The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (29 page)

“And now,” he said, “my poem.”

Luke started reading the poem. I watched the teleprompter. Verses were scrolling up from the bottom. Theirs. Not ours.

Jackson had told us that he’d be in touch. But he hadn’t been. With sudden clarity, I knew I’d been fooling myself. If my phone had buzzed, I’d have felt it. There had been no message from Jackson. He must have been caught.

But if Luke’s poem was read as scripted—

It had all hinged on Luke’s poem.

If Luke didn’t make the announcement, Coluber wouldn’t make the announcement.

Nothing would be righted. Everything would stay the
same. Miki Frigging Reagler would win, and Maura Heldsman would stay in Minnesota, and her other life, the one where she went to Juilliard and danced in New York, would slip away.

Peter Martins. Lincoln Center. That is all. Period. I don’t want anything else
.

It would slip away like a dream upon waking. She’d forget how much she’d cared.

A mess. I should have been able to do better
.

Coluber would only get richer. So would kTV. They’d do another season, and another, pressing students through the mangle of hope, goading them to dream big because big dreams make better TV when they’re crushed. BradLee would keep spying, and Luke—

Well, Luke wouldn’t be our friend either way. That was over. EZRA wasn’t about getting Luke back.

All these thoughts jostled for space in the five seconds of cheers that followed Luke’s first couplet. I felt my phone buzz against my leg and I didn’t look because I knew what it would say.
Ethan: DO something
.

Then there was a buzz against my other leg, and I grabbed him. Baconnaise. I never had gotten used to the tumor. It felt like a Ping-Pong ball.

He looked at me. I could have sworn he smiled.

“Baconnaise,” I whispered. There had to be something I could do, something
we
could do. I looked around madly. Left. Right. Up.

Those wires.

“Baconnaise,” I whispered again. “Baconnaise, you stud. Choose green.”

I crouched and put him down and he took off with all the bravery I’d always known he had, climbing the curtain like he’d been trained in parkour. What character. What pure, thoughtless courage. He made a little leap—he was above the stage now—he was at the bundle of green wires, the ones leading to the teleprompter. He looked back at me questioningly.

I nodded. I snapped my fingers. It didn’t matter, now, if anyone heard.

He heard the signal and somewhere in his rodent brain it resonated, the same signal I’d given him so many times in the Appelden. He dove for a green wire and he took it in his mouth and he began to chew. And I couldn’t watch but I watched, I watched the screen and Luke and my Baconnaise, and the screen flickered and the look of concentration on his little face was unbearable, I was so filled with pride and horror and hope. The lines on the screen zigzagged and the words became illegible. I glanced at Luke—he’d abruptly stopped, mid-couplet—and I knew the end was near. So I turned away from the snowy teleprompter and my former best friend, and I looked only at Baconnaise.

He was still chewing. Twenty feet above the stage, still gnawing away. I heard Luke begin to speak again. He was reading from his notebook, reading our new words. Easily, winningly. He was a natural. And the audience rumbled with expectation and joy, and—

I knew it would happen.

Elizabeth said later, “You couldn’t have known.”

But I will always know this: I knew it would happen.

Luke was almost finished.

“Poetic justice,” he read with gusto, “kicked his
ass
.”

Baconnaise kept chewing and there was nothing I could do. I saw what I knew I would see. His entire body stiffened as if electrocuted—which it was—and his eyes bugged, his shape swelled as every hair stood upright. Even then he did not take his jaws off the wire. I had my arms outstretched like a suppliant, desperately gesturing for him to let go, to come back, but we hadn’t practiced that part. I hadn’t taught him to come back to me.

Luke finished his
Contracantos
, our
Contracantos
, to wild applause.
The poem had announced the new scholarships. They wouldn’t be able to get out of them now.

