by Daryl Banner
“Did I say something wrong?” he asks. “I have no idea what’s going on. Please tell me.”
“W-Was I just a fling for you?”
Ugh. These emotions are nothing I’m used to. I have no idea how to handle them, whether or not I’m overreacting or in the right or the wrong. I feel so stupid and childish, and I’m completely aware of it. Part of me wants to just play the whole thing off, like this was all a big joke to me, like it means nothing. I want to shrug, act cool, then go back to my dorm and watch TV while eating my roommate’s bag of Doritos she thinks I don’t know she stashes behind her pillow.
And the other part of me wants to strangle Dmitri until he kisses me again like the woman I thought I was to him. The one in a million.
The passion.
“A fling …?” His voice is light and careless. “We … We made out. You’re acting like we had sex or something.”
“So it didn’t mean anything to you?” I press on.
“I … I mean, of c-c-course it … it …” He’s trying so hard to find the words. That, or he’s trying to figure out a way to let me down without breaking my heart.
I’ll save him the effort. I’m so considerate that way. “Never mind,” I tell him in a quieter tone, so quiet the rush of the fountain takes my words away. “I’m just being dumb.”
“You’re not dumb.”
Ah. So he did hear me. Or he can read lips, which makes sense with the deaf sister thing. I think. “I read too much into … into everything. I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you.”
“But I’m not your one in a million.”
“My what? Oh. Wait …” I see his whole body shift. I can picture his eyes widening with the realization. I don’t know whether it’s relieving or even more humiliating to have him realize where my anger has come from. “Y-You thought that … that my poem …?”
“Just forget it.” I cling to the straps of my backpack and turn away, continuing toward the Quad.
He hurries in front of me and blocks my path. “Sam. I didn’t mean to deceive you. I really, really didn’t. I … I didn’t even know you had these sorts of feelings. I kinda thought you were … more of a … carefree sort of, uh …”
My face is burning red. This is humiliating enough without having him insisting on a conversation. I wish he’d just leave me alone.
And so I decide to play the denial card. “I don’t have any of those feelings. You’re just another nasty boy who … who’d kiss anything with a pulse. Congrats. You got your hands all over me. Now I want to go to my dorm and die my slow college-girl death.”
“You’re lying,” he says to the top of my downturned head. “You wouldn’t be acting like this otherwise. You totally have feelings for me. I’ve hurt you because you thought that poem was about you.”
“It’s a poem. It isn’t real. I’m not an idiot,” I spit back, feeling like a total idiot.
He leans in closer to me. “And if I remember that night in your dorm correctly, you were the one who made the first move. It was your hands all over me.”
“Goodbye, Dmitri,” I say to his chest, but I don’t move an inch.
“So really, shouldn’t I feel like the one who got used?” he teases.
My heart flutters at the sound of his voice. He’s making an effort to make light of this. It’s a sweet effort. Damn it, he’s trying to make you feel better. Stop being such a stubborn twat!
“Yeah,” I mumble sourly. “I totally used you. My bad.”
He hesitates, perhaps not knowing if his lightness is scoring him points or making things worse. Or maybe he’s trying to gage whether I’m being sarcastic or sincere. I don’t even know which I’m being.
He reaches to put a hand on my shoulder, then drops it to his side, thinking better of it. “How about we … forget that all of that happened and … we just be friends? Or something …?”
“Or,” I say back, grabbing hold of that speck of confidence that seems to come and go like the wind when I’m around him, “you admit that you used me, that I’m a … a woman and deserve someone’s full attention, and that the poem really was about us.”
I turn my eyes up to him defiantly.
Dmitri’s face is wrinkled up in bafflement. “But—”
“Because if you don’t,” I go on, “then I’m just left to assume that you … really did use me. In more ways than just that night in the dorm. You used me to write a poem. I’m like …” I smirk and fold my arms. “I’m like your muse. You used me for a quick … inspiration … and now you’re moving on to the next girl you find.”
