"The review panel has examined Mr. Brooks's submission," Park announced. "We have identified a potentially significant constructive approach to a carefully defined version of the Hartwell periodic-extension problem. That is a preliminary assessment, not a completed peer review. The panel believes the work merits a full mathematical discussion."
Applause began at the front and spread across the room. Whitfield remained seated, staring at the tabletop. Park waited for quiet before explaining Rule 47 and the invitation to defend the work the following morning. Elijah watched on a monitor backstage, his stomach tightening when he heard the words professional assembly. Five minutes had almost broken him; now he was being asked to face experts for an hour.
Park looked toward the side door. "Elijah, you can decline. Your work will still receive the independent review it deserves. Would you like to present your argument in greater detail tomorrow?" A staff member offered him a microphone. He did not take it immediately.
He thought of Okonkwo's notebooks, his mother's borrowed day off, the school library where he had colored his first tiled page. He also thought of Whitfield's laugh, and a part of him wanted to prove the professor wrong so badly that it frightened him. Then he remembered the corner check, the little problem that had brought him here before he knew the symposium existed. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "But can I have my notebooks back to prepare?"
The question drew warm laughter. Park promised that the staff would make copies and return every page before he left. Ruiz smiled at him from the judges' table, and Brooks offered a nod that seemed to say he was about to be asked difficult questions for the right reasons. Elijah understood only part of it. Mostly he wanted dinner, a quiet room, and a chance to sleep.
In Roxbury, the community math center became so loud that Ruth could barely hear the final announcement. Parents hugged children, volunteers called relatives, and Nia jumped up and down shouting that her brother was going to be famous. Okonkwo had traveled to Boston with Elijah, but a video call connected her to the room immediately afterward. She asked the crowd to celebrate the invitation while remembering that a proposed proof needed independent checking, and a few children groaned at her insistence on caution.
"What matters right now," she told them, "is that a child from this neighborhood asked a serious question, worked honestly, and earned a serious hearing. Nobody handed him that work. And nobody gets to take it away because they're uncomfortable with his age or where he lives." Ruth watched the faces of the children as Okonkwo spoke. She recognized a kind of hope that needed handling as carefully as the fragile papers in Elijah's folder.
Backstage, an event coordinator explained that cameras were waiting outside. Danielle shook her head before the woman had finished. "He is ten," she said.
"He just went through a frightening morning. We're taking him to eat." The coordinator seemed startled that anybody would decline such valuable publicity, but Park supported the decision. Elijah walked out a service corridor with his mother and mentor, escaping the cameras for the time being.