***
The next day, I gave Marius the old World War Two fighter jacket I had. It had always been a little bit big on me and, frankly, I never wore it anymore.
“Thanks. I always liked it. You don’t have to.”
“Nope. It never quite fit, and I owe you big time. Consider it an early Christmas gift.”
At lunch the next day, we recounted our adventure to the cafeteria table. Moony sat quietly and detached.
“Hey, Moony,” Dale said. “What were you doing while all this was going on?” He started laughing.
Moony smiled and looked at me sheepishly. “Kiran told me to run, so I ran.”
The table broke out in laughter.
I leaned across to Moony and whispered to him. “Moony, you did a good thing. Whenever you’re in trouble, please run. Promise me.”
“Aw. You’re a great friend. Run. That’s what I’ll do if I’m ever in trouble.”
CHAPTER 19
Winter came slowly that year, and that was when it happened.
It was last-period English and a light snow had started falling. It was the first snowfall of the year at long last, and a lovely sight. Our classroom had a window looking out on the park. I was talking to Marius before class when out of the corner of my eye, I saw her at the window. Laura. I could see her sigh intensely as she admired the snow. She was wearing a white sweater with a Christmas floral decoration across the front. The image was framed indelibly in my mind. Her face against the backdrop of the freshly fallen snow.
Marius caught my gaze. “You are not listening. Pay attention.”
“Sorry what . . . I . . . was just . . .”
“What are you staring at?” He turned around slowly, but Laura had fortunately gone to her seat.
“The snow. I was wondering if they had started putting the boards up for the rink.”
“Oh,” he said.
I felt utterly relieved in that instant. Whether he was buying any of it was a different story.
That class, we were given twenty minutes of reading time. We had been studying Tender Is the Night and everyone was to silently read a selected passage.
I usually took advantage of this time to write. I put the novel on the desk to act as a decoy. I also pulled out my notebook to start an impromptu poem, “Laura by the Window.” I wrote and wrote, ever forgetful of where I was.
If the snow would dance on your skin,
how would it feel?
If I could touch that snow,
would that not be bold?
My thoughts ripple.
Daydreams spray my peace.
If I could only speak,
I would address such verse to
Laura by the Window.
Suddenly a shadow appeared on my desk and sheer panic spread across my body. It was Mrs. Woodsmith. I sat still and silent, not knowing what to say or do. My eyes were transfixed by the name on the page, “Laura.”
Without a word, I quickly slid my notebook under my paperback and started reading. Mrs. Woodsmith said nothing and tapped me gently on the shoulder. I kept my head down with my hands holding on to the book for dear life. She walked back to her desk, never saying a word. She sat down with a thoughtful look. She looked across the room to where Laura sat. A smile appeared on the corner of her lips. She then looked back across the room directly at me. Our eyes met briefly. I put my head down again. I cautiously peered up a second later and could see the knowing grin on her face.
Then a voice piped up to disturb the silence. It was Marius.
“Something funny, Mrs. Woodsmith, that you would like to share?”
At that moment, if the window were open, I would have jumped. Seriously. The fresh snow would have broken my fall.
She got up from her chair and moved out to the front of her desk. By now, most of the class had put their books down to see what the commotion was about.
“You amuse me, Marius. The truth can be so near for some who dare to seek it. So far for those who cannot see.”
“What?” he replied in a state of total confusion.
“Exactly. I was reflecting upon a joke a fellow teacher told me earlier today. It remains quite funny thinking about it.”
“Why don’t you share it with us so we could all get a laugh out of it?” Marius did not enjoy the teasing and was trying hard to turn the tables and claim a victory.
“I would, though I don’t think you would get it,” she said gleefully just as the bell rang.
Marius, utterly defeated (maybe for the first time I’d ever seen), tapped me on the back with his pen.
“What was that all about?”
“I’ve given up understanding teachers, Marius.”
Marius raced out the door, giving Mrs. Woodsmith a stare on the way out. I slowly passed by her with vigor, eager to avoid further scrutiny. I remained ever hopeful Marius’s scowl had distracted her enough.
“Have a very nice weekend, Mr. Wells,” she said as I was about to pass the doorframe. I didn’t even have to see her face. Her smirk was omnipotent and weaved its way through me.
I turned and glanced at her and muttered a quick soft, “Thank you,” and left.
CHAPTER 20
Christmas was always special. Unfortunately, it marched tortoise-paced toward you and ran away faster than a hare. In between, you barely had time to savor the moment. This year was even more special. My heart sang endlessly songs I couldn’t recognize and lyrics I couldn’t make out. I merely lived in tune with the melody of how they made me feel. The layer of snow outside in the park propagated ever so slowly. There were days when the rink in the park was a steady pattern of hockey amidst the falling snowflakes and shoveling.
Today Mrs. Woodsmith made an announcement. “You are to all prepare a poem by the end of this week.” The quiet murmur of submission from the class followed her declaration. “This time, you will not be handing them in but reciting them in class. It will be twenty percent of your semester grade. They can be any length and on any subject. Presentations will take place beginning Friday.”
