Moore to Lose (3 page)

Next up, Miss Mia Silver. Tom looked down at the page and groaned out loud. Damn it, Mia, he thought. He really had high hopes for her to turn in something substantiative and there were like five lines on the page. He shook his head, feeling overwhelming disappointment and thinking, “C’mon Mia, I know you have more in you.”

He started to read.
Sky Diving Blues
. Ok, good title. Sky, she starts high. Diving, she’s descending. Blues, she’s hit bottom. Ok, good start. C’mon Mia, surprise me.

Sky Diving Blues

Flying high

a flirtation with the sun

The slow descent

to a burned Rome

The neighborhood hasn’t changed

Tom felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He put his beer down and read it again. Holy shit. She did it. Eighteen words in the body of the poem. Three words in the title. Twenty-one words. Twenty-one words and she gave it all. She put it all out there. He wasn’t wrong. He knew she had it in her. He read it again. She understood raw. It was all there. It was succinct. It cut to the heart of it. No fluff. Mia Silver got to the net/net in twenty-one words.

Oddly proud of his youngest student, Tom wondered if the neighborhood that hadn’t changed was her college campus in California. A burned Rome. Destruction. Devastation. Maybe a Nero fiddling – someone dancing over the ashes of her smoldering city, of her heartache. A flirtation with the sun. Someone who shone brightly for her, someone she held up in exalted esteem. Damn, she cut to the heart of it with a few words and the Rome burning imagery. Beautiful. Her cohorts were giving pages and pages of rhyming dreck – pure shit and in twenty-one words she nailed it.

When he finished the stack of papers he pulled out Rob Ryan’s and Mia Silver’s poems again and reread them. These were his two – the conflict was there within them. He could work with that. He’d teach them how to take that pain and use it as the fuel in creating. Two out of fifteen. Not bad. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Rob and Mia and mentor them the way George and others had mentored him.

Tom Sheehan was loving life.

Mia took her seat at the back of the classroom. It gave her a great vantage point to observe her classmates and check them out. She loved observing people and listening and definitely knew more about them than they knew about her. Not that anybody in the writing seminar had made any real effort to get to know her, but she could tell a lot about them through her observations.

Tom Sheehan entered the classroom and put a stack of papers down on the desk at the front of the room. Mia was nervous about getting her poem back. She hoped he didn’t hate it. Hanging out with him on Saturday had been really fun – he was very cool, although a little intimidating, and she felt like a kid around him. Mia wondered if she would ever feel as sophisticated as some of the other girls in the class. They seemed so sure of themselves around him. Mia felt self-conscious.

He started to walk around the room, returning the assignments by slapping them on people’s desks, face down. Uh-oh, he does not appear to be happy was her initial thought. When he got to her desk in the back, he smiled at her and gently laid the paper down. A look passed between them, but Mia wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to relay. It made her uncomfortable and she was pissed that she hadn’t worn sunglasses. She wanted to hide. And he was so damn cute. Not smart to have a prof crush on a twenty-seven year old single guy. Her prof crush on Rick Stevens was safe – he was older and married and definitely would not sleep with his students. Tom Sheehan, on the other hand, was a player. Smart, sexy, witty – but definitely a player.

Mia took a deep breath and turned over the paper. She let out a little surprised “Huh” sound. Tom had given her an A+ and written on the paper was, “I’m so proud of you.” Mia looked up and Tom was looking at her, gauging her reaction. She beamed at him, surprised. His face remained neutral, but his eyes were sparkling. Mia smiled at him, a full devil grin and he returned her smile briefly. She looked back down at her paper, feeling very proud.

She read over her poem and could feel the sting at the back of her eyes. Did you ever really love me, Schooner? Why the elaborate ruse?
Flying high, a flirtation with the sun.
She was Icarus. He was the sun. And that brief flirtation melted her wings. Who was she kidding? Her wings were the least of the damage. He had her heart. And she didn’t know if she’d ever get it back. She hated him for the betrayal and missed him and loved him and hated him. He and CJ probably had gotten a good laugh over it. Why had he betrayed her like that? She could feel her throat closing up.