Dmitri can’t seem to close his mouth. “I … Y-You … I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time following your logic, Sam.”
The words coming out of my mouth are really just a giant shield I’m forging before our eyes, and it’s made of excuses and anger and nonsense. The truth deep down is, I’m terrified that Dmitri doesn’t want me in the way I want him, and I neither want him to confirm it nor attempt to deny it; I wouldn’t believe him anyway.
Really, we made out that night because of a spontaneous, hormone-driven impulse. There was no passion. It was just chemistry, right?
And now I want more. And he doesn’t. I’m not the woman from his poem and I never will be. That’s the truth I can’t quite manage to say.
So I keep up with the bullshit. “Yeah, that’s because some horny poet like you doesn’t understand logic. You just … write poems all day and …” I right my glasses. Really, I just need to shut up and go. “And I’m just gonna go and write my music and … and who knows? Maybe I’ll use you the way you used me. I’ll turn you into a … a song.”
“Sam …”
“I’ll turn you into a dumb song and the professor can give me an A.”
“You are more than just poetry to me, Sam.”
“Goodbye, Dmi—”
He interrupts my uttering of his name by pushing his lips against mine. A flame bursts from within me and casts its fiery fingers down every appendage and hair follicle on my body. I breathe him in, tasting every bit of him and remembering every second of that night we spent together in my dorm, wrestling around like fools.
Then the kiss is over and he pulls away.
Our eyes connect, and even the fountain is rendered silent as the only thing I know is my pulse and our breath.
Then I push past him without another word, clutching the straps of my backpack as I hurry back to the dorms. And with every solemn, lonely, heated footstep, I hear his words over and over echoing in my head: You are more than just poetry to me, Sam. You are more than just poetry to me, Sam. You are more than just poetry to me, Sam.
Chapter 6
Dmitri
Samantha Hart might be the most infuriatingly interesting person I have ever encountered.
That’s including all the weirdos and freaks and arty peeps I hung out with back in high school. Even my younger sister’s deaf friends, or my older sister’s super nerdy, hyper-intelligent friends didn’t hold my interest or my intrigue the way Sam does.
There’s something incredibly, undeniably magnetic about her. And I do realize that that’s an odd thing to say about a girl like Sam who is so peculiar and withdrawn and deadpan in her expressiveness. I always feel like there’s a world of things she isn’t saying behind those glasses of hers. If she’d only unlock that door she keeps so tightly sealed, she would unleash a score of beautiful poetry and music.
I guess that’s kind of presumptuous to say. For all I know, she does that easily enough in the privacy of her own room with a computer or a piano and doesn’t need some dumb wonder-boy like me to swoop in and save her.
Really, I think I’m the one who needs saving.
The next time I see Sam in class, she doesn’t say a word to me. I have to wonder if kissing her by the fountain was a mistake. Maybe the whole scene in her dorm room was a mistake, too. I just don’t know. Everything is confusing. I don’t know how I feel about her because, if I’m being frank, I don
’t know very much about her. She’s a mystery, and I know that that intrigues me. But so am I, and what if she unearths something she doesn’t like, and just as I find myself opening up my deepest, darkest secrets to her, she gets scared off and finds herself a better, likeminded, cute musician in the School of Music to ignite all her fires?
After Thanksgiving break, when I endure a very crowded time at home with my sisters and parents and a table full of roasted turkey and cranberries and my mom’s famous spicy mashed potatoes, there is very little of the semester left before finals and winter break. I go home again for Christmas and New Year’s, sans my older sister Amber who might be getting serious with her boyfriend this time. My mom thinks they’re going to be married before the summer, but I doubt it; Amber is as fickle as Texas weather, which can shift from winter to summer in the space of an afternoon.
“And what about you?” my mom asks me on my last weekend home before I head back to campus. “You haven’t brought anyone back. I was expecting you’d have twenty girls on your arms … or boys.”