“One tiny detail . . . they have to be original poems.”
The groans went off like mortar volleys through the class to only be silenced by the class bell.
Marius was quick to jump to his feet. “Wells, write me a sonnet, please. Not too good, just good enough.” He was half joking. If I wrote him a horrible one, I’m pretty sure he would accept it at face value and present it. It certainly would teach him a needed lesson.
“I’ll have trouble writing one myself by Friday, let alone writing you one!”
I walked to my locker, opened it, and buried the maniacal grin I had inside. I would be reciting a poem to Laura. An audience of one amongst many. My heart fluttered with both the opportunity and the thought of her listening to my heartfelt thoughts. Whatever I wrote now had to be singularly amazing.
***
The next few nights were sleepless and restless for me. Nothing was good enough. I filled wastebaskets with doomed ink and defective words. I needed to study for a physics test at the same time. I finally closed the textbook around 2 a.m. and went back to my thoughts and my dilemma. I drifted off to sleep with stereo headphones on and record player stylus long since upright and back in its holder.
My night’s toil began as the marriage of the lunar glow with the crystal-like snowflakes that evening lit up my room like thousands of fireflies. The words filled my head haphazardly, ricocheting off every wall before calmly settling into place. I couldn’t tell if I was asleep or awake. It made no difference to me.
It pulls me down from this soft cloud,
dances with me and pulls me tight.
As time nibbles on the playful moon,
the envious sun belches in a bright orange haze.
Come dawn, our dance, prematurely over,
gravit
y pulling me from this dream;
Falling farther from your outstretched hands,
the unburnt embers breathe life and pledge together
to defeat gravity and hold you forever.
Their flames fuel my love and serenade a lonely moon,
loyal forever to dreams once too often betrayed.
I wrote the words down on a piece of paper. It wasn’t hard for me to memorize them. It was truly a full moon shining through my window that night. A spider had started laying down its silky trail from the top frame of the glass to the bottom. The moonlight shined off this delicate string and glistened before my eyes. I thought of plucking the string to hear the wondrous music trapped within it. I finally slept—and slept well.
I walked to school with a quiet confidence. Along the way, Moony recited to all, whether we cared to listen or not, his forty-eight-stanza poem. Not once but twice. It was a consummate Moony performance. Pure nonsense and pure charm all at once. Marius had obviously done research and had a short poem called “The Blue Wheelbarrow.” His word count was about fourteen. From the time Marius told it on the way to school to the version at school, the words changed.
Finally, my silence grew noticeable.
“C’mon, Wellsie. You’re holding out,” Thomas demanded.
“Guys. I’m not done yet. I’m finishing it at recess. I’ll recite it on the way home.”
Just then the school bell rang; I was safe, for now.
Time oozed forward and meandered toward English period with insecurity flooding my heart. My homage had better be beyond just good. But, what if it sucked? Seriously. I took a long stuttering breath. Slowly but surely, anxiety took over. I saw Janie at her locker a couple of rows down from mine. She was adjusting her hair in the small mirror perched perilously on the top ledge of her locker.
She was usually pretty darn blunt but honest at the worst of times. Better still she was not in my English class. Her ears would be the perfect audience for a poem designed for a young woman.
“Janie! Moony asked me his opinion on a poem he wrote for English today. I desperately need a woman’s opinion, okay? I mean, I don’t know what to tell him.”
“I heard it’s an hour long, you serious?” Her hand brushed aside a stray hair from her face as she spoke.
“No, he wrote another one,” I said, handing her the fruits of my labor. I prayed she didn’t recognize my handwriting.
She read it slowly. Her facial expressions were thoughtful as her eyes squinted, studying the page. She finally looked up with a smirk. “Not my cup of tea. Pretty good, I suppose. Has Moony been drinking? It doesn’t sound like him.”
“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “Thanks. I’ll let him know it’s good to go. Then again, he may go with the other one he wrote,” I said as I desperately tried covering my tracks.
I walked into English class and almost choked on my exaggerated gasps of air and closed my eyes for an instant. Marius had his weighty feet up on the radiator at the back of the class. I could see the overcast sky outside. It was the kind of sky that foretold a winter storm. To my shock and dismay, Laura wasn’t there.
I went to my desk and prayed she would walk through the door. It didn’t happen.
As Mrs. Woodsmith went through the attendance list, faint hope made a brief cameo appearance. “Ms. Winters.”
“She’s sick today,” responded a female voice on her behalf. I almost thought the thud in my heart would echo throughout the class. I put my head down, hoping my sigh had gone unnoticed.
Damn it. Double damn. I took the paper in my hand with my poem and tucked it neatly in my writing notebook. There was no way I was reading that. Especially since she wouldn’t hear it. I thought maybe Mrs. Woodsmith would not call me to read mine and hopefully Laura would be back next class.
Then she went through the list of reciters for that day, and there was my name: fifth. I had maybe twenty minutes to write a new poem. One by one the four students preceding me came and went, during which time I wrote feverishly.
The snow, it falls covering
the quiet despair of summer’s hope.
