by Haley Pierce
Everyone else nods as if they’ve expected this. I start to raise my hand, tentatively, wondering if it’s not too late to make a dash for the door. He looks at me, a hint of amusement peeking through his otherwise stony expression. “No, McBride, this will not be graded,” he answers in a sing-song tone, as if he’s read my mind. Oh, god, can he read my mind? “It’s only for me to see where your interests lie.”
I swallow an orange-sized lump in my throat. Somehow this doesn’t make me feel better.
I feel even worse when he calls on the first person, a frizzy-haired girl named Ackerman, and she recites some poem about paths diverging in a wood, without hesitation, as if she’d practiced it all her life.
“Very nice, Ms. Ackerman,” he says, scanning down the list.
One by one, all the students recite their poems, and meanwhile, I struggle to think of something even remotely poetic. Nothing comes. My mother called poetry garbage. She told me reading fiction for fun was a waste of time. She deliberately kept it out of the house.
A guy with a red mohawk recites something about someone named Annabelle Lee. Despite going on forever, it doesn’t give me the time I need to come up with any ideas. All I can think about are some of the mnemonic devices that we came up with for anatomy, and a few Dr. Seuss rhymes I may have been subjected to in kindergarten about cats in hats.
Then, Homer stands up next to me and eloquently recites a poem he calls Ozymandias. Hill nods appreciatively and then his eyes shift to me. “Ms. McBride?”
Mind still blank, I rise to my feet, keenly aware of the twelve sets of eyes on me.
“Well, uh . . .” I begin brilliantly.
I take a deep breath, waiting for embarrassment to fully envelop me.
Instead, I’m surprised that a very different emotion floods me. Indignation. Regardless of what he thinks, this is still Creative Writing 101. For beginners. Maybe no one else is one, but I am. And there should be no shame in my lack of knowledge, because he’s supposed to be teaching me. That’s how he’s supposed to earn his money, not by embarrassing his students. And if he wants me to a recite a poem that’ll get to know me better, he’s got it.
I tilt my chin up and recite, “Toe bone connected to the foot bone, foot bone connected to the heel bone.”
Hill’s eyes widen slightly. He leans forward, elbow on his thigh, chin propped in his hand, as if this is a new one he’s never heard before. Of course he’s never heard it in one of his classes before; it’s a song my mom used to sing to me over and over again when I was a kid and my dreams of being a doctor were just beginning.
People around me start to smile. I continue on, and as I do, the rhythm comes back to my memory, and I start to sing it. “Heel bone connected to the ankle bone. Ankle bone connected to the shin bone . . .”
Homer is nodding along beside me. Suddenly, Mohawk-guy starts to clap along, getting into the groove as I break into the chorus. “Dem bones, dem bones . . .”
Today is certainly a day of firsts. I’ve never had such an obvious reaction to a man as I did when I met Mr. . . I mean, Dr. Hill. I’ve never subjected myself to such humiliation by singing in front of one of my classes. It feels like a wild dream, so when I finish, I go for broke. I hold the last note and add in little jazz hands.
The class erupts in applause, shocking me. Mohawk-guy leans over his desk to give me a fist-bump.
As I slide back into my seat, I realize Dr. Hill wasn’t clapping along with the rest. He’s just staring at me, rubbing his unshaven jaw with his hand. Finally, he says, “Interesting choice, McBride,” and marks something down on the leather-bound booklet in front of him.
I know he wasn’t grading it, but I can still see the bright red F in my mind.
Then he moves onto the next student, who recites some other poem I’ve never heard. Ackerman rolls her eyes at me. Homer, the freshman, looks at me like I’m some mildly amusing joke that needs to go find a literary life. All of my exhilaration drains away. When it does, it’s replaced with complete humiliation. What had I just done? I’d wanted to be teacher’s pet, and now I’ve made myself the class clown. My face burns every time I think about it, so much so that I find myself counting down until the period ends.
