by Jude Warne
“I put it on your desk, tiger,” Mom called over her shoulder. She and Dad were cooking eggplant parmigiana for dinner, my and Sal’s favorite. Luckily the ice cream hadn’t destroyed my appetite.
“Thanks, Mom. When’s dinner?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Dad replied.
“I’ll be there,” I said as I hurried to my room to check out the note. I was pretty sure that Amelia had left me the log-in info for an online poetry anthology she had told me about, like, three months ago. She had told me it included one of my favorite Jack Kerouac poems that hadn’t been published in any book or poetry journal.
Sal rubbed up against my leg to greet me when I reached my room. I hadn’t been spending enough time with him and made a mental note to play our favorite game of fetch at least twice this weekend with his favorite green ball.
“Hey buddy,” I said as I scratched his neck. He purred in reply.
I threw my book bag down and looked over the note, which included Amelia’s username and password for the anthology’s webpage.
I logged into the site on my laptop and began to skim through the archival contents. Most of the poems were by unknown authors that I didn’t recognize, but I clicked on this rare 1940s Kerouac poem, which I started to read on a new page. The bottom of the page offered suggestions of which poem to read next, and one caught my eye because of its familiar title.
“Magnolia Monday” by Gladys Larson, 1931. I clicked on it and was taken to the poem’s page. As I read, I couldn’t believe the words I encountered on the screen. No, I thought to myself, it couldn’t be. But it sure as anything looked like the poem that Wren had shown to me, the one that she had entered into the contest at Henley, the one that she told me she had written.
I went to my desk and rifled through the untidy stack of pages there until I found it. Wren had given me a copy of her poem to edit on Wednesday and I had written up some suggestions. I still had the copy.
There it was: “Flowers on a Friday,” by Wren Cooper. I placed the paper next to the laptop screen, with the poem by Gladys Larson.
Identical. Word for word.
Before I knew it, Sunday night was upon me again. The weekend had gone by in a rainy whirlwind during which I had mostly just tried to catch up on my schoolwork. I had succeeded in that, at least, uncharacteristically finishing all of my assignments by four in the afternoon, leaving my Sunday evening totally free. I had written my weekly essay for Ms. Reese on Saturday morning at around eight, which if someone had told me I was going to do last week, I wouldn’t have believed him. Usually I slept until ten or eleven on weekend mornings—but in light of recent events I hadn’t been sleeping well at all.
I wasn’t sure what to do about Wren and the fact that she most likely had stolen that magnolia poem and claimed it as her own to submit into the contest. I kept thinking that there must be some explanation, but every time my mind followed a train of logical reasoning, it ran hard up against a brick wall of high improbability.
For instance: perhaps Wren really had authored the poem and published it under the penname Gladys Larson . . . in 1931, because she had access to a time machine and got her kicks from being published in different historical eras . . . No, not likely.
Perhaps Wren had promised Gladys on her deathbed that she would make sure that her magnolia poem was appreciated by modern audiences too, vowing to get it published again under a new name . . . But when I googled Larson I discovered that she had died in 1988 before Wren was even born . . . No, not likely.
Perhaps Amelia’s poetry anthology webpage was a fake site full of stolen poems with fake years on them. Maybe someone using the name Gladys Larson was a plagiarizer herself—and had used Larson’s name and stolen the poem from Wren and Wren didn’t even know . . . No, not likely.
With all of these scenarios running through my mind, I hardly slept a wink.
I just couldn’t imagine Wren blatantly stealing someone’s idea; I couldn’t imagine anyone doing it, really. As a writer myself, it would be my worst nightmare to see something I had written and which had come from my own unique mind, claimed by someone else too cowardly to do his or her own work. Wren didn’t seem cowardly but instead seemed just the opposite. All of her positivity, her enthusiasm about the poetry club, her interest in the history of North Beach and the Beats, her seeming belief in the “First thought, best thought” philosophy—could these qualities point to Wren being a thief and liar?
Wren and I had made plans to go to Sausalito on Saturday but I suggested we reschedule, using the bad weather as an excuse. The truth was that I wasn’t ready to see her just yet, not until I figured out how to approach her about my discovery. I didn’t want to accuse her of anything necessarily, but I did want to know the real story, especially since she had entered the poem into the contest. What if she ended up winning? If the poem had been published before, it stood a good chance at being published again!
I paced around my room, which suddenly felt very small and prisonlike. Sal eyed me suspiciously from his perch on the bookshelf. I picked him up and put him on my shoulders, his purring growing louder. From my window, I watched the green trees outside get whipped about by the pounding rain. My brain felt like one of them.
I put Sal down and walked toward the study. Mom had taken one of her classes to an evening seminar, but Dad was home and working on a new research paper. I found him hunched over his desk surrounded by books of all shapes and sizes. I needed to talk to him.
“Dad?”
He jumped about a foot in the air and then breathed a sigh of relief when he saw me.
“You scared me, Hunter, sorry. I’ve been miles away in this research for the past hour. What’s going on? I should probably make us some dinner soon. It’s after seven and Mom won’t be home until later.”
“Nah, that’s okay. I’m not too hungry,” I replied, taking a seat in Mom’s rocking chair.
