The Trouble with Emily Dickinson

by Lyndsey D'Arcangelo

  The deal was sealed.

  * * *

  When JJ returned to the dorm an hour and a half later, she was carrying a pizza in one hand and a six-pack of Pepsi in the other. She casually walked into the suite where Queenie was sprawled out on the couch watching television, wearing a pair of boxers, wool socks and a T-shirt that asked “Why are all the cool girls lesbians?”

  Queenie acknowledged her presence simply by repositioning herself on the couch so that there was room for two. JJ set the pizza box on the coffee table without saying a word, and sat down. She handed the six-pack to Queenie, who released one can, popped the top, and passed it over before taking one for herself. JJ took a long sip from the can in her hand, letting the sweetness of the soda dance on her tongue before she swallowed.

  “What are you watching?” she asked.

  “Nothing much.” Queenie burped, and added, “Excuse me.”

  They watched sitcom reruns for the rest of the night and nearly finished off the entire pizza. They exchanged a few tidbits of conversation, mostly whether the characters they were watching on television were attractive or not. And not once did Queenie say, “I told you so.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Kendal braced herself, and then knocked on Mya’s door. She had little in common with Mya Brooks, aside from the fact that they both were on the cheerleading squad. Their conversations were few and far between, and basically centered on schoolwork and cheerleading. Mya was the captain of the cheerleading squad. She cared about the squad wholeheartedly, and about little else. It was all she ever talked about. It was her life.

  Mya was sweet and understanding, though, which made her easy to talk to. She was compassionate and charitable, a true humanitarian. But as sweet as she was, she knew how to play the game when it mattered. It wasn’t in anyone’s best interest to get in her way whenever cheerleading was concerned. And if anyone ever told her that cheerleading wasn’t a sport, watch out!

  “Come in,” Kendal heard from beyond the peephole. She opened the door and saw Mya sitting comfortably in a beanbag chair, an open textbook in her lap.

  “Kendal,” Mya said, surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Kendal entered slowly and checked every corner of the room to make sure Mya was alone. She motioned to the bed, asking for permission to sit down.

  “Sure, have a seat,” Mya said warmly. “I’m sure you heard about our little meeting last night. I had a hunch Christine would let you in on it since she isn’t the best at keeping secrets.”

  “She did,” Kendal replied evenly. “I was actually going to come to address some things myself, but I didn’t want to make a scene at the meeting.”

  “Why would you have made a scene?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you make a scene if you were about to get kicked off the cheerleading squad?”

  Mya burst out laughing. “Kendal, who said we were kicking you off the squad?”

  “Christine did. She said you were having a secret meeting about me because everyone had noticed how I’ve been acting lately. You know, avoiding soccer parties and such, and hanging out with certain people. I thought . . .”

  “It was a secret meeting of sorts, but in no way were we planning on kicking you off the squad. As far as your behavior, we have noticed. But only because of how hard you’ve been working to get your grades up lately. We know how upset you’ve been about not being able to socialize as much, and we wanted to throw you a party. The secrecy of the meeting had to do with the planning of the party.”

  “That’s it?” Kendal cursed Christine under her breath. She might not have blatantly lied to her about the so-called secret meeting, but she’d certainly implied that Kendal was about to be kicked off the squad.

  “We discussed ideas for the winter formal too, but that’s basically about it.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Kendal stood up. “Christine had me thinking that you were going to kick me out for being gay.”

  Mya’s book dropped from her lap.

  “Not that I am, in any way, shape or form,” Kendal hurried to explain. “I mean, not that I know of, at this point in my life, or think I might want to . . . if I met someone, a woman, I guess, the thought has crossed my mind, because of JJ, but if . . .”

  “Kendal, are you trying to tell me that you are a lesbian?”

  “What? No!” Kendal said quickly. She pulled at her fingers and avoided Mya’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Kendal walked across the room, unable to keep her feelings bottled up any longer. “Ever since I met her, I’ve been all over the place.”

  “Met who?”

  “JJ. I’ve never met anyone like her before. And I know she’s a girl. So I ask myself how another girl can make me feel this way. And I try to stop the feelings, but the truth is that I don’t want them to stop. So when Christine said that if I wanted to continue to be on the squad and keep my friends, then I had to stop spending time with JJ, I didn’t know what to do. Then I realized I knew exactly what to do, because why would I want to be part of a team that dictated who I could spend my time with, or cared more about a reputation than it did about me?”

  “So you came here to quit the squad?” Mya asked. “Because of what Christine had led you to believe?”

  “Yes,” Kendal nodded. “I need to figure out my feelings for JJ, and I won’t let anybody else do that for me or judge me in any way.”

  Mya stood up, took Kendal’s hand and guided her over to the bed. They sat down, side by side. “Did you know that I have an older brother?”

  “Yes,” Kendal replied, recalling meeting Mya’s brother at the homecoming parade last year.

  “Did you know he’s gay?”

  “He is?” Kendal remembered a tall, handsome and muscular fellow who went to college in Boston. He had seemed more like a ladies’ man than a man’s man.

  “Yes. And he’s even in a fraternity.”

