The Henley High Poetry Club

by Jude Warne

  “Apparently,” Ms. Reese continued, “the poet from whom the student took the poem happened to be an old mentor of one of the contest judges who recognized the work instantly. Interesting, too, given that the poem is so obscure. I had never heard of it before myself. So as is fitting, the entry poem has been dismissed from the contest.”

  I heard Wren’s name mentioned here and there amidst the chatter in the room. Carmelita and Tyler both shot me looks of concern. Tyler made a disappointed face, while Car mouthed, You okay? I nodded that I was. Ms. Reese stood up from her director’s chair and paced around the room a bit as she continued to talk.

  “I’d also like to say to you guys now, that you should never feel that you have to resort to stealing if you either can’t come up with a creative idea or for some reason can’t finish an assignment. Authenticity is the best and most powerful quality that you as writers can bring to creative work. It is what makes you, you. And it’s irreplaceable. Have confidence enough to know that.”

  The class was still quiet and attentive as Ms. Reese took a deep breath and reached for the results envelope once more.

  “Now, onto bigger and better, brighter, and most of all lighter, things. Let’s do this. The winner of the poetry contest is . . . Carmelita Lorca!”

  The room erupted into applause. Kate Shankar looked vaguely disappointed but congratulated Car just the same. I was so proud of Carmelita. She was always direct, straight with me, honest, smarter than me. She was onto Will and the club’s ridiculousness one minute into the first meeting. Before that even.

  “Congratulations, Carmelita. We look forward to reading the next issue of the Dandicat Press Literary Journal, with your poem inside it, the only one by a high school student. Most excellent.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Reese,” Car said, beaming.

  She looked extraordinarily happy. She looked beautiful. She was the coolest girl that I had ever met, and she was my best friend.

  “Great job, Car,” I said. “You deserve it.”

  “Thanks, Hunt.”

  I suddenly had the desperate urge to speak with her, alone. I felt like I had all of this stuff to tell her. We hadn’t talked—really talked—in so long. Now she was getting her work published in a real literary journal. I didn’t want her to forget about me.

  I’ve tried to hint at it, to feel you out over the past year after I realized how I felt, but you didn’t pick it up.

  Zivotovsky, you fool!

  Just friends is fine . . .

  “Car?” I asked. “What are you doing for lunch? Maybe we could—”

  Everybody was trying to talk to Carmelita at once. We were a bunch of Honors Lit nerds after all—what had I expected? It was a big deal. Ms. Reese had sat back down in her chair and seemed to be grading our recent essays, having given up on trying to get us focused.

  Car heard me.

  “Sorry, Ziv, I have to go to Physics tutoring during lunch today. The future of my academic life depends on it, otherwise I would skip.”

  She smiled at me warmly, but I was worried. I didn’t want to lose her.

  The rest of the day dragged on. I saw Carmelita twice more throughout the rest of classes, but both times she had been with someone who was dragging her off somewhere. I couldn’t seem to be with her for longer than thirty seconds. It was an important day for her, for her literary career, something that we had talked about and planned for often. Perfect. After spending years as her right-hand man, clocking hours and hours of hangout time—after living in the same building—I couldn’t get close to her today, when I really needed to. When I really wanted her badly.

  By the end of the day I felt strung out on her. It seemed like the longest Tuesday in history. I had a near miss in Trig when Mr. Kim called on me to answer a question I hadn’t even heard asked. I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than talking to Carmelita as soon as possible.

  I chose to wait for her outside by the exit doors after tenth period. We usually walked home together anyway, but since I hadn’t spoken to her all day, I was worried about whether our routine would carry through as usual. Now Carmelita was a published author. I remembered how I had changed when I was singled out in the poetry club. She was liable to change at any minute.

  But she didn’t. At three thirty sharp, roughly ten or so minutes after most Henley students had fled for the day, Car came trotting down the main stairs. I had seen her perform this same action so many times before, but today it seemed different. I wanted something from her today, I guessed. Something more.

