle of the third paragraph. She laughed and started the sentence again, and this time she let each line settle before beginning the next. The closing passage went smoothly. Maya applauded loudly from the front row, and Adrian said they might actually survive the presentation. "Your confidence is deeply inspiring," Roxanne told him, and he bowed.

Isla was in her pajamas brushing her hair when Roxanne got back to the dorm, and she asked whether the presentation was making her nervous. "I’m more excited than I expected," Roxanne admitted, dropping onto her bed. "It’s strange working with people whose instincts are so different from mine. We argue about everything, and the story keeps getting better anyway." Isla said that was probably exactly why it was interesting. Roxanne set her printed pages beside her bag, adjusted her alarm, and lay back for a moment before picking up the final page. She read the last paragraph one more time and turned off the lamp.

She reached the arts hall earlier than she had planned the next morning, with the corridors still quiet and the light pale through the tall windows. Adrian was already there, adjusting the corner of a framed photograph on the display stand, and Maya stood beside him with her arms crossed, frowning at the presentation schedule pinned to the board. "What’s wrong?" Roxanne asked. Maya pointed to the list without saying anything. Their group was no longer in the middle of the session. They had been moved to the opening slot. Adrian glanced at Roxanne and gave a small, resigned shrug. "Looks like we’re going first."