Dramatically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  “And, what, earned a hundred dollars towards new pom-poms for the cheerleaders? If you want to make a big impact, you need to think big. And to think big, you need to go bigger than grassroots.” Kris looked like he was about to put his hand on my shoulder, but it instead landed flat on the wall right above it. I was blocked in between his arm and the curio cabinet.

  “And come in with imperialistic ideas that don’t let the people decide how they want to handle things? Right. Besides, plenty of small efforts grow to make big impacts.” I crossed my arms to keep from gesturing or accidentally touching him again. This wasn’t the time for plan ‘Flirt Kris Into the Losers Circle.’ “Mother Teresa based her entire life work off of small actions.”

  “You’re not Mother Teresa.”

  No, I’m not. The evil little part of me that was dying to turn the flirt on wanted me to say, but I choked it back. I wasn’t attracted to him, I reminded myself, even though the tightness in my throat was trying to tell me otherwise. I just wanted to get on with my plan of messing with him as much as he was messing with me. The electricity between us was so strong, though, I was surprised a lightning bolt hadn’t formed in those millimeters between our lips.

  And I was not thinking about his lips. Damn, this whole getting into character thing was messing with me.

  “To start, you’re agnostic.” He cracked a smile.

  That broke the tension. A laugh bubbled up my throat and I gave in, doubling over until my sides hurt. I almost didn’t notice that he stepped back slightly to give me room. “True.” Two of the maids passed us and gave us weird looks. I straightened up and caught my breath.

  He pulled away from the wall and started walking. “At least your name would sound official enough. Mother Ephemie.”

  I cringed. It was an automatic, natural reaction. “Stop calling me that. I hate my name.”

  Kris winked at me over his shoulder. “You could have been named after an actor in a movie about immortals who kill each other with swords.”

  “Seriously?” Now I knew why Alec kept making sci-fi jokes about Kris’ name.

  “Seriously. My dad loved Highlander. He was dying for a son so he could use the name Kristopher.” A little bit of red came into his cheeks and he shrugged. “`There can be only one,’” he said weakly, making a slashing gesture as if he was holding a sword.

  I choked back another laugh. “That should be the motto for this competition.”

  “Does it make me the default winner?”

  “Doubtful.” I gave him a playful shove. “C’mon. We’re going to miss the best food. I hear there’s chow-dah.”

  “You might be a good actress, but never, ever try to do a Boston accent again, okay?”

  “So long as you stop doing those bad imitations of the North Jersey accent to impress the Southern girls. Deal?”

  “You’re taking away my best material, Katsaros.”

  “Tough, Lambert.” But I smiled, and, with my eyelashes lowered just enough to give him the flirtiest look in my repertoire, reached out and squeezed his arm before jogging ahead towards the dining room. I could feel his eyes on my back and was glad I wore those butt-hugging designer jeans.

  I knocked on the conference room door and crossed my fingers before walking in. The bio said my mentor was some political speechwriter, but hopefully there was a change. Maybe they mixed things up and I was really supposed to be with one of the two directors that were supposed to be mentoring.

  The second I saw the wavy black ponytail and teal blouse, my hopes sunk into my stomach and melted through my feet into the patterned rug.

  “Hi,” I said tentatively. Yay to feeling disappointed and, at the same time, idiotic for hoping there’d be a special change just for me.

  My mentor stood and held out her hand to shake mine. “Ephemie, hi. I’m Lauren Shepard. Feel free to call me Lauren.” She wore one of those really expensive silk scarves Grace’s mom wore all the time, except on her it looked trendy and not stuffy.

  Calling an adult by her first name felt weird, ditto shaking her hand, but I shrugged it off and tried to look like I did this every day. “And you can call me Em.”

