Louder Than Words

by Laurie Plissner

  I handed back the piece of paper without looking up. She had interrupted my daydream right at the good part.

  “No, you idiot, the article underneath that. The reading at Bookends tonight. ‘Derek Moore talks about his new book, In Verses Veritas, a story of one man’s journey toward personal truth through poetry.’”

  “SO?”

  Jules sighed melodramatically at my failure to jump on board her thought train. Sometimes she assumed I thought about things exactly the same way she did, and when I wasn’t able to finish her sentences, she was frustrated.

  “Look at the picture on the cover. Don’t you see it?” She held the newspaper about an inch from my face.

  “IT’S BLURRY, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE SOME KIND OF FLOWER.”

  “Not just any kind of flower—it’s a white tulip.” She jabbed her finger at the fuzzy newsprint photograph of the book cover.

  “AGAIN, SO WHAT? I DON’T THINK OUR MYSTERY POET HAS THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO PURCHASE WHITE TULIPS.” With her typical enthusiasm, Jules had jumped from a single coincidence to full-on indictment. In my mind, she had soared over the Grand Canyon of conclusions. “IF A GUY WROTE A BOOK ABOUT FORGIVENESS, IT WOULD BE PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO PUT A WHITE TULIP ON THE COVER, SINCE IT’S NO SECRET THAT TULIPS REPRESENT FORGIVENESS. ANYBODY CAN LOOK ON FLOWERSYMBOLS.COM.”

  “I know, but I have a feeling. Just come with me.”

  She pulled at my arm, and the enormous book spread across my lap crashed to the floor. The librarian cleared her throat and shook her head.

  “YOU’RE GOING TO GET ME KICKED OUT OF HERE, AND I DON’T HAVE ANYPLACE ELSE TO GO.” Jules had caught me in a low moment.

  She patted my head. “Poor homeless girl. Did Charlotte kick you out of the mansion? You can come live with me, but first we’re going to this bookstore.”

  I gathered my things. Jules was relentless, and once she’d made up her mind, it would be easier to rewrite history than convince her otherwise.

  The bookstore was jammed when we arrived. Whoever this guy was, he had a following. Every chair was filled, so we stood at the back with a dozen other people, barely able to see the man with a beard and long hair sitting in a big leather chair. After a few minutes, a middle-aged woman dressed in tie-dye from head to toe picked up a microphone.

  “Welcome, everyone. What a crowd. Apologies to those who have to stand, but it’ll be well worth it. Derek’s insights into the human spirit are without parallel.”

  Jules elbowed me and whispered, “It looks like we fell into a Woodstock reunion.”

  We had to be the youngest people in the room by at least thirty years.

  Why are we here again? I scribbled on my notepad.

  “Poems, forgiveness, white tulips, murder,” she hissed. “Just listen. It takes patience to be a good detective.”

  Remember, Sherlock, we’re not real detectives.

  “Good evening. My name is Derek Moore, and I have a terrible secret. Four years ago I committed a crime, and I never told anyone.”

  Jules shoved me so hard I almost fell over. Now he had my attention. Could we have backed into it? I started to sweat. Was I looking at the person who had changed my life forever? In my mind, I had imagined someone classically evil, with slicked-back hair and a little black mustache curled up at the ends—not a Jesus lookalike in cowboy boots, torn jeans, and John Lennon sunglasses.

  “What I did doesn’t matter now. I’ve made peace with my transgression, and rehashing what I’ve done wouldn’t accomplish anything. And that leads into what I want to talk to you about, what I’ve written about: forgiveness. Forgiving yourself for your own wrongs, and forgiving others for their shortcomings. Anger, whether at yourself or sent out into the world, only brings you down, only reduces the quality of your life. It’s a poison that will slowly and surely kill you. How do you dispel that anger? I’m here to tell you—poetry. I cannot emphasize enough the power of words to heal.”

  My muscles cramped up, and my handwriting was barely legible. You think this is the guy? What do we do now?

  “I don’t know. Shhh.”