I thought it was over. I put my hands down. I almost covered my face. But the current must have stopped running, because Baconnaise lifted his head and jerked himself away from the bundle of wires. He flew through the air and landed on the stage with a catlike grace. I heard a faint shriek, and Baconnaise shot across the stage, moving with the mania of a madman, a madgerbil, and Luke held out his hands, and Baconnaise propelled himself into them. And there was a sudden stillness, and Luke looked down.

“Thank you
so
much, Luke Weston,” said Trisha Meier, prancing toward him from the judges’ table. Under her smile I could see the curl of revulsion toward whatever vermin had dared fling itself from the bowels of this Midwestern stage and die on her star’s lap.

The audience took her cue and began to clap.

“And we’ll be back with the final vote after this break!” said Trisha Meier. Her smile dropped with a thud the instant the cameras blinked off. She ushered Luke offstage, toward me. She started yelling at the pages running around with clipboards. Luke stood there, looking uncertain and alone.

I stepped out from behind the curtain. He wasn’t surprised.

“Hi, Ethan.”

“Hi.”

“Here he is.” He gave me Baconnaise’s tiny body. The hairs had settled. I cradled him in both hands but his body was
smaller than I remembered. He was almost weightless in death. I choked up. Baconnaise.

“He saved us,” said Luke.

I didn’t question that statement at all. I just nodded.

Luke reached out his hand but froze in midair, waiting for permission. I nodded. He stroked the little body. “I missed you.” He was talking to Baconnaise.

I think he was talking to Baconnaise.

“When the mind swings by a grass-blade,”
said Luke, two fingers soothing his fur.

It took me a second to realize: he was quoting the
Cantos
, the real
Cantos
.

“An ant’s forefoot shall save you. The clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower.”

I stroked his fur too. And although I knew that the difficult, individualistic, dangerously intelligent Ezra Pound had never imagined his masterwork being quoted over the corpse of a gerbil named Baconnaise, I didn’t think he’d mind.

And you know what? If he’d minded? Well, guys, key difference between life and art:
ars longa, vita brevis
. Art is long and life is short. Ezra Pound is dead. The
Cantos
are not.

“Welcome back to
For Art’s Sake
!” said Trisha.

“You did it!” cried Damien.

“I did it!” Trisha addressed the camera. “I was telling them during the break, I was like, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get through the last welcome-back without tearing up!”

“But there’s still so much excitement left!” said Willis Wolfe.

“That’s right. First, some very exciting news.” She didn’t look too excited. “The news that Luke Weston hinted at with that
memorable
poem.”

The finalists and former contestants filed onstage, all twenty standing in a row.

“I’d like to introduce America to a very special someone,” said Willis Wolfe. “He’s my colleague, and he’s my friend: the vice principal of Selwyn Academy, Sebastian Coluber!”

Coluber came onstage from his first-row seat in the audience. “Thanks, Willis. Yes, I do have an extremely exciting announcement.” Nope, he didn’t look excited either.

“Mr. Coluber has been essential to the production of this show,” said Willis Wolfe. “He’s been behind it all along.”

“And it’s been a pleasure,” said Coluber. “So rewarding.”

“Do the announcement!” said Damien, like a little kid.

“Ah yes,” said Coluber. “As you’ve learned from Luke’s terrific poem, we’ve been thinking about the fairness of the prize. The winner is set to receive one hundred thousand dollars of scholarship money. But what about the other contestants? After all, they gave so much of themselves to this show—so much heart, so much spirit.”

Trisha was nodding tearily along. The contestants looked tense.

“And so,” said Coluber, “to each of the non-finalists, Selwyn and kTV will work together to offer—” He swallowed. “Fifty thousand dollars, to be applied to any arts institution in the nation!”

The former contestants went wild. They danced, they screamed, they hugged. So did the audience. I was proud of my classmates.

“The winner was already set to receive a hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship,” said Coluber, “as well as a trip to LA, a spread in
La Teen Mode
, and a guaranteed signing with an agent. However—”

He looked as though he might puke.

