The Trouble with Emily Dickinson (18 page)

Queenie acknowledged her presence simply by
repositioning herself on the couch so that there was room for two.
JJ set the pizza box on the coffee table without saying a word, and
sat down. She handed the six-pack to Queenie, who released one can,
popped the top, and passed it over before taking one for herself.
JJ took a long sip from the can in her hand, letting the sweetness
of the soda dance on her tongue before she swallowed.

“What are you watching?” she asked.

“Nothing much.” Queenie burped, and added,
“Excuse me.”

They watched sitcom reruns for the rest of
the night and nearly finished off the entire pizza. They exchanged
a few tidbits of conversation, mostly whether the characters they
were watching on television were attractive or not. And not once
did Queenie say, “I told you so.”

CHAPTER 25

Kendal braced herself, and then knocked on
Mya’s door. She had little in common with Mya Brooks, aside from
the fact that they both were on the cheerleading squad. Their
conversations were few and far between, and basically centered on
schoolwork and cheerleading. Mya was the captain of the
cheerleading squad. She cared about the squad wholeheartedly, and
about little else. It was all she ever talked about. It was her
life.

Mya was sweet and understanding, though,
which made her easy to talk to. She was compassionate and
charitable, a true humanitarian. But as sweet as she was, she knew
how to play the game when it mattered. It wasn’t in anyone’s best
interest to get in her way whenever cheerleading was concerned. And
if anyone ever told her that cheerleading wasn’t a sport, watch
out!

“Come in,” Kendal heard from beyond the
peephole. She opened the door and saw Mya sitting comfortably in a
beanbag chair, an open textbook in her lap.

“Kendal,” Mya said, surprised. “I wasn’t
expecting you.”

Kendal entered slowly and checked every
corner of the room to make sure Mya was alone. She motioned to the
bed, asking for permission to sit down.

“Sure, have a seat,” Mya said warmly. “I’m
sure you heard about our little meeting last night. I had a hunch
Christine would let you in on it since she isn’t the best at
keeping secrets.”

“She did,” Kendal replied evenly. “I was
actually going to come to address some things myself, but I didn’t
want to make a scene at the meeting.”

“Why would you have made a scene?”

“Well, wouldn’t you make a scene if you were
about to get kicked off the cheerleading squad?”

Mya burst out laughing. “Kendal, who said we
were kicking you off the squad?”

“Christine did. She said you were having a
secret meeting about me because everyone had noticed how I’ve been
acting lately. You know, avoiding soccer parties and such, and
hanging out with certain people. I thought . . .”

“It was a secret meeting of sorts, but in no
way were we planning on kicking you off the squad. As far as your
behavior, we have noticed. But only because of how hard you’ve been
working to get your grades up lately. We know how upset you’ve been
about not being able to socialize as much, and we wanted to throw
you a party. The secrecy of the meeting had to do with the planning
of the party.”

“That’s it?” Kendal cursed Christine under
her breath. She might not have blatantly lied to her about the
so-called secret meeting, but she’d certainly implied that Kendal
was about to be kicked off the squad.

“We discussed ideas for the winter formal
too, but that’s basically about it.”

“I don’t believe this,” Kendal stood up.
“Christine had me thinking that you were going to kick me out for
being gay.”

Mya’s book dropped from her lap.

“Not that I am, in any way, shape or form,”
Kendal hurried to explain. “I mean, not that I know of, at this
point in my life, or think I might want to . . . if I met someone,
a woman, I guess, the thought has crossed my mind, because of JJ,
but if . . .”

“Kendal, are you trying to tell me that you
are a lesbian?”

“What? No!” Kendal said quickly. She pulled
at her fingers and avoided Mya’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

“What’s going on?”

Kendal walked across the room, unable to keep
her feelings bottled up any longer. “Ever since I met her, I’ve
been all over the place.”

“Met who?”

