Even on a normal, nothing-new sort of day, a clear coast and two or three hours alone with Fry would have been hard to resist. But now that I’d read his true feelings, his proposition was practically irresistible. Notice I said “practically.” After all, I had a famous poet in my house and a lesson in digital-audio technology to teach. I felt as though I were caught between fairy tales: a handsome, sexy prince on one side, and a wise and famous king on the other. “I can’t, Fry,” I told him. “Rufus Baylor is still here.”
“The Bard of Ancient? What’s he doing there?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Yeah. You said you loved the poem.”
“I did. I do.” Why did all the good things have to cluster together? Why couldn’t I spread them out to cover the long, boring times in between? “I also said our poet is eating dinner with us. Mom’s already invited him every week for the rest of the class—Thursdays with Rufus!”
“Rufus?!”
Could I tell him about the music store? “I’ve gotten to know him better.” Without his making me feel wrong, gullible, foolish?
“A lot better, it sounds like.” There was that tone again. The sarcasm, the anger.
“He’s really nice, Fry.” Nice. It wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was brilliant, generous, astonishing.
“Nicer than you and me and no one home?”
“It’s just that—”
“Nicer than you with no bra in my bed?” He paused, gave me time to picture poetry and pillows, a whole bed to ourselves. Without worrying about whether his mother might come home. His arms around me. “No farther,” he purred, sealing the deal. “I promise.”
“I just can’t, Fry.” What he was saying was so different from what he’d written, I felt dizzy, off balance. Where was slow, love-round? “Besides,” I added, remembering the end of his poem, “I thought you were happy with my name on your lips.”
“What?”
“You know. Your poem?”
“Oh, yeah. Come on, Sar, be serious. We don’t get chances like this every night.”
I wanted to tell him about the class he’d missed. I wanted to crow about how Rufus liked my poem. But I knew better now. Instead, I let Fry do the talking. Which meant I heard more than I wanted to about old men and young girls. “Just watch the geezer’s hands under the table, okay?”
“Fry!” I was glad I couldn’t see him, didn’t have to look at the smirk, the tight smile he wore every time he talked about Rufus. “I thought you understood.”
“I understand that kids are all talking about it. I’m not the only one who thinks the old man goes on autodrool whenever you’re around.”
“But—”
“And then you turn around and have the guy to dinner! What’s wrong with this picture, Sarah?” Fry sounded like a father, a scolding parent. “You’re in high school, and he’s . . . he’s barely alive, for Chrissake.”
He paused, lowered his voice, as if finally, he could make me listen to reason. “Hey, it’s not like you’ll even get an A out of this.”
The first CD popped out of my laptop. “I can’t talk now,” I told Fry. I heard my mother laugh, high and girlish, downstairs. “I have to go.”
“Your choice, babe,” Fry said, his voice angry again. “And your loss.”
Was it? My loss? After we’d hung up, I sat down to wait for the second CD. I read the poem Fry had sent again. It was beautiful. Loving words strung together, a rush of passion. My head hurt from trying to figure things out, from wanting to hold Fry and listen to him say those words over and over. Still, the lightness in my neck and shoulders, as I started downstairs to show Rufus how to play the tracks, felt as much like relief as disappointment. As if half of me wanted to steal off to meet Fry, but the other half was only too glad to go on feeling the magic that always happened when Rufus Baylor was around.
As it turned out, my technology lesson was short lived. My mother just wasn’t built to listen and learn, so even though our poet tried his best to follow my lead, Mom was constantly interrupting. “Rufus, if you have a moment,” and “Oh, Rufus, have you seen this?” It was only when Jocelyn dragged her back into the kitchen to help pour coffee that I got to put more than two words together. So while I had the chance, I used the five that mattered most: “How do you do it?”
“I thought that’s what you were supposed to tell me.” Rufus, who seemed to have relaxed a little now that my mother was out of earshot, slipped off his jacket, folded it across his lap, and waited for instructions.
“No,” I told him. “I mean, how do you make poetry that says so much in such a little space?”
You should have seen our poet’s face then. It looked like a switch had been thrown and he’d come to life. “That’s a fine question, Sarah,” he said. “An astonishing one.”
