Here’s the thing about writing stuff down, and the reason I recommend it: when you read back what you wrote, stuff makes more sense. When I first started to write about what happened last week in Ponzini with Beverly and Howie and Quentin, I felt like the whole thing was Beverly’s fault—maybe because she said the whole thing was my fault. But after I wrote it down and read it back, I got a different feeling about it. It wasn’t Beverly’s fault, what happened. Not really. I’m not saying it was my fault, but it wasn’t hers.
She took it real hard, though. She didn’t hang out with us over the weekend, not for a minute. Then, on Monday and Tuesday, she wouldn’t ride the bus with us—which she’d been doing ever since Quentin came back to school. She walked to school, even though it was pouring rain both mornings. She walked right past us at the bus stop. She didn’t even nod in our direction.
But you know who took it even harder than Beverly?
Quentin.
I don’t think he’d ever had anyone get mad at him, let alone stay mad at him. He couldn’t take it. He kept asking me how long it would be until Beverly wasn’t mad anymore, and I kept telling him I didn’t know. That didn’t sit well with him. After she walked past us on Tuesday morning, he followed her halfway down the block, trying to apologize, but she wouldn’t even turn around. If Lonnie hadn’t chased him down and brought him back to the bus stop, he likely would’ve missed the bus.
Last night, he showed up at my house with a note. He wanted me to copy it over so that he could give it to Beverly. (If you’d ever seen Quentin’s handwriting, you’d know why he needed me to copy it over.) Here’s what the note said:
Dear Beverly,
I feel real sluppy since the race we had, which is a word I discovered that means “sorry” and “unhappy.” I really thought I could do it. I didn’t mean to scare you so bad. Please don’t be mad at me no more.
Sincerely,
Quentin
I copied over the note while he sat on my bed and waited. I fixed up the punctuation, but I kept the words the way he wrote them. So even if Beverly recognized my handwriting—which she likely would because of how many classes we had together—she’d know it was really and truly Quentin’s note.
He read it after I was done and nodded.
“How are you going to get it to her?” I said.
“I’ll slide it under her door,” he said. “I got an envelope.”
“Can I see it?”
He unfolded the envelope from his back pocket and showed it to me. On the front he’d written “FOR BEVERLY,” which you could just about make out, because he’d written it in capital letters. His print capitals weren’t as bad as his cursive.
“How are you going to get into her building?”
“I’ll wait for somebody to come out,” he said.
He shook his head. “You did enough already.”
This morning Beverly walked past us again at the bus stop.
But she said hello to Quentin.