IT SEEMS LIKE THE WHOLE CROWD LEANS back and cringes when I step up to the mic and a painful squeak from the loudspeakers pierces the air. A little shocked by it, I jump back and slide the mic stand a little farther away. If it wasn’t for how long this day already feels I’d think I was dreaming, the way all these eyes are on me, everybody completely silent. Mr. James would call this being able to hear a pin drop but let’s be real: Who’s ever heard that? Today it might have been possible. Almost like the first open mic we had here, the room is full wall to wall and everybody in here is waiting on me to say something about why we’re here but all I can think about is how I forgot my things at home. I look down at my hands, thinking, maybe, if I stared hard enough, I might be able to imagine the flash cards in my hands. Then, maybe, I could imagine what I wrote on them. But all I find in my palms is sweat and too many nerves that make me so shaky I force myself to wrap my hands tight around the mic stand so my hands have something to do. I look down, a few rows past C.J., to see Sunny nodding like he can hear his favorite song. He smiles and flicks his hand at me like he’s waiting for me to finish saying whatever I have to say.
“G-g-good afternoon, everybody.” Great, already stuttering. “W-we… w-w-we are here because…,” I say, trying again. I look over at Maria at the side of the stage and she’s smiling up at me. For a second my brain replays the day of our practice oral presentations in class on the first week of school when she had the exact same smile on her face. My belly starts to flip and get all woozy the same way it did that day as I remember the taste of spaghetti sauce coming up my throat while trying to push through something I wasn’t prepared for. And even then, I at least had flash cards. From outside, I hear a car’s speakers as it drives by with music blasting and bass so deep that the wall closest to the street rattles like a tiny earthquake. I look over at C.J. in his seat, bobbing his head to a beat we’ve both heard before, and when the car passes he starts to clap the rhythm, and in seconds, so is everybody else.