We’re lounging on the L-shaped couch in our living room with the TV playing some game show, which is the exact same spot I “came out” to her my sophomore year of high school as bi-curious. The captions on the TV are turned on despite my deaf younger sister Devin being at a friend’s house. It’s sort of a habit.
“You calling me a slut?” I tease halfheartedly.
She ignores the crude humor, but picks up on my halfhearted tone at once. “Aww, baby. Is it tough meeting people at college?” she prods while stirring a cup of hot chocolate, waiting for the marshmallows to melt. “I told you, you should join more clubs or attend some social events. Your dorm has a mixer every semester, don’t they?”
Just what I need, to meet someone in a crowd of horny, repressed boys and girls over paper plates of cafeteria hotdogs and cold fries.
“I’m too busy trying to build a future for myself,” I answer.
“Oh, bull. You’re eighteen, Dmitri. You don’t build futures. You’re horny and you’re exploring.”
“Not going to discuss my state of horniness with my mom, thanks.”
“No, of course not.” Her spoon clanks around in her mug. “But—”
“I’m also creative,” I cut her off. “All the time. I’m writing a new short story every week, practically. I want to hone my craft.”
“Ugh. Stop sounding like a twenty-something,” my mom begs me, setting the spoon down on the end table and cradling her mug near her face to blow on it. “Your younger sister is all I have left to mother after you! I feel so old.”
I bite my lip and glance off at the TV. I keep seeing Sam on the very last day of class. I had built up this whole thing I wanted to say to her before we took off to start our winter breaks, so I waited in my chair for her to get up first, since she was behind me and would have to pass by me to leave. When she did, though, I couldn’t speak. My throat tightened up and I got all weird, my heart racing.
Then she was at the door. I saw a moment of hesitation. Her eyes moved halfway toward me, but didn’t quite meet mine.
I parted my lips, a small bolt of excitement running through me.
Then she seemed to change her mind and left.
That was the last time I saw her.
“Well,” I say, pushing away the vision of Sam, “at least you got Devin for four years. I heard she’s kinda being awesome for a freshman in high school. All A’s and making friends. If I could go back …”
“You would’ve done a different sport?” my mom finishes for me. “I think soccer suited you. You have the calves for it. Or maybe you got the calves because of it. You’re the only one in the whole family who’s ever bothered with a sport. Charlie even hates watching them.”
Charlie is my father. “He’s an odd fruit, that’s for sure.”
My mom leans toward me suddenly. The chocolate-scented warmth from her mug wafts over my face. “Don’t regret nothing from high school. It’s all a waste of breath, anyway. I’d hoped your first semester at Klangburg would show you that, but if it hasn’t yet, just give it another semester or two. Don’t give up. You’ll find what you’re looking for.” Applause erupts from the TV right then, pulling her attention.
And I sink into my chair, thinking on her words. I wonder if it’ll even matter. Will I see Sam next semester, or will she avoid me at all costs and surround herself in a cloud of girls who all give me the stink-eye as they pass by?
When I’m back on campus the following week, I don’t see Sam at all. Figures. I don’t know why she’s the only person I’m thinking about. I made other friends, didn’t I? There’s that one guy who lives down the hall from me who I ran into at the cafeteria and then ate lunch with. He told me his name that day, and I forgot it, and now every time he sees me, he says, “Hey, Dmitri!” and I’m forced to smile and say, “What’s up, hallmate?!” hoping that the occasion never arises when I actually need to use his name. I hate sometimes that first introductions only tend to happen once.
I’d love a second introduction to Sam. I’d love another chance.
Why am I so hung up on her?
Oddly enough, distraction from my own mental mess comes right in the middle of my Astronomy class. I’m sitting somewhere in the middle of the auditorium learning about how our solar system is the face of a penny, and we’ll be learning everything within that penny during this semester.