  Jules was listening intently—what she was waiting for this guy to say, I didn’t know. Did she expect some kind of confession? To me, he was just spouting clichés, preying on the human need to feel better about ourselves, to get things off our chest and move on.

  I wrote Jules another note and shoved it in her face. His speech is pretty generic. Say you’re sorry, in stanzas, and move on.

  Now that the moment was at hand, I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the person who had killed my family. Jules grabbed the pencil out of my hand and gestured toward the speaker.

  “Just listen,” she whispered. Either she was gathering evidence I couldn’t identify as such, or she was totally into the bullshit this crackpot was spewing.

  Mr. Moore was staring off into space, almost preaching to the rapt crowd. I had to hand it to him; he was polished. He spoke totally off the cuff, no notes.

  “Even something as serious as murder can be forgiven. There is no offense which our Lord does not forgive, and therefore there is no wrongdoing which we ourselves cannot forgive.”

  Before I could grab Jules’s sleeve, she had taken off for the platform, climbing over the aging flower children if she couldn’t squeeze between them.

  “Citizen’s arrest, citizen’s arrest!” I followed the trail she had blazed but before I could reach the front of the room, two security guards had grabbed her. “Arrest him, not me. He killed my friend’s family. He just said murder should be forgiven. He’s talking about running a car off the road and killing three people.”

  Although there had to be a hundred people in the room, you could have heard a pin drop.

  Derek Moore sat motionless in his chair, legs still casually crossed, seemingly unfazed, not even looking at Jules as he addressed her.

  “Miss, I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. Could someone please handle this interruption so that I may continue? Young lady, you are not only misguided, you are rude.”

  I reached out to Jules, but the security guards, having patted her down to make sure she wasn’t packing heat, were already hauling her toward a side door. A minute later we were on the sidewalk. Jules stood, gasping for air, rubbing her bruised arms. I pulled out my voice box.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US ARRESTED?”

  Before she could answer, the earth mother who had introduced Derek Moore emerged from the side door. “Are you high?” Kind of a funny question from someone who looked like she’d probably spent the last five decades stoned. “I should call the police.” Didn’t she mean pigs?

  Jules pulled herself together and stood nose to nose with Miss Yasgur’s Farm 1969. “That man in there killed my friend’s family. He ran them off the road in a snowstorm four years ago. I don’t know whether he was drunk or stoned or what, but he wrote some poems, and he left them at the tree with white tulips, and we figured out it was him.”

  Jules had clearly gone off the reservation. I knew what had happened and I could barely follow what she was saying, she was talking so fast.

  Expecting the woman to pull out a phone and call 911, I was shocked when she started to laugh. “That’s a fascinating story, but quite impossible.”

  “But the picture of the tulip and the poems and all this crap about forgiving yourself for committing a crime. It has to be him,” Jules insisted.

  She had a wild look in her eyes, and I put my hand on her arm, hoping she would come back down to earth and just stop talking before we got into more trouble. I still hadn’t told Charlotte about the poems, and I was beginning to think I didn’t want to.

  “MA’AM, I’M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THIS. MY FRIEND IS A LITTLE UPSET.” Since when had I become the voice of reason? “WE’RE GOING TO LEAVE NOW. SORRY FOR EVERYTHING.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” My frantic typing and robotic voice seemed to take the hysteria down a notch. The Hawkie Talkie was incredibly
powerful—everyone who heard it instantly started oozing sympathy. Maybe it wasn’t such a nasty little device. It was turning out to be quite useful. “She’s talking about your family, isn’t she?”

  I nodded, trying to squeeze out a tear. If this woman had planned on calling the police, maybe she would take pity on the head case and her mute friend. We made quite a pair, and I couldn’t imagine anyone with an ounce of compassion who would want to make trouble for such a damaged duo.

  Laying her hand lightly on my shoulder, she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, but there is absolutely no way Derek Moore could have caused the accident.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Jules had recovered her voice and was about to relaunch her trek down her twisted road to reason, but thankfully the woman cut her off.

  “He couldn’t have run a car off the road, because he doesn’t drive. Derek Moore has been blind since 1972. The pigs—I mean, the police—sprayed him with some kind of tear gas at an anti-war rally, and he was allergic to the chemicals. He never recovered his eyesight.”