  “Nice to meet you, Em.” Lauren sat down and shuffled through her folders. When she looked up again with her dark-rimmed light-blue eyes and smiled, it hit me how much she looked like a young Lynda Carter, back in her Wonder Woman days. The thought “I am being mentored by Diana Prince” ran through my head and I had to stifle a laugh. “Let me start by telling you my qualifications. I was actually a Change Council student ages ago and after I graduated from BU with a double major in journalism and political science, I worked with a few political campaigns here in the city. I’ve written speeches for mayoral and gubernatorial candidates. Currently, I write for Governor Bennett.” She flipped the top folder open and laid her hands flat on the pages, which were full of red marks and comment boxes. “I had such a wonderful experience as a student that I volunteer every year as a mentor. This year, I’ve been assigned to ten of the students in this competition, including you. Do you have any questions for me?”

  “No,” I said slowly. My eyes were still on the pages under her hands, dread bubbling up in my stomach. This was supposed to be the easy part. The speech was done and I could say it in my sleep. Having someone take control and tear things up only days before the competition terrified me.

  “Great. Then, let’s get started. I read through and listened to your speech and we have a lot of work to get this up to podium quality.” Lauren tapped her fingers on the paper, her perfect, shiny manicure reflecting the markups.

  I blinked at her, nausea taking over, every insecurity I’d ever had about my speech threatening to pop up and make an appearance. “I’m sorry, but are you sure it’s a good idea to change it now?” My voice started getting smaller but, hard as I tried to up the volume, I couldn’t control it. “I won state with the speech the way it is.”

  Lauren’s expression remained patient and almost annoyingly tolerant. “And so did everyone else here. You need to be spectacular to stand out in this group. Your opening and closing are great, but the middle loses focus. You have a great hook, but it doesn’t quite play out as well as it promises”

  “Hook?” The first thing that came to mind was the pirate. Then guyliner, which the incredibly hot actor in the fairytale TV show wore to make him look even more hot and evil. Neither of which had anything to do with my speech. “What’s a hook?”

  “It’s that part in the beginning of a speech that captures the audience’s attention, like a fishing hook. But a good hook is like a promise to your listeners. Right now you catch my interest with your opening, I hear in your speech that you have a role model and you want to create change in the world, but it doesn’t carry through the entire piece in a recognizable fashion. We’re going to fix that.” I couldn’t help the frown tugging at my lips and she must have noticed it because she added, “You don’t have to change anything you don’t want to—”

  “Okay.” It took both Phoebe and Grace to help wrangle my words into something good last time. I couldn’t do it alone.

  Her red lipsticked lips twisted up in a wry smile. “—but you don’t have to win, either.”

  “You’re harsh,” I said, and didn’t even bother to say it under my breath.

  “Well, you might not believe it,” her eyes met mine, like she could pierce past them and into my brain, “but you’re good. Better than some adult speechwriters I’ve met. So I’m not going to baby you. I’m treating your speech like I’d treat one of my own. It has a lot of weaknesses, but I also heard your tape and, because you have such a brilliant delivery, you managed to hide a lot of the weak spots from the judges. Let me guess—you act?”

  Dismay turned my insides into a bundle of knots. Of course. Even my mentor thought my speech was nothing more than “weak” fluff without a hook. I didn’t trust myself to say anything, so I just nodded.

  “I thought so. You have a way of putting emotions into your
words that people would kill for. It makes you very powerful speaker, but imagine if those words were stronger and had real depth to them. It’ll take a lot of work, but I think you can do it.” She pulled out a pair of reading glasses and handed me one of the marked-up copies, challenge in her eyes as she looked over the top of the glasses. “The entire competition and organization revolves around change. Are you ready to change?”

  The red marks were terrifying, but I sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Anything for the win. “Yes.”

  Lia waved her fork around in the air as she spoke. “I felt like he was tearing my entire speech apart. I get that he does this for a living, but I’m not one of his corporate clients. It was insane.” The dining room was packed for dinner, but her voice carried clearly over the din. Our table wasn’t made up of quiet people. “I mean, I read the speeches and I get that some people really need help because theirs are just weak, but most of ours are great.”

