by Box Set
“You’ve been nominated.”
* * *
I stop suddenly in the abandoned hall,
Shove him away from me
Into the lockers.
I get real close to his face,
Only a finger’s width between us.
* * *
“Listen,” I start, before I notice
His eyes.
Green-gray like murky water,
Make me want to see what treasures,
Or dangers,
Are hidden underneath.
* * *
For a pinch of a moment,
A mere wisp of time,
They reveal what he doesn’t
Want me to see.
* * *
But I’m trained
To see what’s hidden in those pinches,
Release the shutter on my camera
To capture those secrets
Forever.
* * *
I have no camera, but I see
Into the depths of his dangerous waters.
I find heat.
* * *
Trevor has his own fire burning.
* * *
How have I never seen it before?
4
“HERE’S THE DEAL,”
I say,
Step back real fast.
I have a boyfriend I have a boyfriend
Runs through my mind.
* * *
“Deal?” Trevor straightens his shirt,
Smiles slow,
Like he has a lot secrets he
Doesn’t want anyone to know.
* * *
He might,
But I know at least one of them.
I saw it.
* * *
“You let me photograph you for the contest.
My whole exhibit gets to be you,
The ever popular,
Super-hot,
Most lusted after boy
At Copper Hills High.”
* * *
I’ve been dying to shoot him for years,
Find out what really lives,
Breathes,
Pulses,
Behind those eyes.
* * *
“You think I’m hot?”
Trevor pushes the newspaper into his man-purse.
* * *
“Everyone thinks you’re hot,” I respond.
“And every photo will be of you, Trevor.
Every one.”
* * *
He hears what I’m saying.
He pales,
Looks away,
Swallows.
* * *
“As long as you enter the contest,” he says,
Making my stomach clench.
I really thought he’d say no, and
My pride won’t let me back out now.
* * *
“Great,” I say in my sweetest voice as I
Hover close to him again.
“Can’t wait to see what your soul says to my lens.”
5
“I THINK YOU’RE HOT TOO,”
Circles in my head
In time to the beat of the song on the radio.
* * *
Trevor’s last words to me before he left me
Stunned,
Standing in the hallway.
* * *
“Stupid Trevor Youngblood,” I mutter.
He couldn’t even let me have the last word.
He never could.
* * *
My cell phone blares:
Harris’s ringtone.
6
“HEY, BEAUTIFUL,”
He says when I answer.
* * *
“Hey, Harris.”
I find I don’t have anything else to say.
I know he was disappointed about
What happened at lunch.
I’d have been disappointed if my boyfriend
Ran from the car
Like it was on fire
After I told him,
“I am in love with you.”
* * *
“Listen—” he begins.
* * *
“I just don’t get it,” I blurt out.
“Okay? I mean, what does that even mean, you know?
How can people be ‘in love’?
It’s not a place, like where you get bacon sandwiches
Or something.”
* * *
“Do you want a bacon sandwich, Liv?
Because I’ll get you one.”
* * *
I laugh,
Because Harris said that just to elicit such a response.
* * *
I guess that should mean something
That he knows exactly what to say to get me to laugh.
* * *
“I knew you’d freak out,” he says.
“I just wanted to say it when I was feeling it.”
* * *
“Feeling what? Like we’re in love together?
Or that you were just fond of me in that moment
Because I told you how funny you are, and
That I like being with you, and
That your car smells nice?”
* * *
“Come on,” he says,
“You know this is more than me having a clean vehicle.”
* * *
“But is it?” I ask, not trying to be difficult
But trying to figure out what it means to
Be in love with someone.
* * *
“I love my cat,” I say,
“My dad.
Taking pictures.
I love watching the rain when I’m inside,
And I love the thought of traveling the world one day.
But I’m not in love with those things.”
* * *
I shake my head,
Turn left onto Washington Boulevard.
“I just don’t get it.
Why don’t we just say,
‘I love you, Harris.
I love you too, Olivia.’
What does ‘in love with you’
Even mean?”
* * *
Harris sighs in a way that means he’s annoyed,
Yet contemplating what I said.
“So you think I simply should’ve said,
‘I love you, Olivia.’”
* * *
“At least I would know what that means!”
I pull into my driveway,
Put the car in park, and
Lean my head against the window.
* * *
Silence drapes between me and Harris.
I think of my parents,
Who, years ago,
Used to be “in love with each other.”
Then Mom decided she liked a
Mercedes Benz
More than Dad.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“I just don’t get that particular phrasing of one’s affections.”
* * *
“It’s okay,” Harris says.
“I still love you, Olivia.”
* * *
I don’t echo it back.
Instead, I get out of the car,
Phone pressed to my ear, and
Ask,
“Wanna come over?
Rose doesn’t get home until four.”
7. “I’M HOME!”
My nine-year-old sister announces
This every afternoon,
As if her homecoming is something monumental,
Something worth celebrating.
* * *
Harris shifts on the couch,
Where we are half-watching-TV,
Half-kissing.
* * *
I sit up,
Meet my sister’s bright smile,
Follow her into the kitchen.
* * *
“Wanna snack?” I ask,
Already reaching for the
raisins.
“How was school?”
* * *
“Good,” Rose says,
Launches into how awesome her teacher is, and
How Kevin got in trouble, and
How the mashed potatoes at lunch are sooo good.