And then he forgot all about the player and how to work it. He almost forgot about me; in fact, he didn’t seem to be looking at me at all when he answered. He was checking with something inside, something deep and sure.
“I guess the key to writing big is feeling big. You have to want and feel and taste more than you can ever get down on paper.” He came up from inside and saw me. “That forces you to pay attention, take notes. And choose. Most of all it makes you choose what to put down and what to leave out.”
I nodded. “Like being onstage,” I told him. “There are a billion and one ways to say a line. But only one way you can say it after the lights go up.”
“Exactly,” Rufus said. “But everything you haven’t said, everything you’ve left out, is still there. It echoes and thrums through a reader’s heart.”
“It goes on and on.” I remembered the poem like a bell.
“Want to see how it’s done?” Rufus smiled. “I write morning pages every day. I like to get things on paper before life gets too busy.” I thought of the reporters, the librarians, the groupies.
“You’re more than welcome to join me. I thought I might ask anyone in class who wants to, to try their hand.” He held his head to one side in that way he had. “Though I’m not sure how many takers I’ll have.”
“Morning pages?” My heart sank. Was that how creative types worked? They jumped out of bed inspired? I had enough trouble waking up early for school. And it never felt like my brain turned on until after lunch.
“Eight a.m. sharp.” Another smile. “After coffee, of course. I write without thinking. No editing, no second-guessing. Just notes on what’s here and now, what’s real.”
“Would we have to read what we write?” All the crossings out, the changes I wrote in the margins of my poems before I cleaned them up and turned them in! What if Rufus had heard those lines before they were fixed? Would he still have told my mother I had a feel for poetry?
“No one has to read their morning pages,” Rufus explained. “Not you, not me, not anyone.” He paused. “On the other hand, if you want to share your work, you can. Unless, of course, Carmen objects.”
I laughed. The picture of the Hendricks’ giant feline sitting in on a poetry session was absurd. But Rufus wasn’t smiling.
“It seems my Cat in Residence has an aversion to people taking themselves too seriously.” Our poet sighed. “I invited a friend from Asheville to spend last weekend here, and he’d barely begun reading something from his latest book, when Carmen persuaded him to stop.”
Persuasion seemed a little too subtle for a cat that size.
“We needed to get iodine and Band-Aids, you see.”
“Band-Aids?!”
“I think it was the hand gestures he used while he read.” Rufus shook his head. But he looked only a little sorry. “The scratches were mostly superficial.”
“Don’t mind us.” Mom and Aunt J. arrived, with delicate, bell-shaped coffee cups arranged on a tray. Mom handed around the demitasses. “Go right on chatting.”
But of course, we didn’t. Our guest took one of the cups she handed him, inhaling as if he were sniffing a rose. And me? I had no intention of telling my mother and my aunt that I was considering setting an alarm to go write alongside the most famous poet in the world.
* * * *
“Would you believe a Poet Laureate did our dishes?!” Mom sounded like a dizzy sixth grader with a new crush. The minute Rufus left, my player in tow, she wanted to talk about him. She had me describe every minute of every class, the same classes she hadn’t even wanted mentioned a few days before. She kept me talking and talking, until Joceyln yawned and went to bed. Until I’d told her every detail, including our visit to the record store.
But that didn’t satisfy her. She wanted to keep going, right into the future. She wondered if Our Famous New Friend wouldn’t like to come see the magazine. Did I think she could ask him to write something for them? A few more bracelets and a peasant skirt, and Mom might as well have been Julie Kinney on one of her Rufus Baylor highs.
The difference between Mom and Miss Kinney, though, was that I was pretty sure Julie Kinney had read every poem our poet had ever written. And Mom? It was more like she was thrilled with her brush with fame, not with Rufus or his work. “Do you realize that man could boost the magazine’s circulation with one little quote? A line or two!” She took my hand, something she hadn’t done in a long time—something that felt good even though she was hardly in the same room with me anymore.
“Why, all this awful court business might even turn out for the best. Just imagine what a letter of recommendation from Rufus Baylor would do for your med school application!”
“Mom!”
“Oh, I know he hasn’t got a science background, honey.” She was in monologue mode now; she dropped my hand and paced beside the coffee table with its artfully arranged rows of magazines. “But anyone who read at the president’s inauguration is someone people pay attention to.” She picked up a copy of Her, waved it like a flag. “This man could change both our lives, Sarah.”