  “A gay one?”

  Mya laughed, “No, silly, it’s not a gay fraternity. It’s a regular fraternity. It has straight members, too. And black members. And white members. The point is that it doesn’t matter what you are. Why should it?”

  “I don’t know, Christine seems to think —”

  “It seems that Christine has some personal issues to work out on her own. I’m thinking I should develop a course on tolerance for the whole squad, make it mandatory.” She smiled, “What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a great idea.”

  Kendal was glad she’d decided not to go to the meeting after all. That would have been awkward, especially if she’d burst into the room accusing everybody of plotting against her. But she regretted the fact that she’d decided not to meet JJ in the library for their tutoring session. She hadn’t even sent her a simple text to say she couldn’t make it.

  After Christine had given her the ultimatum, Kendal initially agreed not to see JJ. But as Saturday turned into Sunday, and Sunday turned into Sunday evening, her stomach soured with the thought of what Christine had actually asked her to do. It soured more with the thought of what she’d agreed to do.

  The spot under the scorers’ box served its purpose for a couple of hours. Then Kendal became afraid that JJ would come looking for her after she’d skipped their tutoring session. She ended up going for a walk out on the edge of town where she was sure no one would find her. Everything in her life had suddenly been turned upside down. It was either Emily Dickinson’s fault or JJ’s. Kendal couldn’t decide which one.

  Somewhere along the road Kendal found a beautiful weeping willow with a thick trunk, a perfect spot for organizing her thoughts. She sat down, leaned up against the bark, stretched her legs out on the tall blades of grass and withdrew her volume of Emily Dickinson. Kendal didn’t know why she’d brought the body of work with her, the volume of poetry that once plagued her and gave her nightmares. For some reason she felt it might give her comfort, and maybe help her make sense out of everything she’d be
en feeling.

  She flipped opened the book, closed her eyes, and rested her finger on a single line. When she opened her eyes, she saw the words of the poem before her. Her finger had landed on that page by chance, yet for some reason Kendal felt that it was supposed to land on that poem. She knew that poem. It meant something. And it made everything that she’d been feeling make sense.

  She remembered that poem now, as she sat beside Mya.

  “Is everything okay?” Mya asked.

  Kendal thought about the poem, the words that were branded in her brain, and had been since the first time she’d studied it.

  “Yes. Everything is more than okay,” she said. “In fact, everything is perfect.”

  “Good.” Mya gave Kendal a slight hug and added, “If you ever need to talk more about this, just let me know.”

  “I might take you up on that.” Kendal headed for the door, feeling more relieved than she could have hoped. She paused in the threshold, turned and said, “I underestimated you.”

  “And I underestimated Christine,” said Mya. “Don’t worry. I plan on having a little talk with her.”

  Although Kendal longed to have a little talk with Christine herself, the slight hint of wickedness in Mya’s voice was enough to satisfy Kendal’s appetite for revenge.

  * * *

  Kyan was lying facedown on his bed with a pillow over his head. He had a pounding headache and a severely bruised ego. What girl in her right mind would have the nerve to stand him up? It didn’t make any sense. Getting a girl had never been this hard. But with Kendal McCarthy it seemed almost impossible.

  She hadn’t shown any interest in him that night at the soccer party when the two of them were left alone in a room. And she couldn’t have cared less when he tracked her down in the library to invite her to only one of the best and most exclusive parties of the year. And when he finally thought he had made a dent, the day she’d come to his room to accept the invite, she’d stood him up anyway.

  He had acted like such a fool, playing the sweet and sensitive guy. Apparently, that whole approach had been pointless. But he had thought that that was the kind of guy Kendal would respond to. Maybe she was one of those girls who always fell for the jerk? The guy who never called back, acted like she didn’t exist? Whoever said that nice guys finish last must have known what he was talking about.

  The end of the soccer season, as well as fall semester, for that matter, was just around the corner, and with it came Sampson Academy’s famous winter formal. To Kyan, it was his last chance to put an exclamation point on a perfect high school career. The soccer team was always paired with the cheerleading squad for winter formal. It was Sampson Academy’s version of a prom, only larger and more upscale. Everyone at the formal voted for the perfect couple, which meant that the chosen pair, who would be anointed King and Queen, attained a status far higher than everyone else. Kyan was determined to be one of the chosen. In his mind—in his perfect plan—he would be the king and Kendal would be his queen.

  But in order to achieve that goal, he needed a new game plan. The one he had hatched originally was not working.

  At first he had thought that Christine was his best way in since she had told Kyan many things about Kendal, things that she’d thought Kendal would respond to. And they hadn’t worked. It had appeared that Christine thought she knew Kendal better than she actually did.

  There was one other person, though, one other girl that Kyan had seen Kendal hanging around with over the past month, Kendal’s tutor, the girl on the basketball team. If he could somehow convince her to plant a seed in Kendal’s mind about him, get her to do a little pushing and prodding on his behalf, Kendal just might bend. She just might let him in.

  It appeared to be a feasible plan of action. Girls always listened to their closest friends when it came to dating guys. What better way to get to Kendal than to go through a close friend?