Tom was at the front of the class talking and she had not heard a word he had said. She focused in. Holy shit, he was ripping the class a new one, embarrassed for them that they would turn in what they turned in. Wow – only two people got a passing grade on the assignment. Was he serious? She wondered who the other person was with the passing grade.

Tom sat on the edge of his desk. “What makes writing great?” Mia smiled to herself, but did not raise her hand. Clearly, he was trying to see if anyone else in the class could answer.

Jacqueline’s hand was the first up, “Strong subject matter.”

Tom nodded his head, “Ok. What else?”

Chrissie raised her hand, “Descriptive writing. I mean, like heavy use of descriptions and imagery.”

Tom nodded again and moved on. He pointed a finger at Matt, a thin, geeky kid. “Uh, the ability to get your point across clearly.”

Tom didn’t even acknowledge Matt. “Mia, what makes writing great?”

Mia locked eyes with Tom. “Honesty. Writing needs to be honest.”

“Thank you. Writing needs to be honest to be great,” he sighed, punctuating each word while pacing to the front of the room. “How many of you feel that your work, the assignment that you just turned in, came from a place of complete honesty?”

Hands shot up like flags in a stiff breeze. Mia gingerly raised hers to half-staff.

Tom shook his head. “Seriously? You really think your writing was honest? Was it gut wrenching to write those words? Was it hard to see the paper in front of you through your tears? Did you want to throw your guts up writing it?”

Mia could feel her eyes getting watery. Fuck, I wish I was wearing my sunglasses, she stressed. She couldn’t see the paper in front of her while she was writing Sky Diving Blues. He was her sun, her light. And to betray her with that shallow, mean bitch? Expose her darkest secrets and pain. And to her? Why, Schooner? Actually, she didn’t even want to know why. Just the fact that he did it – betrayed her, broke their trust, sent her hurtling from that exalted place he had taken her to depths so painful. Yes, writing that poem had made her sick to her stomach.

Mia looked down at her desk.
I hate you, Schooner Moore. I hate you so fucking much. If you were standing in front of me right now, I would pummel my fists into your chest. I would take my nails and scratch that pretty face of yours to ribbons. So why do I still just want you to hold me, you cruel mother fucking bastard? I want you to hold me and tell me it was all a mistake, Baby Girl. But it wasn’t because you fucking betrayed me. How could you love me and betray me? You couldn’t. So, you didn’t love me. You never loved me. Was it all a big fucking joke to you and that witch? I want you out of my head. I want you out of my heart. Why did I ever meet you?

Mia heard Tom saying her name. She and Rob Ryan were the only two that did not have to redo the assignment. She knew she needed to concentrate on what Tom was saying, stay there in the present, in the class, and not go to the place she had just disappeared to for the last few minutes. Mia groaned inwardly as Tom asked Rob to get up in front of the class to read his poem. Fuck that means I’m next, she cringed. Her stomach was already in knots from thinking about Schooner. Ick, I just want to go throw up, Mia could feel the bile rising. And Tom was calling her name. Thank God it’s a short poem, this will be over quickly, was all she could think.

Mia shuffled to the front of the classroom, head down so that she could hide behind her veil of hair. Her eyes met Tom’s as she reached a spot next to his desk. His dark eyes were reassuring and oddly comforting. With an almost imperceptible movement, he gave her a slight nod and her lips curled up in a brief semi-smile. “Showtime,” she said in her head.

Sky Diving Blues

Flying high

a flirtation with the sun

The slow descent

to a burned Rome

The neighborhood hasn’t changed

She started toward her seat.

“Mia, stay up here for a second.”

Inward groan. Great. Tom’s hand was on her shoulder. His touch felt good, oddly comforting.

“The body of that poem was eighteen words. Twenty-one with the title. Did it rhyme?” The class collectively shook their head no. “Right. It didn’t rhyme. It didn’t go on for pages. Twenty-one words that conveyed very clear emotion and strong imagery. The emotion was honest and raw. That is the level at which I expect everyone in this class to be operating.” He tapped Mia’s shoulder, indicating that she could return to her seat.

