Dinah wished that this moment could last, wouldn’t fleet away like all the others. She wished she could put all her favorite moments in some special, magic box: this one, and moments at Mrs. Briscoe’s house sipping tea, and some of the moments she had spent writing her poems. Those were almost the best moments: the moments after she had an idea for a poem, and then reached for a scrap of paper and a well-chewed pen, and began writing, lost to everything else in the world except the scratching of her pen on the paper and the words that were trying to form themselves into verses on the page.
Dinah felt an urge for a poem right now. She didn’t want to pull away from Nick’s embrace to find a piece of paper, so she closed her eyes and tuned out the television and tried shaping the lines in her mind.
I wish tonight
Could always be—
Me with you,
And you with me.
But if this night must fade away
And with it everything that’s in it,
Could I make one small request
And keep forever just this minute?
At Mrs. Briscoe’s house on Sunday afternoon, Dinah helped her mother reorganize Mrs. Briscoe’s kitchen pantry shelves—the same shelves that she had helped organize a year before.
“This is how you get clutter,” her mother told Dinah in a low voice. “Five boxes of macaroni, all opened, all three-quarters empty. The solution: a canister, of course. Here, this empty mayonnaise jar will do for now.”
Dinah poured the macaroni into the jar.
“Or over here. Twelve cans of stewed tomatoes, obviously bought on sale. It’s sensible to stock up on a bargain item, but the overflow cans should be moved to the top shelf, out of the way. They shouldn’t be blocking everything else.”
Dinah handed the extra cans, two by two, to her mother.
“I think the pantry’s pretty well under control now,” Dinah’s mother said. “Why don’t you go keep Mrs. Briscoe company for a while? I know she gets nervous when we’re in here rummaging about.”
Dinah found Mrs. Briscoe on the front porch. Mrs. Briscoe loved to sit on her front porch, looking out over the late-blooming wildflowers in her front yard, watching the birds that came flocking to her feeder.
“I wanted to stay out of your mother’s way,” Mrs. Briscoe said. “Is she very disappointed in me for letting all her good work from last year come undone?”
“Oh, no,” Dinah said honestly. “She likes organizing people. She doesn’t mind doing it over and over again. She even told me so once.”
Dinah sat quietly for a minute, watching a plump squirrel feasting on the sunflower seeds that lay thick on the ground beneath the bird feeder. Then she said, “Do you ever think it’s strange, how people meet? Like how you and I met? If I hadn’t been helping my mother last year, we never would have met. Or if Nick’s father hadn’t been transferred to Riverdale, Nick and I wouldn’t have met.”
When Dinah had met Mrs. Briscoe for the first time a year before, she had never dreamed that the birdlike woman with the astonishingly messy house would become one of her closest friends, any more than she had dreamed that the obnoxious boy teasing her all the time at school would become her boyfriend. Life certainly took many strange twists and turns.
“It’s amazing,” Mrs. Briscoe agreed.
“How did you and Mr. Briscoe meet? The very first time?”
“Well, we lived in a small town, where everybody knew everybody else, so we would have been hard-pressed not to meet. If we hadn’t met in one way, we would have met in another.”
“But how did you meet?”
“Eddie was driving a delivery truck for the local grocery store. One day my doorbell rang, and there was this handsome young man trying to deliver an order of pork chops to my folks. I kept trying to explain to him that we hadn’t ordered any pork chops, and he kept insisting that his order was plainly marked with our address. By the time we got it all straightened out, we had pretty much figured out that we enjoyed each other’s company.”
“Was it love at first sight?” Dinah asked. “For me and Nick, it was more like hate at first sight.”
“Love?” Mrs. Briscoe asked. “Love takes a long time. But I was interested, I have to admit it.”
“So if there hadn’t been a mixup over pork chops, you might have married someone else,” Dinah said.
“Well, as I said, in a small town, there aren’t too many surprises. But there are some. Maybe Eddie was mine.”
