By Friday I’d worn every reasonable outfit I owned, and then some. I pulled every remaining item of clothing from my dresser drawers and stood in front of my closet for ten minutes, but I had no more butt-crack-covering jeans or tops that didn’t make me look like I was headed to a Renaissance fair. It was way too early in the morning for this crap. I’d been here for over a week, and I’d grown no more used to functioning at ungodly hours than when I’d arrived. Without my mom’s morning mental-fitness tests, Jody served as my sole inspiration for getting out of bed, and I refused to greet her dressed like a slutty pilgrim.
Surely I could find some long-sleeved T-shirts in this house somewhere. If only my dad were smaller I would’ve stolen one of his, but neither my brother nor I had inherited his broad shoulders.
My brother. Andy. Why hadn’t I thought of him sooner? He’d been at college for two years now but still had a room full of stuff here for the summers. I snuck down the hall and opened his bedroom door slowly. Even though he would never catch me, he’d spent years of our childhood yelling at me for touching his stuff, and those lessons didn’t fade overnight or, apparently, even after a decade.
The room was unnaturally quiet and clean. Mom must have picked up after his last visit, because Andy never made his bed. I’d heard his wife voice the same complaint about their son. They lived in Atlanta, and I hadn’t seen my nephew in months. I felt a pang of regret for missing his fifth birthday. How many years would I have to wait to make it up to him?
I shook my head. It was too early for deep thoughts. I needed to focus on things I could control, like comfortable apparel. Opening Andy’s closet felt like hitting a jackpot. I found a long-sleeve Cardinals waffle-weave shirt that fit me darn-near perfectly if I cuffed the sleeves. I also snagged a navy-blue V-neck sweater and a lightweight, olive-green army jacket to hold me over for a couple days.
I walked into school feeling more comfortable than I had in a week, and it must have shown.
“You look like you’re in a good mood this morning,” Nikki said as she took the seat next to me in English class.
“Yeah. I guess I’m getting back to my old self.”
“Really? You don’t seem like the pre-concussion you at all.”
Warning bells sounded in my mind. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t hang out by our lockers in the morning.”
“I’ve just been working with Miss Hadland to get caught up in her classes.”
“You seemed pretty caught up yesterday when you jumped down Deelia’s throat.”
I tried not to laugh. “She’s been asking for that for a long time.”
Nikki didn’t disagree but frowned with concern. “Are those Andy’s clothes?”
“I wanted a casual Friday.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Yeah.” I lied. The longer this conversation went on, the less sure I felt.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No. Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know.” She tucked a strand of her sandy-brown hair behind her ear. “You just seem kind of far away lately.”
Damn. I’d been so worried about not getting caught I didn’t think about what that distance would feel like from her side of the friendship. “I’m sorry. Let’s catch up at lunch today. My dad gave me some extra money. Wanna go back to Encarnacion’s?”
Her eyes brightened. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Do you mind if Kelsey comes with us?”
The clouds returned to her expression. “Why?”
“I’ve been working with her in keyboarding class, and people are kind of hard on her.”
Nikki didn’t look unsympathetic so much as cautious. “They probably are, but she doesn’t make things any easier on herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s kind of weird. She wouldn’t dissect the frog in advanced bio last month. And remember when she passed around the petition last year to get vegetarian lunch options in the cafeteria?”
No, I didn’t remember that, but I could imagine how well it went over. “What’s wrong with liking animals?”
“Nothing. I’m not mean to her. I just wish she wouldn’t make herself such an obvious target.”
“No one should have to worry about being a target,” I snapped. “She’s just a kid trying to graduate. It’s the school’s responsibility to keep her safe. It’s the teachers’ job to make sure we all get a fair shot here.”
Nikki looked surprised. “Are you sure you’re not mad?”
I lowered my voice. “I’m not mad at you, but I’m frustrated with the system. It’s set up to reward people who play the game, not people who actually do the right thing. You gotta remember that, Nikki. When you’re a teacher, you gotta promise me you’ll work with the kids who need you, not just the ones who are easy to work with.”
She nodded solemnly.