  CHAPTER 26

  JJ sat on a wooden bench in front of the grand fountain, the symbolic centerpiece of the quad. But since the weather had recently turned colder, the fountain had been shut off.

  By itself, without water, the cement structure was depressing, lifeless. It had no purpose. It just stood there, taking up space, while students wandered by and paid it no attention. JJ wondered if the fountain missed the water during the bitter cold winter months. Even its soft blue color had faded, which left it looking gray. The water was the fountain’s life source and without it, the fountain couldn’t go on living. Well, at least for the rest of the winter. Then, every spring, when winter thawed, the school staged a big party on the quad the day the fountain water was turned back on. And the fountain sprang enthusiastically back to life.

  JJ sat there, wondering why she’d just wasted a decent amount of her brain cells crafting a metaphor on the circle of life and a waterless fountain when she could be doing something much more productive with her time. But this is what usually happened when the Dibble Syndrome hit. It sucked the life right out of her. It made no sense, rhyme nor reason. It left her in a complete and utter daze.

  Nothing mattered to her, not basketball, not even her writing. She hadn’t written anything for at least a week, in fact. Ever since Kendal hadn’t shown up for their tutoring session, she’d been moping around as if it were the end of the world. It didn’t help that she saw Kendal practically everywhere she went. Attending a small private school made it far too easy to bump into the same people on a regular basis—whether you wanted to or not. But Kendal never even looked in her direction. JJ figured she felt bad about what happened and would rather forget all about it, Emily Dickinson and those “wild nights” included.

  What made it all worse, though, was the fact that Queenie had been right about Kendal all along.

  JJ shook her head in disappointment. Maybe she needed to be more like Queenie. Maybe she needed to not care, to not let herself get attached. But JJ knew that was impossible. She did care. And her emotions ran so deep there was no way she could be with someone without getting attached. Keeping people at arm’s length was a skill that Queenie had mastered, for whatever reason. JJ had never asked her why. She assumed Queenie had gotten burned somewhere along the way, possibly by a former girlfriend. Or maybe she was just cynical because it was part of her personality. Either way, it was quite obvious that she was bitter when it came to relationships.

  But as many times as JJ got her heart stepped on, she refused to be like Queenie. She was a hopeless romantic; so what? It was better than being a cynic.

  “Whenever something like this happens, you go off to find yourself.” The voice rose from behind.

  JJ turned around to see Queenie standing there, hands in her pockets, a wide grin on her face.

  “It’s pathetic, isn’t it?” JJ asked, turning back to face the fountain. She wondered what Queenie would think about her little fountain metaphor.

  “No, it’s not pathetic,” Queenie returned. She walked over and sat down on the bench. “It’s just the way you deal with things. And it’s probably a lot healthier than the way I deal with things.”

  “You mean by ignoring the feelings?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s just what I need to do.”

  “Say no more, my friend!” Queenie slapped JJ on the knee and stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “I called a few people. We’re going to go dancing downtown.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  JJ frowned. She wasn’t sure she was up for one of Queenie’s crazy adventures.

  “What? You’ve got something better to do?” Queenie asked in a tone that told JJ she shouldn’t attempt to argue. It was clear that Queenie had every intention of dragging her downtown whether she wanted to go or not.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “And no tutoring?”

  “No tutoring.”

  “And you got that extension for your writing class, right? You don’t have to re
ad that poem anytime soon?”

  JJ nodded. She had gotten an extension. It had been her last hope because she hadn’t even been close to being prepared last Monday morning when she was supposed to read her poem out loud. And in a state of panic, she’d asked to speak to Mrs. Clark out in the hall. She desperately tried to explain her stage fright and that she was doing her best to overcome it. Somehow it had worked because Mrs. Clark took pity on her and granted JJ an extension.

  At the end of the semester, during exams, the writing class held an open reading at The Spot. Every person in the class had to select the best piece from their own body of work that they had accumulated over the semester. They were to read their pieces aloud in front of the entire class and whoever else was in the audience. Each student would be graded on both the writing and their stage delivery.

  Mrs. Clark’s one stipulation had been that JJ read the poem that she had already selected.

  JJ had agreed on the spot. She didn’t have a choice. But it really didn’t matter which poem she read, just as long as she didn’t have to read it out loud anytime soon. She figured that she’d be able to conquer her stage fright by the time the end of the semester came around. At least, she hoped she would be able to.

  “So it’s settled then,” said Queenie. “We’re going out.” She yanked JJ off the bench. “We’ve got to do something about your outfit, though. There’s no way I’m going to a club with you looking like that.”

  JJ regarded her clothes. She was wearing her basketball jersey pants, a dark-blue hooded sweatshirt and flip-flops with white socks.

  “I swear,” Queenie shook her head. “Sometimes you just scream ‘I need a makeover’.”

  * * *

  With Queenie’s help, JJ emerged from her dorm room looking quite hip in faded jeans, a form-fitting vintage long-sleeved T-shirt, and her favorite pair of Adidas sneakers. She even had taken time to do her hair. Before they left the dorm, Queenie sprayed JJ with her own cologne because she swore up and down that it made the ladies wild.