Chapter 165: first on the list

Chapter 165 — First on the List

The arts hall was almost empty when Roxanne walked in with Adrian and Maya, and their display already stood along one side of the stage. Photographs hung in a neat row on the stand, Maya’s illustrations were propped between them on small easels, and printed excerpts from Between Two Worlds lay in a fan on the table below. Maya went straight to the easels and began nudging each one a few millimeters to the left. Roxanne found a chair at the edge of the stage and went through her printed pages, underlining the places where she planned to pause.

When she looked up, Adrian was bending over the photographs again, straightening a frame that had looked straight a minute earlier. He hadn’t said much since they arrived, which was unusual for someone who had an opinion about everything. "Are you nervous?" Roxanne asked. He told her he wasn’t, and that he was only making sure nobody had arranged his photographs incorrectly. Maya, passing behind him with a roll of tape, said he had been checking the same display for ten minutes. Adrian opened his mouth to defend himself, then went back to the frame without a word.

Fifteen minutes before the session began, the screen above the stage flickered and went gray. Adrian crouched beside it with his laptop and tried reconnecting the cable, then restarting the file, then reconnecting the cable again. The presentation refused to load. Maya whispered that they might have to speak without any images at all, and her voice cracked slightly on the last word.

Roxanne looked at the display beside them and felt an idea settle. "We already have the prints," she said. "They’re hanging right there." Adrian hesitated, because the photographs weren’t arranged in the sequence they had rehearsed, and the story depended on a particular order. Roxanne reminded him that the story didn’t depend on a screen, only on people being able to follow it. He rubbed the back of his neck, then nodded. The three of them rearranged the prints in a few quick minutes, with Adrian unhooking frames and Maya re-pinning the illustrations between them, until the archway stood first and the empty chairs last, with the sunset at the gates waiting beyond them.

The moderator announced their names while Adrian was still smoothing the corner of the last print. Roxanne walked onto the stage between the other two with her pages held against her chest, and the hall seemed larger than it had during rehearsal, its rows of faces blurring together in the stage lights. Adrian stepped forward first and spoke about the photographs, explaining how ordinary corners of the academy had become the backbone of their story. His voice was steadier than she expected, and by the second sentence he sounded like himself again. Maya followed and described how her illustrations moved between the photographs and held them together, gesturing at the easels as she spoke.

Then it was Roxanne’s turn. She cleared her throat and began the opening passage, and the first line came out a little faster than she wanted. She slowed down on the second. When she reached the end of the paragraph she stopped and let the quiet fill the hall, and she saw several people turn toward the archway print, leaning forward to look at the moss on the stones. The display worked better than the screen would have. People could see the grain of the light and the cracks in the bench up close, and some of them lingered over the framed prints even as she read. By the time she reached the final passage she was reading to the room instead of at it.

The applause was warm without being overwhelming, and the moderator invited questions once it faded. A first-year student near the front asked why the protagonist leaves a place where she finally feels at home. Roxanne took a breath and said that belonging somewhere didn’t mean a person had to stay there forever, and that a place could matter deeply even if it wasn’t the place where someone ended up. A second student asked whether the ending was sad. "I don’t think it is," Maya said, and Adrian added that the last photograph was meant to feel like a beginning more than a goodbye. Their answers overlapped without clashing, and Roxanne realized they had been telling the same story from three directions all along.

They returned to their seats while the next group took the stage, and Roxanne let out a breath she felt she had been holding since breakfast. She was relieved, but the feeling beneath the relief was stronger and warmer, and it took her a moment to recognize it as pride. Nora leaned across from the row behind and congratulated them in a whisper. She said the story felt more complete with the photographs and illustrations right beside it, as though the whole thing had been built that way from the start. Adrian admitted in a low voice that the broken screen had rattled him far more than he had let on. Roxanne said she had noticed, since he had checked the display ten times before the session. "Eleven," Adrian whispered. Maya suggested they celebrate surviving the disaster of the opening slot, and the three of them tried to keep from laughing while the next presenter began.

After the session ended, the coordinator found them near the stage and said the presentation had been received positively. The publication team would review all the projects before deciding which pieces would appear in the final collection, she explained, and nothing was guaranteed yet. Roxanne found she didn’t mind. She had enjoyed building the story with these two, and the work felt worth having made whatever the committee chose. Adrian suggested taking a photograph together before the visiting students left, and Maya insisted they hold the printed story in the picture. Adrian set the camera on a stack of chairs and pressed the timer. Roxanne stood between the other two and found herself smiling before the shutter clicked.

That evening her phone buzzed in the dorm, and she opened the group chat to find the photograph Adrian had uploaded. The three of them stood in front of the display, Maya holding the printed pages up like a trophy, Adrian caught halfway through a blink, Roxanne grinning at something just outside the frame. Maya had already commented underneath, "Proof that we survived working together." Roxanne typed, "Barely," and sent it.

A moment later Adrian wrote again. "We should do another project sometime." Roxanne looked at the message for a while, then smiled. The thought of starting something new didn’t feel like another responsibility this time. It felt like something she might actually want.