Free Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

drinking too much wine and crying.”
    They talked about music and the movies they disagreed about. He made fun of her for liking The Sound of Music . She told him to ask himself why only boys like The Matrix .
    At 11:59 they counted down together to this: “Happy New Year, Amy. If I were there, I would kiss the back of your hand and thank you for being my friend this year.”
    To which she wrote back: “I love being friends with you, Matthew, which you can interpret any way you like.”
    Had she succeeded in telling him what she wanted to say? Had they—in their own awkward way—told each other? She hoped so.

CHAPTER TEN
    M ATTHEW WAS THE ONE who talked her into signing up for Public Speaking. It was a required class that most people took in ninth and tenth grade, but Amy never had. She could have been excused, the way she was excused from the swim-test requirement in middle school. No guidance counselor would insist that Amy take a class that depended on something she couldn’t physically do.
    Except for this: once Matthew suggested it, she wanted to sign up. It had started as a joke about Amy taking three APs and a fourth year of French. “Why don’t you sign up for something really hard?” Matthew said. “I mean, look at this—only three APs? It’s like you never challenge yourself.”
    “THOSE CLASSES AREN’T HARD FOR ME,” she’d said.
    Matthew shook his head. “What is hard for you, Aim? Seriously. I’m curious.” As she typed a response, he thought of something: “Public Speaking!” He laughed and clapped his hands like it was the funniest joke he’d made all morning.
    She deleted the answer she’d been typing and thought to herself: He’s right. That would be a challenge.
    “Why now ?” Nicole asked when Amy told her the class she was adding to her schedule. “When you’ve got so many other things to worry about. It’s your second semester of senior year. You’ll be hearing from colleges soon.”
    Colleges had been such an obsession for Nicole she almost made a scrapbook of the brochures that were sent to the house following Amy’s PSAT scores, which qualified her for a National Merit Scholarship.
    “WON’T I HAVE TO DO PRESENTATIONS IN COLLEGE?”
    Nicole hadn’t thought about this. “You might.”
    “SHOULDN’T I PRACTICE NOW? SO I DON’T EMBARRASS MYSELF LATER, IN FRONT OF STRANGERS?”
    Her mother nodded. It made some sense.
    Amy asked her peer helpers, all of whom had already taken the class, what they thought of the idea.
    “Best class I’ve ever taken,” Sanjay said.
    “Hard,” Chloe told her with a mouthful of celery. “ Really hard. Like, posture is part of your grade. No offense.”
    “I think you should do it,” Sarah said. “I’d love to watch you deliver a speech.”
    Matthew shook his head. She could tell he felt bad about suggesting it at all. “The whole thing was a nightmare. For my final speech, my feet were so sweaty I walked out of my shoes.”
    Amy still wanted to do it. She planned to use her Pathway, of course, so the hard part would be standing relatively still, which was strangely a bigger challenge for her than walking. Walking, you’re supposed to move and make adjustments. Standing still, you’re not. Standing meant willing one side of her body not to move and screaming at the other side to move just an inch. It could be agony. Especially with people watching. But that was the whole point.
    You could read a speech someone else had written (people circulated famously brief ones), or you could write your own speech. Amy wanted to write her own. She wanted to explain what it was like not just to be her, but to be her right now. To feel as if new doors were opening up. To have real friends for the first time, people she said more than hello to. She wanted to say, I know this is old news to many of you, but it’s great, isn’t it? To really be able to talk to someone? To joke around? If she struck the right balance, she hoped to achieve a