They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Open Mic

By Wednesday evening my phone had sixty-one voicemails.

I let every one of them ring out.

Rhett woke me with coffee and a plate of eggs I didn't deserve, and we ate on the floor by the window.

"The debate's at six," he said. "Student government, the whole atrium. Lance gets a podium and a microphone and ten minutes."

"I know."

"I run the sound for it."

"I know that too."

He grinned. "Just checking you've thought this through."

I had.

At six o'clock the Union atrium was packed to the balconies.

Banners hung from the rails. Lance's said ACCESSIBLE LAKESHORE in huge block letters, with a photo of himself on one side and a photo of me on the other.

My own face stared down from the ceiling, smiling in a way I didn't remember.

I stood at the back with my hood up.

Lance walked out under the lights in a navy suit.

He took the podium.

"I want to talk tonight about what accessibility really means," he said. "It means listening. It means showing up. It means standing beside the people you love when the world is hard."

He paused and put a hand over his heart.

"This week has been a painful one for my family. I won't say more. I'll just ask that you keep Quinn in your thoughts."

There was soft applause.

A girl near me whispered, "He's so good."

I put my hands in my pockets and walked down the center aisle.

The moderator, a professor in a gray cardigan, finally got to open mic questions.

A line had formed at the microphone stand.

I stepped to the end of it.

When it was my turn, I took the mic and lowered my hood.

The atrium went very quiet.

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