  I noticed everyone at the table nodding and nodded along with them, shoving a forkful of lettuce into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to speak, though Lia’s words suddenly crashed my appetite. Lia’s glance my way when she mentioned “some people” was unmistakable, and I didn’t blame her. My mentoring session had been a disaster. Lauren had been so critical of every single word and phase and even the way I said words that, by the time I left the session, my speech was in shambles and I was about ready to strangle her with her perfect silk scarf.

  The guy from Louisiana dropped his elbows on the table and our salad plates all rattled. “These speeches got us here. Why should I mess with something that was good enough to beat the hundreds of other speeches in my state? And, honestly, if someone’s speech isn’t good enough at this point, they really shouldn’t be here, anyway. It’s not our fault some states dialed it in.”

  “Exactly. I feel like it’s a waste of time that we can spend in the summit or seeing the city. Right?” Lia looked around our table and most of us were definitely in agreement.

  Ann didn’t nod, instead quietly picking at her salad. “Actually, I had a really good critique. She had a lot of advice about how to change my volume and emphasis to make more of an impact. It’s really not too different from a music teacher making corrections.” She spoke in a low voice, and like the perfect saint of a roommate she was, turned a soft, comforting smile my way. “Plus, they know more than we do about this stuff. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t push us to be our best.”

  That smile made a lump rise up in my throat, and pressure formed behind my eyes. I stuck my fork into my lettuce, skillfully spearing some feta and a crouton at the same time, keeping my attention on my salad so I wouldn’t have to say anything. I couldn’t help the part of me that wondered if Kris also had a decent critique session and how my gaze went straight to his table across the room. His eyes met mine and, after a moment where time stopped and I realized I was caught looking, I forced my attention to Ann, who was still talking. The sawdust in my throat had been replaced with another kind of feeling, an impatient buzz that made me want to get up and do something, anything.

  “…let everything they said to you soak in. I bet after actually listening, it might spark some ideas on how you can make your speech better.”

  Louisiana shook his head at Ann. “I bet you’re in the honor society.”

  “How did you know?” But Ann’s lips were curling up, too.

  “Because you’re too serious for your own good. You never seem to take a break from anything.”

  I looked from Ann to Louisiana and a gleeful little shiver ran up my spine. My bat senses were never wrong about potential matches and it was the major distraction I needed, both from my mess of a speech and from my urge to look at Kris. “Could be worse. Nevada brought her homework. Ann’s a little less nerdy than that.”

  Ann’s brows drew together. “But I—”

  She was so clueless about the potential awesomeness I was about to bring into her life, I couldn’t help but smile. I kicked her under the table. “I know, you brought your flute, but that’s okay. When you’re as talented a musician as you are, you can’t slack when it comes to practicing like the rest of us.” I wracked my brain to try to remember Louisiana’s name, managing to pull it triumphantly out of the millions of layers of fluff and memorized lines from musicals that normally filled it. “Geoff, did you know Ann is in her state orchestra? She’s first chair. You said you’re in a band, too, right?” I was like Sailor Venus, swooping in with my love-chain attack. Subtly, of course.

  Geoff looked as confused as Ann at the change in subject, but still answered. “Folk rock. I play guitar.”

  “Good. Talk about music instead of arguing over speech stuff we can’t control,” I said in my most commanding tone. Ann kicked me back, but she turned a polite smile on Geoff. Those two would be together by the end of the week if I had anything to say about it. Good deed done for the day.

  I could sense Kris’ gaze on me like a magnetic pulse that ran along my skin and my eyes flickered up, catching his again. This time, he looked away, turning to say something to New York girl. It was the weirdest feeling in the world, like there was this rope that kept trying to draw us together even though we were on opposite sides of the dining room. I was definitely getting to him, but it didn’t explain the flush that ran through my own body.