Dad took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and spun around in his desk chair to face me.
“All right. Hey Hunt, anything wrong? You seem like there’s something bothering you.”
Was it that obvious?
“Can I ask you something, Dad? Can I ask you what you would do in a situation—a theoretical situation?”
“Sure. Ask away.”
“What would you do if you thought that somebody was stealing someone else’s work?”
Dad raised his eyebrows.“Stealing?”
“Well yeah, taking something that someone else had written and putting his—or her—own name on it instead. Plagiarizing, I guess is the official name for it.”
“Hunter, you know how Mom and I feel about plagiarism, how the university holds plagiarism as one of the worst student crimes possible.”
I didn’t want Dad to get too heavy-handed about all this. Couldn’t he be neutral for like, five minutes?
“I know but—” I began to answer.
“Creativity is one of the highest values that we . . . I mean, it is to be respected and credited accurately—”
Dad was getting all worked up, I could tell. He had taken off his glasses, and the pace of his speech increased.
“Right, but Dad, what if by republishing the piece—well, what if it was the only option? What if the—the—stealer-writer had run out of time by a deadline, you know?”
Dad thought about it some more, then shook his head.
“Think about it this way. How would you feel if you found one of your pieces claimed by someone else, even though you had written it?”
I thought seriously before I answered.
“Well, if it happened to be a cultural manifesto that was going to change the world, I’d have to put my ego aside and just be glad that it was out there in the world. Anything other than that, well, I’d be super, super angry.”
“Of course you would, and you would have a right to be. Plagiarizing is stealing, Hunter. It’s never good.”
I got a creepy feeling in my stomach when he said it. I had been thinking t
he same thing.
The next morning I waited outside on the lawn for Carmelita. The grass was still drenched from the weekend of rain, but the Monday sun shone brightly up above. I chose to believe that it was a good omen.
I hadn’t seen Car since Friday at Weir’s, and I felt a bit nervous about seeing her again. Would things be different between us now? She had acted like they wouldn’t, but I wasn’t so sure. I had been a bit preoccupied with the whole Wren-as-Gladys-Larson debacle all weekend and had put off processing what Carmelita had told me. But this morning it stared me in the face once more. It didn’t help that I had dreamt about her again last night.
In the dream, she had started out as Wren before morphing into Carmelita, who repeated the speech that she had fed to me on Friday. In the dream, it led into a confession of being in love with Tyler.
I suppose it was more of a nightmare than a dream.
I turned to see Carmelita running down the stairs in her favorite converse and a flower print dress.
“Sorry, Ziv! I’m coming!”
She had almost reached me when she stumbled over a rogue tree root on the lawn and fell, her books flying everywhere. I ran to help her up.
“Car—Car, are you all right?”
She took my hand and tried to stand up but then tripped again on her dress. She burst out laughing and couldn’t seem to stop.
“I’m . . . fine,” she said between laughs. “Happy to have started the week off on the right foot.”
That got me going, too, and soon neither of us could stop laughing. Finally, she stood up and looked me square in the face.
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
“Hey, yourself.”
Her eyes looked clearer, her gaze more direct. I felt like it was the first time that I had ever looked at her.
“Well?” she replied.
“Well, what?”
Did she want me to kiss her or something?
“Well, don’t you think we should get going if we don’t want to miss the announcement about the contest?”
“Oh, right.”
Suddenly I wished the whole contest-and-poetry-club-thing had never even happened.
We walked along the road in the direction of Henley High.
“Have you planned on what your concession speech will be when you . . . lose to me?” Carmelita joked.
“Ha ha. That’ll never happen.”
“Famous last words!”
It really was a beautiful morning. We even spotted a few butterflies hanging around the tulip garden that was outside Weir’s.
“How was the concert?” I asked, trying to sound only half-interested.
“Oh man, it was great! Julian’s brother was a total whacko! He spent most of the concert crowd surfing. Eventually he threw away his mic and just surfed while the band jammed.”
“I’m not surprised, I guess. Sounded like a make-shift operation.”
“Oh sure, but it was a lot of fun.”
I felt all tight inside. I suddenly remembered my nightmare from last night, and how Tyler and Car had walked off together, super into each other, and away from me.
“Julian didn’t try anything on you, did he?”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t . . . all over you . . . or anything?”
I was pretty sure that I sounded like a nut but I couldn’t stop myself. Carmelita started laughing again.
“Julian? I don’t even think he likes girls! What is going on with you, Hunter?”
A lot, Car, a real lot. Suddenly the idea of you with any guy other than me makes me feel sick.
“What about Tyler?”
I had gone too far. Carmelita stopped dead in her tracks even though we were just one block away from school. Groups of students passed us by. Some stopped to look and then kept walking. Car took my hand and pulled us over and out of the way.
“Look,” she said, “I missed you at the concert on Friday night. I want us to be friends, okay? I’m really sorry if . . . if I freaked you out on Friday when I told you, you know, how I feel. Felt.”
The correction of tense intrigued me. She went on.
