To: Susan Vernon
From: Alicia Johnson
Subject: Things sure change
Hey there—not headed back to New York any time soon. I have a new role on Chamber of Lies and will be down here for the foreseeable future.
Also…am actually dating the lobbyist now. Turns out he’s not a jerk after all. I’m going to give a workshop to some kids he’s involved with. Science kids, not theater kids, so this should get interesting…
Got any auditions lined up? Work on the horizon? Give me the news from New York.
Best, ’Lis
Alicia wiped her palms on her slim black trousers, glancing at Colin before she entered the hotel meeting room. “You didn’t have to come with me,” she said, glancing at his charcoal suit and subtly patterned tie. “I’m sure you have very important…lobby-ist-ing things to do.”
Placing a hand on hers before she could reach for the door handle, he pulled her toward him, glancing up and down the hallway. “Well, I did have plans to work over the weekend, but someone derailed those pretty completely.”
Alicia smiled as his lips descended to hers, teasing. “Is this your revenge? You’re going to distract me when I’m supposed to be working?”
“You’re volunteering.”
“That’s still work,” she said, trying to suppress a shiver as his lips traced down her neck.
“True.” Colin straightened, smoothing his hair and regarding Alicia with a glittering smile. “Ready to face the kids?”
Feeling an unfamiliar flutter of pure nervousness, Alicia flicked her bangs off her forehead with a jerk of her chin. “I guess I have to be.”
Colin looked closely at her. “Do you have stage fright?”
Alicia gave him a heavy-lidded look of disdain. “No. Stage fright I can deal with. Stage fright is a professional hazard. This is just…nerves.”
Colin’s chin tucked in, and his eyes widened. “What’s the difference?”
“One’s something I deal with all the time that I have the coping skills to overcome. And the other is…teenagers.”
Colin started to laugh, and Alicia smothered an impulse to slap him. He caught her expression and covered his mouth with his hand. “Sorry. The idea that you could be frightened by anything…let alone adolescents…”
“Don’t fool yourself. Adolescents are terrifying. Every Shakespeare production’s Wednesday matinée during the school year is full of the feral beasts.”
Colin moved to open the door and watched as Alicia composed herself. Her spine straightened, her chin lifted, and she shrugged her shoulders, letting them drop loosely. She looked poised, like a dancer or a fencer.
En garde, kids.
Pulling open the heavy door, he grinned as she strode into the room like she owned it. He followed and introduced her to the group’s chaperone, a high school science teacher from Ohio. The poor woman looked exhausted, dark circles ringing her eyes, but she gamely introduced Alicia. Twenty pairs of eyes swiveled to look at her. Colin felt the urge to step in front of her, to protect her from those mostly lackluster gazes. Her eyes scanned the group, and she fixed her smile on the girl who had recognized her at the gala. The girl was smiling back, friendly and excited, her large dark eyes shining behind her glasses frames.
“So, most of you are probably wondering what the heck an actress has to teach you scientific geniuses about anything. And you’re right. I don’t know a microbe from a micron. But I do know about communicating things with passion and sincerity.”
A hand went up, a jaded-looking boy with pale blond hair in the back row. She nodded at him, and he gave her a patronizing smile that made Colin want to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and frog-march him out of the room. “No offense, but the ideas are important, not the presentation.”
Alicia paused for a moment. “Right.” She affected a bored look, mimicking the boy’s expression almost perfectly and droning in a rapid, flat voice, “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.’ Just words. Just ideas. In fact, they’re Shakespeare’s words. So, they don’t need any special treatment. They stand on their own, right?”
“But that’s a play,” the boy objected. “Totally different.”
“Actually, it’s a poem. A sonnet. But let’s put this to the test. How many people have watched TED talks online?” Every hand in the room went up.
“Okay, how many people have started watching a boring lecturer and noped out of that thing faster than you can say ‘thermodynamics’ because it was so painful regardless of how much you wanted to know the information?” Most, though not all, of the hands went up again. The jaded boy in the back seemed to be keeping his hand down on principle.
