by Daryl Banner
I guess there are worse ways to suffer.
He doesn’t once look my way. He has a book tucked under his arm. He has this big black cuff on his wrist. His eyebrows, dark and blunt, are pulled together with concentration. It’s like he’s furious, and he’s going to do something about it. I sorta wish he was mad at me. I don’t even know why. I just want him to look my way.
Oh my God, I’m such a creep. Stop staring.
Stop staring.
And then there’s nothing more to stare at as he disappears in the crowd outside the door. I’m all alone in the classroom, glued to my seat with no one around me. Even the professor is gone.
I turn my head and spot something on Dmitri’s desk. After rising from my chair and stumbling over my worn shoes, I discover it’s a crumpled up piece of paper.
I should probably leave it alone. Really, it’s none of my business.
Only a total weirdo would care about something that a cute guy in class left on his desk. Trash, no less. Something he wanted thrown away, obviously. Not something he’d want someone to … happen upon.
Or open up.
Or read.
I glance over my shoulder. There’s still no one here. I’m all alone and I’m standing over the desk of the guy I was staring at the whole hour. I mean really, could I be any more pathetic?
I guess I could be. I mean, I could pick up this ball of paper and read it, right? But I wouldn’t do that.
I won’t do it.
Turning on my heel, I walk toward the door, forcing myself to think about where I want to go to enjoy the sandwich in my backpack. There was a nice courtyard with benches between the School of Theatre and the School of Music. I could sit there. Maybe I can go find my new best friend Amy and we can chat about Rho Kappa Lambda.
Then suddenly I’m in front of his desk again and smoothing out the piece of paper. I pick it up and read:
Poetry is dead.
I stare at his words. I read them twenty times.
Poetry is dead.
I don’t know why, but his words really hit me. In an instant, I feel like he’s just become my mission. Why would he think poetry’s dead? Did someone hurt him? Is he one of those tortured artists who skulks around with a broken heart all day?
Maybe he doesn’t need someone ogling him all class period. Maybe he just needs a friend. A friend who’ll listen to him. A friend who might convince him that poetry is very much alive.
A friend whose heart might race in his presence.
A friend who might never have felt this way about a boy before.
A friend who just wrecked her life with two little words.
Chapter 2
Sam
“Sisters for life!”
Fourteen other pledges cheer, girls squeal, and then suddenly we’re being compressed into what I take to be a sort of sorority mosh pit of clumsy hugging, giggles, and jumping in the living room of a house on a street two blocks from campus.
An hour later, I’m alone and drinking punch in a rocking chair on the front porch (no, it’s not spiked; drinking of any kind is strictly forbidden in Rho Kappa Lambda) when Amy bursts out of the house. Her eyes light up when she finds me. “Sam!”
If I’m being honest, the only reason I came to the initiation was because they said there’d be free drinks and finger foods. Anything to lighten the load on my budget is something I pay attention to.
“I was expecting hazing,” I confess.
“Oh, no. No hazing. It isn’t allowed, silly! We’re totally honorable and follow all the rules. Were you okay with our little ritual?”
I tuned out most of what was being said when the other pledges and I were being inducted, or initiated, or sacrificed to Aphrodite—whatever they call it.
“And really,” she goes on cheerily, “the dues are cheap, since the house is paid for thanks to my daddy. We’re really quite fortunate.”
Dues …? I stare at my punch. “I … I didn’t know there were dues.”
Amy finds that to be the funniest thing in the world. “Of course! All the sisters pitch in. I doubt there are any sororities that don’t make their members pay dues.” She tilts her head. “Oh. Is that a problem?”
I’m still staring at my punch. Well, I guess this was tasty while it lasted. “I … I don’t really, um …”
I hate letting people know how much I struggle to pay tuition, or how much of a miracle my being enrolled in college is at all. The very idea that Amy might be looking down at me with pity is enough to make me hop off the porch and pretend I never became a Really Kool Lady. I feel anything but kool, with the K or not.
