“No need, Sharon, thanks.”
“My offer stands.”
“Bye.” He hung up.
Seconds later, the email arrived.
This was exactly the news he had been waiting for, the one phone call and confirmation that had been gnawing at him for months until a confidential DNA test could be run on the amniotic fluid at a certain week of gestation. But now he had to admit that, while relieved, he also felt a strange void permeating his body, crawling and settling in his insides, his heart, his throat.
A rhythmic sound of metal being rapped repeatedly called his attention. Jordan turned around but didn’t see anything. He veered his head to peer further into the corridor. From behind a locker, a flame of curly, reddish-blonde hair caught his eye. The girl who had rushed out of the hall was kicking a metal locker. Her kicks weren’t forceful; they were rhythmic and served as an accompanying metronome to her mumbling the same sentence to herself over and over. “We can benefit. Every life. On this earth. If we join forces.”
Jordan tore himself from the window, shoving the phone back into the back pocket of his chinos. Stopping next to her, he reached out his hand. “Jordan Delaney, UN Model judge and former student in this school.”
The girl stopped her kicking and chanting and, looking into his face, hesitantly reached out, took his large palm, and shook it with her much smaller one without a word.
“Hannah, right? Listen, don’t tell anyone I said this, but you’re the best one in there. That’s why they don’t clap for you, okay? Because you’re killing it in there.” He paused. “But—there’s a but here—you need to tell a story and not just lecture them. Make them visualize what your suggestions mean by painting them an image of what could happen if your policy isn’t implemented. If you do, they’ll be too busy listening to you to call out things from the sidelines like cowards.”
The girl narrowed her green eyes as she took his words in. “So, like, tell them that, if other countries don’t help out with disposal of plastic waste in smaller island countries that don’t have the budget to do it themselves, then baby dolphins could choke and die?”
“Exactly.”
“Will they clap?”
Her question squeezed his heart. “I don’t know. All you need for this competition is to convince the judges. And all you need for yourself is to trust yourself and keep going, even if they don’t clap.” He paused, and she slowly nodded. “But I understand why you want them to. I know it’s hard. But being applauded doesn’t always mean you’re winning. It doesn’t mean they’re friends with those they’re applauding, either.”
She bunched her lips and drew her mouth to the side, as if she were pondering his words.
“Remember, tell a story. And don’t let them see you’re upset. Trust me; someone like you will get enough applause when you’re older.”
The girl bit her upper lip, then slowly nodded again.
“Hannah!” Avery peered from the hall’s door. “Oh, there you are. Jordan, hey. Come in; we’re reassembling.”
He winked and smiled at the girl, then they entered the noisy hall.
When it was her turn to represent her stance, Jordan was proud of his youngest advisee. More kids applauded her than before. He sent her a small smile, unable to openly support her over the other contestants.
But he did when the moment came for him to announce his verdict.
“Not everyone can do what these guys did,” he said, waving an arm toward all eight participants. “It takes guts and hard work. It requires nothing, especially no guts, to hide behind someone’s back and discredit that. Don’t be the ones hiding behind others.” He then looked at Hannah. “You should all be proud of yourselves. All teams were good, but Team Three did the best.”
The two other judges voted with him, and he watched Hannah and the boy who was her teammate receive the congratulations of their classmates. She beamed when hers and the boy’s names were cheered in a chorus.
“Like mother, like son, JD,” Avery said from behind him, her hand loitering on his shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
“You both have an eye for the underdogs.”
He stood up so her hand fell to her side. “I don’t know about that, but that girl, that team, was the best one here. It was unanimous.” He looked around. The two teachers who had judged with him had left.
Avery ignored the annoyance in his tone. “Well, I’m done for today, no meetings or classes to substitute in. I’ll go get my things and meet you in the parking lot?”
They never made such an arrangement, and he wasn’t sure where this was coming from. Perhaps she read the old him right. If he was the man he had been a decade ago, she probably would have had him in her bed by now … though out of her door soon after.
“I can’t. Sorry. I have a meeting,” he lied.
It was too noisy for her to reply, so she just followed him outside, where they were surrounded by a flock of kids that flowed into the hallway.