“JJ. I’ve never met anyone like her before.
And I know she’s a girl. So I ask myself how another girl can make
me feel this way. And I try to stop the feelings, but the truth is
that I don’t want them to stop. So when Christine said that if I
wanted to continue to be on the squad and keep my friends, then I
had to stop spending time with JJ, I didn’t know what to do. Then I
realized I knew exactly what to do, because why would I want to be
part of a team that dictated who I could spend my time with, or
cared more about a reputation than it did about me?”

“So you came here to quit the squad?” Mya
asked. “Because of what Christine had led you to believe?”

“Yes,” Kendal nodded. “I need to figure out
my feelings for JJ, and I won’t let anybody else do that for me or
judge me in any way.”

Mya stood up, took Kendal’s hand and guided
her over to the bed. They sat down, side by side. “Did you know
that I have an older brother?”

“Yes,” Kendal replied, recalling meeting
Mya’s brother at the homecoming parade last year.

“Did you know he’s gay?”

“He is?” Kendal remembered a tall, handsome
and muscular fellow who went to college in Boston. He had seemed
more like a ladies’ man than a man’s man.

“Yes. And he’s even in a fraternity.”

“A gay one?”

Mya laughed, “No, silly, it’s not a gay
fraternity. It’s a regular fraternity. It has straight members,
too. And black members. And white members. The point is that it
doesn’t matter what you are. Why should it?”

“I don’t know, Christine seems to think
—”

“It seems that Christine has some personal
issues to work out on her own. I’m thinking I should develop a
course on tolerance for the whole squad, make it mandatory.” She
smiled, “What do you think?”

“I think that’s a great idea.”

Kendal was glad she’d decided not to go to
the meeting after all. That would have been awkward, especially if
she’d burst into the room accusing everybody of plotting against
her. But she regretted the fact that she’d decided not to meet JJ
in the library for their tutoring session. She hadn’t even sent her
a simple text to say she couldn’t make it.

After Christine had given her the ultimatum,
Kendal initially agreed not to see JJ. But as Saturday turned into
Sunday, and Sunday turned into Sunday evening, her stomach soured
with the thought of what Christine had actually asked her to do. It
soured more with the thought of what she’d agreed to do.

The spot under the scorers’ box served its
purpose for a couple of hours. Then Kendal became afraid that JJ
would come looking for her after she’d skipped their tutoring
session. She ended up going for a walk out on the edge of town
where she was sure no one would find her. Everything in her life
had suddenly been turned upside down. It was either Emily
Dickinson’s fault or JJ’s. Kendal couldn’t decide which one.

Somewhere along the road Kendal found a
beautiful weeping willow with a thick trunk, a perfect spot for
organizing her thoughts. She sat down, leaned up against the bark,
stretched her legs out on the tall blades of grass and withdrew her
volume of Emily Dickinson. Kendal didn’t know why she’d brought the
body of work with her, the volume of poetry that once plagued her
and gave her nightmares. For some reason she felt it might give her
comfort, and maybe help her make sense out of everything she’d been
feeling.

She flipped opened the book, closed her eyes,
and rested her finger on a single line. When she opened her eyes,
she saw the words of the poem before her. Her finger had landed on
that page by chance, yet for some reason Kendal felt that it was
supposed to land on that poem. She knew that poem. It meant
something. And it made everything that she’d been feeling make
sense.

She remembered that poem now, as she sat
beside Mya.

“Is everything okay?” Mya asked.

Kendal thought about the poem, the words that
were branded in her brain, and had been since the first time she’d
studied it.

“Yes. Everything is more than okay,” she
said. “In fact, everything is perfect.”

“Good.” Mya gave Kendal a slight hug and
added, “If you ever need to talk more about this, just let me
know.”

“I might take you up on that.” Kendal headed
for the door, feeling more relieved than she could have hoped. She
paused in the threshold, turned and said, “I underestimated
you.”

“And I underestimated Christine,” said Mya.
“Don’t worry. I plan on having a little talk with her.”

Although Kendal longed to have a little talk
with Christine herself, the slight hint of wickedness in Mya’s
voice was enough to satisfy Kendal’s appetite for revenge.

