Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (4 page)

“Whitman talks about celebrating himself, and indeed the speaker in this poem is named Walt Whitman, but the details here are not all autobiographical.” Mr. D jots some phrases on the white board and I copy them into my notebook:
Praise of the Individual. The Collective Experience. Democracy. The Boundaries of Self and World.

Poetry is pretty, but I’m not very good at making sense of it on my own. Luckily, although Mr. D wants us to think for ourselves, with a little prompting we can always get him to tell us his own thoughts. Which I then write down and regurgitate in a similar form on the tests, in the essays. Easy peasy as long as I take notes. As long as I know the requirements, I can manage to keep straight A’s.

“Instead of the usual analytical essays, I thought it would be exciting for us to write some poetry this semester,” Mr. Dawkins says, turning from the board to face us. He claps his hands again for emphasis. “You will each write your own ‘Song of Myself’—celebrating yourselves and singing yourselves.”

He goes on to explain the requirements and things, but my brain screeches to a halt. Not this. I can’t write poetry. This is American Literature, not Creative Writing. We’re supposed to read things and write essays on them and take tests. Things I can manage. Things I can control. Around me, people are opening their notebooks, chewing on pens, scribbling away. I can’t catch my breath. I don’t touch my pen.

“Cassandra?” Mr. D taps my notebook, where I’ve dutifully written all the notes, up to the point where he gave us the assignment.

“I can’t write poetry,” I say.

“Of course you can,” he says.

No. I can’t. “Well, I can’t write poetry about myself.”

“Of course you can.”

I sigh. This is so stupid. I push my open notebook away from me. Not much, a couple of millimeters or so, but it’s enough to make my point.

“Well, what are you interested in? Do you have any hobbies? Goals? Special abilities or talents?”

I shake my head. What, am I supposed to collect butterflies or something? The pigs—that’s Eric. The music I listen to—that’s Kayla. The clothes I like—that’s Kayla. Goals for the future—Mom and Dad. Church? That’s … not something I can write about.

“Sports?” Mr. D sounds so hopeful.

I laugh. “I played softball one summer in eighth grade.”

“Well! Write about that!”

“So I should celebrate how my own teammates chanted ‘easy out’ every time I got up to bat?” It’s a true story, but even then I was careful not to let it be important to me.
I’m not good at sports
. I checked the box and moved on.

Mr. Dawkins can’t help chuckling. “Cass. What do you like to do in your spare time? How would you describe yourself? What are you proud of? What makes you different from everyone else in this room?”

“I—” I don’t know. I don’t
know
. I look around the room, and it’s like … it’s like the stupid survey all over again. Desperation crawls up out of some hole deep inside me, and this awful hiccupy thing happens inside my lungs that makes me gulp for air like a guppy. I can’t breathe. In my spare time? I go to the mall and pretend to shop. I go to church and pretend to listen. I go to football games and pretend I know the score. I asphyxiate in the middle of English class. Mr. D takes a step back.

“Cassandra?” He does that weird crouching thing next to my desk that teachers do when they want to ask you a personal question or correct your spelling. “Are you okay?”

Oh yeah, totally. I cover my gasping mouth with one hand and nod to say I’m okay. Of course I’m okay.

“I don’t understand, Cass. You
must
have something to write about. Something about you that’s special.” It’s like he can’t get past that question, like he can’t believe a person could possibly exist who doesn’t have a hobby or a talent or a passion or whatever.

“I’m not special,” I whisper. I can breathe again, in shallow little puffs, but I can’t look at him or anyone else. I’m not sure if he hears me. He continues to survey me, searching for substance.

“Do you like to read, maybe? Write? Draw? Go fishing? Ski? Play Monopoly?” I shake my head no. “Start fires? Mutilate kittens?”

I can’t stop myself from smiling. The desperation passes. Around me, most people are bent over their papers, laboring over their songs. They talk and laugh as they work, and a few of them are reading each other’s poems out loud. Teasing. Arguing. Asking for help. Mr. D nods to a group in the corner by the computers. “Be right there,” he says.