  “Hunter! Am I glad to see you. Today has been craaaaazy,” she said as she walked toward me. She walked purposefully slow for comedic effect.

  “Well you’re a bigwig published writer, now. Contest-winner too. Quite a day for you, Car.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. The sun shone strongly above us as Car put on her aviator shades. We started to walk toward home. A few blocks passed before I could muster up the courage to tell Carmelita what I needed to. To tell her in just the right way.

  “Yeah, well. I better get used to it, right? You better get used to it too, Ziv.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re going to be a published author too. Anyone with half a brain knows that.”

  “Thanks, Car.”

  “Really. I was pretty sure you would have made it to the semifinal round.”

  “Thanks, but I wasn’t surprised. The poem that I turned in . . . well let’s just say, it wasn’t like me. It was more like what I was trying to be.”

  We walked along in silence for a bit. This courage-mustering was harder than I thought. But if Carmelita could do it with her confession at Weir’s last Friday, so could I.

  I reached out and took her hand. It was easier than I thought it would be. She didn’t pull away, and we stayed like that for a while. The afternoon breeze blew at its own whims. Here goes, I thought.

  “Carmelita, I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.”

  “About the other night. About Friday.”

  Car squeezed my hand. “Hunt, I told you—”

  “No, I know, I know. But I didn’t tell you, you know? I didn’t really tell you what I thought.”

  We passed Weir’s Weird Ice Cream Shop and I got a flash craving for Raspberry Thyme. Wow, I really was changing. Cedar sage chocolate was the furthest thing from my mind. I liked the way that Carmelita’s hand felt in mine. It felt obvious. It felt right.

  “Carmelita, I’m sorry for being a dumb . . . well, a dumb person. I didn’t see a lot of things that were true. I didn’t see you, not really. I mean, I didn’t see how I really felt about you. This whole poetry contest and everything surrounding it . . . I just wanted to apologize to you, for not really being here lately. I’ve been off in my own world.”

  “Yeah well, we all do that sometimes, Ziv. I mean, you were working on stuff. It’s okay. You’re supposed to.”

  “No, Car, you’re not listening to me. You’re being too . . . too nice. I’m trying to tell you something here.”

  “Okay, well then tell me.”

  I stopped abruptly on the sidewalk. There was a cluster of trees off behind the bakery on Telegraph Avenue and we walked over to it.

  “Car, I’m sorry for neglecting you.”

  She leaned against a tree and burst out laughing.

  “What are you talking about, Hunter?”

  “I’m sorry for not seeing the truth about you sooner. The truth about, you know, us.”

  She grew serious again and looked me straight in the eye. I felt my cheeks get red again but I didn’t care.

  “The truth?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I tried to explain, “you know what it is. You said it on Friday.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “But I’m nervous now,” I went on. Carmelita looked confused.

  “Nervous?”

  I put my hands in my pockets and walked a step or two away and then back, thinking.

  �
�Well yeah, nervous. I mean last I heard, just friends was fine. Your words, Carmelita. But you see, it’s not really fine. Not with me. What about more? What about . . . more than just friends?”

  She stared at me for a moment but didn’t speak, like she was waiting for me to go on with my speech. Maybe I hadn’t been courageous enough.

  “Carmelita, things have changed here, all right? They’re different now.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “I want you now,” I went on. “Do you still want me?”

  She looked at me for a moment and I wasn’t sure what she would do. Then she suddenly pulled me toward her and the tree that she leaned against. We kissed.

  That was that.

  “Look at this, Carmelita.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s your work, on sale here in City Lights. Living the dream—literally.”

  I picked up the copy of Dandicat Press Literary Journal and flipped to the page with Carmelita’s winning poem on it. I pointed to it and smiled.

  “There it is. Genius realized. There you are.”

  Car laughed. “Can I keep you around? Good for my ego, you know?”

  I looked over each shoulder, making sure there was no one around the bookshelf aisle that we currently occupied.

  I leaned in and kissed her.