“I probably shouldn’t’ve told you because it doesn’t matter anymore; you’ve got someone else, anyway. You’ve been so serious lately. Maybe we both have. You know, you can be a great writer and still have fun.”
“Car?”
We had started walking again, toward the main doors of Henley.
“What would you do if you thought that somebody was stealing someone else’s work?”
She stopped short again and sighed, exasperated with me. “What?”
“If you thought that someone had stolen someone else’s work and put his own name on it instead?”
Carmelita scanned my face carefully, trying to read it.
“Thought or knew?”
“Thought, I think.”
Carmelita walked over to the lockers and I followed. She hastily threw her Physics book in and shut the door to relock it.
“I would ask him how it felt to steal other people’s hard-earned intellectual property. I would tell him to get a life,” she said over her shoulder as she walked toward Ms. Reese’s room. “You coming?”
That settled it for me.
When I reached Ms. Reese’s classroom, I took my seat with Car and Tyler. I felt kind of relieved to see them in real life and not . . . declaring any wild love for each other. It seemed that some kind of spell had broken. Suddenly the idea of Wren turned me off immensely. I really did not want to see her and hoped that she would be absent. Something told me she wouldn’t be though. Ms. Reese was going to announce the three finalists of the poetry contest today, and I was sure that Wren would want to hear the results.
Just like that, there she was. Wren waltzed in and took her usual seat on the other side of the room. She looked beautiful in a black dress and black ballet slippers. When she saw me, she gave a soft wave and mouthed a Hi! I was suddenly extra aware of myself and of Wren, and I didn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea about us. I didn’t want them to think that we were together or anything; I didn’t want Carmelita to think so in any case. I smiled back at Wren in an attempt to seem friendly and felt my cheeks burn in embarrassment. How perfect. If I were writing the short story, I would’ve written it just this way too:
Hunter Zivotovsky, writer-genius extraordinaire, finally got the girl he’d always wanted . . . only to realize that he didn’t want her at all. And that she might be the biggest plagiarizer of all time . . .
Oh boy, that part nauseated me. If Wren really did steal the poem, and Ms. Reese or the Dandicat Press people found out, would she be arrested? Wouldn’t legal stuff come into play, like copyright issues? I was starting to think that I was in over my head.
Ms. Reese came striding into the classroom and I felt relieved at once. If anyone would be able to straighten all of this out, it would be her.
“Good morning, everybody. Good weekends, despite the three-day-long raging monsoon?”
There was an assortment of half-hearted responses throughout the room.
“Glad to hear it. Pass your essays forward, if you please. Then I’ll get to the exciting news that I’m sure you’re anxiously waiting to hear.”
I dug my paper out of my bag, which I had typed—and saved, multiple times—on my laptop. These days it was difficult to know when someone might decide to tear up a writer’s only copy at random.
Once she had collected everyone’s work, Ms. Reese stood in the center of the room holding a piece of official-looking paper.
“Here in my hands, I hold the results of Dandicat Press’s decisions on the contest finalists! Is everybody ready?”
Most of the class had woken up by now and sat in focused attention, awaiting the news. Only Julian Frey was still dozing off as he usually did on Monday mornings. Kate Shankar kept nudging him in the ribs to wake him up.
“Oh, and,” Ms. Reese added, “the contest judges provided comments on each poem that was sub
mitted. So even if you didn’t advance to the semi-finals, you will still receive highly valuable feedback from some very insightful editors. Sound good?”
There were some nods and grunts of agreement.
“Next week you guys, I am bringing coffee in for everyone, okay? Because this does not cut it . . . Okay. The three finalists of the contest are . . . ”
My heart thumped loudly in my chest. The future of my literary career hung in the balance—maybe.
“Carmelita Lorca, Kate Shankar, and Wren Cooper!”
The room burst into applause. I had to remind myself to join in.
Truth be told, I was in a state of semi-shock that my poem hadn’t made it. I was borderline in a state of panic too that Wren’s—or Gladys Larson’s—poem had made it. What if she won? Would that be fair to the real Gladys, to Ms. Reese and the Dandicat Press judges, to Kate and—Carmelita?
I would ask him how it felt to steal other people’s hard-earned intellectual property. I would tell him to get a life.
I looked over at Car, whom Tyler and Julian were congratulating and saying encouraging words to.
“Congrats, Car. I’m . . . well, I’m proud of you,” I told her loudly over the many conversations going on all over the room.
“Thanks, Ziv,” she replied, beaming at me.
I felt surer than ever that I liked Carmelita, that I liked her as more than a friend. The timing of this was terrible. It was all too much. Son of a—
“Hunter?”
Ms. Reese was standing above me with a stack of papers in her hands. She handed my poem back to me.
“Well done, Hunter. The editors said that you nearly made it to the semifinals. Keep up the good work. Be sure to read the comments on the back too, I think they’ll help you.”
“Thanks, Ms. Reese.”
I looked through my poem and felt a mixture of contempt and love for it. I had truly believed that I was going to win.
On the back of the paper were a few handwritten comments made by the editor judges.
Excellent, clear voice and style. Confidence evident. Word usage impressive for grade level. Shows artistic promise. Overly serious in subject and tone, which lessens the emotional effect of the poem.