Smug little bastard. “No offense,” indeed.
Alicia ignored her almost-heckler and counted hands. “Fourteen out of twenty. I’m guessing that most of you see my point.” She resisted the urge to look over at Colin. She was surprised he had stayed.
Well, she was surprised he had come in the first place.
“So, what’s the key to a compelling presentation? Anyone?” Alicia looked around the group of students, her gaze skimming swiftly over the ones who seemed more skeptical about her message, and allowing her attention to settle for longer moments on those whose expressions were receptive. Alicia let a gentle smile curve her lips, as if these interested students were co-conspirators with her, inviting them in.
Her glance returned to the student who had remembered her Law and Order gig. “Gina, right?” The girl nodded. “What do you think makes for an engaging speaker?”
The light in the girl’s eyes dimmed for a moment, and Alicia smiled at her. You’ve got this. Alicia remembered the girl’s presentation at the gala. Gina probably needed this the least of any of them.
A spurt of confidence flared in Gina’s eyes as she said, “Connection?”
“Can you expand on that?” Alicia circled her hand between Gina and herself.
“Well…” Gina pressed her lips together, seeming to choose her words carefully. “What you’re doing,” she blurted.
Alicia laughed. “All right, then. What am I doing?”
“Well…” Gina giggled. “You’re looking at me!”
Alicia let her gaze lift off of Gina and land on the cynical boy in the back. “Yes,” she said, then let her eyes skim over the group until she found another friendly face, a boy whose large, dark eyes and tan skin reminded her of Colin. “What’s your name?”
“Ash.” The boy’s smile dimmed.
“Okay, Ash. What do you think?”
Ash’s brow furrowed as he thought. His hands came up to shape the air as he tried to express himself. “You’re…smiling a lot. You’re friendly.”
“That’s true.” Alicia glanced swiftly over the group and noticed that a couple of the skeptics were leaning forward slightly, taking more interest. “We don’t have to make this about me. Remember the things that made those TED talks interesting.”
“They’re short,” a voice from the middle of the group sounded. Alicia located the speaker, a girl with thick, black hair and golden-brown skin. Her arms were folded, but her eyes were glittering with humor.
“That’s right. They’re brief. Which means they know exactly what they’re talking about.”
Leaning back in his chair, Colin folded his arms and watched Alicia alternately charm, dare, and cajole the teenagers in front of her. She got them on their feet, moving around the room, running, then stopping.
“Your project. Tell me about it.” Challenging the student nearest to her, Colin watched as Alicia smiled at the auburn-haired girl, waiting while the girl caught her breath and then launched into an eager explanation of her project, her breathlessness seeming to cause her to choose her words with more economy. She certainly seemed more passionate about the project, eyes sparkling and hands moving with more energy than Colin’s memory of her from the gala.
“Excellent. Another circuit,” Alicia called out, and the students dashed around the perimeter of the room. “Stop!” she commanded.
Colin tensed. She was pointing at the blond kid, the closest thing to a naysayer she seemed to have in this group. Colin had noticed that the boy moved sluggishly, merely going through the motions of fulfilling her instructions.
“Your theory. Tell me about it.”
The boy gave Alicia a look that made Colin want to push the kid’s teeth through the back of his neck. He began speaking to Alicia with exaggerated care, as if to a particularly slow child. Alicia regarded him for a few moments, then turned to the rest of the group, ignoring him as he trailed off.
“Does this work for any of you?” she asked, turning to face the rest of the group, her expression calm.
The rest of the students looked at her, stunned. The blond kid looked at the back of her head with poorly suppressed rage.
“Does it?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve already told you I’m no science person, but I think I know when someone’s talking to me like they think I’m stupid.” She pursed her lips and placed her hand on her cheek in an exaggerated impression of someone thinking hard. Then her hand dropped away. Her face was no less thoughtful, but sharpened somehow. “But what if I wasn’t stupid? And what if I had the power to put your project in motion? What if I really understood what you’re talking about and I had money or influence or…both?” She slowly swiveled back to the boy and looked at him with a flat, level gaze.
