In a World Just Right

by Jen Brooks

  “Yeah, I surprised myself with that bit of brilliance.”

  She looks up from the page. Her eyes go to my scar, then move away. She reveals no awful reaction, just another person checking themselves in the act of staring at the mark of Frankenstein. “You don’t think much of your poem.”

  “There isn’t a lot of thinking to do about it. I mean, I tried, but I’m no poet.”

  “Well, it’s not the waste you think it is.” She holds the paper up between us and reads it aloud again. It’s so short, it takes only a few seconds. “You don’t hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The rhyme, the meter. It’s good. Most people who try to write a poem with rhyme and rhythm mess up a beat or can’t find a word that exactly rhymes. Yours is perfect.”

  “Great. I have a career ahead of me as Dr. Seuss.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “You can say it’s no good. I can take it. ‘Honesty is essential in critique.’” Eckhart’s mantra.

  “I am being honest.”

  She is. I know. It’s a bad poem, but she’s managed to find two good things to say about it. “Okay. So what should I do to improve it?”

  She stares at the words again, points to the last two lines. “This sounds a little weird without any punctuation and the two ‘because’es. All four of your last lines make a sentence, but the last line should be by itself. I would put a period after ‘lit.’ That way you have, ‘They’re safe because they pass by it’ as one sharp sentence ending the poem. It’s your message.”

  I take in the advice. It’s good. In Kylie-Simms-is-my-girlfriend I get this kind of advice all the time, but I thought for some reason I made Kylie smarter in my world than she is in the real world. Like the smell of her hair, it’s another thing I got right without knowing it.

  I take the paper from her and put in the suggested period. I don’t want to talk about my poem anymore. “Let’s do yours,” I say, and adjust the angle of her poem on my desk.

  MY TREE

  by Kylie Simms

  I brush fallen acorns from the hollow

  between root bumps where I sit sometimes

  sharing my day with you

  holding you.

  I squeeze my eyes closed

  and you are sharing your day with me

  holding me.

  Acorns need more like six inches

  than six feet.

  I dig the dirt and plant something,

  but you’re too deep to sprout back.

  “Wow,” I say, because I can’t say what I’m really thinking. I’m stuck on lines five through seven: “I squeeze my eyes closed / and you are sharing your day with me / holding me.”

  She’s making a world.

  The idea of Kylie Simms being a world-maker stops me cold. I know she can’t be, that in the poem the speaker is merely imagining that the dead person is with her, but Kylie could have used a million ways to describe it other than “I squeeze my eyes closed.”

  She’s waiting for me to say something constructive. “Wow” isn’t exactly helpful critique. I mentally shake myself and point to the title, which might be simple but is a hell of a lot more clever than mine. “I like ‘My Tree.’ At first you think the title means the tree she sits under, but then you come to the end, and the tree is the dead person. Her tree is what would grow from the acorn. Her lover is buried in the ground, and she wants him to grow back.”

  “What makes you think it’s a she talking about a lover?”

  It’s obvious, isn’t it? But I scan the poem and don’t find any gender-specific pronouns. Eckhart has told us over and over not to confuse an author with a speaker, but I just made Kylie the speaker of a poem that could have been about anybody. “Okay. Sorry. It could be a he, but whoever he or she is, there’s two mentions of holding each other.”

  “That doesn’t make them lovers.”

  “Are you saying they’re technically not lovers because maybe he or she loves him or her from afar? Fine. The speaker is in love with the dead person, whom he or she may or may not have slept with.”

  Kylie makes some kind of half snort, half laugh. “Can’t you think of any other people who might want to hold each other?”

  Now that she’s mentioned it, I guess there are other people who can hold each other. A parent and child. A sibling and sibling. Two best friends. Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by a memory of being very small and very sick, my mother and father letting me snuggle in their bed while we watch cartoons and they take turns pressing a cold cloth to my head. There was a time when people in the real world might have wanted to hold me, but I forgot how people can touch each other all the time. The only person who touches me lately is the girl sitting next to me, and it’s in the way I assumed when I read the poem.

  “So who’s the speaker?” I ask. “And who’s the dead person?”

  She reaches for her poem to take it back. Eckhart is in full hover mode, a sign that time’s almost up. Kylie simply shrugs. Whether she doesn’t know or just doesn’t want to share, I can’t tell.

  Eckhart claps his hands together. “Let’s re-circle, folks.”

  Kylie smiles like she’s apologizing for having to go, but she wastes no time gathering her things and returns to her faraway seat by Emily and Zach.

  The various pairs and threes grab desks and shift back into position. Eckhart claims his spot in the circle and starts on his left, asking for summaries of critique discussions. He mows through four people before getting to me.

  “Jonathan, let’s hear the poems from your group.”

  I hate reading my stuff out loud, but I’m used to it in this class. Everyone knows by now that I’m no writing star, that my work gets it done but isn’t an example of awesomeness. I read “The Lighthouse,” then Kylie reads “My Tree,” and then Eckhart asks her to talk about my poem.

