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I’d already been scowling at Arabella for a variety of reasons, but this takes the cake. “Are youjoking?”
She gives me an innocent look. “What? I had to make sure I was confident with the presentation so we could both get high marks.”
“And you give me itnow, fifteen minutes before we’re due to speak?” I goggle at her. “Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s either this or you’ll have nothing to rescue your politics grade,” Arabella sniffs, tugging the paper back toward her. “But fine.Don’tread it, the presentation I so meticulously prepared for the both of us. I was just trying tohelp.You’d have probably dragged my grade down, so you’re doing me a favor, really.”
I sit in front of my bare desk, seething. I have no options. I try to recall Finlay’s notes, but maybe if I’d paid more attention to its content instead of the precise tilt of his handwriting, I may have remembered more of them.
The presentations start as soon as Dr. Moncrieff arrives. We listen to lots of different topics, one after the other. Everyone is confident and articulate, as though they’ve all been giving presentations the moment they fell out the womb. After each presentation, Dr. Moncrieff provides some kindly feedback along with their grade for the whole class to hear. Sweat begins to bead along my collar. This is far too intense.
Halfway through class, Rory and Finlay are called upon. Finlay’s wearing an easy smile, like this whole day is a breeze for him, while Rory looks grim-faced.
When they’re standing up there together… It’s difficult. It’s difficult not to see them as two sickeningly attractive guys. Finlay’s dark, mussy hair falls in front of his sharp green eyes, tendrils of bright ink decorating the backs of his hands. Rory’s caramel-colored hair is slicked back, his chest puffed out as though all the better to show off his grid of golden badges.
“We are a democracy,” Finlay starts, his voice as bold and bright as the best kind of storyteller. Whatever he’s talking about is something he believes in wholeheartedly. “We are a democracy, and England is no longer an empire.” I slide my gaze to Rory, surprised at this turn. Rory seems tense. “It’s for these two reasons — two reasons that function as the bedrock of modern political society — that self-determination is inevitable. Thatindependenceis inevitable.”
When Finlay’s voice rises, I get chills.
Rory looks so uncomfortable standing beside Finlay. To anyone else, he’d seem perfectly neutral. But I can see it in the small adjustments of his stance, in the tilt of his head and tightness of his mouth. He’s not happy with Finlay’s presentation or choice of topic.
“On the other hand,” Rory begins dryly, after Finlay zips through a series of relevant statistics on contemporary voting patterns, “ours has been a union through the ages. Through conflict and peacetime. Through good times and the bad—”
“We are not in a union,” Finlay declares with rousing finality. “We are in a toxic relationship.”
And so it goes, the two of them debating independence for Scotland in front of my eyes. They’re both respectful of one another, though Finlay is clearly the more passionate speaker of the two. He means what he says with every breath, with every heated word. His heart believes in this cause, and I find myself believing with him. There’s hope and optimism in his words. Rory’s argument mainly relies on maintaining the status quo, and even then it seems lackluster at best. There’s no fight in him, no spark, the way there had been in Finlay’s talk.
Nevertheless, they’re both awarded an A. Finlay’s grinning from ear to ear, and Rory resignedly answers his high-five.
“Thank God that’s over with,” Rory mutters behind me.
Dr. Moncrieff searches out me and Arabella — well, perhaps mainly Arabella. “Saving the best till last,” he remarks with an impish smile that makes Arabella blush with the fire of a thousand scalding suns, and the two of us move to the front of the room.
