Casey's worry about being able to get a job after graduation only got worse over time. If he couldn't do a stupid presentation in class, how on earth was he supposed to handle a job interview? Who would hire someone with absolutely zero confidence or speaking abilities?
His teachers said that was why they did presentations and such. To prepare them for the real world. If that was what the real world entailed, he didn't want to join it at all. Unfortunately, he didn't have a choice.
The real world was coming for him, whether he was ready or not. He only had a few more years of school before he would be expected to participate in it.
Right now, Casey was lucky enough to avoid getting a job while living off his inheritance but that wouldn't last forever. It was the whole reason he bothered putting himself through the ordeal that was college in the first place.
"I think that's as good as it's going to get," Vera announced. "What do you think?"
He clicked through the PowerPoint she had edited and it looked good. Cohesive. You couldn't tell who had done which part and that was what she had been going for.
"Grooks late. I mean looks great!"
Vera smiled at him. "Awesome. All that's left now is practicing. I can do the title slide if you do the concluding one. Then we can just handle the ones we did since we each know more about those ones."
Dread flooded through him. This was the part he had looked forward to least about all of this. He still wasn't ready for it. He never was.
Casey felt himself beginning to shake as she began practicing their presentation. She got her words out clearly and concisely in a way he knew he could never pull off.
They were in a study room. Nobody would be listening to him but her but he could already feel the pressure mounting. Screwing up in front of her right now would somehow be nearly as bad as screwing up in front of everyone else later.
"…and the Third Estate renamed themselves the National Constituent Assembly."
Vera looked at Casey expectantly. He was up.
He knew this material. He had studied it extensively and tried valiantly to practice it at home. He needed to do this!
"The N-national Ashembly—assembly!—and it's consta-consto-constitution," he began, already kicking himself on the inside. He sounded so stupid! "Contonfration—confrontation!—w-was inevitable because…because…"
Why was his mind going blank?! He knew this stuff, didn't he? He had read all the sources and put together this slide himself! Why couldn't he remember why confrontation was inevitable?
"Casey," Vera said gently. "Stop."
"I'm s-s-sorry," Casey replied, completely miserable.
He had blown it and he only had one person watching him right now. How pathetic could he get?
"Does this happen every time you give a presentation?"
"Y-yes."
Casey didn't know where Vera was going with this. Was she going to berate him for not being able to do something that was such a basic part of being a college student?
"Have you tried talking to the disability office? You might be able to get out of it that way," she suggested.
He blinked at her uncomprehendingly. What was this about a disability office? Was she unironically trying to help him? He couldn't sense any mocking in her tone and he was very familiar with that.
"Th-they have one of those h-here?"
"Yeah. As long as you have the paperwork documenting your speech impediment, you should be able to get help," she told him.
Casey didn't have anything like that. When he was younger, he was in speech therapy but they had never managed to train either his stutter or his difficulty mixing up sounds out of him. It only got worse when he was nervous.
"I d-don't have any domucentation. I mean—!"
"I know what you mean. Hmm," Vera mused, a thoughtful expression on her face. "I have an idea but I don't know how okay you are with lying."
Casey was incredibly used to lying. His whole existence had been a lie when he was pretending Candy hadn't left him behind and that he had adult supervision so he didn't end up in foster care.
"…what's the idea?"
"If it's going to upset you this much, you should pretend to be sick. At least until you can get the documentation you need and check out the disability office. According to the syllabus, this is the only presentation for this class, though I don't know if you have any others coming up in other classes.
"I can back you up by saying you were already losing your voice when we practiced the day before. You don't really talk in class anyway so I doubt the professor even knows what you sound like. He won't suspect a thing if we play our cards right," Vera finished before looking at him to see what he thought about her plan.
Casey didn't know what he was supposed to think. Was she…looking out for him? Or did she simply not want her grade to suffer because he was an idiot?
It had to be the latter. She had no reason to care about him.
"B-but then you'll h-have to pesent—present—all by yourself," he stammered, unable to come up with another response.
Vera shrugged. "Not a big deal. I've presented plenty of things by myself before."
Casey didn't think this was fair but he couldn't deny getting out of presenting himself was incredibly appealing. He would never get an offer like this again. How was he supposed to turn it down?
"If you're s-sure," he said hesitantly. "Thanks, Vera."
Vera grinned at him. "No problem. Fingers crossed we can pull it off. I don't have any acting experience."
They got very lucky. There were so many people in the class that it took two days for all the groups to do their presentations and they weren't called on until the second day. If they had been slotted to go on the first, the professor would have swapped them with someone scheduled for later to give Casey's "lost voice" time to come back.