“I mean it. It would mean so much to me if you remembered this conversation.” I pleaded with her. “Being a good teacher isn’t about getting good test scores or having a tightly managed classroom. It’s about making sure you see every kid for who they could be someday, no matter how deeply their potential is buried.”
“I promise.” She spoke with so much conviction I believed her. “And Kelsey can come to lunch with us, okay?”
“Thank you. It means a lot to me.”
“I see that.” Nikki nodded and glanced over my shoulder in a way that caused me to turn around.
Jody stood a few feet behind me with a dazzling smile on her face. My heart pounded. I hadn’t meant for her to hear that lecture. I didn’t need her to be reminded of why she wanted to stay in this business. My argument to Nikki had probably reignited Jody’s resolve to be the kind of teacher I’d described. I should’ve been mad at myself for undermining my larger mission, but I couldn’t summon any disappointment while being simultaneously warmed by the glow of Jody’s approval.
*
Lunch went surprisingly well. I could tell both Nikki and Kelsey were worried, nervous, and not quite themselves around each other at first, but as time went on I was able to broker some common ground, and they eventually shared a few laughs on their own. I wasn’t naive enough to think they’d become best friends overnight, or maybe ever, but at least they’d developed some sort of connection that gave me hope neither one of them would be completely alone if I did somehow manage to transport back to present life. I still wouldn’t completely let myself believe I’d time-traveled, but the longer I stayed in my past, the more valid that option seemed. It would be irresponsible not to at least take some precautions.
I felt pretty proud of myself, honestly. I’d almost made it through another day without drawing any extra attention to myself. Best of all, the tension between Jody and me practically crackled with electricity. She’d been nothing but professional all day. She hadn’t pulled me out of study hall or even called on me in class. She kept well clear of my personal space and only spoke a polite good morning to me all day. To an outsider it would’ve appeared she paid me less attention than any other student. She came across as studiously unconcerned with me, which made my heart tap a rapid beat against my rib cage.
Jody simply didn’t do aloof. She didn’t do detached. She didn’t do distant. None of this was her natural state, which told me she was fighting her instincts concerning me, and she wouldn’t be fighting them if they were telling her I was just another kid in need. A normal teenager might have misunderstood her withdrawal, but I’d been in her shoes. I’d tried to play off attraction. I’d lived enough of my life to recognize the difference between generic concern and genuine interest. I also had a writer’s eye. I’d written women on the brink. I knew the subtle signs and how people fought them. Jody played the part with textbook precision. I almost cried with joy to see her turn away as soon as I walked through the door for theater class.
As we arranged our desks into a horseshoe, I made sure to position mine as close to her as possible. I’d always been the one to be pursued in a relationship, and while I certainly wasn’t coming on strong, I enjoyed the knowledge that my presence affected this graceful, beautiful, driven woman. I got so busy stealing glances at her I didn’t notice Kelsey until she collapsed in a heap into the seat beside me.
“Hey,” I said cheerfully. “Long day?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, hanging her head so her dark hair covered her face.
“TGIF, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kelsey,” I said more softly, “hang in there. Just one more class, and then we get a few days off.”
She nodded, but when she looked up, her eyes were red-rimmed and the stain of embarrassment or anger burned pink even under her tan skin. I’d seen her tired and resigned, even frightened, but I’d never seen her so broken down.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” She blinked away tears.
“Bullshit, Kelsey. Talk to me.”
“I’m tired, but I’m fine, really.” She raised her chin and took a long, measured breath. “And you’re right. We’re almost done for the day.”
I didn’t buy it, not a bit. I’d left gym before the rest of my class since I didn’t have to change or shower, but locker rooms, like hallways, were battle zones where teachers either couldn’t see and hear the abuse or simply chose not to. I could only imagine what Kelsey had gone through in the ten minutes since I’d last seen her. I resolved not to leave her alone there again, even if it meant participating in gym class from now on. I was about to tell her that when Jody called the class to order.
“Today we start our monologues,” she said joyfully.
“You mean our subtexts.” Deelia sniped like an expert.
“Yes, but lucky for us, the subtext of a monologue is still a monologue,” Jody said with forced enthusiasm. “Isn’t that exciting?”
