“Barely.”
As I scan the room, it dawns on me why everything is mismatched and looks like it came from completely different time periods. An antique bookcase with a modern lamp. A retro ’70s chair with a sleek metal end table. “Everything in here came from the prop room?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t they miss this stuff?”
“Eh. Pieces have been disappearing little by little over the last decade, ever since Poet’s Corner began. I’m sure they miss things occasionally, especially the big stuff.”
“Like, for instance, a bright orange couch.”
“Exactly.”
“And even if they did miss it,” I say, suppressing a smile, “they’d have no idea where to look.”
“Secret room.” His mouth curves up on one side. “I should probably feel a little bit guilty, shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe a little bit,” I say, holding up my hand, thumb and finger nearly touching.
“It’s not like they were stolen.”
“Of course not. They were simply relocated.”
“That couch is really comfortable.” He steps past me and jumps down onto the ground with a thud. He falls back into the orange sofa, running his hands back and forth across the cushions. “And inspirational. You know, if you’re looking for something to write about, this couch would make a great topic.”
I laugh. “Why would I want to write about a piece of furniture?” I have a mental illness and four superficial friends. Surely I have more fodder for a poetic career than to need an ugly orange couch.
When he grins, that dimple on the left side of his mouth catches my eye. “I have no idea.” Then he lets his head fall backward and he stares up at the ceiling. “This is good. Keep ’em coming.” He motions toward himself with one hand. “What other questions do you have for me, Sam?”
Sam. Again. That makes two.
I walk around the stage, getting a feel for it under my feet. I run my fingertips across the stool, remembering how terrified I was up here. It feels like it’s daring me to sit on it again, so I hop up and take a look around. The room looks different now that it’s emptier. Safer. At least now I feel like a poet wannabe and not a stripper.
AJ’s still reclining into the couch, watching me.
“Tell me more about the rules. You can’t criticize anyone’s poetry, especially your own, right?”
“True,” he says. “And the last time I broke that one, you saw the ramifications firsthand.”
I remember how AJ stood up here with his guitar dangling from the strap, inviting his friends to throw paper at him. “Yes, I did.” Thinking back on that day reminds me of something else I’ve been wondering about.
“Why do you always start by saying where you wrote your poem? Why does that matter?”
“Is there a place you like to go when you write? Is there one particular place that inspires you?”
I picture my room, huddled down in my sheets far past my bedtime, writing until my hand hurts. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t call it inspirational. Then I think about the pool.
“Yeah.”
AJ looks right at me. “We think those places matter. We think they’re worth sharing, you know? Because when you share them, they become part of the poem.”
Goose bumps travel up my arms. “Hmm. I like that.”
“Yeah, me too. Which reminds me of another.” He hops back onto the stage and stands right in front of me. “The first poem you read in Poet’s Corner has to be written here.”
“What?”
“Yep.”
Crap. Back in history class, Sydney wasn’t telling me I had to get up on stage. How could I have been so stupid? “Why did you guys let me start reading today?”
He laughs. “You were going for it. I don’t think any of us knew how to stop you.”
I hide my face. “Until I stopped myself.”
“And I think I speak for all of us when I say we were sorry you did.”
“Really?”
They wanted me here.
“Of course. You would’ve been pummeled with paper when you finished, and I, for one, was especially looking forward to that part.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Now, that would have been an interesting initiation.”
“Maybe,” he says, “but this one’s better.” He pulls his phone from his pocket. “We meet on Mondays and Thursdays at lunch. Sometimes we call additional meetings for no apparent reason. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No.” Actually, maybe.
“If we invite you to join us, I’ll need your number.” He lifts his phone in the air. I’m not an official member, but he seems to be asking, so I tell him. He types it in, then slips his phone back into his pocket. “Any more questions?” he asks me.
I step off the stage and start walking the perimeter, past hundreds of slips of paper filled with thousands and thousands of words. All these people. Each one so exposed in the most frightening way. I have no idea how I’ll ever do anything close to this.
“I think all of you have a gift I don’t possess,” I say without looking at him.
“What’s that?”
I take a few steps forward, watching the walls and the words as I go. “You seem to know how to articulate your feelings and share them with other human beings. I’m afraid my gift is the exact opposite; I’m skilled at holding everything in.” My chin starts trembling like it does when I tell Sue something I never intended to admit, but my chest feels a bit lighter now. I doubt this is what AJ meant when he asked if I had any questions, but I have to hear his answer to this one. “How do I learn to do this?”
He gets up from the couch. “I guess you start in a safe place, with safe people, like in this room, with us.” He’s speaking as he walks toward me. “We trust each other and we don’t judge. You’re totally free to blurt here.”
I laugh too loudly. “Me? Yeah, I don’t blurt. Ever. My friend Kaitlyn prides herself on having lots of opinions and always saying exactly what she thinks. She blurts. Sometimes it hurts the people around her.”
“That’s different,” he says.
I feel myself staring at him. “Do you always say exactly what you’re thinking?”
