Slammed (27 page)

"The couple to the right of Caulder and I have been here the longest, Bob and Melinda. Their son just joined the military. They were great after my parents died. Melinda cooked for us every day for months. She still brings something over about once a week.

"The house over there?" He points down the street. "He's the one renting your house to you. His name is Scott. He owns six of the houses on this street alone. He's a good guy, but his renters come and go a lot. Those are about the only people I know anymore."

I look at all the houses along the street. They're all so similar and I can't help but try to imagine the differences of all the families inside the homes. I wonder if any of
them
are hiding secrets? If any of them are falling in love? Or out of love? Are they happy? Sad? Scared? Broke? Lonely? Do they appreciate what they have? Do Gus and Erica appreciate their health? Does Scott appreciate his supplemental rental income? Because every bit of it, every last bit of it is fleeting. Nothing is permanent. The only thing any of us have in common is the inevitable. We'll all eventually die.

"There was this one girl," Will says. "She moved into a house on the street a while back. I still remember the moment I saw her pull up in the U-Haul. She was so confident in that thing. It was a hundred times bigger than her, yet she backed it right up without even asking for help. I watched as she put it in park and propped her leg up on the dash, like driving a U-Haul was something she did every day. Piece of cake.

"I had to leave for work but Caulder had already run across the street. He was imaginary sword fighting with the little boy that had been in the U-Haul. I was just going to yell at him to come get in the car, but there was something about that girl. I just had to meet her. I walked across the street but she never even noticed me. She was watching her brother play with Caulder with this distant look on her face.

"I stood beside the U-Haul and I just watched her. I stared at her while she looked on with the saddest look in her eyes. I wanted to know what she was thinking about, what was going on in her head. What had made her so sad? I wanted to hug her so bad. When she finally got out of the U-Haul and I introduced myself to her, it took all I had to let go of her hand. I wanted to hold onto it forever. I wanted to let her know that she wasn't alone. Whatever burden it was that she was carrying around, I wanted to carry it
for
her."

I lean my head on his shoulder and he puts his arm around me.

"I wish I could, Lake. I wish I could take it all away. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. It doesn't just go away. That's what your mom is trying to tell you. She needs you to accept it, and she needs for Kel to know, too. You need to give that to her."

"I know, Will. I just can't. Not yet. I'm not ready to deal with it yet."

He pulls me to him and hugs me.

"You'll never be ready for it, Lake. No one ever is."

He lets go of me and walks away. And he's right again, but I don't care this time.

***

"Lake? Can I come in?" Mom says from outside the bedroom door.

"It's open," I say.

She walks in. She's got her scrubs on now. She sits on the bed next to me as I'm writing in my notebook.

"What are you writing?" she asks.

"A poem."

"For school?"

"No, for me."

"I didn't know you wrote poetry," she says as she tries to peek over my shoulder at it.

"I don't, really. If we read our poetry at Club N9NE we're exempt from the final. I'm thinking about doing one, but I don't know. The thought of getting up there in front of all those people makes me nervous."

"Push your boundaries, Lake. That's what they're there for."

I flip the poem upside down and sit up. "So what's up?"

She smiles at me and reaches to my face and tucks my hair behind my ear.

"Not much," she says. "I just had a few minutes before I had to leave for work. I wanted to let you know that it's my last night. I'm not working anymore after tonight."

I break our stare and lean forward and grab my pen. I put the cap back on it and close my notebook, tucking both the items inside my backpack.

"I'm still carving pumpkins, Mom."

She slowly inhales and stands up, hesitates, then walks back out the door.

15.

“
Forever I will move like the world that turns

beneath me

And when I lose my direction, I’ll look up to the

sky

And when the black cloak drags upon the ground

I’ll be ready to surrender, and remember

Well we’re all in this together

If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to

die.”

-The Avett Brothers, Once and Future Carpenter

Will walks into the classroom carrying a small projector. He sets it on the desk and begins hooking it up to his laptop.

"What we doing today, Mr. Cooper?" Gavin asks.

Will continues to prepare the projector as he responds to Gavin. "I want to show you why you should write poetry." He swings the plug around his desk and inserts it into the outlet on the wall.