* * *
I smile,
Thinking that I love Rose.
* * *
But I am not in love with her.
7
“LIKE THIS?”
Trevor asks the next afternoon as
He scoots forward on the couch,
Raises one fist to his chin
Like he’s Uncle Rico on Napoleon Dynamite.
* * *
“Get real,” I respond,
Analyze his position, and
Notice his hips are too far forward,
His back too bent,
His left arm dangling in empty air.
* * *
This picture would be a nightmare.
* * *
“I’m going to manhandle you.”
I step toward him,
Let the camera settle around my neck.
* * *
“I wish you would,” he says.
* * *
I push on his shoulders,
Force him back into the couch.
“Arm up, like there’s a girl sitting
Here you really like.
Gross, not creepy-possessive-like.
Release the fingers.
You don’t own her,
You’re just claiming the space she occupies.
Yeah, yeah, like that.”
* * *
I picture myself in that spot,
Sitting close,
Feeling the warmth of his almost-on-my-shoulders arm,
Smelling the maleness of his skin.
* * *
He should be carefree,
Hands loose,
Smile wide,
“Left leg up,” I say. “Ankle on knee.”
* * *
He moves,
That diabolical grin on his face.
“Turn your right toe more toward me.
Good. Okay, tilt your head just a little…
Too much. You’re not a puppet.”
* * *
I step toward him,
Feeling the heat of his body
As I invade his space.
His smile faces as I gently push on his chin, and
Say, “Just a little.
Then I can catch the light in your eyes.
Makes you look alive.”
* * *
“Hand here.” I move his left hand down on his knee more,
Ignoring the thrill that squirrels down my spine
When we touch.
“We don’t want to this look posed,
Though it is posed.
You should look natural,
Like you just sat down, and
Now you’re waiting for your girlfriend,
Who will easily slip into this space, because
She knows she belongs there.”
* * *
“Got it,” he says.
“And I’m waiting.”
He grins,
One eyebrow raised, and
I ignore his flirtations as
I step back and raise my camera,
A dance we are unaccustomed to,
But one we will master.
* * *
I snap several pictures before he smiles,
Before he cages his soul.
“Smile,” I say, “Like the girl coming to sit next to you is special.
Don’t look at her! Look at me.”
* * *
Click click click.
I take his picture in rapid-fire succession.
* * *
“I’m home!” Rose announces.
* * *
I drop the camera,
Remove the strap from my neck.
“We’re done for today.”
* * *
“Tomorrow?” Trevor asks,
Gets up, and
Brushes imaginary dirt from his jeans.
“We can go to my place.”
He doesn’t look at me as he says it.
* * *
“Right,” I say
As I roll my eyes.
He knows there’s no way I’m going to his place
Tomorrow,
Or ever.
* * *
“How about the dock?”
I shoo Rose into the kitchen with a look that says,
Be right there. Get out the crackers.
* * *
I turn back to Trevor and find him
Too close,
Smiling,
Eyebrows raised.
“The dock?”
* * *
I suppress the memory of what happened
Last time I was at the dock
Alone with Trevor.
* * *
“I’ll bring my assistant,” I say,
“She needs the hours, and
You need the water to make you look good.”
* * *
“I thought you said I was hot.”
* * *
“I said everyone thinks you’re hot.”
* * *
“You pay someone to help you take pictures?”
* * *
“Sort of. She’s more like an intern.”
* * *
Sufficiently satisfied with my answers,
Trevor stoops for his man bag, and
Agrees to meet me at the dock
After school tomorrow.
8
“I JUST FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH HIM,”
Mom says about why she left Dad.
* * *
I’d never asked her,
But while my problem is that
I’ve bottled everything up
Mom’s is that she never shuts up.
* * *
This is another thing about love
I do not understand.
* * *
The word “fall” should not be applied to
Anything but a season.
* * *
My grandpa fell last year,
Broke his hip, and
Hasn’t walked normally since.
* * *
I fell out of bed as a baby,
Goose-egged my head, and
Cried all night.
* * *
Or so Dad says.
* * *
Gravity takes complete control
Of things,
Making them fall,
Shatter,
Split,
Separate.
* * *
Like my parents,
My family.
* * *
Where is this “love” place anyway?
* * *
The only thing I imagine when someone says,
“I’m falling in love with him,”
Is pain,
Injury,
Danger,
Death.
* * *
Like jumping from an airplane
Without a parachute,
Hoping to hit the magic vortex
Labeled LOVE, and
Find someone there you like enough
To live with forever.
* * *
“Not forever,”
I mutter to myself
As I clean up my photography equipment.
* * *
Because apparently,
You can fall out of love
Too.
* * *
I wonder if falling out hurts more than falling in,
Or if it’s like
Slipping through the cracks
When no one is looking.
9
“DAD, WHY DID MOM LEAVE?”
My voice fractures the silence of dinner and
Causes Rose to look up sharply from her spaghetti.
* * *
Dad twirls his noodles, and
Breathes in deep, and
Meets my eyes.
* * *
“I mean, you didn’t work late”—
Something I’d heard my BFF Jacey’s mom complain about—
“You make enough money.
I make dinner.
Rose is the cutest thing ever.”
* * *
I don’t know why I’m asking.
I don’t really care.
I’ve just been thinking about what Harris said,