The Circle

and in minutes she
     was in the wings of the stage, listening to a thousand Circlers enter the auditorium,
     talking and laughingand dropping themselves into their seats with happy thumps. She wondered, briefly,
     if Kalden was anywhere out there.
    “Mae.”
    She turned to find Eamon Bailey behind her, wearing a sky-blue shirt, smiling warmly
     at her. “Are you ready?”
    “I think so.”
    “You’ll be great,” he said. “Don’t worry. Just be natural. We’re just re-creating
     the conversation we had last week. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    And then he was onstage, waving to the crowd, everyone clapping with abandon. There
     were two burgundy-colored chairs on the stage, facing each other, and Bailey sat down
     in one and spoke into the darkness.
    “Hello, Circlers,” he said.
    “Hello Eamon!” they roared back.
    “Thank you for being here today, on a very special Dream Friday. I thought we’d change
     it up a bit today and have not a speech, but an interview. As some of you know, we
     do these from time to time to shed light on members of the Circle and their thoughts,
     their hopes, and in this case, their evolutions.”
    He sat in one of the chairs and smiled into the wings. “I had a conversation with
     a young Circler the other day that I wanted to share with you. So I’ve asked Mae Holland,
     who some of you might know as one of our newbies in Customer Experience, to join me
     today. Mae?”
    Mae stepped into the light. The feeling was of instant weightlessness, of floating
     in black space, with two distant but bright suns blinding her. She couldn’t see anyone
     in the audience, and could barely orient herself to the stage. But she managed to
     direct her body,her legs made of straw, her feet leaden, toward Bailey. She found her chair, and with
     two hands, feeling numb and blind, lowered herself into it.
    “Hello Mae. How are you?”
    “Terrified.”
    The audience laughed.
    “Don’t be nervous,” Bailey said, smiling to the audience and giving her the slightest
     look of concern.
    “Easy for you to say,” she said, and there was laughter throughout the room. This
     laughter felt good and calmed her. She breathed in, and looked in the front row, finding
     five or six shadowy faces, all smiling. She was, she realized and now felt in her
     bones, among friends. She was safe. She took a sip of water, felt it cool everything
     inside her, and put her hands in her lap. She felt ready.
    “Mae, in one word how would you describe the awakening you had this past week?”
    This part they had rehearsed. She knew Bailey wanted to start with this idea of an
     awakening. “It was just that, Eamon”—she’d been instructed to call him Eamon—“it was
     an awakening.”
    “Oops. I guess I just stole your thunder,” he said. The audience laughed. “I should
     have said, ‘What did you have this week?’ But tell us, why that word?”
    “Well, ‘awakening’ seems right to me …” Mae said, and then added “… now.”
    The word “now” appeared a split-second later than it should have, and Bailey’s eye
     twitched. “Let’s talk about this awakening,” he said. “It started on Sunday night.
     Many of the people in the room alreadyknow the broad outlines of the events, with SeeChange and all. But give us a summary.”
    Mae looked at her hands, in what she realized was a theatrical gesture. She had never
     before looked at her hands to indicate some level of shame.
    “I committed a crime, basically,” she said. “I borrowed a kayak without the knowledge
     of the owner, and I paddled to an island in the middle of the bay.”
    “That was Blue Island, I understand?”
    “It was.”
    “And did you tell anyone you were doing this?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Now Mae, did you have the intention of telling anyone about this trip afterward?”
    “No.”
    “And did you document it at all? Pictures, video?”
    “No, nothing.”
    There were some murmurs from the audience. Mae and Eamon had expected a reaction to
     this revelation, and they both paused to allow the crowd to assimilate this information.
    “Did you know you were doing something wrong, in borrowing this kayak without the
     owner’s knowledge?”
    “I did.”
    “But you did it anyway. Why?”
    “Because I thought no one would know.”
    Another low murmur from the audience.
    “So this is an interesting point. The very fact that you thoughtthis action would remain secret enabled you to commit this crime,