Amy puts a hand on my arm. I flinch, looking up at her. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispers. “I got you covered.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You do?”
“We’re going to be best friends,” she decides, giving me a big smile.
I return the smile, unsure how I feel about all of this. It’s not that I regret my decision to join Rho Kappa Lambda. I mean, my mom did insist that I immerse myself in the whole college experience as much as possible.
So here I am. Immersing.
“Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?” she adds hastily. “Really Kool Ladies don’t discriminate!”
My eyes flinch away, thinking of the boy I’ve been sitting behind in Poetry for the past few weeks. That second day of class when I went to sit in my newly-assigned desk right behind Dmitri Katz was the most nerve-wracking experience I’ve ever known. As I stared at the desk that I occupied on the first day—front and center—I was certain the professor would notice its vacancy and search around for my face. Then I’d be called out in front of everyone, Dmitri’s cute face would be noted, and my whole devious act would be brought to light—to my complete and utter humiliation. The truth would be written on my face from one reddened ear to the other.
But none of that happened. In fact, it was rather anticlimactic how very little attention the professor—or anyone, for that matter—paid to my devious seat-switching maneuver. Even Dmitri didn’t notice the sudden appearance of a person in the desk behind him who wasn’t there the first day.
Again. I’m used to not being noticed. No big deal. Life story.
“Oh!” Amy squeaks. “There is someone! I can see it in your eyes! Who? What’s his or her name?”
Dmitri Katz. That’s his name. And he doesn’t know I exist, even though I sit right behind him every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But what’s a new lady friend good for if not to share juicy boy news?
Juicy nonexistent boy news. “He’s this guy in … my class. Poetry. He’s nice, I guess.”
“Nice?” Amy folds up her legs on the chair and hugs them to her chest, listening with widened eyes. “How so?”
“He … has hair and stuff.” Ugh, this is so awkward.
“Uh, okay, so he’s not bald. What’s his name??”
For some reason, I feel like it’s some secret I need to keep. I can’t even think to say his name out loud. “D-Danny,” I blurt.
“Danny?” She sighs. “That’s a cute name. You sound really into him. I bet he writes the most beautiful poetry.”
I put my cup of punch in my face to avoid answering any further, staring over the banister of the porch at the edge of campus that looms just down the street. With gulp after gulp of the innocently sweet, red beverage, I’m imagining how many more classes have to go by before I muster up enough courage to just say hello to him.
Hello. That’s all it takes to start a friendship.
Hello. Just two tiny syllables, and Dmitri will know I exist.
We could even go with “hi”. One syllable. Half as many as “hello”. Why can’t I manage even one syllable to the boy in Poetry?
But you can’t do that. Saying hello is weird and only normal people do it. You have to just sit behind the hot guy you want in class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and pine after him and hate yourself every day that passes that you don’t say hi.
It’s three w
eeks and three days from that moment on the porch, a particularly rainy day at the beginning of October, when Dmitri is called up to read a poem.
Standing there in front of everyone, Dmitri reads from chapter 4 in the textbook, a poem by … someone famous.
And I watch his lips move. I don’t even hear the words.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth stanzas, his eyes flick up from the book and connect with mine.
I hold my breath.
Then Dmitri Katz winks at me.
He returns his gaze to the book and continues the poem while I feel my insides freeze into solid ice. Did that really just happen? Did he just wink at me?
Or he had something in his eye. Maybe an eyelash. It was definitely, completely, utterly not a wink.
I think.
Then, two classes later, he twists in his chair and asks me how much longer before class is over. His voice is soft, smooth as the stroke of a finger across sensitive flesh, and I whisper, “Twenty-two minutes.”
“Damn,” he responds, smirking sourly, then faces front once again.
Dmitri is breaking the ice. Slowly. He chips away at it the way an ice sculptor gradually converts a block of nothing into exquisite artwork. I feel the sharp pinch of his little dark pickaxe.