The students grumbled, but Jody forged on, reminding the class of the parameters. We’d do three monologues a day for the next week. Each student would get a turn to perform, then lead the class discussion of the original piece, its subtext, and what they took away from it.
She looked around, clearly searching for another place to sit before taking the seat beside me, and called the first performer. She crossed her legs so her body angled away from me and gave her full attention to the student. The position caused her black skirt to ride up to reveal a distracting bit of thigh. I had to place my hand on my own cheek and turn my head away in order to keep from staring. I might have failed completely if not for my lingering concern about Kelsey.
I barely knew the student at the front of the class, but he seemed to do a fine job with the Saint Crispin’s Day speech. I’m sure I would’ve held my manhood cheap for not standing with him, were I not utterly preoccupied with the women sitting on either side of me. My mood had shifted rapidly in a mere matter of minutes. Had I suffered visions of grandeur in believing I could make a real difference in either of their lives? I wasn’t even sure anything I’d experienced in the last week had actually happened. And yet, the tension radiating from both Kelsey and Jody certainly didn’t feel dreamlike. I wanted to reach out to each to them, hug them, protect them, shake some sense into them, make them see what I saw in their futures. I felt like I owed them each something, but could I really make a difference for either of them, or was I deluding myself?
I didn’t know the monologue the next girl did. Something from The Crucible maybe? I doubted she’d ever read the play all the way through or understood its meaning. She was one of Deelia’s friends, and I wouldn’t waste an ounce of my attention on her. Everything to come in my life seemed to hang on one question: how could I get Jody to give up on the future she planned while at the same time convincing Kelsey to hold on to hers?
“Kelsey, you’re up,” Jody said.
Kelsey took a deep breath but didn’t rise from her seat.
“Are you okay?” I whispered. “Do you want me to go?”
She shook her head and took another deep breath. “I can do it.”
She slowly, almost painfully sulked to the middle of the room, then without introducing the piece began to speak in a clear, low voice I barely recognized, “To live or to die, that’s my choice. Is it better to put up with the insults and injuries or stand up for myself, and in the process sign my own death warrant? To die, to sleep.”
Her performance was no mere recitation of Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy. She actually posed these questions to us, or more likely to herself.
“Death would stop all the pain of this life, all the trials and abuse. I wish for a chance to dream peacefully, but we don’t know what death brings. If I knew I could find peace there, I’d take it freely. Who wouldn’t? It’s only my fear of the unknown that makes me endure the painfully slow passage of time, the bullying, the loneliness, the injustice.”
I listened helplessly as she grew more animated, clenching her fists at her sides while pleading the case of death and lambasting life for its constant stream of horrors. On the pro and con list of death, the columns weren’t even close to equal. Even if I didn’t know the end of this story, I’d have no doubt which option she favored.
“If there was some way to end all this hellish torture, who wouldn’t take their own way out? It’s only the fear of what lies beyond that turns us all to cowards.”
With that she hung her head, and the class applauded lightly, uncomfortably. How many of my classmates, if any, realized she’d cut the last few lines of the monologue? I didn’t doubt the purposefulness of the edit. She’d ended on a line filled with disdain at her own cowardice, because that’s as far as she’d progressed on her own journey into darkness. She wanted to die but was still too afraid to do so. I had time, but not much.
Kelsey barely sat down before I jumped into the yet-unstarted discussion portion. “First of all, you did a great job with that piece. You captured Hamlet’s main conflict and put it into language we don’t just understand but can also relate to.”
“I agree,” Jody added, seeming to understand the gravity of Kelsey’s message. “I felt your words down to my toes, and I recognized that place, the position where you just want to ask yourself why you should even bother with the life you’re living.”
While Jody might not be contemplating the exact choice Kelsey feared, she wasn’t in a dissimilar situation. She too had to decide whether to fight for a dream or let it die.
“Do any of you have thoughts about this piece?”
Deelia raised her hand, and Jody sighed heavily. She clearly didn’t want to call on her, but she was the only one prepared to speak, so Jody nodded.