“I’ll be okay.” My voice is still stuck in whisper mode, but my lungs at least seem to have regained normal functionality.

To my horror, he reaches out his bony English-teacher hand and pats my shoulder, and then he withdraws his hand and shifts his weight on his heels, searching for a better view of my eyes. Even in the noisy classroom, I can hear his knees popping as he crouches there.

“Cassandra. There’s something inside of you that’s worth celebrating, that’s worth singing about. If you think about it long enough, you’ll find it.”

“If I think about it too long, I’ll fail this assignment,” I mutter. The due date looms from the white board. Two weeks from tomorrow, also midterms.

“It’s not about the assignment,” he says, hauling himself to his feet. “It’s about life.” He turns toward the group of kids who are waving him down from across the room.

“But … ”
Life
. The panic returns. “What if there’s nothing? What if there’s nothing to write about?” He can’t leave me. I can’t write this poem.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to make something up then,” he says, in a tone that implies he’s done all he can do for me.

Make something up? “Something for my poem?” I persist, half-rising out of my chair, as if to follow him.

He shrugs. “Or something for life,” he says.

I sit.
Make something up.

Darin pauses in his doodling and looks at me through his shaggy bangs. “It’s okay,” he says. He looks like he’s about to elaborate, but then he tosses his hair back. “I mean, I would read a poem about mutilating kittens.” And then he laughs, but it’s a nice laugh—not a mocking laugh and not the creepy kind of laugh that would make me suspect there was some truth in the statement.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” My voice is shaky, but his eyes are a steady gray, and he smiles at me.

“Relax, Cassandra. It’s a stupid assignment.” He hands me his paper, which I can see now has a few lines scribbled in among the sketches:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, but I won’t let you watch while I play with myself.

“You’re disgusting,” I say, sliding the paper back across the desk. My cheeks tingle a little. I hope I’m not blushing.

“It’s what makes me special,” he says, and then he does the weirdest thing. He reaches across the table and takes my hand, but before I can pull it away, he draws this stupid little smiley face on my index finger with his pen. And then he holds up his hand—each finger has a little face like mine—and he waves at me.

All I have to do is smile, lift that one finger, and wave back. The bell rings, and my hands are still clutched into fists in my lap as he tosses his hair back and stands. “Lighten up,” he says. And then he’s gone.

8. The biggest risk
you’ve taken …

I’m not sure I’ve ever gone to the mall alone. Eric’s twenty is in my pocket and it makes me mad. I can’t believe he couldn’t pick something out for me, for his own sister. I want to walk directly over to my favorite things and say, “Look, this is what I like, this is the kind of gift you should get me.” But as I stand here in the crowded food court in the middle of the Sterling Creek Shopping Center, I can’t even decide which direction to go, which store to walk into, much less what I want. I’m not sure I know how to even walk without Kayla leading the way.

Make something up
. I can do this. Out of habit, I turn left, toward the music store and the store where the skater kids hang out, but I can’t get myself to go all the way into the skater shop. I flip my hand listlessly through the rack of black T-shirts near the door and pretend like I’m checking out the orange suede sneakers on display. I feel so dumb. I don’t know these people. A boy with a pink-and-blond faux hawk and black eyeliner nods, but he doesn’t smile. I can feel him judging me. I tug the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my fingers and wish for Kayla, for her confidence. The boy scowls, his brow heavy with metal barbells.

Okay. So not that store. I keep moving, roaming the corridors like a tourist in a foreign city, my eyes wide and uncertain. Colors swirl around me—an endless stream of trendy fashions spinning on racks and colorful banners proclaiming sale prices and neon signs and television monitors with music videos flashing—herds of people pass me, their conversations loud and unintelligible to my dizzy ears. I stumble a little, and even the air feels strange surrounding me, artificial and busy, too full of motion. I stop and lean against the wall for a minute. When I look down, there’s that little smiley face on my fingertip.
Lighten up.