Maybe he wants me to swing my pickaxe into him too, except in a way that sounds more romantic and less axe-murderish.
I’ve never wanted to swing a pickaxe at anyone so badly before.
On a fateful Friday, the professor announces our major project.
“You’ll pair up to study and analyze a poem using the principles we’ve learned this semester. Pay attention to musicality and rhythm,” he says with a downward tilt of his head, peering at us over his glasses (and his massively frightful beard). “Pay attention to word choices, to irony, and to how the poem makes you feel.”
He says about a hundred other things, but the only words I hear are: You’ll pair up.
My heart has relocated to my ears somehow and all I can hear is my own thrashing pulse.
“After you study your assigned poem, you’ll then co-write a series of poems inspired by the one you read. Go ahead. Pair up. There’s an even number of you here, so it won’t be an issue.”
At once, people are turning to one another, a murmur rushing over the class as students who’ve sat next to each other the past month and a half introduce themselves for the first time.
And all I can do is stare at the back of Dmitri’s head, my throat so tight that I can’t breathe. My palms are slick as frog skin. I have major underarm sweat. I can’t close my lips.
I might be going into cardiac arrest.
Why can’t I just say his name? Or hello, at the very least? Hi …? It’s one less syllable. Say hi, Sam! I mean, he winked at me, didn’t he? Wasn’t that an actual wink? And then he asked me one day how many minutes we had left in class. He must like me. Right?
Right …?
Then I notice the pretty girl coming from the other side of the classroom. She’s approaching Dmitri with her big cute eyes and her bouncy blonde hair.
She’s going to partner up with him right in front of my face.
This is my only chance, and I’m about to watch it be stolen away by another pretty girl in my life.
Another pretty girl like Jessa from seventh grade. She was queen of the evil girls and was of a caliber I knew I’d never be, and she took every chance to remind me of that fact. I’m the ugly girl. She’s the pretty girl.
That’s how it’ll always be. And I believed her.
I think I still believe her.
It was a sunny, perky day in April when I had a breakdown after being made fun of by Jessa in the middle of the hall between classes about a boy I thought was cute (I still haven’t figured out how my little secret got out), and my dad took me by the wrists in the garage that night and said, “Samantha. Look at these hands. Do you know what they’re capable of? You make music with them. You move a grown man to tears. Me. To tears. You create romance. You inspire feelings in others. You move, build, and destroy worlds with these hands.” He leaned in really close, his eyes full of inspiration of what he wanted me to become, and he said, “Use them.”
The girl still approaches Dmitri—the one who might as well be Jessa all over again—but he doesn’t even notice her. He’s picking at his fingernails, bored, waiting.
I look down at my hands. Use them.
She’s almost there. Jessa, once again ready to take my dignity away from me, once again ready to cut my legs out from under me and put me in my place—my ugly, unworthy place.
And I’m behind him saying nothing, doing nothing.
Your hands, my father’s voice echoes from that night long ago. It was such a horrible day and night and I’m reliving it. Your hands …
I swallow hard.
Use them.
The next instant, I pick up my notebook and thwack Dmitri over the back of his head as hard as I can.
“The fuck!” he shouts out, jerking forward, then he turns around to get a look at me.
Oh, the look he gives me … His beautiful, deep black eyes pour into mine from behind his thick, sexy dork-boy frames. His lush lips are parted, his eyebrows pulled together furiously as he stares at me. The whole world’s stopped and it’s just me and Dmitri. He sees me. I exist.
And I just gave him half a concussion with my notebook.
I don’t give him the one syllable of “Hi”. I don’t give him the two of “Hello”, either.
I give him fourteen. “Thought I saw a fly. Hi. I’m Sam. Wanna be my partner?”
He stares at me with baffled eyes. It isn’t the ideal way I pictured him gazing on my face, since it doesn’t involve him shoving his full, gorgeous lips on me with his hands all over my quaking body, but it still does the job of casting a flutter of excitement through my bones.
