Chapter 13
SELENE
Very few things on my social calendar inspire legitimate excitement in me. Too often, I have to show up to events Allegra has thrust upon me with a forced smile stretching my lips and feigned interest lighting up my eyes for hours while I hold boredom at bay.
Surprisingly, today’s engagement isn’t like that at all.
“I won’t be up here for long,” he promises, pushing the glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose back up.
It’s an absent-minded gesture, one he probably does several times a day since his frames appear to be warped, that also has the benefit of making him seem less intimidating.
Since he’s well over six feet and easily three-hundred pounds with broad shoulders and a hard stare, he can use all the help he can get on that front.
He wraps his fingers around the edges of the podium and smiles.
“First, I want to thank each of you for being here. Back in the day you couldn’t pay me and my friends to give up a single minute of our summer break, so I’m impressed with the way y’all have packed this room out.
Give yourselves a round of applause.” Scattered claps come from different parts of the room, but it’s a far cry from what Mr. Jackson has requested.
He squints into the crowd, mouth pulled into a flat line of disapproval.
“Now, I don’t know if y’all know this, but we’ve got First Lady Selene Taylor in the building today.
If you won’t clap for yourselves, maybe you’ll clap for her. ”
He gestures toward me, and I have no choice but to stand and face the sea of unfamiliar faces, smiling and waving even as the growing noise level in the room sets my teeth on edge.
After the explosion at the polls, loud noises and tight spaces became even more difficult for me than they were before.
On instinct, I look to the only source of comfort I have at the moment: Agent Shaw.
There are four other agents in the auditorium, lining the walls and keeping a closed watch on the doors, but Agent Shaw is closest to me.
She pulls her gaze away from the crowd and meets my eye, offering assurance of my safety in the form of a curt nod.
It doesn’t give me the same level of comfort I would feel if it were coming from Cal and Beck, but it’s more than enough to give me the strength to send the anxiety buzzing underneath my skin back where it came from.
The crowd calms at Mr. Jackson’s insistence, and I return to my seat, praying the ringing in my ears will subside before the children take the stage.
For a moment, I think it won’t happen because Mr. Jackson’s speech is nothing more than muffled murmurs, but as soon as he starts talking about the Congressional App Challenge, everything clears up.
“As you all know, the CAC was established in 2013 to facilitate national appreciation and recognition of the computer sciences and STEM. This is a nation-wide competition, but it’s not my job to worry about every kid in the nation.
My job is to worry about you. The brilliant minds of the 11th Congressional District. ”
He slaps his hand over his chest, eyes brimming with pride.
“My district. As your representative, it’s my job to give you every advantage I can, and there is no greater advantage than adequate preparation.
At this stage in the challenge, you’ve already developed the concepts for your app and began building.
You’re work shopping and fine tuning and double checking every line of code, in hopes that one day your app will be the one displayed in the Capitol building, and that’s great.
But I’m here to tell you that none of it will matter if you don’t know how to talk about your app.
If you can’t convince a consumer that they need it, they never download it, and all your hard work goes down the drain.
That’s the last thing any of us want to happen, which is why today you’re going to stand up here on this stage and convince me and Mrs. Taylor that we need your app. ”
A short silence follows the explanation, and then Mr. Jackson’s lifts a brow, an assessing gaze rolling over the crowd. “Think you can do it?”
The kids meet his question with resounding screams of affirmation that make him laugh as he makes his way to the judge’s table to take a seat beside me. Once he’s seated, members of his team move into the crowd, pulling students from the rows and lining them up next to the stage.
“I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” Mr. Jackson says, leaning in a bit too close. “None of the other reps will be able to compete with this Pitch a Pro event. They’re all doing run of the mill stuff like coding boot camps.”
“It’s my pleasure. Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Of course! It would have been a failure on my part to not include the First Lady when she’s an expert in the field.” One of the members of his team, a young Black girl with a pixie cut reminiscent of the ones Mama spent her days doing in the 90’s approaches, handing Mr. Jackson a stack of papers.
“Rubrics,” he explains, placing the stack in between us. There are already pens on the table along with bottles of water for us to share.
“Will we be getting a list of the participants as well? I’d love to have some prior understanding of the students and their projects before hearing the pitch.”
Mr. Jackson pushes his glasses up again, shaking his head. “No, ma’am. We figured the less you know beforehand the better. This way the score given to the presentation is based solely on what is said on the stage.”
“Interesting. Did you at least have them prepare pitch decks to be given out afterwards?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pulls a few papers from the top of the stack between us, sitting some in front of me and some in front of him. “They’ll be available to you through my office.”
Satisfied, I nod and offer him a genuine smile.
The CAC is a great initiative, but it’s still young and relatively unknown.
That means a lot of the work to put together events like this falls on the shoulders of the individual district representatives.
Not many take the kind of initiative Mr. Jackson has to provide support to the participants. It’s actually inspiring.
“The work you’ve put into this day is admirable,” I tell him, watching him light up.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Please, call me Selene.”
“Selene,” he repeats, testing out the syllables hesitantly.
“May I call you Reed?”
“Ye-yes, of course,” he stammers, nodding enthusiastically.
“Perfect. Reed, how were you planning to reward the kids for their participation today?”
Perplexed, he glances around the room like the answer is hidden in the walls somewhere. “Umm, I wasn’t?”
He winces, and we share a laugh. His is nervous and full of self-consciousness. Mine is pure amusement because of course he thought exposure and experience was enough to make this event worthwhile.
“Guess I should have thought that through, huh?”
“I mean, not having a reward certainly hasn’t hurt your turn out at all,” I say. “But I think it’d be nice to give them something. As you so wisely pointed out in your speech earlier, they are giving up a day of their summer break to be here. Not to mention the time they spent preparing.”
“Right. You’re absolutely right.” Slight panic has taken over his features. “Do you have any suggestions?”
My answer is immediate. “You can never go wrong with tech when it comes to kids like this.” As I start to rattle off items I would have killed for as a child, Reed flips over one of the rubrics and scribbles it all down, handing the list off to the closest member of his team with instructions to secure the circled items before the end of the day.
“We should probably make an announcement about the prizes” Reed says. “I’m sure it’ll give them an extra boost before they get on the stage.”
“Absolutely,” I agree, fighting the urge to make another suggestion and losing. “Before you do, I’d like to add something to the list.”
“Oh, okay, let me just—” he stands, preparing to call back or go after the young woman he just sent off.
“Not to the actual list,” I clarify, standing as well.
Reed’s head swings back in my direction, and I feel bad for confusing him.
“The new laptop and NAS DiskStation will go over beautifully with the winners, but those are just two items and we’ve got fifty kids here.
I think it would be beneficial to offer something everyone can take advantage of regardless of if their pitch is chosen or not. ”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A spot in my company’s junior coding academy.”
The idea started to take root the moment I walked into this room and saw it filled with the faces of the future of my chosen field.
It sprouted into possibility when I heard Reed’s speech about his responsibility to the children of his constituency and immediately began to think about what my obligation was to them and why I hadn’t considered how to fulfill it sooner.
He tilts his head to he side, brow furrowed. “Culture Code has a junior coding academy?”
“It will by the end of the day,” I promise him, knowing that Monique will get Nichelle on it as soon as I send in the request.
She’ll probably be thrilled to see me using my company email for something other than declining meetings and scolding her for sending me links to the many interviews Sutton’s parents have done in the weeks since her death.
There’s never anything else in the emails, just the links and layers upon layers of subtext that ask why I believe the Ellsworths won’t speak with me if they’re making a point of talking to everyone else.