Nick had definitely been a surprise to Dinah. But in a way, everything in life was a surprise. Just about every day something happened that Dinah hadn’t expected, like a poem, or a kiss from Nick, or a chance to buy her very own star.
“Did you know that for twenty-five dollars you can have a star named after you?” Dinah asked. “I’ve earned the money for mine today, helping my mother. I’m sending away for it tonight. Do you want to get one, too? Suzanne doesn’t. She says she’ll just look at mine.”
“I’ll look at yours, too,” Mrs. Briscoe said. “What a lovely idea, naming a star. And there’s no one I’d rather see a star named for than you.”
Above the trees across from Mrs. Briscoe’s house, the evening star appeared in the darkening sky. Dinah knew it was not really a star but the planet Venus.
“There’s Venus,” Mrs. Briscoe said, as if reading Dinah’s thoughts.
Another moment for Dinah to save.
“I wrote a new poem last night,” Dinah said. She recited it softly for Mrs. Briscoe. Last night, as she had been writing it, it had been for Nick, but now it was for Mrs. Briscoe, too.
When Dinah finished, Mrs. Briscoe reached over and took her hand. The two of them sat together on the porch swing without speaking, side by side, hand in hand, until Dinah’s mother came outside for Dinah, and it was time to go home.
Twelve
Ms. Dunne usually wore suits. On Monday her suit was a brilliant lime green. She looked to Dinah like a lime Popsicle. Her two legs were the Popsicle sticks.
“I am very proud of the poetry you have all been writing for me this fall,” Ms. Dunne told the class at the start of second period. “I always expect great things from my seventh graders, but this time my expectations have already been far exceeded. In fact, I think it’s time your poetry was shared with a wider audience.”
That was exactly what Dinah had expected Ms. Dunne to say to her the other day. At least Ms. Dunne was saying it now, even if she was speaking to the whole class.
“Mr. Roemer has agreed to let us have the large bulletin board in front of the main office,” Ms. Dunne continued. “Every week from now on, from one of my four seventh-grade classes, I’m going to choose a Poet of the Week. That person’s poems will be prominently displayed on the front bulletin board for all to see. So over the course of the year, some thirty of you will have your work featured in this way. As I have over a hundred seventh-grade students, this will be a significant honor. And at the end of year, we’ll gather all the Poet of the Week poems into a book that we’ll donate to our school library.”
“Who’s going to be the first Poet of the Week?” someone asked.
Dinah waited for the reply. She would have asked the question herself, but it seemed impolite for the most obvious choice for Poet of the Week to call attention to herself in that way. She looked down modestly at her desk, in case everyone was staring at her.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Ms. Dunne said. “Really, the talent in my classes this year is overwhelming. I’ll make my decision as soon as possible.”
Dinah herself hadn’t noticed any other overwhelming talent in the second-period class, but perhaps there were some outstanding poets in Ms. Dunne’s other classes. The thought was a sobering one.
“I want to have the first Poet of the Week on display next Monday,” Ms. Dunne went on. “Does anyone have any new poems to hand in today?”
Dinah opened her notebook. She wasn’t going to hand in the poem she’d written on Saturday night, even though she
thought it was the best poem she’d ever written. It was too close to her heart to share with anyone except Nick and Mrs. Briscoe. Instead she took out her latest collection of haiku and read them over one last time:
The clouds hide the sun.
Crickets chirp in the evening
As winter draws near.
A dead bird lay still
On the sidewalk this morning,
His song now silent.
Today is over.
It is finished forever,
Never to return.
They were still about death, but they weren’t as much about death as “A Few Thoughts on Immigration Policy.” They were just right, Dinah thought, for the Poet of the Week.
* * *
The second practice debate was held after school on Wednesday. Dinah and Nick debated two eighth graders, this time arguing for stronger regulations on immigration. Dinah made her speeches as dull as she possibly could. No one could accuse her this time of being emotional or dramatic. Well-chosen statistics? Dinah didn’t know how well chosen her statistics were, but she certainly had a tall stack of three-by-five file cards covered with them, though the stack would have been taller if she and her partner hadn’t spent a full week refusing to speak to each other.
