Kincaid smiled, Liv and Rebecca standing there with her. “Someone call the doctor. The professor is talking to herself.”
Taryn put her hand over her beating heart, then she grinned. “What are y’all doing here?”
Liv tilted her head, her dark ponytail swishing behind her. “As if we’d miss this.” She stepped forward and gave Taryn a tight hug. “This is your big moment, chica!”
Taryn hugged her friend back, and then Rebecca and Kincaid came in for their own quick embraces. Taryn laughed. “I can’t believe y’all are going to subject yourselves to a school-board meeting. I have to warn you. They’re about as exciting as watching C-SPAN.”
Kincaid nodded, expression solemn. “This should prove how much we love you because I’m missing The Real Housewives for this.”
Taryn laughed. “I’m truly honored.”
“Are you ready?” Rebecca asked. She was still in her lawyer gear, a tailored gray suit and a crisp black blouse, but she’d pulled her red hair down from the twist or bun it’d been in, and it was curling around her shoulders. “Do you need us to be a practice audience?”
“Thanks, I think I’m good.” Taryn patted the bag looped over her shoulder. “And if I get lost, I have all my notes in here. Most of this stuff is burned into my brain at this point.”
Rebecca reached out and squeezed Taryn’s hand. “You’re going to rock this. I read through your program last week, and it’s amazing, Taryn. Really. This will save lives.”
Taryn took a deep breath, the words sinking into her. “God, I hope so.” Her phone buzzed, the reminder alarm warning her it was time to go inside. “That’s my cue.”
Her friends all gave her one last quick hug and then let her go ahead so she could get set up inside. She hadn’t asked or expected them to come, but knowing they were going to be sitting behind her in that room, supporting her, believing in her… Well, it meant a lot. She took one more steadying breath as she made her way through the entry hall, then pulled her shoulders back and strolled into the large room with confidence.
The members of the school board were on a raised stage at a curved table. This was the building usually used for school theater productions so the acoustics provided a steady murmur from the voices of the people in the room. The board members were talking among themselves, the microphones turned off, and a thin guy with glasses was hooking up Taryn’s laptop, which she’d dropped off earlier, to a podium at the front of the center aisle so her presentation would project onto the screen. There were some people in the audience but not many. These meetings didn’t attract a lot of attention unless something newsworthy had happened.
Taryn wasn’t newsworthy at this point. For that, she was actually thankful.
She made her way down the main aisle to the podium, facing the board members as if she were presenting to a court, and pulled her notes out. She set everyth
ing up the way she wanted it and then took a seat in the first row to wait for her name to be called. She tried to make eye contact with the vice president, Regina, a petite Hispanic woman with shoulder-length hair and a bright-purple blouse, but no one was looking her way. They were all too busy whispering.
Once the meeting was called into session, the group got through the formalities quickly and then introduced Taryn. There were a few light claps from the audience, and Taryn didn’t have to look back to know they were courtesy of her friends. She stood, pasted on a confident smile, and made her way to the podium.
A shiver of nerves went through her as all the board members’ eyes turned toward her, but she rolled her shoulders back and pushed her nerves away. This was it. This was what she’d been waiting for.
All right, Nia, here we go. This one’s for you, baby girl.
Taryn started off strong, citing her memorized statistics and the findings of her research. Her passion for the topic was making her heart pound and her words come out with an urgency she hadn’t planned. Emotion was beating beneath each word, but she kept it on a leash. This was about facts. Research. Proof. If she cried, they might dismiss her, discount her. She needed to be the professor today, not the victim.
She got to her last slide, which was a beautiful chart she’d put together with all the risk factors and how they connected to each other. Damn, she loved a chart. She used a laser pointer to walk them through it, proud of how ironclad her numbers were. When she was done, she smiled, pleased with the fact that she hadn’t teared up, her voice hadn’t cracked, and she’d gotten all the vital points across.
I did it.
But when Taryn turned from the screen to look at the board members and no one said anything, that burst of confidence faltered, a runner stumbling along the path. She took a sip from the water bottle someone had put on the podium for her and cleared her throat. “I can take questions now if any of you have them. I also have plans for how to best do the rollout and the breakdown of costs if you’d like to see those.”
“That’s not necessary. We saw those in the document you submitted, Dr. Landry,” the president said, his voice loud and hollow in the microphone. He gave her a tight, brief, pat-her-on-the-head smile.
Taryn forced her own smile to stay in place even though she felt dismissed. “Right. Well, are there any questions? I’m prepared to have this roll out quickly, so as soon as I get the go-ahead, I could have this in a few area schools by the fall, and then bring more on by next spring. Or we could—”
“Dr. Landry,” the president said, slipping into what she thought of as his politician voice—a slick tone that matched all the gel in his salt-and-pepper hair, “we really appreciate you presenting all of this information to us. You’ve obviously worked very hard and have done thorough research. The issue of school violence is a top priority for us, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, some of the restriction in her chest easing. It was okay. This was important to them. She was freaking out over nothing.
“But—” he continued.
Her world came to a halt at the one word.
“We’ve evaluated the cost of your program, and with our budgetary restrictions, this is just not going to be feasible,” he finished.
Taryn’s hands gripped the sides of the podium, her fingers going bloodless, but she forced herself to keep her voice steady. “Sir, I understand where you’re coming from, but I was very aware of the funds allocated for this type of program, and I made sure to work it so it would fit within those parameters.”