  Jules’s jaw dropped. Finally, she had run out of things to say.

  “WE’RE GOING TO GO. SORRY FOR THE TROUBLE WE CAUSED.”

  I took Jules’s arm and dragged her to her car, digging the keys out of her pocket and letting us in. Just as we got inside the sky opened up, and we sat perfectly still, listening to the rain pound on the roof.

  “YOU DIDN’T READ THIS WEIRDO’S BOOK, DID YOU?”

  “Nope.”

  “BLIND FOR THIRTY YEARS. HENCE THE SHADES INDOORS.” I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of what had just happened, but Jules was embarrassed enough already.

  “I’m so sorry. I just had this feeling. When I opened the newspaper, there it was. It was like fate.” Jules shook her head and then rested it against the steering wheel. “I’m really sorry.”

  “IT’S OKAY. YOU WERE JUST TRYING TO HELP. BUT MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU COULD DO A LITTLE RESEARCH BEFORE WE MAKE A SCENE AND ALMOST GO TO JAIL.”

  “Point taken.”

  “IT’S ACTUALLY KIND OF FUNNY. YOU LOOKED VERY GRACEFUL, HURDLING OVER THE HIPPIES. GAZELLE-LIKE.”

  “Thanks.” Jules let out a giggle.

  It was kind of comical, especially since we didn’t end up behind bars. If she’d laid a hand on Derek Moore, I’d probably be calling Charlotte to bail her out on an assault charge.

  “CITIZEN’S ARREST? WHERE DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT?”

  “I think I saw it on an episode of CSI: Miami.” Jules looked at me and broke out laughing. That was one of the best things about Jules—she didn’t dwell.

  Chapter 18

  A church bell in the distance rang four times. “The school building is closing in fifteen minutes. It’s time to go home, kids, as much as you love this place. But chin up, you get to come back, bright and early tomorrow morning.” Mr. Carson fancied himself a comedian and liked to use the school’s PA system to share his talent with the student body.

  I put my notebooks in my backpack and left the library, heading for the locker room. Charlotte had texted me twice to remind me to bring my gym clothes home for a bath before they walked back to the house on their own. Everyone else had apparently left for the day, and I could hear the rhythmic tick of the oversized black and white clocks that hung all over the school. Hopefully, the gym wasn’t already locked. No games were scheduled on Wednesdays.

  As I rounded the corner, a voice startled me. “Hey there, Sasha. Long time, no see.”

  Out of the boys’ locker room paraded my four tormentors. I had not seen them up close, nor had they spoken to me, since our rumble in the park. With Ben in my life, I’d no longer felt the need to act out, so I hadn’t been to detention in ages.

  Eyes down, I thought I could make it to the safety of the girls’ locker room, but they followed me through the swinging doors. Like the rest of the school, it was deserted. Just my luck. A student body of close to a thousand, and the building was empty except for the five of us.

  “Wait up, cutie. What’s the rush?”

  Like pack hunters, they surrounded me and I stood, my back against a bank of lockers, wondering how I managed to end up in such an awkward position with these goons not once, but twice.

  “Were you worried about us? We’re all better now—you wanna see?” Jed asked.

  I didn’t answer, just stared past them, wondering if I tried to run, how many seconds it would take for them to catch me.

  “We know it was you who put that shit in our jock straps,” Paul said.

  I shook my head, my palms already damp with sweat.

  “Who else would do that to us?”

  Trying to breathe normally, I shrugged.

  “What about that fuckface with the chucks?”

  Shrugging and shaking my head at the same time, I stared at the ceiling.

  “You don’t look too sure about that. BTW, where is he? Isn’t he usually two steps behind you?” Tom asked.

  Not knowing what else to do, I shrugged again. I looked as idiotic as they sounded.

  “While we’re waiting for him, maybe we could try to finish what we started. No hard feelings.” All four guffawed. “Well, maybe a few … hard … feelings.” Paul put his hand on his zipper.

