Finding Her Voice

Text 1: First Speaker, by Neve Armitage

An original novel extract.

Thirty seconds.

Amara stood beside the stage with her cue cards clutched in both hands. The cards shivered between her fingers, although the school hall was warm. Beyond the curtain, chairs scraped and hundreds of voices rose and fell. The microphone waited in the centre of the stage beneath a hard white light.

‘You’re first,’ whispered Mr Ellis.

Amara nodded. Her mouth had forgotten how to open.

Twenty seconds. Ten. Five.

She walked to the lectern. The audience became a blur of pale faces and dark uniforms. At the front, the other debate team sat perfectly still, their notes arranged in tidy piles. Amara dropped one of her cards. It floated to the floor like a dead leaf.

‘Good morning,’ she said. Her voice was as thin as paper.

Nobody laughed. A girl in the front row smiled at her, and someone near the back called, ‘Go on!’

Amara took a breath. She read her first point, then looked up and explained it again without checking the card. The next sentence came more easily, and the one after that stretched across the hall, clear and steady. Her words were no longer hiding behind her teeth; they were marching out in bright, confident lines.

By the time she reached her final point, Amara was speaking directly to the other team. They were no longer frightening shapes beneath the lights. They were listening.

The bell rang. Amara smiled, placed her unused cards face down on the lectern and returned to her seat.