Once it does, Dr. Hill clears his throat and holds up a finger. “Before you all go . . . I know many of you think of the first day of class as a grab-a-syllabus-and-go day, but like I said, this is not a throwaway class. Therefore, you have homework, due next Monday.”
Collective groan.
“Writing is nothing without passion. Now, passion means different things to different people, and so I want to learn what it means to you.” He smiles cryptically, tenting his fingers together in front of him. “You have to seek your passion. It will not seek you. Therefore, I’d like you to think about your passion, to seek it out, then write a poem illustrating your greatest passion.”
I wince. Poetry, on day one? I’ve never written anything like this before.
“I want you to pour every ounce of yourself into this work. Can you?”
And his eyes land directly on me.
All I can think in answer is, No, probably not.
And he knows it.
I entertain the thought of rocketing out of my seat and heading straight to the registrar to find a different class, but only for a second. There simply are no other classes that can fit my schedule and fill the English requirement.
I can do this, I tell myself. I haven’t screwed up irreparably yet.
But it sure feels like I have when Dr. Hill dismisses us but says, “Ms. McBride, please stay after.”
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Unbroken (Preview)
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Is it easier the second time around?
Football is life.
My father has been telling me that since I strapped on my first helmet. The sooner I get over this injury, the sooner I can get out of this dead-end town and back to the NFL.
But leaving Genevieve was tough enough the first time. That sweet little girl has had me wrapped around her finger since first grade.
Now, she’s all woman, with deadly curves and an attitude to boot.
Our bodies are drawn together like magnets. Will the NFL have to wait?
Unbroken is a 50,000 word stand-alone romance novel with no cliffhangers, no cheating and a beautiful HEA.
Geni
If I get my ass pinched one more time, there’s going to be hell to pay.
I shovel my latest tip off the plastic checkerboard tablecloth and scowl. Three dollars on a ninety-dollar tab? Fantastic.
I scan the bar as I pocket the crumpled dollars in my apron. It’s Sunday afternoon, and as usual on a game day, Billy’s is hopping. The air is thick with smoke and bodies are wadded, tight, around the bar, so breathing’s a problem. Abby, my best friend since birth, is prancing through whatever openings she can find, arms loaded with French fries and ribs, looking like she actually enjoys the attention of these beer-guzzling, football-addicted slobs. She tosses her blonde ponytail every time someone tugs on it, looking oddly satisfied with her life, and all I can think is that she’d once had so much higher aspirations than this. Everyone is so damn happy, because this is Western Pennsylvania, and the Steelers are up by 21 in the third.
I fucking hate the Steelers.
Abby sidles past me, depositing Billy’s Blastin’ Onion Ring Tower in front of two obese men with plumber’s cracks. I watch them dig in ravenously, juice dripping down their chins, belching on their cheap Rolling Rocks, not sure why I’m disgusted because this is Bradys Bend, where I grew up, and men like that are par for the course, here. Men who squeeze butts and don’t shower and expect women to swoon all over them despite the fact that they’re flat-out nauseating. Abb
y clearly doesn’t mind. Her cheeks are rosy and she looks just about as exhilarated as everyone else in this place. “You okay, darlin’?”
“You were born in this shithole town, well north of the Mason Dixon line, Ab. Stop with the southern accent,” I grumble.
“I think it gets me better tips.” She bats her eyelashes and tightens the knot in her t-shirt, right at her breastbone.
“Oh, you think that’s what is getting the tips?” I say, scanning her from head to toe. Like the hoochie daisy dukes and baby t-shirts, strategically altered to expose as much skin as possible, have nothing to do with it.
She shrugs unapologetically, and I guess she does have a point. After all, she probably doesn’t have to worry about three-dollar tips. “You could probably do with a makeover.”
I look down at my oversized flannel, ripped-knee jeans, and sneakers, and frown. Nothing on the pockets of my boy-cut Levi’s says “Pinch Me”, and yet, here I am, ass so bruised I probably won’t be able to sit down when my shift ends at eight. “No thanks. This isn’t Hooters.”
