Mara was not in the room. That had been decided the day before, in the kitchen, with their mother Elena still in her clinic scrubs and a mug of tea going cold between her hands. Mara had wanted to come in, to sit beside Tess and be ready to speak if Tess faltered, and Tess had loved her for wanting that and also known, with a clarity that surprised her, that she did not want it. "I can be right outside," Mara had said, and she had not made it sound like a concession or a defeat. She had made it sound like a plan. Now Tess could feel that plan holding, like a handrail she did not have to grip, as she took the chair nearest the door and laid her hands flat on the folder to stop them shaking.
Ms. Alvarez was already there, and she gave Tess a small nod that was not quite a smile, the kind of nod that said, I see you, take your time. Mr. Ellis sat at the head of the table with a notebook open and a pen uncapped, and Ms. Okafor sat beside him with a folder of her own, thinner and neater than Tess's. There were two other chairs, one for June Park, who was on the festival committee as a student representative, and one that remained empty for a moment longer than the rest. Tess tried not to look at that empty chair. She looked instead at the grain of the table, at the faint ring left by someone else's mug, at the way the light caught the edge of her folder.
When Cassidy Vale came in, she did not come in loudly. That was the first thing Tess noticed, and it stayed with her. Cassidy had always entered rooms as if she expected them to rearrange themselves around her, but now she kept her eyes down and took the empty chair without the usual sweep of attention. She was there, Ms. Alvarez had explained earlier in the week, as part of the school's restorative process, not as a judge of Tess's work and not as a guest who could approve or refuse it. She was there to listen, and to understand what the committee's decision would mean, and to be present for the part of the process that concerned her own conduct. Tess had not known what to do with that explanation when she first heard it. She still did not know, entirely, but she understood that Cassidy's presence was not a test Tess had to pass. It was a condition the school had set, and Tess's work was separate from it.
Mr. Ellis cleared his throat, not unkindly, and thanked everyone for coming. He spoke briefly about the festival, about the wall by the main entrance that had been set aside for a student mural, and about the fact that several proposals had been considered and narrowed down. He did not linger on the narrowing. He turned to Tess and said her name in a steady voice, and asked if she would like to present her revised design. Tess nodded before she could lose her nerve, and opened her folder.
Inside were two large sheets, taped at the centre so they could be opened like a book, and Tess laid them out on the table with both hands. The left panel was the low tide. She had drawn it in pencil and watercolour washes, with the sand and rock left pale and exposed, the pools shallow and still, the seaweed lying flat and dark against the stone. At first glance, she knew, it might look quiet, even empty. That was the point, and also the risk. The right panel was the high tide, when the water returned, and she had used deeper blues and greens there, with the light breaking differently across the surface, the anemone open, the hermit crab half out of its shell, the starfish no longer stranded on dry rock but held, again, by the water that made its shape make sense.
For a moment, no one spoke. Tess could hear the clock again, and the distant sound of a door closing somewhere down the corridor, and her own breathing, which she tried to slow without making it obvious that she was trying. Then she began to talk, and her voice sounded thinner than she wanted it to, but it did not stop.