Dinah and Nick lost again.
“I said you shouldn’t try to get by on emotion,” Mr. Dixon said afterward. “I didn’t say you should be dead.”
“I hope you’re happy,” Dinah told Nick as they walked to the bus together. “I toned down the dramatics and look what happened.”
“Tone down doesn’t mean eliminate completely,” Nick said. “It just means tone down. Come on, let’s not fight. Next time we can just tone up the dramatics. Like maybe halfway up.”
Dinah knew she couldn’t blame Nick for their defeat, though it was tempting to try. “Okay,” she said. “Next time we’ll be right in the middle.”
Next time she and Nick would work harder, too, for now they were back together again, back together to stay.
* * *
Ms. Dunne didn’t announce the first Poet of the Week until Thursday morning.
“I’m pleased to say that the first Poet of the Week will be from our second-period class,” Ms. Dunne said, once the bell had sounded and everyone was seated.
Dinah hardly breathed. Poet of the Week wasn’t the same as Poet of All Eternity, but it was better than nothing—than being snuffed out of life with no fame whatsoever. Maybe at the end of the year the Poet of the Week book could be published by a real publisher, so that it would be in libraries all over America, and in the big Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Dinah would suggest it.
If she won.
But she had to win. How could she not win?
“Our first Poet of the Week is distinguished by both the quantity and the quality of her work.”
Her work. And Dinah knew she wrote more poems than anyone else in her class. And they were the best, they were. That was just a fact, the way it was a fact that the sun was 93 million miles away from the earth.
“Our poet writes in a wide range of styles: rhyming verse, free verse, haiku. And her poetry treats serious and important themes in a thoughtful and striking way. Our first Poet of the Week is Dinah Seabrooke.”
The class applauded. Dinah bent her head graciously to acknowledge their cheers. Well, maybe no one was actually cheering, but they were clapping pretty hard, especially Suzanne and Nick.
“Congratulations, Dinah,” Ms. Dunne said. “Stop by for a few minutes after school today so we can select which of your poems to display. I’ll take a picture of you, too, to mount on the bulletin board along with your poetry.”
Dinah could hardly wait. Already her thoughts were racing. Maybe Mr. Roemer would read “A Few Thoughts on Immigration Policy” over morning announcements, as he had read Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life.” Maybe she could arrange to have it broadcast over the PA system in the Air and Space Museum.…
* * *
When Dinah walked into JFK Middle School on Monday morning, the first thing she saw was the bulletin board for Poet of the Week. There was her picture—gazing poetically off into the distance—and a dozen of her poems, including “In a Mere Five Billion Years,” “A Few Thoughts on Immigration Policy,” and the best of her haiku.
All day long, Dinah collected compliments, or at least comments. Mr. Dixon wasn’t one for compliments, but he stopped her in the hall to say, “Saw your poem on immigration. Now, don’t start spouting poetry on us in the next debate, Seabrooke.” Miss Brady, Dinah’s gym teacher, who had never seemed in the least poetic, asked Dinah for a copy of one of her haiku. Mr. Mubashir read her poem about the sun out loud to the entire eighth-period science class.
Mr. Roemer didn’t read any of Dinah’s poems over morning announcements, but he did announce her name as Poet of the Week and told all the students of JFK Middle School to be sure to admire her work on the front bulletin board.
Maybe it was the poetic aura that clung to Dinah like a gauzy veil, maybe it was the hard work she and Nick had put in all weekend, but Dinah and Nick won their next practice debate, and against the other two eighth graders, too.
“This time you had it all,” Mr. Dixon told them. “Substance and style. Even if we’re all going to die in the end, eh, Seabrooke?”