“Well, at least make over your attitude, Geni,” she says, looking over her shoulder, to where Billy is bartending. He’s a big, buzz-cut-sporting teddy bear, usually, but now, he’s giving us eye-daggers from behind the bar.
Well, not us, actually. Me. I reach for a wet rag and run it over an empty table to make it look like I’m doing something constructive and say, “I have a great attitude.”
She rolls her eyes. “Porcupines are less prickly, girl.”
“What do you mean?” I say with mock horror, affecting that sugary Southern accent to mimic her. “I’m as sweet as pecan pie, sugar.”
“Right. It’s been a stellar day for you. I only heard one complaint about you today.”
I cross my arms indignantly. “That old lady was being a pain!”
She stares at me in horror. “All she wanted was a glass of water. It shouldn’t have taken you twenty minutes to bring it. She nearly choked to death.”
I wave her away. “Hello, they’re called ‘hot wings’ on the menu for a reason! If she couldn’t stand the heat . . .”
She clenches her teeth and shakes her head sadly at me. Then she drops some napkins over at a table behind me and mumbles, “Has he given you a talking to again?”
“All Billy ever does is give me talkings to,” I groan. “He doesn’t say ‘hello’ to me when I walk in anymore. He says, ‘We need to talk.’ I’m sorry if I’m not a ray of sunshine, but that’s just how I am.”
She winces. Abby and I are so close that I think she actually does feel my pain. “Maybe this is your wake-up call. You’re not the customer service type. Why don’t you go and look for something else, Geni? Something where you don’t have to wait on customers?”
“What, are you trying to get rid of me?” I tease.
“No. But you’re miserable, honey. Anyone can see that.”
I shake my head. She’s suggested that to me before. But if the Universe meant this to be my wake-up call, it wouldn’t have left only twenty-three bucks in my checking account, and a rent bill and my father’s hospital payment, which are both two months past due. To think, growing up, everyone in town used to envy me because my parents owned a big house and gave me the best of everything. Now, I’m one missed shift away from homelessness and utter devastation.
“I love this job,” I say in a dull monotone.
“I can tell,” she says, striding off happily, pen and paper at the ready, to a new table of ass-pinchers.
I sigh and approach a table, feeling the hard weight of Billy’s eyes on me. I’m not delusional. I know I’m not waitress material. I don’t think I’ve done one thing right under this roof. Billy’s been threatening to fire me since I started working here four years ago, back when this was just a quick summer gig before I moved on to bigger and better things. But he can’t find any other sucker to work such crappy hours, and for such crappy wages. When “bigger and better” got put on hold indefinitely, I became a permanent fixture here, and can’t see myself anywhere else, despite how miserable I am whenever I walk through the door to start my shift.
Sometimes I wish Billy would fire me. Maybe it would give me the push I need to get out and find what I’m meant to be.
Whatever that is.
I watch Abby, laughing and talking with the new customers. She seems so content. It’s hard to believe that four short years ago, we were planning to escape decrepit old Bradys Bend, Pennsylvania, where nothing exciting ever happens, and make our marks on the world.
Now, Abby just wants to get her customers’ lunch orders right.
And I . . .
I have no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like I’m heading downhill, away from the great big something that was waiting for me. Other people in my graduating class navigated to their callings. Some quickly, some took more time. But maybe some people don’t have a calling and are doomed to wander the earth searching their entire lives.
Maybe that’s me.
Feet crunching on discarded peanut shells, I approach my next table with menus. The bar suddenly erupts into wild applause, some men jumping to their feet, upending chairs in their excitement, pumping fists and giving high-fives to nearby strangers. I look up at the television set behind the bar and frown. The Steelers are at the seven-yard line.
Someone behind me says, “Isn’t that fantastic, little girl?”
I whirl. The man has a red face, like a pimple on the verge of popping, and a toothpick wedged tight between his fat lips. I guess to him, I’m little, since his backside is dripping over the seat like runny mashed potatoes, but I’d never be considered petite. I’m substantial, which is what my mother always called us Wilson women; not fat, but tall and solid. I regard him blankly.
