Chapter 67 Demerit points

Chapter 67 Demerit points
"That is not true!"

My voice comes out at a volume that is not aggressive but is not quiet either, the volume of a person who has decided that what is being said in a corridor is being said loudly enough that the correction should be equally audible. 

Callum turns. 

The two architects from Group Two turn. 

Three other people in the corridor nearby turn. 

Callum looks at me, his eyes warm, like he is gearing up to gaslight me.

I know that look anywhere.

"The garden concept was mine." I say.

I am not shouting.

I am not performing.

I am just stating a fact in front of the people who need to hear it without giving Callum the opportunity to gaslight me today.

"I said it on day one of Stage 3. I said what a newlyweds house needs to feel like and I said the garden was the place to start from. You contributed a line about what the garden means to your design process, which was a good line and which the group used, but the concept was mine."

"The structural coherence of the submission came from the interior logic that Roe and I developed together. The exterior was a group revision of your initial concept. That is what happened. That is what the submission reflects." 

Everyone is paying attention now. 

The two architects from Group Two are looking between me and Callum with the careful attention of people watching something they did not expect to see on a Monday morning. 

"I think," Callum says, with the measured patience of a man who has decided that the best strategy is to make me sound unreasonable by sounding reasonable,

"that you are being quite literal about something that was a collaborative process. Attribution in group work is—" 

"Attribution in group work is exactly what the judging panel is scoring us on." I snap, annoyed at him trying to make me look stupid.

"It is on the brief. Evidence of genuine collaboration and the ability of the group to produce work stronger than any individual member could produce alone. Which means attribution matters. Which means standing in a corridor and telling other architects that the central thread was yours when the central thread was a group effort, with specific contributions from specific people, is not just inaccurate. It is the kind of inaccurate that has a name." 

Callum's jaw does the thing. 

The tight thing. 

The thing it does when he is furious and is in a space where being furious has a cost. 

"You are making a scene." he says quietly.

His warning registers. 

"You were making a speech." I scoff

"I am making a correction." 

"Calloway." Roe calls from somewhere behind me.

His voice has the quality of a man who is one hundred percent on my side and is also watching a situation develop that has its own momentum now and may not be fully stoppable. 

"I am fine." I say. 

"I know you are fine." Roe says. "I am fine as well. We are all fine. I am simply noting, as a friend, that we currently have an audience." 

I look to my side.

We so do. 

The corridor outside the conference room has become, in the last three minutes, a space that approximately twelve architects are occupying while actively not pretending to do something else, their notebooks open, their conversations paused, their attention on us with the focused interest of people who have found something more interesting than anything they were previously doing. 

"This is embarrassing. You are embarrassing" Callum says.

"No, I'm not" I say.

"Standing in a corridor telling people you did work that other people did is embarrassing. That, I agree with completely." 

"I meant ..." 

"I know what you meant and I don't agree with it, dummy!" I snap. 

He looks at me. 

I look at him. 

And all of it is in that look. 

All of it. 

Six years in a past life I am the only one who knows about. 

Every presentation submitted under his name. 

Every concept that left his mouth as if it had originated there. 

Every room he stood in and spoke with the confidence of a man who had done the work. 

He had not done the work. 

I had done the work. 

And for the first time in either of my lives we are standing somewhere that is not a kitchen or a hospital or a hotel corridor at midnight, we are standing in a hallway full of professionals, and I am not swallowing it. 

"Ms. Calloway." 

Dr. Fontaine's voice sounds from the direction of the conference room. 

I close my eyes briefly. 

Then, I open them and turn around. 

Dr. Fontaine is standing at the end of the corridor with the folder under her arm and the expression of a woman who has walked into a situation that she did not create but is now responsible for managing and has already decided how she is going to manage it. 

She looks at me with disapproval on her face. 

She looks at Callum. 

She looks at the corridor full of architects who are suddenly very interested in their sketch books. 

"My office." she says. "The three of you." 

Roe appears beside me. 

"I wasn't involved in ..." he starts. 

"Every member of group five will convene in my office, right now." Dr. Fontaine says, her voice not open for argument. 

Roe closes his notebook with a loud snap. 

We follow her. 

Dr. Fontaine's office is a small room off the main corridor with a desk and two chairs and a window that looks out onto the Paris street below, and she stands behind the desk and looks at the three of us standing in front of it with the composed authority of someone who has had this kind of conversation before and has long since stopped finding it surprising. 

"I will be brief." she says.

"This competition expects a standard of professional conduct from all candidates at all stages. What occurred in the corridor this morning did not meet that standard. I am not here to adjudicate the content of the disagreement. I am here to address the manner of it." 

She opens the folder. 

She takes out three sheets. 

She places one in front of each of us on the desk. 

Each sheet has our name at the top and a single line below it. 

Half a demerit point. 

Applicable to Stage 4 scoring. 

"This is a formal record of the incident." she says.

"Half a demerit point will be applied to each of your Stage 4 scores. It is not enough to eliminate you from the competition if your work is strong. It is enough to matter if your work is close to the threshold." She looks at each of us in turn.

"I trust I do not need to say anything further." 

She does not. 

She really does not. 

"No." I say. 

"No." Callum says. 

"No." Roe says.

Then, after a pause, "May I ask what Quintessentialism means exactly because I wrote it down but I want to make sure I ..." 

"The complete brief will be released tomorrow." Dr. Fontaine says. 

"Right." Roe grins sheepishly

"Yes. Of course." 

Dr. Fontaine picks up the folder. 

She looks at us one more time with the expression of a woman who has seen everything and is tired of seeing this particular thing. 

"You may go." she says.