  “Ahem,” someone said in a purposefully pronounced way. It was Tyler. Carmelita and I looked up, caught. We’d been together for a month but hadn’t made it official. It hadn’t been announced on Facebook yet.

  “It’s about time,” Tyler said smiling. Car and I looked over. I was pretty sure that I’d turned red upon being discovered. I didn’t care though.

  “Have you seen this?” I asked Tyler, grabbing the copy of Dandicat Press Literary Journal from the shelf. Tyler smiled and nodded.

  “That I have, my man. Congratulations Car, it’s now official.”

  “Thanks, Tyler,” she replied.

  Suddenly Tyler’s face lit up. He had remembered something important.

  “Hey! Guess who I ran into on the way over?”

  “Ms. Reese?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Tyler answered, “Will. He mentioned the poetry club.”

  “Really? What’d he say?” Carmelita asked.

  “Well,” Tyler began, leafing through a copy of Flannery O’Connor stories. “Apparently, The Henley High Poetry Club has gone on hiatus.”

  “Hopefully a permanent one,” Carmelita said, taking my hand.

  “It sounded like it might be that kind of a thing,” Tyler went on.

  I had seen Wren a few times around Berkeley over the past few weeks. She had been suspended from Henley High for plagiarism; she’d been caught for stealing a few of her other assignments that she had turned in last month, too. Whenever Wren saw me she became instantly paranoid and started walking the other way. It was awful. I wished that we could still be friends or something. I didn’t think it was evil, what she had done, just . . . totally wrong and uncool. I felt like I could have helped her, but she hadn’t given me a chance.

  Despite everything that had happened, I still felt connected to Wren in some way. Maybe that would never die, just like my feelings for the French exchange student Mara had never really died. Even though I was over the moon about dating Carmelita. Maybe it was like that with everyone a person crushed on. Like the initial feelings still lived on, even though the person had moved on. Emotions couldn’t be turned on or off like water in the faucet. It was one of my new ideas, but it intrigued me, and I’d have to see what else I came up with as time went on.

  Will I had seen once or twice around school. He mostly kept to himself now from what we could tell.

  “Look at this, Ziv,” Carmelita called from the next bookshelf aisle.

  I went over to find Car browsing through the store’s New Releases section. She pointed to a newly released collection of Jack Kerouac’s poetry, one that I didn’t own.

  “Wow,” I said, picking the book up and leafing through it.

  I thought back to all of Jack’s work that I had been inspired by over the past few years. I thought back to his life philosophy that had always inspired me too. First thought, best thought. Living true to the self. Being honest.

  One day I hoped to be published through City Lights Publishers. One day I hoped to come waltzing into the bookstore—after hanging around Caffe Trieste on Vallejo Street, after shooting the breeze with Bobcat at Vesuvio—and find my own book. I would autograph it on the fly and leave it for some Lit-nerd Henley student like me to find.

  I walked over to the store’s main display and stood in awe of the selected books that had been placed there: all of Kerouac’s work, all of Ginsberg’s work, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s too. The legacy of twentieth century San Franciscan writers, North Beach writers.

  These writers had all written books that were genuine, that were true for them. It was the secret to their greatness, I was sure. Maybe that was why twenty-first century readers like myself loved them so much. They still held up.

  “Just think,” I said to Carmelita and Tyler, who were on either side of me gazing at the display. “One day we’ll be here. I mean, Car started it. First stop, lit journal contest. Next stop, published book. That’s how it goes—and a bunch of concentrated work in between, of course.”

  “Of course,” Tyler said with his arms folded across his chest and a mocking smile on his face.

  “Hunter?” said Car. “You’re getting too serious again.”

  “Right. Sorry,” I agreed, putting my arm around her. “Fun first and foremost. For the future.”

  The three of us stood there in silence for a moment, daydreaming.

  The future . . . or the future as it should be, I thought. Moving forward with good and reliable friends, who were seekers of truth and honesty and authenticity and fun. Who were works in progress.