medium · Act reading

Passage: Marisol had practiced the speech in her bathroom mirror until the words felt like furniture she could move in the dark. But at the podium, looking out at the rows of expectant faces, she realized the room had a texture her mirror could not reproduce: the small coughs, the rustle of programs, a child's voice somewhere near the back. She set her index cards down unread. For the first time the speech stopped being a thing she delivered and became a thing she shared, and her sentences, freed from their rehearsed order, came slower but truer. The passage indicates that Marisol's decision to set down her index cards results in:

1. a delivery that is less polished in timing but more genuine in feeling
2. a complete loss of her train of thought before the waiting audience
3. a return to the exact wording she had memorized in the mirror
4. an angry reaction from the audience members near the back of the room

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