Dinah looked down. She was still holding Nick’s hand. Did that mean that they had unbroken up again? What did she want it to mean?
“I’m sorry,” Dinah said then, slowly. “About yesterday. Getting so mad about Poet of the Week. I don’t know why I get so mad at you all the time. It’s like—I just get so mad.”
“Mount St. Dinah,” Nick said. “You know, like Mount St. Helens. The volcano? But, yeah, it’s pretty horrible when you erupt. Then again, it’s pretty nice in between eruptions.”
Nick drew Dinah close to him. Dinah knew he was going to kiss her. She wanted him to, and yet—
Love was so hard. Dinah didn’t know how anybody managed to do it, to make it last. Of course, for most people it didn’t last. Dinah knew one girl at school who had already had three different boyfriends just in seventh grade. Blaine Yarborough’s parents were divorced, and so were Jason Winfield’s. Even Mrs. Briscoe had once been so angry at Mr. Briscoe that she had locked him outside on the front stoop.
But love was wonderful, too. There was nothing else in the universe like it. Catching fireflies with Nick, sharing popcorn, debating, laughing, kissing—all of it had been worth living for, every minute of it. Even if no single moment could be saved for all of time, that was no reason not to savor every moment as fully as you could while you were lucky enough to be living it. Neither love nor life would last forever, but both were still full of astonishing and joyful surprises.
Nick kissed Dinah. His kiss might not have gone on for all eternity, but it seemed as if it did.
“Here,” Nick said, “I made this for you ten minutes ago, when I was supposed to be drawing stars.”
He handed Dinah a folded piece of paper. She opened it, and by the light of her flashlight she saw that Nick had drawn a piece of cream pie. And on the piece of pie he had written her name.
* * *
Dinah drew as many stars on her chart as she could, but there were so many stars that finally she gave up and just made random dots all over the page with the tip of her pencil.
Then she sat down with her back against the trunk of a bare tree. She turned the chart over, and on the back, leaning it against her knees, by the light of her flashlight, she began scribbling her poem for Mrs. Briscoe.
I look up at the starry sky
With stars as far as I can see.
Mrs. Briscoe is there somewhere.
I wish that she were here with me.
People die, but love lives on.
Love is what will always be.
It will always be a fact
That I loved her, and she loved me.
Beneath the sky, the earth is dark,
Yet stars twinkle up above.
They will die, and I will die,
But what lives on is love.
Dinah was crying again when she put her pencil down. She still wasn’t sure the poem said what she wanted it to say. It wasn’t really true that love lived on—in the end, nothing would live on—but in the meantime, in the short run, in the here and now, love was one reason to keep on living. Poetry was another.
Suddenly Dinah knew that it didn’t matter, really, that no one would read her poems in another five billion years, once the sun had burned out. The purpose of writing poetry wasn’t to be named Poet of the Week or Poet of All Eternity; the purpose of writing poetry was just—to write poetry. Dinah wrote poetry because nothing else made her feel more fully and truly alive.
“Is everyone finished?” Mr. Mubashir called. “Bring me your star charts as soon as you are done.”
Dinah couldn’t turn in her star chart, because she had written her poem for Mrs. Briscoe on the back of it. She had a feeling that Mr. Mubashir would understand. Carefully she folded her poem and tucked it into her jacket pocket, next to Nick’s drawing. Then, shivering with cold and happiness, she waited for Suzanne beneath the night’s vast, endless canopy of glittering stars.
Copyright © 1995 by Claudia Mills
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd
First edition, 1995
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mills, Claudia.
Dinah forever / Claudia Mills. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
[1. Death—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relationships—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M63963Dj 1995 [Fic]—dc20 94-42136 CIP AC
eISBN 9781466852891
First eBook edition: August 2013
Dinah Forever Page 10