Make My Way

Chapter Forty-Seven

Aria's POV

The first couple of weeks back were pretty uneventful for me. Other than a Merrick's promposal to Vivian (a sign that read "On a scale of one to America, how free are you on April 15?"), nothing had happened. But since it was nearing spring, my busiest time of year, that meant speech was starting up. Our first meet was on the same day as the second performance of Into the Woods and, since it was in town, at least a few of us would go.

If you don't know what speech is, you're missing out. It's one of the best, most fun experiences I've ever had. There are a ton of different events, but I'll start with the Interps. There is Serious, Humorous, Dramatic, and Poetry. You find a pre-written price from a book or an online vault and you have eight minutes to perform, except Dramatic has to be an excerpt from a play. In all events, you are judged on a scale from one to five, one being the best, five being the worst. Only one person can get a one, one can get a two, one can get a three, and one can get a four, and everyone else gets fives.

After that, there are the events that you write your own speech for. That includes Persuade, Inform, and Entertain. You write your own speech about pretty much whatever you want, as long as it fits the category, and then perform it.

Then come the stressful ones, the prep events. For these you go into the prep room, which is usually a library, and have a certain amount of time to get your speech ready and perform it, the draw time. The prep events include EPR (Extemporaneous Program Reading), Storytelling, Extempt, Radio, and kind of Impromptu.

In impromptu, you go into a classroom and flip over two quotes and only have a few minutes to pick one, decide on three points to talk about that relate to the quote, and perform.

For EPR, you have an hour to prepare a price and perform it. Since there are two rounds of competition with everyone and then finals which is only the top eight, one round is humorous, one is serious, and one is poetry. You have to cut the piece and practice it so that it is less than seven minutes.

Storytelling is one of my favorite events. You are given a fairytale or folk tale or something like that  and have half an hour to read through it and practice it before going and performing it in your own words. I had a feeling Xavier and I would be competing neck in neck for this one this year.

Then comes radio broadcasting. You are given a bunch of news stories and you must include one international story, one national, one local, weather, and sports story. You could have more, but the time must fall between 2 minutes and 45 seconds and 3 minutes. Then, you also have to do an editorial on basically whatever you want but it also has to fall in the same time restrictions.

Finally, there's extempt. I don't actually know what what you do in that event, I just know it has something to do with current events and I never want to do it. So that's speech. We had practices for a while and then came the meet. Only Xavier, Laine, Everly, and I went. It was an extremely small meet at one of the other high schools in town, which meant it should be pretty easy to state qualify, but that also meant something else for me.

A few years ago, we had a co-op with that school because they didn't have a coach, but it had ended last year. When the co-op was still going, I had a thing with this guy named Benjamin. Ben was a very flirty, charismatic guy who seemed gay 90% of the time and also never denied that he was gay. He was my first boyfriend and my first kiss.

I had just finished one of my rounds of storytelling and was sitting in the cafeteria waiting around and talking to some people, when he walked in. I saw him turn the corner as Xavier sat down next to me. "Quick, don't ask questions, just flirt with me," I told Xavier urgently. All I wanted was to avoid a conversation with Ben, but Xavier didn't hesitate before grabbing my face in his hands and kissing me hard and long. I pulled away, needing to breathe and muttered under my breath so that only he could hear, "I guess that works too."

Ben came over and sat across from us. "Hey guys, how's it going?"

I shrugged, "Not bad, I think my first rounds went well," I told him.

"Same here," Xavier said.

"Well that's good, but I just have to ask, are you two together now?" Ben questioned. Both of us shook our heads and denied it. "Oh, well I think it'd be cute. Well I need to get to my next round, see you guys later!" He left us sitting alone together on the cafeteria table.

"Great, now everyone at speech thinks we're dating," I said and he shook his head.

"I've got to go, good luck," he said and left. I figured I should probably go to my Serious and Entertain rounds. My entertain was on commas and proper grammar usage and, personally, I thought it was funny. I finished all of my rounds and saw that I broke for finals in all of them. I performed entertain first, drew and performed storytelling, and then went to serious.

In the room, I met Ben's humorous duo partner. She was a junior with wavy, shoulder length, dark brown hair and glasses. By the way she talked about him, I could tell she liked him. Since I had dated him before, I knew what was coming. He would flirt with her, ask her out, date her for a while, and then she'd find him flirting with a bunch of other girls at the same time. Not only had I broken up with Ben, within the next few months, he had broken Laine's heart. I remember it had been right before last year's state speech. But now, I was less worried about that happening to her and more worried about him officially coming out as gay and her not knowing what to do.

When I had finished all of my finals, I went back to the cafeteria and my coach came up to me and told me she was leaving so we had to as well. She told me she had told Everly and Laine and they left but she asked me to find Xavier and let him know. Moments after, he walked into the room. I relayed the message and we both agreed that it was stupid for us not to stay for awards but we left anyway.

We had a play to get ready for.