“If she was talking about suicide, I think that’s inappropriate for class. It’s a sin, and it sets a bad example.”
“Hamlet is a classic piece of literature that’s been taught in high schools for hundreds of years,” Jody said, leaving no room for debate. “So, does anyone have anything to say that actually adds to this discussion?”
She looked around the class from one blank stare to another until her eyes finally met mine. I had to say something, but what? Could I change anything? And, if so, to what outcome? Either I could feed her some silly pep talk about how everything would all work out in the end, or I came down on the side of death. I needed to find some middle ground. Thankfully the happy medium is what I knew best.
I turned from Jody’s pleading eyes to Kelsey’s dark, haunted ones. “The problem I have with Hamlet, and so many of the others who’ve tried to dissect this piece, is it’s always such a binary. Either he does nothing, or he kills himself and everyone else. It’s a false choice.”
“How so?” Jody prodded me gently.
“Maybe for the sake of a play you have to force everything to fit into a two-hour time slot, but in life, we don’t have to resolve every conflict or follow some preordained script. We have a hundred other options in any given situation. Sure, if Hamlet fights, he makes himself a target. Maybe that’s true for us. Maybe it’s not. But he could’ve just gone about his business. Lots of people do. He was a student. He could’ve gone away to college. He could have legitimately gone crazy. Someone very smart once told me sometimes insanity is a survival skill.”
Kelsey didn’t budge at that allusion. “Yeah, but what do you do when death is the only dream left?”
“You get a new dream,” I said emphatically. “There’s always another way out. Maybe that way sucks. Maybe it’s hard. Maybe you dumb yourself down for a while or drink yourself into oblivion or join a commune or a rock band, but do whatever you have to do to get to the next step. There’s always a next step.”
“Sometimes there’s not. Sometimes you do your best and it’s not enough. Why put yourself through it if you’re going to wind up in the same place in the end?”
“There’s always an alternative future. Hamlet says it himself. ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’ You of all people know that, Kelsey. Just because you can’t see a future doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” She smiled faintly, but a smile nonetheless, and it caused the weight on my chest to lighten immensely. We might be living on stolen time, but perhaps I’d just bought a little more sand for the hourglass.
With Kelsey stabilized I turned to Jody, who wore a similar expression, her smile tinged with exhaustion and sadness as her eyes met mine. “Thank you, Stevie. That was remarkably eloquent.”
“Eloquent?” Deelia scoffed. “I have no idea what anyone is talking about anymore. None of this subtext has anything to do with theater. How are you going to grade us on this?”
Jody rubbed her eyes. “I’ve told you several times, you’ll be graded on how well you capture the essence of your monologue and how well you’re able to discuss your character’s underlying motivations and emotions, something Kelsey did very well today.” Then turning to Kelsey, she added a sincere “thank you.”
As class dismissed, I wanted to stay behind and talk to Jody. I wanted to know if anything I said had swayed her. I wanted to focus on her beautiful eyes, see her chest rise and fall with each breath, feel her body close to mine, but I simply couldn’t leave Kelsey alone in the hallway.
I walked with her to my locker, then drove her home. Thankfully, everyone was eager to chase their own Friday-night plans and paid us little attention. Kelsey didn’t talk much but seemed in higher spirits when I dropped her off at her parents’ store. I promised to stop by sometime over the weekend and left feeling secure about her safety, then quickly turned my thoughts and my car back toward Jody.
I tore into the school parking lot and sprinted up the stairs to her classroom only to find the lights off and the door locked.
“Damn,” I muttered, then glanced around the empty hallway to make sure no teachers had heard me swear. What could I do now? I could go stalk her at the college, but that seemed creepy. And I didn’t even know if she lived on campus. I could go to St. Louis tomorrow night hoping to run into her. What were the odds of that happening? Waiting until Monday was the only responsible, measured approach. Two days apart wouldn’t kill me. I could probably use some time to myself. A few days off would let me clear my head. I could play it cool or safe, the way I liked to.
Who was I kidding?
I couldn’t wait for Jody even under the best circumstances, and certainly not when both our futures were on the line. As soon as my parents left for work tomorrow, I had to go after her.