  “‘The lighthouse keeps fisherpeople safe,’” she begins. “‘Fisherpeople,’ besides being a nod to political correctness, shows kind of a carefree attitude from the speaker. The rhyme and rhythm reinforce that, make it whimsical, like the poem shouldn’t be taken seriously. But the poem is very serious. It’s about a caring force out there keeping people safe. I think the most important line is ‘I’ve never seen it lit before.’ That says that for some reason the speaker feels he hasn’t been kept safe. The fact that he sees it lit today means he hopes he’s finally come under protection. The whole poem’s like a defense mechanism. The speaker uses a childish rhyme and meter to make it seem like protection is kind of a joke, but he’s hiding behind a carefree attitude only to make it seem like it’s no big deal to him if the lighthouse doesn’t protect him after all.”

  I’m stunned. That’s pretty deep psycho-crap from someone who didn’t say any of this to me in partners. I don’t even bring up the fact that my poem doesn’t have gender-specific pronouns either, so my speaker isn’t necessarily a he.

  The class takes Kylie’s reading and digests it thoughtfully with a few comments. Apparently they didn’t realize, as she did, that the poem is about my inner self longing for a lighthouse in my life.

  I don’t think it’s true, but I’m a little uneasy.

  Now it’s my turn to talk about Kylie’s poem. “It’s about a person sitting under a tree by a grave. The title is partly about the tree and partly about the dead person sprouting back to life like an acorn. The speaker may or may not be a she and may or not be the dead person’s lover.”

  It’s a little sarcastic, the way I say it, but I’m edgy and annoyed about the analysis I’ve just received, and I want this to be over. The class ignores my tone and does its chitchat thing about what the poem means and who the speaker and dead person could be, and Kylie graciously participates. Finally Eckhart asks, “How many of you have done something like Kylie describes, gone to a cemetery alone to be with a loved one?”


  A couple of people actually raise their hands. “My grandmother,” says one. “My dad,” says the other. A few people look at me. With my whole family in the ground, it might make sense that I’d visit them alone because there’s no one else left, but I never have. I’ve never visited them at all, not even with Uncle Joey. I can’t explain why.

  Mr. Eckhart, I think, doesn’t know about the plane crash, but he must sense the shift in mood, because he changes the subject. “Who did you intend as the speaker and person being mourned?” It’s the same question I asked, but she doesn’t shrug it off this time. She looks at me. The whole class can see where she’s focusing. An awkward couple of seconds pass. I think she’s going to say my name. That she put me in a graveyard to be with Mom and Dad and Tess and Auntie Carrie. Her eyes hold mine, and I stop breathing. Can’t swallow. She seems to be searching for her answer in my face. Her brow furrows in confusion. Her lips part slightly as she inhales with some inner revelation.

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  Everyone seems satisfied with that, so Eckhart moves on to the next poems, but Kylie won’t stop looking at me. She wrote a poem about me, and for some reason I feel guilty.

  CHAPTER 3

  AFTER SCHOOL I GO TO Kylie-Simms-is-my-girlfriend and knock on Coach Pereira’s office door. There are dozens of kids in the gym hallway coming and going from the locker rooms. A bunch of runners at the far end review the relay lineup for today’s workout. Sprinters and distance runners, throwers and jumpers, boys and girls, all mixed up together. Yesterday’s meet was against a weak team, so for mercy’s sake some of our top people didn’t run, while others tried out events they’d never done before. Between yesterday and today the point is to get in some team bonding through understanding one another’s events.

  Even though yesterday’s meet wasn’t tough, we were all supposed to be there. I knock again, and this time Coach answers. “It’s open.”

  I turn the handle and walk in on a meeting he’s having with the girls’ head coach and the assistant coaches. They hold clipboards with rosters for the various field events.

  “Shut the door, Aubrey,” Coach says. I stand in the little nook behind it while the coaches finish their game plan for who officiates what today, and when the meeting breaks up, Coach and I are alone. I sit on his famous twill couch and brace myself.

  “What happened yesterday?” he asks.

  I haven’t really prepared an answer. How do you tell your coach you forgot your track meet because you confused your worlds?

  “I don’t know, Coach. I just . . . I just messed up.”

  He studies me. He’s not the kind of person who takes excuses, even good ones. Mine is a very far cry from a good one.

  Besides girlfriend Kylie, Coach Pereira is the only person, even in this world, who can look at my scar and not turn away for shame or pity or whatever else people feel when they see it. He looks at it now, stares at it, really, not shy that I know what he sees or can guess what he’s thinking. He’s making an excuse for me, and it has something to do with how messed up I am.

  “You want to talk about it?” he says.

  For the second time today I feel guilty. I shake my head and fight to maintain eye contact. Coach respects eye contact.

  He waits a few seconds in case I change my mind, then reaches for a clipboard. “We need someone to pick up the high jump bar today. I already put Jefferson in your relay spot.”

  “Okay, Coach.”

  “You know I’m always in this office if you want to talk.”

  “Okay, Coach.” When he rises, it’s my cue to get out. I pause with my hand on the door. The high jump bar punishment is embarrassing but generous, coming from him. “Thanks, Coach.” I head straight out to the track.

