Chapter 54: Volume 1, - 54: Daniela’s Table
The courtyard behind the cafeteria at Escola Secundária do Oriente was shaded by dusty blue-gum trees dropping leaves across the concrete benches. By twelve-thirty, midday heat had settled over the grounds, forcing students under covered walkways or near the sports hall.
Bia sat at the end of the bench with an A3 sketchbook open across her knees. Beside her, Mari Lopes held a fine-liner between her fingers, squinting down at the tracing paper overlay pinned to the backboard.
"The line width is wrong," Mari said, tapping the barrel against a drawn plaza. "If you make pedestrian paths the same gauge as the road border, nobody can tell where the pavement stops. It looks like a car can drive straight through the seating area."
"It’s a sunken drainage basin with seating," Bia said without looking up from her sketch.
"It looks like a pool," Daniela Reis said from across the table, peeling a clementine. "And if you put those stone ledges there, people will skate off them until someone puts plastic spikes on the edges."
"The assignment is about public space utility," Bia said, erasing a faint line near the top margin.
"I’m telling you what actual people do," Daniela replied, tossing peel onto her plastic wrapper. "If you design a nice flat bench, someone will sleep on it or leave a dirty coffee cup. The canopy at the bus terminal is useless because the roof is thirty metres too high. When rain blows from the river, everyone stands behind the ticket kiosk anyway."
Mari tapped the edge of Bia’s drawing. "She’s not wrong about the bus terminal, Bia. Visually your lines are clean, but you need more contrast on secondary structures."
"The feedback said the main issue was how people move through the square during peak hours," Bia murmured, turning the page toward the light. "Everyone cuts across the grass because paved paths force a ninety-degree turn."
"Because people take the shortest line," Daniela said. "Look at the lawn outside the library. There’s a dirt track through the middle because everyone walks straight from the gate."
"Desire paths," Bia said softly, sketching a faint diagonal dotted line. "That’s what they call them in urban planning."
Mari reached into her tote bag for her logo notebook. "People hate being told where to walk. It’s like graphic design. If a sign is too neat, people ignore it."
Daniela watched them before turning to Bia. "You’ve been spending a lot of time with Rayan lately."
Bia didn’t look up. "We’ve been studying."
Mari raised an eyebrow. "Rayan? The football boy?"
"The documentary boy," Daniela corrected. "The one who spent last term looking like he was about to get expelled, and now walks around with a notebook like he’s studying for finals."
"He’s not that bad," Mari said reasonably. "His drawings in art class are terrible, but at least he stopped throwing paper aeroplanes. He speaks in complete sentences now."
"He’s quiet," Bia said, keeping her green eyes on her paper as she cleaned a smudge. "He had questions about history notes."
"I haven’t seen Silva pull him out of class once this month," Daniela noted. "That’s already different."
"He is different," Mari offered, leaning her elbow on the table. "A couple of months ago he always looked ready to fight someone. Now he just looks tired."
Bia traced the outline of a drawn bench with her finger. "He’s under pressure at his club. Sometimes you can be sitting right next to him on the wall, and he’s still at Sporting. His mind is twenty kilometres away, checking things that haven’t even happened yet."
"Does he talk about it?" Daniela asked.
"A little," Bia said. "Not details. Just... whether he’s doing enough."
Before Daniela could respond, a shadow fell across the end of the table.
Rayan stood at the edge of the shade, his black Sporting backpack slung over one shoulder. His curls were slightly flattened from the heat, and he wore a plain grey T-shirt and shorts. He hesitated, glancing from Daniela to Mari before settling on Bia.
"Hey," Rayan said.
"Hey," Bia replied, sliding her pencil into the spiral binding.
"Mind if I sit?" Rayan asked, indicating the empty space at the end of the bench.
"Go ahead," Daniela said.
Rayan sat down, setting his bag between his feet. He pulled a bottle of water out, took a drink, and leaned slightly towards Bia, keeping his voice down.
"Training was better yesterday," Rayan said quietly. "I felt quick. I got back well too. Tavares didn’t say anything bad after the last drill."
Bia looked at him, her green eyes steady and attentive.
"Do you think..." Rayan hesitated, looking at the concrete before forcing his eyes back up to hers. "Do you think they’re going to keep me? Based on how much better I’m playing now compared to March?"
The question hung in the warm air under the blue-gum trees. Daniela stopped twirling her pen, and Mari glanced over from her notebook.
"I don’t know, Rayan," Bia said directly.
Rayan’s forehead creased with mild frustration. "You’ve seen me at the pitch. You saw the Casa Pia match clips on my phone last week. You know how much I was struggling two months ago compared to now."
"I know you’re playing better," Bia said, her tone remaining calm and unhurried. "I can see you’re working harder, and you’re not getting angry on the pitch like before."
"Then why wouldn’t they keep me?" Rayan pressed, his voice tightening slightly. "If the improvement is clear—"
"Rayan," Bia interrupted gently, stopping him with a small, firm gesture. "You want me to say yes. That doesn’t mean I know."
Rayan went quiet. He stared at her for a long moment, searching her face for validation or a softer answer. But Bia offered none. She simply gave him the truth, without pretending to hold authority over a club decision she had no part in.
Rayan let out a slow breath. The sharp edge of his frustration dulled into quiet acceptance.
"Right," Rayan muttered, looking down at his water bottle. "Yeah. Fair enough."
Daniela cleared her throat. "Anyway, back to real problems. Bia’s trying to figure out how to stop people from trampling her theoretical grass."
Mari turned her notebook back towards the centre. "I still say decorative gravel along the edges. If the texture changes underfoot, people instinctively slow down."
"Gravel gets kicked onto the pavement," Bia said, picking up her ruler. "Then groundskeepers have to sweep it back every morning."
Rayan looked at the paper spread out between Bia and Mari, studying the shaded elevation blocks and annotated arrows.
"If a van parks there," Rayan observed, pointing a finger with a short-clipped nail near the curb, "won’t it block people coming off the crossing?"
Bia stopped her pencil. She looked at the spot Rayan indicated, tracing the line from the pedestrian crossing across the drawn roadway.
Mari leaned in, squinting at the layout. "He’s right. That’s a blind corner."
"Look at that," Daniela said. "The football boy found a safety hazard."
Rayan didn’t smile, but he leaned back, resting his hands on the wooden table as Bia drew a revised curb radius to extend visibility.
"Extend the paved curb by two metres," Bia murmured, shading the line. "That forces delivery vehicles further back."
"Makes sense," Rayan said quietly.
Mari tapped her pen against her chin, sketching a signboard for the entrance. Daniela began complaining about a sandwich shop near the station that had terrible seating, and Mari countered with a critique of its handwritten menu font.
The conversation moved forward naturally, tumbling from architectural sightlines to bad school lunches and end-of-term exams.
Bia glanced at Rayan once. He was still sitting at the end of the bench, water bottle in hand, quietly following Daniela and Mari’s argument without steering things back towards Sporting.