  The locker room was closer to civilization than an empty park in the middle of winter, and I figured if I didn’t show my fear, I could get out of this latest calamity on my own. Maybe. I held up my middle finger.

  “That’s right. I’m glad we’re thinking the same thing. Except I like to call it making love.”

  Jed took my hand, kissed my fuck-you finger, and put his other hand on the crotch of my sweats. All the blood rushed from my head and I saw stars. This couldn’t be happening again. And while I did have pepper spray this time, it was buried uselessly at the bottom of my backpack.

  With his thumb, Jed rubbed me through my pants and whispered, “You like that. I can feel how hot you are.”

  If I fainted now, would that scare them away? Or would I simply get a concussion when my head hit the floor?

  Sneakers squeaked on the linoleum outside the door, and I prayed that it was a lacrosse player returning to retrieve a forgotten stick. Turn left, not right. The door swung open.

  “So how are the four foreskins of the apocalypse this afternoon?” Ben stood there, nunchucks in hand, smiling broadly.

  Déjà vu all over again. I slid down to the floor, all feeling gone from my legs.

  “Told you,” Paul said. It was probably the first time he’d ever been right about anything. “You’re late. So, Sasha was just telling us what you did to us.”

  Ben glanced over at me, and I shook my head slowly.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Ben said.

  “I kind of think you do,” Jed said. “And now it’s your turn to get burned.”

  “Nice rhyme. You’re a poet and a detective,” Ben said.

  Before Ben could cock his wrist, Paul had grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. The nunchucks clattered to the floor. Without Ben’s sticks, we were fucked.

  His voice still as smooth as glass, Ben said, “I just saw the security guard around the corner. He’ll be coming through here any minute.”

  “Go ahead, yell for help. I want to hear you scream like a little girl,” Paul said. “Right before I break your fucking arm.”

  He shoved Ben to the floor. I hoped Ben knew enough to stay there.

  “Help!” Ben called, but I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that there was no security guard around the corner.

  Pounding their fists into their palms, Paul and company looked like the Sharks right before they started their dance rumble with the Jets in the first act of West Side Story. They were so busy thinking about reorganizing Ben’s facial features that they had completely forgotten about me, which didn’t matter, because I was cemented to my spot in front of the lockers. Drawing his ham-sized fist back, Paul punched Ben square in the nose. Blood sprayed everyw
here. Until that moment, I didn’t think anything bad could ever happen to Ben. He was always ten minutes ahead of everyone else, but now he was curled up on the floor, blood streaming from his nose.

  I had to do something, or at least try. Whether or not he loved me, whether or not he ever came back to me, I would do anything for him. Already on the floor, I extended my left foot, hooking the nunchuck chain with the toe of my shoe. Slowly, trying not to attract attention, I pulled my leg back in. Hoping I could actually do what needed to be done, I grasped the wooden handle the same way Ben did, jumped to my feet, and started swinging wildly. Fortunately, we were all pretty close together, so it didn’t matter that I wasn’t aiming, or that my eyes were closed. There was the unmistakable thunk of wood connecting with someone’s kneecap. I swung the nunchucks over my head and down. Crack. Either I’d split someone’s skull open, or I’d broken Ben’s sticks. When I opened my eyes, Paul and Jed were on the floor, one clutching his knee, the other shielding his bloody head from further attack. The other two were already halfway out the door.

  I bent over Ben. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and his nose wasn’t quite in the center of his face anymore. I had fantasized endlessly about being near him again, his face inches from mine, but this particular scenario had never occurred to me. At least he was here, and even though he hadn’t been able to repeat his knight in shining armor act, he was definitely still tuned in to my brain channel.

  Are you okay? He looked anything but okay.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “And thank you.”

  Sorry for what? I cradled his head in my lap.

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to save you, and you ended up saving me.”

  Rescuing me from bad guys isn’t your life’s work. And even Superman needs a little help sometimes.

  Grabbing a towel from an open locker, I soaked it in warm water and started mopping the blood off Ben’s face. Does that hurt? I blotted gently around his nose, afraid I was making it worse.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and pulled himself up to a sitting position. This guy did not like being rescued.