“How would you communicate your idea to that person?”
Alicia’s heart was thudding hard as she looked into the boy’s face. His pale skin had turned a dull, angry red.
“What’s your name?” she asked quietly, taking slow, even breaths to try to ease her own tension.
“Ben,” he said, his eyes flat.
“Ben, if you’re not excited about what you’ve created, how can you expect anyone else to be?”
“But it’s about the idea.” Ben’s jaw was set, teeth clenching.
“Right,” she said, pitching her voice even lower. “And if that idea—the idea you came up with, your baby—doesn’t put a light in your eyes, if it doesn’t make your heart race, then it must not be very earth-shattering, mustn’t it?”
The boy still looked mutinous. Alicia turned to the rest of the group and saw many thoughtful expressions. Former skeptics seemed to be moving to her side. If she didn’t get them all, well, you never did get everyone.
“Ideas don’t exist without emotion. We’re all human beings. We live in a state of balance. The reason why TED talks are so compelling—one reason at least—is that just about everyone who gives one is utterly passionate about their subject. They believe in what they’re talking about.” She turned back to Ben. “That makes it much easier for someone else to believe in it too. Why make this harder for them? It only makes it harder for you. The only people whose job it is to believe in you are your parents.”
And for some of us, not even them.
The boy’s jaw worked and the muscles in his temple bulged, but he did seem to be listening for once.
Alicia clapped her hands together and turned to the group. “Okay, a different exercise. I’m going to count you off into pairs and you are going to take five minutes to explain your projects to each other. Then your partner has to explain the gist of your project to the group in one minute.”
A hand went up, and she nodded at the boy, who said, “Some of our stuff is too complicated to explain in five minutes, let alone in one.”
“I’m not talking about all the details. Get the kernel, the substance. You need to learn how to communicate an idea quickly and efficiently. Think of a trailer for a movie. What is it there for?”
Gina raised her hand, and Alicia nodded at her. “It gives you an idea of what the movie is about. It makes you want to see the whole thing.”
“Exactly. You’re not always going to be able to tell everyone everything. You’ve heard of ‘elevator speeches,’ right? Imagine you’ve just met an investor or your scientific hero in an elevator, and take a few minutes to think about how to efficiently get your point across.”
Colin had originally planned to go back to the office once he was sure Alicia had settled in with the kids. But watching her, he couldn’t tear himself away if he tried.
He pulled out his phone and e-mailed Jeanette, telling her not to expect him in the office until tomorrow. No emergency, he typed, just want to make sure the USA Science Fair trip ends well. A few minutes later, his phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. Right, Jeanette had written. Give my regards to Miss Science Fair.
His cheeks heated as he looked up at Alicia again. She was focused on a redheaded girl trying to explain someone else’s experiment. He didn’t know quite why Alicia was doing this, but he had already seen her methods in her own work and trusted that she knew what she was doing and would get results.
Even the blond kid who had shown her so little respect was participating now. He wasn’t as eager as some, still holding himself a little aloof, but his face showed a hint of anxiety, as if he knew that everyone who was participating was getting something out of it he was not. Something real. Something that might give someone else an edge.
Smart. Finally. Colin glanced at the chaperone, sitting a few chairs over. She was also watching, her interest shining through her obvious fatigue. Colin felt a surge of pride in Alicia as he looked back at her. Having had students give elevator speeches for each other, she was now telling them that each student would again take charge of their own message.
“Here’s why I wanted you guys to do this.” She started counting off on her fingers. “First, I wanted each of you to feel what it’s like to try to get interested in something you didn’t do yourself. It’s not always going to be a hundred percent about you. Second, you had to encapsulate your project to hand it off to someone else. That boils everything down to its essence. Third, seeing what your peers selected out of what you taught them shows you, hopefully, what you thought was essential but might be not necessary for this sort of movie trailer treatment. Think about that for a minute, and we’re going to go again. You will each have thirty seconds to pitch your idea.”
Twenty pairs of wide eyes fixed on her, then unfocused as they all began to think.