He shrugs. “I try to. I like to know where I stand with people, and I figure I owe them the same courtesy. I mean, I’m never rude or hurtful about it, but I don’t see any reason to be fake. That’s a lot of work.”
It is. I would know.
AJ lifts the cord from around his neck and drops it over my head. His fingers graze my shoulders and the key makes a little sound as it bounces against a button on my blouse.
“Is this allowed?” I lift it in my hands, running my finger over the sharp points and grooves.
“Of course. The key belongs to the group. I’m just the one in charge of the door.”
I’m feeling a little nervous about being down here alone. What if the power goes out? What if the ventilation fails? Could anyone get to me? “Does anyone else have a key?”
“Mr. Bartlett. He comes in a few times a month to empty the trash, vacuum the joint, that type of thing.”
“The janitor? He knows about this place?”
“He’s worked here for twenty years. Mr. B knows everyone and everything. But he keeps our secret to himself.”
I run my finger along the key again. I don’t really want AJ to go, but at the same time, I’m eager to be alone with all these poems. I’m dying to finally find his lyrics.
“I’m going to leave, okay?” he says. I expect him to step away, but he surprises me by stepping toward me. I’m reminded of how tall he is, and I have to tip my chin up to see his eyes. I’ve thought about him so much over the last month, but now I finally have a chance to really study him.
He’s not gorgeous or anything, not like Brandon and the rest of my recent crushes. But none of them ever made me feel the way I do right now.
Everything about AJ is pulling me in. The way he’s standing, so confident and in control. The w
ay he’s been so relaxed in this room with me today, making me feel like I do belong here. The way I remember him playing that one song, how it practically floated out of his body.
“Stay down here as long as you like. Read the walls; they’re covered with a decade’s worth of words written by more than a hundred people. Meet everyone. Then write something of your own.”
“Okay,” I whisper. His expression is soft and kind, and his eyes shine when he talks about the room and me becoming part of it.
“Lock the door and turn off all the lamps when you’re done. I’ll be waiting for you at that table by your locker.”
“Okay,” I say again.
He starts to step away from me, but he stops. “Oh, and if you want to, practice reading aloud. The stage doesn’t feel quite as scary when the room is empty.”
He squeezes past me and I press my back against the wall to give him room.
“AJ?” He turns around. I don’t want to say it, but I feel like I need to, because I don’t want to be uncomfortable down here and I certainly don’t want him to be. And if they’re all gearing up to judge my sincerity, he should understand how much it means for him to forgive me.
“You don’t have to do this. If you don’t want us to be friends, I get it. It was a long time ago, but the things I said and did when we were kids…” I trail off, thinking about the day Kaitlyn and I crank-called his house over and over again, until his mom finally picked up and screamed in our ears, begging us to stop. Or that time we sat behind him on the bus and cleaned out our backpacks, dropping all our gum wrappers, paper scraps, and pieces of lint down the back of his shirt. I shake my head and bite my lower lip hard. “You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
He doesn’t speak right away. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asks.
“I guess…I sort of…” I stammer, searching for the perfect words. “I wanted to be sure you knew. Just in case you thought I didn’t mean it the first time.”
He gives me another smile. That makes three today. This one looks even more genuine than the others. “If I didn’t think you meant it the first time, you wouldn’t be down here.”
I have no idea what to say to that, so I just stand with my thumbs hooked in my front pockets and rock back on my heels.
“But since we’re blurting here,” he says, “I’ll be honest. It wasn’t easy for me to let you come down here today. I’ve accepted your apology, because I think it’s genuine and I’m not one to hold a grudge, but let’s not push the ‘friends’ thing, okay?”
As he walks to the door, he raises his finger in the air and circles it above his head. “Read the walls, Sam.”
I spend the rest of sixth period and all seventh reading the walls of Poet’s Corner. The poems here are silly, heartbreaking, hilarious, sad, and many are absolutely incredible. They’re about people who don’t care enough and people who care too much, people you trust and people who turn on you, hating school, loving your friends, seeing the beauty in the world. Sprinkled among them are heavier ones about depression and addiction, self-mutilation and various forms of self-medication. But most of them are about love. Wanting it. Missing it. Actually being in it. I read some of those twice.
None of the poetry is marked with anything that makes its author identifiable—aside from the fast-food wrappers, which appear to be Sydney’s trademark. Hard as I try, I can’t figure out which ones Caroline penned, but AJ’s proved to be fairly easy; as soon as I found that first song, I had no trouble finding more of his right-slanted, narrow handwriting.
By the time the final bell rings, I’ve read hundreds of poems. As eager as I am to say I covered every square inch of this place, I’ve already been alone down here for over an hour. AJ’s sitting at the table, waiting for me to return, and I still have a poem of my own to write.
My backpack is still sitting in front by the couch, so I take a seat and thumb through my notebooks. I skip the red one because I’m not angry, and the blue one because I’m not thinking about the pool. The poem that’s building inside of me is a yellow one. My head falls back into the cushions, and I let my gaze travel around the walls one more time before I take my pen to the paper. I tap it three times. Then I let everything go.
