Chapter 8
Lara
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It’s over.
It’s over before it’s even begun.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
My eyes burn, and I blink rapidly; all I need now is to start crying in front of everyone.
And it’s not that I’m sad. I’m angry. Angry at myself.
Angry at Sophia, because she seriously thought sending me here as her replacement would work out.
But I’m also much, much angrier at the fact that I’ve disappointed her and the others.
I want to look at Luca; I need the reassurance in his gaze to rebuild my own self-assurance, but instead, my attention is drawn to a smartphone pointed at me.
I look toward it, and I recognize Shane’s mocking sneer.
He got up during my presentation and is now standing off to the side of the room next to the coffee machine.
Lurking, almost. With his camera pointed mercilessly at me.
I feel naked, and although I can’t see myself, it’s like I can.
I look small. And ugly. Not like someone who belongs on a stage. Not like someone who should be considered for a prize. I don’t even look like someone who deserves to develop such an important game.
I take a step back, as if I can brush off all their stares by doing so, but I can’t, of course.
They’re everywhere. My breath is coming too fast, and my blood is thundering in my ears.
It’s just like back then. Everyone’s looking at me.
Everyone’s judging me. This time, no one says anything, but they don’t have to; I can still hear them.
Their thoughts. A mixture of confusion and disgust. They push me another step backward.
From the corner of my eye, I can see movement.
Luca. He’s shaking his head slightly. Of course, he’s just as disappointed as the others, but .
. . he holds my gaze. Another slight shake of his head, but not to show me that I’ve failed.
Instead, it’s like he can read my thoughts and wants to stop me from acting on them, from turning around and running off the stage.
His dark-brown eyes are like a life vest dragging me back to the surface.
When I straighten my shoulders and step forward again, he nods almost imperceptibly.
His eyes never leave my face. I can see him gesturing under the table for me to keep talking.
His mouth is forming words, like he’s trying to feed me cues.
I have no idea what he’s saying. I can’t read his lips, but I’m forcibly reminded of what he just told me.
You wouldn’t be here if they didn’t consider you the most capable for the job.
I wish I was the person he sees in me. I wish so badly that I was even a fraction as great as people like him or Sophia think I am. But I’m so much less than that.
“The characters,” I begin again, and for a change, I barely care about how awful my voice sounds.
I’m just grateful that something’s coming out of my mouth.
“The characters’ problems mirror our players’ problems. Making friends as an adult, building self-esteem, a healthy body image .
. .” I find my way back to my presentation, and I can see Luca and Akito across from him breathing sighs of relief.
While I speak, I pick up the laptop—which is still working, thank God—and plug the HDMI cable back in.
I click through my slides, hands shaking.
My throat is too tight; every single word comes out strangled.
I stay standing where I am, painfully tense, to avoid tripping again.
This means that I’m now doing the very thing every single YouTuber I watched in preparation warned me against. There’s no stage presence; I don’t command the scene, I’m drowning in it.
Somehow, I make it through the presentation, but the audience’s eyes seem to be burning holes in my skin.
And though I have some experience with burn injuries, it still hurts every time.
When Elsa gets back on stage with me, I wish I could hug her. All I want is to get out of here. She smiles at me, but I recognize the pity in her pale eyes. She tries to hide it, but I’m far too familiar with that expression not to notice it.
I wonder if Luca’s going to look at me the same way. “Thank you so much, Lara! Questions, anyone?”
For the second time since I’ve stepped up here, a dead silence settles over the room.
There were audience questions after all the other presentations before mine.
I look over at the judges’ table, and the man from Black Veil lowers his gaze to write something on the piece of paper in front of him. Is he avoiding my eyes?
“All right, thanks everyone for your attention, and Lara, thank you for your presentation.”
Just “your presentation.” No friendly, flattering words.
Because there are no nice words to adequately describe what I’ve just done.
I didn’t hold an interesting presentation like Akito earlier, not a great one like Aleksander or an informative one like Muhammad.
A catastrophic one? Yes. An embarrassing one?
Yep. Maybe even an unprecedented one. Not a good one, though.
I’ve failed. There’s no way PixelPulse is getting invited back for round two.
Maybe we’ll never get invited to anything in the history of gaming ever again. And it’s all my fault.
I step off the stage, feeling numb, barely registering Elsa announcing the next speaker. It’s another man, and I’m sure he’ll do everything right, while I, one of only two women here, have failed.
My face grows even hotter, and I clench my teeth hard.
My failure doesn’t just affect me. How many of the people here see me not as Lara, an individual, but just as a woman in the gaming industry?
How many of them will return to their studios and tell the others about that event where everyone was quite good apart from that one woman?
When a man fails, it’s a funny anecdote.
Embarrassing, maybe, but no more than that.
When a woman fails, and in a male-dominated industry at that, it becomes a judgment on all of us.
I haven’t just made the situation worse for myself and PixelPulse.
I’ve also made it worse for all the girls who dream of becoming devs, who have it hard enough as it is.
All I can do now is hope that my only other female competitor, the strawberry-blond woman flashing me a sympathetic smile, will do better.
She probably will, but it won’t matter. I’ve still ruined it.
My self-loathing spreads like a virus, taking over one cell of my body at a time until there’s nothing left.
It makes me want to walk past my table, out of this room, and straight to the toilets.
But I can still feel eyes on me that should be on the stage right now.
They’re just waiting for me to break. Because to them, I’m nothing but an emotional woman.
I don’t walk back to my seat for myself or even for Sophia and the others back in London. I do it for all those girls who dream of having a place in this industry, the way I used to. If I can’t be the woman who paves the way for them, I don’t want to be the one making it harder for them, at least.
I’m biting down so hard that my jaw hurts as I lower myself into the chair next to Luca.
Akito gives me a brief smile and turns his gaze back to the front of the room.
Shane, who has returned to our table, has his eyebrows raised in a mocking expression.
But I can handle even that right now. I prefer it to looking at Luca for fear of what I might see in his eyes.
At the same time, I hate that I care about his opinion so much.
Why should I? I don’t know him, and he’s my competitor.
A competitor I’ve just lost against, surely.
A competitor who, unlike myself, has a chance to win that money.
From the corner of my eye, I can see Luca glancing over at me now and then, but I keep looking at the stage, where a red-haired man in his forties is presenting a platformer.
The minutes tick by, but I’m far from focusing on what’s being said.
My frustration grows with each passing second, my muscles tightening more and more.
Though I didn’t even want to come, knowing that Sophia’s never going to send me anywhere else again is devastating.
A light touch on my leg brings the merry-go-round of my thoughts to a grinding halt. Luca.
“You all right?”
I raise my eyebrows and suppress a snort. In what universe would I be all right after this kind of performance?
“That was stupid, sorry,” he adds in a whisper. “It’s not as bad as you’re imagining right now.”
“How do you know what I’m imagining?”
“It’s pretty clear from looking at you.”
“Oh yeah?” I whip my head around to face him so quickly that my hair bounces off my cheek. “Well, what am I imagining right now? The fact that everyone just saw me break down? Or the fact that someone took a video to show their colleagues back at the office? How do you know how bad it really is?”
“I was just . . .”
“Next up is Luca Brown. If you’d join me on stage, please.
” Elsa’s clear voice brings him up short, and he growls quietly in frustration.
Almost like he’d rather talk to me than go up front.
Which is utter bollocks, of course. “Luca is a developer for Bytes instead . . .”
“Let’s talk later,” he whispers, and although Elsa has finished her announcement, he only leaves after I nod.