* * *

Kyan was lying facedown on his bed with a
pillow over his head. He had a pounding headache and a severely
bruised ego. What girl in her right mind would have the nerve to
stand him up? It didn’t make any sense. Getting a girl had never
been this hard. But with Kendal McCarthy it seemed almost
impossible.

She hadn’t shown any interest in him that
night at the soccer party when the two of them were left alone in a
room. And she couldn’t have cared less when he tracked her down in
the library to invite her to only one of the best and most
exclusive parties of the year. And when he finally thought he had
made a dent, the day she’d come to his room to accept the invite,
she’d stood him up anyway.

He had acted like such a fool, playing the
sweet and sensitive guy. Apparently, that whole approach had been
pointless. But he had thought that that was the kind of guy Kendal
would respond to. Maybe she was one of those girls who always fell
for the jerk? The guy who never called back, acted like she didn’t
exist? Whoever said that nice guys finish last must have known what
he was talking about.

The end of the soccer season, as well as fall
semester, for that matter, was just around the corner, and with it
came Sampson Academy’s famous winter formal. To Kyan, it was his
last chance to put an exclamation point on a perfect high school
career. The soccer team was always paired with the cheerleading
squad for winter formal. It was Sampson Academy’s version of a
prom, only larger and more upscale. Everyone at the formal voted
for the perfect couple, which meant that the chosen pair, who would
be anointed King and Queen, attained a status far higher than
everyone else. Kyan was determined to be one of the chosen. In his
mind—in his perfect plan—he would be the king and Kendal would be
his queen.

But in order to achieve that goal, he needed
a new game plan. The one he had hatched originally was not
working.

At first he had thought that Christine was
his best way in since she had told Kyan many things about Kendal,
things that she’d thought Kendal would respond to. And they hadn’t
worked. It had appeared that Christine thought she knew Kendal
better than she actually did.

There was one other person, though, one other
girl that Kyan had seen Kendal hanging around with over the past
month, Kendal’s tutor, the girl on the basketball team. If he could
somehow convince her to plant a seed in Kendal’s mind about him,
get her to do a little pushing and prodding on his behalf, Kendal
just might bend. She just might let him in.

It appeared to be a feasible plan of action.
Girls always listened to their closest friends when it came to
dating guys. What better way to get to Kendal than to go through a
close friend?

CHAPTER 26

JJ sat on a wooden bench in front of the
grand fountain, the symbolic centerpiece of the quad. But since the
weather had recently turned colder, the fountain had been shut
off.

By itself, without water, the cement
structure was depressing, lifeless. It had no purpose. It just
stood there, taking up space, while students wandered by and paid
it no attention. JJ wondered if the fountain missed the water
during the bitter cold winter months. Even its soft blue color had
faded, which left it looking gray. The water was the fountain’s
life source and without it, the fountain couldn’t go on living.
Well, at least for the rest of the winter. Then, every spring, when
winter thawed, the school staged a big party on the quad the day
the fountain water was turned back on. And the fountain sprang
enthusiastically back to life.

JJ sat there, wondering why she’d just wasted
a decent amount of her brain cells crafting a metaphor on the
circle of life and a waterless fountain when she could be doing
something much more productive with her time. But this is what
usually happened when the Dibble Syndrome hit. It sucked the life
right out of her. It made no sense, rhyme nor reason. It left her
in a complete and utter daze.

Nothing mattered to her, not basketball, not
even her writing. She hadn’t written anything for at least a week,
in fact. Ever since Kendal hadn’t shown up for their tutoring
session, she’d been moping around as if it were the end of the
world. It didn’t help that she saw Kendal practically everywhere
she went. Attending a small private school made it far too easy to
bump into the same people on a regular basis—whether you wanted to
or not. But Kendal never even looked in her direction. JJ figured
she felt bad about what happened and would rather forget all about
it, Emily Dickinson and those “wild nights” included.

What made it all worse, though, was the fact
that Queenie had been right about Kendal all along.