  Usually the boys’ team and the girls’ team warm up separately, two massive swarms of kids, with slower runners petering out in the back like comet tails. Today everyone’s been told to warm up and stretch in relay teams, so there are small-group satellites with batons circling the track. Some are doing passing drills with the stick.

  Although there’s more than a hundred kids out here, I spot Kylie right away. She, Paul Jefferson, Ginny Hamleigh, and Nathan Chen finish their warm-up jog and sit on the infield to stretch. I want to sit with them, but they’re doing the team bonding thing, and I’m an outcast for the day. Instead I go over to the high jump to help Coach Tambini, who is adjusting the standards to set the bar at starting height.

  “I got the bar today, Coach,” I say.

  He pretends like he doesn’t know I’m in trouble for skipping yesterday, even though he just saw me in Pereira’s office. “Thanks,” he says, like I’m doing him a favor.

  The warm-up period ends. Teams are called to the starting line and arranged in heats for the first race, the four-by-one-hundred meters. High jump designees from several teams start arriving and getting their steps. I volunteer to hold the tape measure for some and spot takeoffs for others. I’m so busy helping, I almost miss Kylie marking off her own steps in the track’s third passing zone just meters away. She makes a disappointed face at me and puffs out her lower lip in sympathy for my doghouse status. It should be me passing the baton to her, but I see Paul Jefferson in the second exchange zone ready to go.

  The starting gun fires, and Ginny Hamleigh emerges somewhere in the middle of the stagger. She gains ground on the runners to her outside but gets passed by Tom Aguirre, one of the top boy sprinters at Pennington. Nathan Chen takes the baton from Ginny in the first exchange zone, almost running away from her, but thankfully they don’t drop it. In a real meet teams keep a decently consistent pace all the way around, but this race has people in it who aren’t normally sprinters. Nathan Chen is a two-miler, and he doesn’t have sprint wheels. By the time he gets to Paul Jefferson, a javelin thrower, their team is in fourth or fifth place.

  Paul doesn’t know how to get off the line, so Nathan plows right into him. The baton clanks to the track. Paul has to run back to retrieve it. He’s pretty fast, though, for a thrower who never runs, and since no one else had a good handoff either, when he approaches Kylie, he’s back in the thick of things. Kylie times her takeoff perfectly and reaches back for the baton without breaking stride. She passes two teams in the exchange zone and sets off after the leaders.

  She has only a hundred meters to close a considerable gap, but she’s doing it. People run down the infield shouting at the racers. The finish line is at the opposite side of the track from the high jump, so I don’t see the finish in the mass of people. A cheer goes up.

  Coach Tambini marks off someone’s clear of the bar and smiles at me. Impressed that I managed to snag such a fine girlfriend. For the moment I puff with pride.

  The relay pseudo-meet takes about an hour and a half, and when the equipment is all picked up, I wait for Kylie in my fancy red Uncle Joey car. By the time she plops down in the passenger seat, there are only a few athletes left in the senior lot. She clicks her seat belt firmly into place. I haven’t fastened mine. I rarely do, despite the law. Seat belts make me feel trapped.

  I start the car and let it idle, not ready to drive her home.

  “We could’ve used you on the four-by-eight,” she says. She means she missed me.

  I place my hands on the steering wheel and watch a couple of sophomores walk over to the rotary to wait for their ride. “I’m sorry. I screwed up.”

  She settles back into her seat and watches the sophomores too. “I worried the whole meet and all night when you didn’t answer your phone,” she says. “Why didn’t you at least call me?”

  I would have called her if I’d been in her world, but my real-world phone just doesn’t reach this far, and Jonathan’s-smokin’-hot-dance-club made me forget anyway. She thinks that when I disappear I’m taking depressed alone time. She thinks I need solitude to deal with life. I don’t correct her, because the alternative is to tell her I�
��m in a different world.

  “Do you have your creative writing notebook with you?” I ask.

  “What does that have to do with you not calling me?”

  “Do you have your poem you wrote for today?”

  She exhales impatiently. “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?”

  She turns and gets up on her knees to dig through the backpack she flung into the backseat. Her body fills the space between the front seats, brushes against me, and I smell the sweat and dirt of the track meet mixed with that tropical something both Kylies like putting in their hair.

  She pulls out a piece of notebook paper and falls back into the passenger seat. “Why do you want this?”

  I’m not sure I do, but I need to check. I reach for it, but she pulls it toward the window, away from me. “Jonathan, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You tell me not to worry when you disappear, but you’ve never missed a meet.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you really?”

  “I will be when you let me see that.” I point to the poem.

  She sighs and hands it over. I unfold it and read.

  MY TREE

  by Kylie Simms

  I brush fallen acorns from the hollow

  between root bumps where I sit sometimes

  sharing my day with you

  holding you.

  I squeeze my eyes closed

  and you are sharing your day with me

  holding me.

  Acorns need more like six inches

  than six feet.

  I dig the dirt and plant something,

  But you’re too deep to sprout back.

  Although I don’t have the other Kylie’s poem for comparison, it appears that this version, which was written by my totally separate girlfriend in a totally separate world, is an exact match. Nothing like this has ever happened before.