“If you want to learn everything beyond the penny, take Astronomy II,” the professor announces, “which I offer both in the fall and the spring. We talk about quasars in there,” he says, saying the word all funny and giving us a wiggle of his eyebrows.
I catch sight of a girl in the front moving her hands. I don’t know how it is that I just now notice that she’s facing the wrong way—toward the front row. I furrow my brow, confused, until I also spot the muscly, tatted hunk in a tight grey t-shirt right in front of her, watching her instead of the professor.
I nod appreciatively, observing them. I have a deaf guy in my class. That’s what I need, I decide. I’m too messed up about Sam and feeling lonely and idiotic. I need new friends.
And, more importantly, I need new friends who will last. Every friend I’ve made on this campus is skittish and runs away from me the moment I get too dark or creative or … whatever it is I am. There was a gay dancer named Ian I met in the Quad courtyard the day I got back from winter break. We totally hit it off for a day—until he read a piece I wrote about a focused, driven ballerina who turns into an albino tarantula and eats her instructor. I thought it was a creative show of teacher-student angst. Ian thought it revealed some mental illness I was hiding. For a fleeting moment, I’d thought I found a friend. And again, I scared him away. I won’t let it happen with deaf guy. Besides, if the deaf guy’s looks are any indication, just about nothing will scare him.
Two days later, I’m sitting in Astronomy again, but I’ve picked a seat much closer to the front. In fact, I’m sitting right next to that musclebound hottie and paying as much attention to the interpreter as he is. The difference between mister muscles and I, however, is that I can actually hear the professor, and when I realize how many key words and phrases the girl isn’t signing—since she can’t quite keep up—I start to get annoyed.
“It’s quite clear that we have rocky planets near the sun,” the salt-and-pepper-haired professor in an argyle sweater vest explains, “and then gassy planets farther away, and then icy ones in the back. It’s no coincidence that Jupiter’s closest moons are rocky and farthest moons are icy. Jupiter, considered a failed star by some, is actually like a little solar system in and of itself. Did you know—”
And from all of that, the girl (who has the thickest arms and bluntest nose I’ve ever seen, by the way; she’s almost sexy in a Greek marble statue kind of way) only translates: Some planets are rocky. Some in the back are ice. Gassy planets. Jupiter is a star. Jupiter is a system.
I gape at her. Is she serious? How the hell did she get certified
? Is she even certified?
I pat the deaf guy. He pulls his eyes away from her, stops scribbling in his notebook, and looks at me with two heavy, annoyed eyes. His face is basically a gift from the gods, despite him looking ready to beat someone up all the time. Namely: me, and right now. A web of black ink on his shoulder crawls up his neck in little spikes and coils.
Damn, this is one fine motherfucker I don’t want to mess with.
I lift my hands and sign: She’s missing so much. I can interpret ten times faster and more accurately than her.
The guy wrinkles his face, as if suspicious.
“Uh, what the hell?” hisses the girl at me.
I turn to her and sign while I whisper, so as to include the deaf guy. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a dick, but this poor dude’s gonna have to pass a test eventually, you realize. And he’s not gonna pass it when he thinks Jupiter is a fucking star.”
“The school pays me,” she hisses back, not bothering to sign. “You don’t have a two-year degree and certification in interpreting, do you? Care to show your credentials?”
“My credentials,” I whisper and sign, “come in the form of my deaf sister who I’ve been signing to my whole life. That’s called a fourteen-year degree. Let the school pay you. I don’t care. But I’m gonna sign for my new friend here for free so we can pass tests together.”
She stares at me with a mixture of disbelief and hurt.
I try to ignore the sudden wave of sympathy that rushes over me (or is it embarrassment I feel for her?) as I turn towards my distractingly handsome classmate and start to interpret the lesson with my hands. After one last second of hesitation, he picks up his pencil and starts to take notes, watching me instead as the professor drones on.
The “grammar” of actual sign language is different than spoken English, so I have to make choices as the professor speaks, modifying his sentences while keeping the integrity of his words intact.