“He’s already changed mine,” I told her. “Remember the poem he said he liked? I’ve got it upstairs.” I knew I was taking a chance. I knew my poem might hurt her pride, but it was about the two of us, after all. “Want to hear it?” It was about love.
“I can’t wait to get a look at it, really I can’t.” My mother dropped to the couch, rolled up the magazine, and propped it under her chin. “But right now we’re talking about your future, Sarah. Let’s get serious.”
Get serious. Isn’t that what Fry had just asked me to do?
The tears started up, I felt them fill the bottoms of my eyes, willed them to stay there. What had I expected? Wasn’t Shepherd taking me for ice cream amazing enough? How many miracles in one family could Rufus Baylor work?
“After all”—she was wearing the focused, calculating expression that meant she wasn’t interested in frivolous small talk—“Rufus is an exception. Poetry is no way to make a living, young lady.”
“I’m pretty tired, Mom.” I was, too. Suddenly, I felt as if I’d hiked halfway up a very steep hill and couldn’t make it to the top. “I really need to go to bed.”
Mom looked up from her dream, stared at me. I guess she figured my future was something she didn’t really need my help to plan, because she smiled, walked with me to the foot of the stairs. “Okay, honey,” she told me. “But I think I’d better do a little homework of my own tonight.” A peck on my cheek.
“Before you go to bed, could you recommend a few of Rufus’s poems for me to read?” She stood there, as if she were waiting for me to drop the books in her hands. “You know, some of the important ones?”
* * * *
I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t. Not with so much hurt and anger swimming around inside me. It felt like dark shark noses circling, bumping into everything. If Mom had walked into the room then and apologized, even offered to look at my poem, I would probably have told her what she’d told me about Florinda Dear’s dress: “Too late to be sorry now.”
Maybe it was because I needed backup. Or because swimming behind those shark noses was some good news that I wanted to share. Whatever the reason, I did something I hadn’t done in months and months: I called one of my friends. One of my old, BF friends.
Wanda’s number was still stored on my cell, but guess what? I knew it, anyway. And talking to her was as easy as dialing her. She didn’t make me feel guilty or apologetic for phoning; she sounded as though I called every day, as if I’d never snubbed her in the hall, pretended she was invisible, and generally been the worst kind of ex-friend imaginable.
Best of all, she didn’t mention the bash. We talked about everything else. About the other Untouchables. About school. About the months of gossip and jokes and movies I’d missed. And finally, because she made it all seem so natural, I told her the rest. About the trial. About the poetry classes. How H was writing awful poems and Fry was writing great ones. How Rufus and I had gone music shopping, how he liked my poem, how he’d turned my father almost human, and how my mother had just nominated herself regional president of the Whale Point Rufus Baylor Fan Club.
“No, no, no, a thousand nos!” Wanda had never tried out for the Players, but she was very dramatic. I pictured her pale face, the red arcs of her brows raised like a poppy-eyed emoticons. “I refuse to believe you sat at the very same, actual table as Rufus Baylor! Ate out of the same plate!”
“I didn’t,” I told her.
“Didn’t what?”
“Eat out of the same plate. He had his own.”
“Oh, Sarah, you know what I mean.” Her voice was practically singing. “Imagine! Washing the actual fork he used, the actual glass, the—”
“Wan,” I told her. “He’s a person, like anyone else. Only smarter.” I paused, realized that wasn’t the extent of it. “And funnier,” I added.
“And the world’s most brilliant, celebrated, and truly inspired poet!” I already mentioned that Wanda loved poetry, right? “Sarah, I’m so jealous of you and happy for you at the same time. Do you know what I’d do to spend an evening with Rufus Baylor?”
“Set fire to his house?”
There was silence now, because both of us knew she wouldn’t. Not ever. But I was glad I’d said it. Glad I could talk to her, even about that.
“Come to dinner next Thursday,” I said. “My mother’s invited him back.”
“Do you mean it?” She sounded so surprised and hopeful it made me sad. Made me remember how awful I’d been to her. I thought about the way Wanda’s and George’s waves had gotten smaller, more dispirited each time I passed them in the hall. Smaller and smaller. And yet they’d never stopped.