Of flowers, long since grown and dead.
Of hope, betrayed without a whimper.
Alas, the tree branch shelters the last squirrel.
It will remain warm, returning with spring.
I will wait in frozen fascination;
Reborn, when a new hope
preys vengefully upon my tortured soul.
I had just finished when my name echoed across the room.
I don’t recall going up or reciting. But I know my eyes never left the white landscape in front of me. It was pretty darn gorgeous.
When I returned to my desk, Moony gave me the thumbs-up sign from his seat and Marius patted me on the shoulder. He leaned over and whispered, “At least you didn’t have a hard-on while you were presenting.” The highest compliment you would ever get from him.
While the class listened to Moony for a good thirty minutes, I sat with my head down. One more week to go before Christmas break and then I wouldn’t see her for two weeks.
I walked home dejectedly that day and sat on a park bench for what seemed like hours, just staring at the footprints that led me there, and watching the soft snow falling and gently filling them in.
I got bitterly sick that weekend, enough to make me miss school on Monday and Tuesday. I assumed Laura had returned and recited her poem while I was absent.
My parents took the opportunity of my being around the house with time on my hands to have me sign off on my college application. It seemed like a lot of paperwork for one school. I was so sick I couldn’t care less at that point and didn’t know what I was signing. I finally felt like my old self by Friday, the last day before school was out for the holidays.
English class was early that morning. I depressingly looked at Laura as she left class that day to attend her next one. My vision of her would have to keep until early January. I turned to Marius.
“Hockey at the rink? During holidays? I’ll bring my shovel.”
“I’ll be around. I’ll bring lots of pucks.”
Even that saddened me. We expected it to be our last winter on the outdoor rink together.
I wore my flight jacket all through classes that day. I felt slightly chilled as I walked to my locker for the last time before the new year. I opened it and held my notebook firmly in hands. Pages and pages filled. I clung to it tightly and closed my eyes briefly. One day I would sit back and read what I wrote. Not today and not for a while.
I was about to close my locker and turned my body slightly. Someone was there, right next to me. A bright ember sparked somewhere nurturing a warmth that filled my body. It was like the warm massage of a fever. Instead of feeling weak, my heart pulsated to a gentle beat. I didn’t need to see or hear; I knew who it had to be intuitively. My heart whimpered softly like a puppy. I turned and met her eyes briefly and drowned in them. I looked down not wanting to betray my secret.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to creep up on you,” Laura said. Her voice caressed and nibbled on my ear.
“No. Not at all. I didn’t want you to get hit by, you know . . . the locker.”
“I see; I’m okay. I wanted to ask you a favor.” Her eyes opened wide. I summoned all my energy and my senses to commit to memory those soulful dark eyes and long lashes.
“Sure,” I said, almost fainting. If I had fainted, it would have been a fitting death. The last image being her eyes. Life just does not make things so fundamental.
“It’s our last year in high school, and I’m making a memory book. In reality, it’s a kind of scrapbook.”
“For the school yearbook?”
“No. This yearbook is my own special one. I want to have a keepsake. I know it sounds trivial.”
“Not at all.” I melted now, serenely and invi
sibly. Trivial? Here I was, holding tons of paper with my obsessive musings.
“I know I missed some of the poem recitals and wanted some for my scrapbook. I mean just a copy. Mrs. Woodsmith suggested yours as one of them. She said it was quite good.”
“You spoke to Mrs. Woodsmith?”
“Yes. Mrs. Woodsmith suggested yours. If it’s a problem, don’t worry. You can keep it. I just want a copy.”
“No. Honestly, it is no problem at all. I’m glad she thought it was good.” I started shuffling the papers I had. I realized I had stuffed it into my notebook.
“Wow. You take a lot of notes,” she said, pointing to my notebook with papers sticking out all over.
“I guess I like to write… maybe too much sometimes,” I said, giggling. At that point, I felt totally at ease swimming in an endless ocean filled with calm, warm waters.
She laughed. “You’re not the only one.”
I finally found the poem and handed it to her.
“The library isn’t closed yet. I’ll hurry and make a photocopy and bring it right back to you.” Now the smart, logical choice would be to accompany her to the library and steal every second with her possible. Of course, my mind no longer worked in tune with the laws of physics or logic.
“No. Please, you can keep it.”
“Seriously. I can’t keep it. You probably worked hard at it.”
“Trust me. It means a lot that someone would want it. It’s yours. Please keep it.” I handed the paper over to her, and our fingers gently brushed.
“Thanks so much,” she said, staring with her vast dusky eyes right through me and swallowing my soul. She started backing up and as she did, she said: “Merry Christmas—and thanks again.”
She slowly moved backward, watching me. No words could come out of my mouth. A million thoughts and images raced through my mind, including how I should give her the original poem that was meant only for her. Finally, as she was about to give up and turn, it came out.
“Merry Christmas, Laura.” She smiled, seemingly satisfied with the response, and walked away. I closed my locker, and Marius was beaming, with Moony close behind.
The Boys Who Danced With the Moon Page 14