He grins at me, revealing a missing eye tooth. “Aw, sweetheart, are you one of those girls who don’t know the game of football?”
I blink at him. “I understand it,” I say, raising my chin up high. “It does not sufficiently interest me, though.”
He regards me like I’m an alien from the planet Idiot. I’ve never spoken or acted like a local. In Bradys Bend, if football doesn’t interest you, you might as well bite the heads off chickens. Also, I can tell he doesn’t believe that I know a thing about it. When he opens his mouth to explain the fundamentals of the game, I cut him off.
“They’re four and twenty with the sac so they’re going to need to drive it hard to get it into the end zone. I’m sure St. Clair will throw. It’s his signature move when he’s under this kind of pressure.”
He looks at me, dumbfounded by my understanding of his language, that coy smile sliding off his face.
“Hey, Earl, don’t you know who this is?” a voice says across the table. I look up to see Charlie Magee, old Chuckie, who was a year ahead of me in high school, and my ex’s one-time best friend. As is typical of all Bradys Bend High School athletes, the four years he’s been out of school have managed to turn his linebacker physique soft; now he looks more like a lumpy mattress than a refrigerator. He has a barbecue sauce stain on the part of his t-shirt that’s working hard to stretch over his burgeoning beer belly.
Earl squints at me, spits a bit of peanut shell onto the floor. Attractive. “No, who?”
I cringe; ready for him to say Silas St. Clair’s old girlfriend. Silas St. Clair, Heisman trophy winner, Davey O’Brien Award winner, first draft pick for the Steelers three years ago, Super Bowl winner, and by far, the greatest thing to ever come out of Bradys Bend. Then, everyone will know why I’ve been walking around this place like I’m navigating a minefield.
Instead, he says, “She was one of our groupies. Never missed a single football game at the high school.”
I swallow the knot that ties up my throat. As relieved as I am, I’m also insulted. I was never a groupie to the game, never hung around the bleachers like the cheerleaders, waiting to be noticed by the players. I went to the games for one thing and one thing only: My boyfriend. But the
door closed on that part of my life too long ago. No one can picture us together anymore, because I’m a waitress, and Silas St. Clair is, well . . . a god. A god who is known for his crazy antics on and off the field, whether it be dancing or doing handsprings on the sidelines or escorting three, count ‘em, three, porn stars to some awards ceremony last year. It’s almost enough to make me think that my sophomore and junior year as Silas’s girlfriend was just in my head.
“Hope they pull it out,” I add, because I’d probably get myself hauled into the parking lot and stoned if I said what I’m really thinking, which is, Hope he chokes.
Not that he ever does. Silas St. Clair is, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “practically inhuman in his precision. He rarely fails with what he sets out to do.”
Gag.
But I can’t watch. I used to find it hard to watch, sitting in the front bleachers of the run-down Union High field, with its tufts of sad brown grass. I used to close my eyes and pray for good things for Silas St. Clair.
What a difference four years makes.
Steeling myself, I ignore the silence that has fallen over the crowd as they all hold a collective breath. I plant myself in front of a table of college boys with Carnegie Mellon sweatshirts who must have gotten lost on their way back to Pittsburgh, and say, “What’ll you have?”
My voice is practically a roar, shattering the tense silence. The boys scowl and crane their necks around me to see the television, ignoring me as if I’m an annoying boulder that just rolled into their way.
I tap my pen on my notepad, blow a tuft of wayward hair out of my eyes. “Hello?”
Suddenly the quiet is broken and the place explodes with celebration as the word erupts from several places at once. The word I’d expected to hear. The word I’d been dreading.
“TOUCHDOWN!”
“Fucking A! Fucking A!” A goateed dude in a Penguins hat shouts, jumping to his feet and giving his friend double high fives. Peanuts spill and beer sloshes across the table. “I told you! I told you my man St. Clair would pull it off! I can feel it. Back to back Super Bowl wins!”