Year 9 NAPLAN Reading Prep — Set 2

The Weight of Silence

A short story

Backstage at the Regional Convention Centre, Mia Torres pressed her back against the cool brick wall and tried to slow her breathing. In eleven minutes, she would walk out under the fluorescent lights of the Year 9 State Debating Final and argue, for six unbroken minutes, that competitive video gaming deserved recognition as a legitimate sport. She did not fully believe it herself. That hardly mattered; a coin toss had decided her side of the argument, not her conscience.

Her grandfather, whom she called Pa, had taught her almost everything she knew about rhetoric before his hands grew too unsteady to turn the pages of his beloved thesaurus. He had worked as a country solicitor for forty years, a man who believed a strong argument was less about winning and more about being impossible to ignore. "Silence is not empty," he used to say, tapping the kitchen table for emphasis. "It is loaded with everything you haven't said yet. Let it work for you before you open your mouth." At eight years old, she had thought it was a riddle. Backstage now, at fourteen, it felt like an instruction she had never properly rehearsed.

Jordan Chen, the reigning three-time state champion, strolled past with the loose, unbothered gait of someone who had never known trepidation on a stage. "Didn't realise they let reserves debate in the final," he said, not quite looking at her, before disappearing towards the green room. Mia said nothing. She told herself his condescension was only strategy, a small verbal jab designed to unsettle her before she had spoken a single word. Infuriatingly, it was working.

She reached into her blazer pocket and found the card Pa had pressed into her hand that morning, before the long drive to the city. She had not opened it. Her fingers traced its folded edge, and for a moment the noise of the corridor dimmed to almost nothing.

When her name was finally called, Mia did not open the card. She realised, walking toward the light, that she already knew what it would say, because he had been saying it to her, in one form or another, for six years. She let the silence stretch for three full seconds before she spoke a single word, exactly as he had taught her, and watched the adjudicators lean forward, waiting.