It was definitely Dinah’s favorite week of seventh grade so far. She wouldn’t at all mind leaving her footprints on the sands of time as a famous poet and debater. And more good things lay ahead: Mr. Mubashir had announced that this coming Friday evening, their class would gather for its first stargazing. They would meet on the school lawn at nine o’clock to learn how to recognize fall constellations. And maybe somewhere out there in the star-spangled heavens would be Dinah’s own star. She should be hearing back from the star registry any day now, informing her which star would be the one to be named after JFK Middle School’s first-ever Poet of the Week.
On Thursday morning, Ms. Dunne smiled at the class. “Dinah’s week as our official seventh-grade poet is almost over. I’ve now chosen the second Poet of the Week. Next week I really am going to select a poet from one of my other classes. I don’t want anyone to think that I favor second period. But the poet I’ve chosen has improved so much over the past few weeks that I simply have to recognize him next.”
Dinah felt a pang of sadness. She didn’t want her week to be over. She didn’t want to come to school next week and see someone else’s poems on the bulletin board. Suddenly Dinah couldn’t bear the fleetingness of fame. Five billion years had seemed short enough. A week was nothing.
“Our second Poet of the Week, by contrast with our first poet, writes comic poetry. He has a keen sense of humor, which he is learning to express in successful rhyming verse.”
Dinah glanced over at Nick. He was very funny, though most of the poems he had shown her this fall had been serious. If someone else had to be Poet of the Week, Dinah hoped it was Nick.
“Our second Poet of the Week,” Ms. Dunne said with a twinkle in her eye, “is Artie Adams.”
Dinah stared at Artie in horror. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. She expected Artie to gag and retch, to give a good imitation of himself throwing up on Mr. Mubashir’s class trip. But instead Artie looked pleased and almost shy. The others clapped, even louder for Artie than they had for Dinah. This time they definitely were cheering.
Poet of the Week! Joke of the Week! The sooner Dinah’s week ended, the better.
* * *
At the end of class, Dinah still felt as cruelly betrayed as she had at the beginning. She stood motionless by her desk, waiting for Suzanne and Nick to come to her, to denounce Ms. Dunne’s monstrously inappropriate choice.
Suzanne knew what to say. “Artie?” she whispered to Dinah. “It’s easy to be most improved if you start at negative a billion.”
But Nick stopped by Artie’s desk and gave him a high five. Dinah wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. This was hardly
Lancelot jousting in a tournament to defend the honor of Guinevere.
Then he came over to Dinah and tried to take her hand. Dinah snatched it away and held it clenched in a tight fist behind her back.
“Hey, what’s with you?” Nick asked. “You’re not—you can’t be all bent out of shape just because of Artie.”
“Yes, I can,” Dinah said.
“But, look, Dunne said there are going to be thirty kids picked for this thing. She’s bound to pick someone or other you’re not wild about. I know Artie’s a loudmouth, but you have to admit he is funny.”
“I do not.”
“Someone had to be the next Poet of the Week.” Nick followed Dinah out into the hall. “And it’s not like—I mean, let’s face it, Poet of the Week in one dumb class at one dumb school is not that big a deal.”
Dinah felt as if she had been slapped. How could something so important to her mean so little to Nick? Dinah knew then, as certainly as she knew anything in the world, that she and Nick were over, through, finished, kaput, separated by a chasm too large to be bridged anytime in the next five billion years.
“I admit it’s not like being class president,” Dinah snapped. “It may not be a big deal to you, but it happens to be a big deal to me. I’m going to die someday, and my poems are all I have that’s going to live after me.”
“We’re all going to die,” Nick said. “You act like you’re the only one.”
“I do not.” The author of “A Few Thoughts on Immigration Policy” plainly recognized that everyone was going to die. And yet … deep down, Dinah knew that Nick was right. Other people could die, and the world would go on, for another few billion years or so, but how could it go on with no more Dinah Seabrooke? How could it go on without her? Maybe, all along, Dinah hadn’t minded so much that the sun would burn out someday as that the sun would keep shining, temporarily at least, even when there was no more Dinah for it to shine upon.
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