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“As tempting as that might be… No.”
I snapped my fingers. “Damn.”
Noelle stood up and started pacing again. She waved her hand as she spoke as if she were conducting an orchestra instead of my blubbering-idiot class.
“You have to become someone else when you’re up there. Like an alter ego.” She stopped and turned to me. “Let’s pick who you’re gonna be up on that stage.”
I squinted. “You’re losing me a little…”
“He needs a name. Your alter ego. Something very opposite of the egotistical person who worries about what everyone thinks.”
“Fred,” I said. That’s the first name that came to mind.
“Fred?” She laughed.
“Yeah. Generic. Boring. He doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.”
“Okay…Fred.” She wrote it down.
“Why are you taking notes on this shit?” I asked.
“This isn’t shit…” She threw her notebook on the bed. “This is your future, Archie. And you should be taking notes, too, instead of drawing. Don’t think I don’t notice. At least pretend to take it seriously.”
I sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She picked her notebook back up and tapped her pen against it. “Okay…so a few things we have to work on. First, you’ve got to get to know your dad better.”
“Hard no.”
“I don’t mean spending more time with him. But Google him. Memorize his bio on the firm’s website—that kind of thing. Second, you have to lose yourself and become Fred. The challenging part is going to be not avoiding eye contact while you do that. It’s easy to want to look down when you’re not comfortable.”
“Kind of like you the first night I arrived,” I pointed out.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You avoided eye contact with me at the dinner table that first night.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s probably because I was intimidated. So that would make sense. My ego cared too much about what you thought of me.”
“And now? You know I’m really a blubbering idiot who panics, so I don’t intimidate you anymore?”
She smacked me with her notebook. “Stop calling yourself that.”
“Okay…” I sighed.
She cleared her throat. “As I was saying, we’re conditioned to think if we avoid eye contact, we’re somehow protecting ourselves, when in fact, we’re making it worse. That active avoidance alone is enough to make you anxious. So, as Fred, you’re not going to avoid eye contact.”
“How am I supposed to read off my paper and look at people at the same time? Because you know I’m not memorizing that shit.”
“You’ll just look up between sentences from time to time.”
“What if I lose my place? Then I’ll repeat the same line.” I laughed, even though I didn’t find that funny. “Can you imagine? I’m totally gonna do that.” I started to sweat just thinking about it.
“You’re catastrophizing now. Don’t do that, or we’ll have to develop another curriculum.”
“No more curriculums, teacher.”
She placed her hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “It’s gonna be fine. You’ll get to practice on me all summer. By the time you get to that event, it will be old hat.”
“Old hat.” I chuckled. “You talk like an old lady sometimes.”
“I do have an old soul.” She raised her chin proudly. “Thank you for noticing.”
I flashed a mischievous smile. “You know what else they say about public speaking?”
“What?”
“That you should picture your audience naked.”
She nodded. “Sure, that’s another strategy you could use.”
She hadn’t figured out what I was getting at. “So, if I’m going to be practicing on you all summer, that means…”
Noelle squinted when it hit her. “Ew.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before, Miss America.”
She threw her pen at me and laughed. “Shut up.”
“I have to warn you, Fred is a bit of a perv.”
Her face turned red. “He’d better not be.”
“Even better, can I picture you with welts all over your skin?”
“No.”
Still chuckling, I got up from the bed. “Are we done for today?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “We can be.” She tucked her notebook away in a drawer. “Lesson adjourned.”
She turned back around to face me, and I caught myself staring at her mouth. Wow. Let’s not do that again. I was attracted to Noelle, which was a little unnerving, since I knew I couldn’t go there. Not with this one. She was the only good thing in my life right now, and fucking that up was not an option. Plus, not only was she a family friend, we lived on different coasts. Also, I got the impression she was inexperienced. Aside from thinking she was adorable, though, for the first time in a long time, I felt a strong connection to someone.
“You were cute playing teacher,” I said.
She blushed. She did that a lot around me. I wondered if she had a little crush. Maybe that was wishful thinking. But it would be kind of fun to mess with her if she did. Make her blush even more.
I handed her the drawing I’d sketched while she was lecturing.