  Natural reaction to attention that wasn’t creepy? Because creepy stares gave me a crawly feeling, which this totally wasn’t.

  Lia’s snort brought my attention back to our table. “Speaking of stuff we can’t control, what was up with that talk from the one guy who kept bringing up latrines? I thought he was supposed to inspire us to volunteer for charities like his.”

  “‘Sanitized poo is the future!’” I quoted, dropping my voice and upping my energy to imitate the speaker. It was almost like I was playing a part at this table, too, while my brain waded through the white noise that seemed to have set in. Thankfully, years of acting made improvisation automatic.

  “Don’t sound too excited about it,” the girl from Oregon chimed in, trying to keep a straight face. “Next thing you know, you’ll be elbow deep in poo bacteria testing.”

  Geoff tried to make his brows draw together in a serious look and failed. “Let’s make a rule. Engineers should be banned from making presentations. They get way too detailed when they describe stuff like ‘fecal containment units.’”

  “Oh, guys, I’m trying to eat,” Ann said between giggles. She waved her napkin like a little flag.

  I looked up mid-laugh and there was Kris watching me again. This time, we locked gazes, and then both looked away at the same time. I didn’t know why, but those few seconds left me breathless.

  The one constant in Boston I could take comfort in was the seemingly bottomless platter of cookies they kept at the front desk in the inn lobby. The cookie of the day was chocolate chunk and exactly what I needed after that morning. Everyone else was still pouring through the lobby and towards their rooms or the meeting room, so I leaned against the wall to keep out of the way.

  Arkansas and Hawaii were headed my way—I flashed them a smile as they passed, but they didn’t seem to notice. “…maybe their states didn’t have a lot of competition. You would think they’d set minimum standards instead of letting just anything in,” the guy from Arkansas said. Suddenly, his accent and longish blonde hair didn’t sound or look as cute as they had a few minutes ago.

  The girl from Connecticut joined them, slipping between Arkansas and Hawaii. “You mean like the ones that are lists of what he or she wants to do someday?” she asked, poking him in the arm.

  “When I grow up, I want to make a difference in people’s lives,” one of them said in a falsetto voice. A cold lump formed in my chest and my legs turned to lead. They had to be talking about my speech—compared to their serious speech themes, mine had to be as weak as glittery tissue paper.

  Connecticut snorted. “All I want is world peace, and we’ll skip through the garden of
life together as one big, happy family.”

  “Right.” I could hear Arkansas’ eye-roll from where I was standing.

  “Whatever. At least it’s less competition for us, right?” Their voices faded as they left the lobby and I slumped against the wall. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d become.

  I was an idiot to think I could compete in something like this. Part of me wanted to turn around and confront them and another part of me just wanted to hide until the end of the competition.

  I couldn’t go up to our room because Ann was bound to start prying and I wasn’t in the mood to expose my insecurities to her Midwestern sympathies. Taking a deep breath, I pressed back the tears that threatened to choke and blind me. I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. I curled onto one of the overstuffed chairs in the inn lobby, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

  A very homesick part of me wished I was back in Lambertfield, with Phoebe comforting me with homemade cupcakes and Grace spouting off some sort of wisdom about people projecting their insecurities onto me. Instead, I was hundreds of miles away in a cold lobby, surrounded by strangers.

  “Hey, Em, are you okay?” A hand lightly touched my arm.

  Correction: almost all strangers.

  I tilted my head just enough to squint at him and give my best “I’m fine, leave me alone” vibe. “Just a headache,” I forced out through my tight throat.

  Kris’ brow furrowed and he pointed towards the front desk. “Do you want me to get you an aspirin or water or something?”

  “How about silence?”

  “Aspirin it is. I’ll be right back.”

  Just as he turned away, the part of me that needed someone to talk to blurted out in the tiniest voice ever, “Is my speech really empty fluff? Do you think I only got here because of my delivery?” My stomach turned at how raw and open I was being in front of my biggest competitor.