I’m perched on the edge of the diving block at the end of lane number three. I adjust my swim cap, press my goggles into my eyes with the heels of my hands, and step into my stance. I scratch the tape three times and dive in.
I spent the whole drive here thinking about my afternoon in Poet’s Corner. Sitting on the stage alone. Reading the poems. Writing my own. And AJ, who may not be my friend, but at least he no longer seems to hate me.
But now, everything is so quiet. Not just the pool, but my mind, too. I don’t even feel the urge to swim to the beat of a song. I’m mentally spent. Out of words. Out of thoughts. It feels so good to be this empty. It’s so peaceful.
Is this what it’s like to be normal?
For the next forty minutes, I follow Coach Kevin’s instructions, but I wish I were here alone, without him yelling at me to swim faster, push myself harder. When practice is over and the rest of the team heads for the showers, I hang back in the water and keep swimming a slow freestyle, back and forth.
Fifteen minutes later, the club is clearing out. The rest of my teammates are in their sweats and swim parkas, heading for the front gates, so I pull myself out of the pool and reach for my towel. As I’m rinsing off, I start thinking about what’s next. If I’m serious about joining Poet’s Corner, I’ll have to step on that stage and read next Monday. If they let me stay, I’ll have to read again. And again. I’ll have to come up with an excuse to miss lunch twice a week.
What am I going to tell the Eights?
My heart is racing as I change into my sweats, and my fingers start tingling as I’m heading for the parking lot. I’m almost out the gate when I spot Caroline sitting cross-legged on the grass by my car.
“Hey. What are you doing here?”
She sits up a little straighter and I read her T-shirt: PROCRASTINATE NOW!
“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. I figured you’d be here, and I didn’t get to see you after, you know…what happened at lunch today.”
“What happened at lunch today?” I joke. With a dramatic face palm, I fall back onto the grass next to her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, laughing.
“Did you tell them about my OCD and my anxiety attacks? Is that why AJ apologized and brought me back downstairs?”
“No,” she says matter-of-factly. “I never said a word.”
“You swear?”
She draws an X across her heart.
Then I remember what Sydney said in history when she invited me to go downstairs with her. I meant to thank Caroline when I first saw her in Poet’s Corner, but I never had the chance to. “You know, they let me back in because of the poem you helped me write,” I say, coming up on my elbow.
“You wrote that.”
“Not alone.”
She doesn’t say anything, but she knows it’s true. If she hadn’t helped me find the right words to apologize to AJ, he never would have forgiven me.
“Thank you.”
She grins. “Anytime.”
“I have to get back on that stage on Monday.”
“I know. And you’ll be fine.” She sounds so certain. I wish I felt that confident.
“And let’s just say for the sake of argument, I pull it off. Then I’ll have to come up with more to read. Which could be problematic since, as you know, most of my stuff is about the…” I spin my finger in a circle around my right temple, but I can’t bring myself to say the word “crazy.”
“They can handle it, you know? The…” She mimics my gesture without saying the word either.
I’m sure they can. But it’s taken me five years to tell anyone outside my family about my disorder, and even though I let Caroline in on my secret, I’m not ready to share it with the rest of the members of Poet’s Corner. Besides, I
want their vote, not their sympathy. “I just want to keep it between you and me. At least for now. Okay?”
“You got it.” She presses her lips together and turns an imaginary key, locking my secrets inside.
“Where have you been?” Kaitlyn asks as I find a spot in the circle.
“What do you mean?” I start unpacking my lunch bag. “The bell just rang.”
“Not today. Yesterday.” When I look up, she blows her straw wrapper at me and it bounces off my forehead. “You weren’t here at lunch, and Olivia said you missed fifth period.”
“I was just worried,” Olivia says, playing with her food. “Everything okay?”
“I wasn’t feeling well so I went home after fourth.” I take a sip of my soda. In my peripheral vision, I can see them all looking at Alexis. “What?” I ask, feeling the familiar adrenaline rush that always kicks off the panic attack. I steel myself for whatever it is Alexis is supposed to report regarding my whereabouts.
She saw me talking with AJ at my locker. Or sneaking into the theater with Sydney.
“I saw your car in the student lot after school.” She sounds apologetic, but there’s a little accusatory lilt in her voice. An unsaid Aha. Caught ya.
I don’t want to lie to them, but I can’t tell them where I was yesterday. A version of the events I’d been planning when I ran into AJ yesterday pops into my head, so I go with it.
“I went to the office and the nurse took my temperature. Since it was high, she said I wasn’t allowed to drive, so my mom had to come down here and get me.” I add a dramatic eye roll to punctuate my lie, and give my sandwich my undivided attention, trying not to appear guilty.
They must not have any other evidence against me because Alexis says, “Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.” When I look up again, she’s mixing dressing into her salad. Hailey gives me a sheepish grin, like she’s relieved to discover that I have a good reason for abandoning them without a word.
It worked for today, but I’m not sure how I’ll skip out of lunch on Monday. What am I going to do if I’m invited to join Poet’s Corner—fake an illness every Monday and Thursday? I’m going to need a better cover story.
Every Last Word Page 9