I laugh. Indeed. A deep breath, and I’m ready to dive in again, into the chaos.
Make something up.
Stupid self-discovery.

I’m sure I wouldn’t have seen them if I’d been with Kayla, or with anyone else. There are things you see when you’re with your friends and things you see when you’re alone.

I wander into the bookstore—the big one that my mother hates because they came into the mall and drove out the smaller chain that was there already, leaving only the used-books place downtown. Like I said, I’m not a big reader, but sometimes, I can’t explain why, I just like to go into a bookstore and look at the covers. I trace my fingers across the paperbacks on the display tables, all the different colors and textures and typefaces. Even though their stories don’t appeal to me, I can see why people want books, why they want to hold them in their hands and stack them on shelves and run their thumbs over the edges of the rough-cut pages.

I find the cards in the bargain aisle, half price. I’m not sure I would have picked them up if Pastor Fordham hadn’t just been talking about the tarot, about witchcraft and sorcery and the dangers of the occult. It’s kind of funny, and I wonder what he’d think if he knew that his warnings against the evil are what draw me to it.

The box is heavy in my hands, compact and wrapped tightly in plastic; I can see the bright spine of the guidebook and the dense rectangle of the deck itself. I’ve never even seen tarot cards before. On the front of the box is a picture, bright and alluring, a picture of the Fool. Like the book covers, this artwork captures my eyes, holds them hostage. I can’t put it down, this box of sin.

“Thank you, Eric,” I find myself whispering. Sometimes I do that—I speak my thoughts out loud, or maybe I’ll move my mouth to the words in my head. It catches me off-guard every time, and I look around the store to make sure nobody heard, but I’m all alone here, clutching this secret. My birthday present. My riskiest moment.

I pay for the cards, staring down at the counter as I shove the twenty toward the guy at the till. I half expect him to narrow his eyes at me, maybe quote Scripture or something. Possibly pick up a phone and dial my mother. Instead, he smiles and taps the spine of the book.

“I like this one,” he says. “Good for beginners, but it doesn’t talk down to you.”

I don’t answer. I don’t talk to people who work cash registers, not because I don’t want to but because my brain can only process one thing when I’m standing in line to pay for something, and that one thing is handing over my money. Sometimes I leave the checkout lane and hold a conversation in my head—the conversation I should have had if only I could pretend to be a human for a minute.

I feel my face heat up. “Thanks,” I mumble. I grab the bag off the counter and duck back into my fluffy down jacket on my way out the door.

My plan is to walk home from the mall, which isn’t a perfect plan, but it’s not like I have options. This town is too small to have a city bus, and my parents won’t even let me get my stupid license yet, much less a car. It’s not that far and I’ve walked it before, but it’s already dark, and the wind is colder than I expected. The heavy lump in the plastic bag bounces against my leg as I half walk, half jog along the highway. Okay, so “highway” is an exaggeration, but it’s the main road that cuts through town.

I’m crossing at the second light when I hear the honk—not an angry, get-out-of-my-way kind of honk, but more like a hey-I-know-you tap on the horn. Still, it startles me, and I spin around to see a semi-familiar minivan pulling over to the curb and a manically waving woman at the wheel. Mrs. Johnson, my old Sunday School teacher. Hallelujah. She leans over and pops the passenger door open.

“Cassandra, good gracious, climb in, darling! What are you doing out here, walking in this weather?”

I slide up onto the seat, tucking the bag underneath my feet. “I—I was hanging out at the mall.” I stammer a bit as I search my brain for an appropriate response. If she asks me what I bought, what do I say? Besides, there’s no “if.” She will totally ask.

“Whatcha got in the bag there, honey? Buying books for school?” Mrs. Johnson leans toward me though she keeps her eyes on the road. One mile, maybe a little less, and we’ll be at my house. I slide my feet backward, wishing I could make the bag disappear.