Teaching Mia

Chapter 20 - Facing Fear

Mia looked across the auditorium. It was a full house! It definitely seemed like more than 100 people were in the room. The first group was called to present, and Mia felt that for once lady luck was on her side that it hadn’t been her group. They would be the third to present, at least that bought her a little bit of extra time.

The first group walked up to the podium and she was surprised to see it was a complete train wreck. The presenters were obviously hungover, seemed so disoriented, were lost behind the podium not knowing where to stand, and kept looking at each other all confused. It didn’t look like they had prepared at all. Although she felt a tinge of guilt, it certainly made her feel better about her own presentation. At least they were prepared.

The second group went on and she thought it was pretty decent. That was until one of the presenters pronounced the word skyscrapers the wrong way. He kept on pronouncing it like ‘sky crappers’ and she couldn’t help but giggle. English was definitely not his strong suit. What’s more, why hadn’t anyone corrected him?

The presentation ended and she felt her nerves instantly start to creep up. She was about to stand, when the judges announced a short break before the next presentation. Phew!

She went out to the hallway to serve herself a cup of coffee. She had already had coffee during breakfast, but felt like she could use the extra jolt of caffeine in her system. She poured herself a cup and noticed that her hand was slightly shaking.

“Hey Mia, are you presenting?”

She turned around to see the last person she ever imagined would be speaking to her at that moment. Leo. Unexpectedly, he had a friendly expression.

“Uh yeah…I’m actually up next,” she managed to say.

“Nerviosa?”

“Shaking in my boots.”

Leo chuckled. “C’mon you’ll be fine. Especially after those last two presentations, the bar is pretty low. I mean did you hear that guy talking about sky crappers? I kept on picturing actual people crapping from the sky and falling all over the place. And then a random piece of crap landing in some dude’s eyeball for no reason.”

Mia almost rolled over laughing. “Gross! Yeah, that was pretty unreal. I think I might have a slight advantage over that.”

“See? You’ll do great. Just picture the crowd naked and stand in front of the podium. You’ll command more presence that way. Plus, you’ll be able to show off that nice purple dress of yours.”

Mia looked down at her dress. Why was she always wearing purple? The dress was more of a violet color but still. She peeked up back at Leo. “Yeah I guess if Justin Bieber can pull it off, so can I.”

“He’s got nothing on you. Good luck up there, not that you need it. Those five minutes will be over before you even realize it.” He smiled and walked away.

Mia instantly felt better after their short conversation and when the judges announced the break was over, she confidently walked up to the podium to meet Antonio and Ana.

The audience settled down and Antonio stepped forward. He had decided to wear a traditional silk Chinese suit to the presentation. Mia couldn’t believe it when she had first seen him at breakfast, but then again it was Antonio. He had explained it was part of the smoke and mirrors act, that he was Argentine and it was part of his nature. She decided it couldn’t hurt, maybe they would get brownie points for it.

Antonio made a quick remark about his outfit and instantly drew laughter from the crowd. He then got to business and delivered his part of the presentation effortlessly.