“To the finalists, who have devoted their school year to these eighteen episodes—Selwyn and kTV will present a one-hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship!”

The audience screamed even louder. Miki F.R. leapt up and clicked his heels in joy. Maura and Luke hugged each other, so Miki F.R. vaulted over to force himself between them. At last, when the audience calmed down, they separated. Maura was tear-stained and glowing.

“It’s hard to keep yourself from smiling when something like that happens,” said Trisha.

“Why would you want to keep yourself from smiling?” said Damien.

“It’s heartwarming,” said Willis Wolfe. “It’s a lot of money. But it’s heartwarming.”

Trisha brandished three envelopes. “And now, I hold the fate of our three finalists.”

The losers evacuated the stage. Luke, Maura, and Miki F.R. stood in a row, holding hands.

“One envelope holds the opinion of the seventeen former contestants,” said Trisha. “One holds the opinion of the Selwyn student body. And one holds the opinion of the three judges.”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” said Damien. “Seriously.”

“Each contestant will unseal one envelope,” said Trisha. “Luke Weston, tell the world its contents!”

“The first vote says”—Luke grinned—“Miki Reagler!”

Miki F.R. clasped his hands over his cheeks. He was trembling.

“Miki, open that envelope,” said Trisha.

“The second vote says—Maura Heldsman!”

Maura smiled, but calmly.

“Now, Maura. Maura, you hold the winner in your hands.”

“Unless it says Luke!” That was Damien. Trisha ignored him. Of course there wouldn’t be a three-way tie. The whole thing was rigged.

“Maura, make that announcement. Who is the winner of
For Art’s Sake
? Who is America’s Best Teen Artist? Who is the inaugural champ—”

“Miki Reagler.”

“What?” said Trisha.

Maura waved the paper and beamed. “Miki! Miki, it’s you!” She hugged him, all smiles, but Miki F.R. pulled away so he could start jumping up and down. He’d probably practiced this moment in front of his bedroom mirror.

“America, I give you the champion! Miki Reagler!”

You could already tell Trisha was ruing the decision to have the contestants announce the winner. The drama quotient was severely lowered. Now Luke was shaking Miki F.R.’s hand.

Miki F.R. grabbed the mike. “I’m so
incredibly
honored.”

Even the judges were standing and clapping. Everyone was. Heck, I was.

“This is literally a dream come true. Thank you, Trisha! Thank you, kTV! Thank you, America!”

Minutes upon minutes of applause.

“And that is that,” said Trisha. “It’s been a great season, folks. Congratulations to Miki, our champion. Congratulations to Maura and Luke, our finalists. Congratulations to our judges and the other contestants! And one last note from your hosts—”

“THAT WAS ART!” they all yelled together.

The Selwyn orchestra struck up the theme music. That was EZRA. And that, as Trisha said, was that.

“One more day of Pound, guys,” said BradLee.

I opened my notebook. I’d be sad to see him go. I liked the
Cantos
. Well, I sometimes liked the
Cantos
. I liked it when lines were taken out of context. I did not like dealing with the entire 824-page poem. It was too much for me. Too many thoughts.

“Much of the information we’ll be using today is from a book by Eustace Mullins. A biography. It’s called
This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound
.”

What a boss title.

“We’ve touched on reactions to Pound before, when we
considered his anti-Semitism in the context of the distinction between life and art. I’m sure you all recall perfectly.”

I looked around at the class. Lots of hooded eyes and blank faces. I turned back to BradLee, and our eyes met.

“A refresher, perhaps?” BradLee paused, longer than he usually does during lectures. “People are only people. People do bad things. Yes, Ezra Pound was a Nazi sympathizer. He was doing what he thought was right. Or maybe it was more complicated than that. After all, he was a person, and he was imperfect.”

I was pretty sure—I still am—that he was talking right to me.

“But we need to separate his life from his art, as best we can. We’ve isolated art, carved out a space for it, claimed it’s different. Now we have to live up to that claim.”