Heading to her seat at the back of the class, Mia longed to be sitting on the floor of her dorm room, her back leaning up against the bed, smoking her bong. Unfortunately, the dorm room she longed for was 3,000 miles away. She felt exiled from what she now understood was her home. Her true home. The place her heart resided. She missed them all so much – Rosie, Henry, Caroline, her dorm mates. She missed him. And she wanted him to miss her – but she knew that was unlikely, since he’d always been CJ’s. Miss me Schooner. Even just a little. Miss me. How could you not?

Mia wondered when she was going to stop feeling like shit.

When Tom found her in another section of the park the next Saturday, Mia was shooting long exposures of a stream. The photos would have a soft ethereal quality due to the length of the exposures, with soft white water flowing over the shiny rocks. Mia explained it to Tom, who was having a hard time visualizing it. “I’ll bring prints to class, so that you can see what I’m talking about,” she promised.

Entering the little coffee shop, Mia realized that Tom’s attention made her feel good – feel special. She was also very aware that she was just using his attention as a way to allay some of the pain of losing Schooner. She needed to feel special. And in an odd way she was competing with the Jacqueline’s and Sherri’s of the class – the girls who turned heads and used their sexuality to get exactly what they wanted – all the time. On some level, Mia knew that she was making them her CJ’s. And if Tom liked her because she was smart, funny, a talented writer – then that was her fuck you to all of them – fucking Schooner included. And Mia was itching to give them all the proverbial finger.

“So, I have something I want to talk to you about.” Tom looked at Mia over his coffee, taking on a very serious, authoritative tone. “You and Rob Ryan are really at a different level than the rest of the class.”

Mia smiled, she liked where this conversation was going.

“I’d really like to work with the two of you separately from the class. I’m going to leave the choice up to each of you as to whether you still want to attend the class for the rest of this semester, and next, in addition to working with you two separately or just work totally independently of the class.”

Mia could feel the excitement welling up inside. “So, Rob and I will just work with you alone? Or individually? What are you thinking?”

“I’d like to work with the two of you together. We’ll figure out a time that works with everyone’s schedule. This way you two still have the benefit of bouncing off of each other and doing critical reviews of one another’s work. I’m probably also going to have you team up and write together – things like small screenplays.”

Mia sat back, devil smile slowly commandeering her face. “Seriously?”

Tom laughed, his eyes coming alive at Mia’s response. “Yeah, seriously. Some of my profs did this with me and some other students. It really accelerates your growth because it becomes an intensive workshop. If I keep the both of you just in the class, you won’t get out of it what you could and I don’t want to see that happen. I have a year to work with the two of you and I want to make the most of that year.”

Mia ran her hand through her hair. “Wow. Thank you. Does Rob know?”

Tom shook his head, a shock of unruly black hair cascading down his forehead like some bad boy rocker. Don’t do that, Mia thought to herself. You look like a hot bad boy. A year with this man … holy crap. “He should be here in about twenty minutes. What are you smiling at?”

Probably would not be appropriate to say “Your bad boy hotness” or “This is the first time I’ve been horny in like five months,” or “I’m just wondering if fucking you would help me forget him and make this pain go away,” so she just shook her head. “This is really cool.”

Rob joined them and Tom outlined his plans. They would meet Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7 P.M. – 9 P.M. It was Mia’s first time talking with Rob, a scruffy senior from a small town in upstate New York. Social skills weren’t his forte, and Mia wondered how this was going to work out with her and Rob working together. Knowing one of her strengths was drawing people out, and misfits had always been both her specialty and her comfort zone, Mia knew she’d figure out what made him tick. Maybe he was just shy, an affliction from which she rarely suffered. Relishing anything that would take her mind off of the Schooner hurt and missing California, Rob Ryan was going to become her pet project and maybe even a good buddy.

By the time they’d finished their meeting, Rob and Mia had their first project from Tom. They had to take any short story and convert it into a screenplay. Their deadline was a week from Tuesday, and Rob and Mia had a date for Sunday afternoon to at least pick the story they would adapt.

The three left the coffee shop together. Rob heading downtown to his apartment and Mia heading back to campus and to the darkroom to develop the film she’d just shot.