“Of course,” I told her. “Right after Bad Kids School lets out.”
I felt looser after that call. Everything seemed easier, and tomorrow looked different, fresh. But I couldn’t sleep yet. Not until I got a poem off my chest and out of my heart. This one wasn’t meant for my notebook, though; I reached for my cell, instead, then curled like a fetus around the phone while I texted Fry:
You look like a devil, but kiss like an angel.
You skip out on class, but write deep as a well.
It’s confusing to date you, and so hard to tell,
When we’re together, if it’s heaven or hell.
I hoped he’d understand. And I hoped I could find the courage to tell him in person how confused I was. How one minute, it felt as though we understood each other, not with words, but with our eyes, our bodies, with the sort of connection that makes two people laugh at the same things, reach for each other’s hands at the same time. But how the next minute, I’d feel things I knew I couldn’t share with him—proud of how Rufus treated me like a serious poet; happy I’d get to have dinner with him next week; glad I’d see Wanda again; and guilty I hadn’t even thought of asking Fry.
Why hadn’t I? Inviting Wanda to dinner had been instinctive, natural. Easy as breathing. But it was so much harder to picture Fry sitting at that table. Was it because he had called Rufus Baylor, the Rufus Baylor, a dirty old man? Or was it because he wrote the kind of poetry that visited you in a flash of inspiration . . . without a teacher, without talking or thinking about it? Or was it—and this was the question that gnawed and niggled at the back of my heart—was it because I was afraid?
What happens when you mix oil and water? When the prince gets off his horse and meets your friends and family? If he’s still wearing his armor, if all he can talk about is jousting and all he can do is fight, you might lose the man of your dreams. You might end up, instead, with a guy who protects himself by pushing everyone away. Who tracks dirt on the carpet and smells like a stable.
Lying there, alone with a new moon at the window, I decided I had to take a chance on the person who’d made me feel like a princess. And who knew? Maybe our poet would be interested in jousting. Maybe Wanda and my mother and Aunt J. would get to know the boy I did, the one who hid his sensitive heart under cool. Best of all, maybe Fry himself would understand how very much I needed him to be a part of my life. All of it.
That’s when I made a pact with the strip of moonlight that spilled across my lap: I would invite Fry to dinner on Thursday. It would be a battle to persuade my mother to add to her guest list, especially if the addition was of the boy variety. But wasn’t love worth fighting for?
I got out of bed and padded over to my desk. I loved being the only one up in summer, when the floor stayed warm under my bare feet, creaking and whispering as if it had stored up gossip all day. When the monster action figures on my window seat looked like misshapen fairies huddled together for a midnight ritual. (King Kong was clearly their leader, his oversize arms raised in the moonlight, while Godzilla and the Hulk did their lurking, crouching thing beside him.) I put my cell on silent, plugged it into the charger, and was on my way back to bed when the moon found something I’d forgotten all about. Light from the window caught the white corner of a piece of paper I’d tucked under my laptop, and when I pulled it out, I found the photograph of Nella, creased but still smiling.
I needed that smile more than ever now. It persisted in the face of everything—the bash, H’s bad poetry, the way shame and love were all mixed up in how I felt about Fry. None of it mattered to this girl, who insisted on liking me, and on smiling at me to prove it.
Because the moonlight was so lovely and because Nella’s photo was such a sweet and sudden comfort, I opened the desk drawer and brought my notebook back to bed. I turned on the light, and in the same sort of white heat I imagined Fry wrote, I finished a poem about the girl who smiled through a fire. I wasn’t sure how good it was, but I knew how good it felt. And I knew, too, that Nella belonged to Rufus, not to me. I would give him back the photo when I showed him the poem. The first was a little worn, and the second was brand new, but I was pretty sure our poet would love them both.
Your eyes are only shadows, your smile
as thin as the page in my hands.
But this ghost, your second best,
is all I know, all I need to see me through.
I have made you into something more
substantial, more abiding than a human girl:
Older guide and faithful friend,
a moonlight sage and ally, too.
Sometimes I wonder who you were
before the camera shutter clicked
(in those days that’s how it worked).
Did you ever dream I’d need your help?
That I would fold your fairy face
inside my jeans to keep it from the fire?
That saving you would save
me
from
myself?