"I know why people write poetry," Javi says. "Because they're a bunch of emotional saps with nothin' better to do than whine about ex-girlfriends and dead dogs."

"You're wrong, Javi," I say. "That's called country music."

Everyone laughs, including Will. He sits at his desk and turns the laptop on and glances at Javi.

"So what? If it makes someone feel better to write a poem about their dead dog, then great. Let them. What if some girl broke your heart Javi, and you decided to vent with a pen and paper? That's your business."

"That's fair," Javi says. "People are free to write what they want to write about. But the thing that bothers me is, what if the person who writes it doesn't want to relive it? What if a dude performs a slam about a bad breakup, but then he gets over it and moves on? He falls in love with some other chick, but now there's probably this YouTube video floating around on the internet of him talking all sad about how his heart got broke. That sucks. If you perform it, or even write it down, someday you'll have to relive it."

Will stops fidgeting with the projector and stands up and turns to the board. He grabs a piece of chalk, writes something and then steps aside.

The Avett Brothers

Will points to the name on the board. "Has anyone heard of them?" He looks at me and gives his head a slight shake, indicating he doesn't want me to speak up.

"Sounds familiar," someone says from the back of the room.

"Well,” he says as he paces the room. “They're famous philosophers who speak and write extremely wise, thought-provoking words of wisdom."

I try to stifle my laugh. He's mostly right, though.

"They were asked about this once. I believe they were doing a
reading
. Someone asked them a question about their
poetry
, and if it was hard having to relive their words each time they performed. Their reply was, that although they had ideally moved beyond that-from the person or event that inspired their words at that point in time, it doesn't mean someone listening to them wasn't
in
that.

"So? So what if the heartache you wrote last year isn't what you're feeling today. It may be exactly what the person in the front row is feeling. What you’re feeling now, and the person you may reach with your words five years from now-that's why you write poetry."

He flips on the overhead projector and I immediately recognize the words projected onto the wall. It's the piece he performed at the slam on our date. His piece about death.

"See this? I wrote this piece two years ago, after my parents died. I was angry. I was hurt. I wrote down
exactly
what I was feeling. When I read it now, I don't share those same feelings. Do I regret writing it? No. Because there's a chance that someone in this very room may relate to this. It might mean something to them."

He moves his mouse and the projector zooms in, highlighting one of the lines of his poem.

People don't like to
talk
about death because…

it makes them
sad.

"You never know, someone in this very room might relate to this. Does talking about death make you sad? Of course it does. Death sucks. It's not a fun thing to talk about. But sometimes, you
need
to talk about it."

I know what he's doing. I fold my arms across my chest and glare at him as he looks directly at me. He glances back to his computer, highlighting another line.

If they
only
would have been
prepared,
accepted
the
inevitable,
laid out their
plans
,

"What about this one? My parents weren't prepared to
die
. I was
angry
at them for this. I was left with bills, debt, and a
child
. But what if they would have had warning? A chance to discuss it, to lay out their plans? If talking about death wasn't so easy to avoid while they were alive, then maybe I wouldn't have had such a hard time dealing with it after they died."

He's looking directly at me as he zooms in on another line.

understood
that it wasn’t just
their
lives at hand.

"Everyone assumes they have at least one more day. If my parents had any clue what was about to happen to them before it happened, they would have done everything in their
power
to prepare us.
Everything
. It's not that they weren't thinking about
us
, it's that they weren't thinking about
death."

He highlights the last line of his poem.

Death. The only thing inevitable in
life
…

I look at the phrase and I read it. I read it again. I read it again, and again, and again. I read it until the end of the class period, after everyone around me has left. Everyone but Will.

He's sitting at his desk, watching me. Waiting for me to understand.

"I get it, Will," I finally whisper. “I get it. In the first line, when you said that death was the only thing inevitable in life…you emphasized the word
death
. But when you said it again at the end of the poem, you didn't emphasize the word death, you emphasized the word
life
. You put the
emphasis
on
life
at the end. I get it, Will. You're right. She's not trying to prepare us for her
death
. She's trying to prepare us for her
life
. For what she has left of it."

He leans forward and turns the projector off. I grab my stuff, and I go home.