The girl has stopped in her pursuit, her eyes going between us with confusion. I couldn’t care less, locked onto Dmitri’s deep and brooding stare as I am.
And then he finally answers with three tiny, reluctant syllables of his own: “Uh … okay.”
Chapter 3
Sam
“Where should we go?”
Dmitri asks me this when we meet up in the Quad courtyard. He’s holding the copy of our assigned poem too tight, crinkling it. He wears an annoyed smirk that gives him a pensive, darkened expression.
“There’s the cafeteria,” I suggest.
“Too much noise.” He looks off at a pair of guys by the fountain playing guitar (a repetitive song with three basic chords that makes my brain numb halfway through the first verse) and the cluster of girls sitting in front of them—their audience. “You live here in the dorms?”
“Right here,” I confirm. “Yeah.”
“Which building?”
“West Hall, room 202,” I blurt, then inwardly gape at my boldness, my face flushing with mortification. Why did I say the room number too?? He didn’t ask! I might as well have just shoved the second key to some seedy motel room at him with a note saying that I’ll be waiting on the bed naked with a bottle of chardonnay and a can of whippy-cream.
But Dmitri doesn’t seem fazed at all. In fact, he doesn’t seem to show much of anything but irritation and impatience. “I’m East Hall,” he says with a nod of his head. “Over on the other side of the cafeteria.”
“My dorm has a lounge,” I explain. “In the basement. It’s big and it has a … a couch.” My face can’t be any redder. I have no idea why. I look away, forcing myself to stare at the guitarists and their college girl groupies. I try very hard not to let that make me think of my dad. “Unless anyone’s doing laundry, it’ll be quiet and …”
“Mine’s a first-floor lounge and it’s small. We’ll work in yours,” he decides gruffly, moving past me toward the doors of West Hall.
A moment later, my heart drums excitedly against my ribcage as I open the door to the basement. To my great relief, there’s no one down here. Really, th
e basement doesn’t fill up until the evenings, so I figure we have about four hours before any pesky laundry-bearing dormmates interrupt us. We ought to be done with our poetry analysis by then. Maybe we’ll even discuss an original or two we’re supposed to co-write.
Oh, what poetry we’ll visit. Oh, what deep meanings we’ll explore together. Oh, what unfounded musicality we’ll discover … I cannot wait. I’m depleted of breath. I’m hearing songs when the room is silent. I’m dancing the dance of life while sitting perfectly still.
And then Dmitri, sitting on the threadbare couch next to me, picks up the sheet of paper containing our poem and recites the first line: “To fuck or not to fuck. That is the question.”
I flinch.
He’s staring at the poem, his eyes gazing over the rest of the words. His mouth is wrinkled in a permanent state of disgust. Then, after too long a time, he lifts his eyes to me. “This is seriously the poem we have to analyze?”
I try to say something. Nothing comes out. I lick my lips and try again. “I-It’s the … the one the professor assigned us.”
“Right.” He sucks in his bottom lip and stares at the paper, pensive and full of annoyance—or at least that’s how I perceive whatever sexiness is happening on his face right now.
Truth be told, I have no idea what he’s thinking. About the poem. About me. Does he regret our pairing up? Maybe he would’ve preferred that pretty girl who was headed his way—who he didn’t even notice. Maybe I went and ruined his plans, forcing myself on him after ogling his backside for weeks. I’m ashamed to admit how many times I enjoyed the scent of his cologne (or whatever it is—his shampoo, his deodorant, his fabric softener) as it wafted over me each time he sat down or got up from that desk of his in front of me.
I’m thoroughly obsessed and I have no idea who he even is. What if I get to know him over the course of analyzing this poem and find that he’s an awful person who hates kittens, or was a total bully in school, or who—even worse—despises music?
Maybe that’d be a good thing. Maybe then I could get over him and realize what an idiot I’ve been these past several weeks. Maybe this will all turn out to be a blessing and Mr. Dmitri Katz will just be another page in my nonexistent tear-speckled diary of doom.