The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (11 page)

He was talking to us. I knew it.

I had to catch the bus alone that day: Jackson had
Giselle
tech rehearsal, Elizabeth had a portfolio review with her graphic-design teacher, and Luke had an editorial meeting for the
Selwyn Cantos
. I was by myself when I left, my thoughts spinning after that English class. And I saw the weirdest thing I’d seen all day.

There’s a spot up the hill from the buses where the kTV
guys gather on breaks to smoke, hang out, and escape the tanned demon that is Trisha Meier. One cameraman was sort of my pal. This fall it had seemed that I was always running into him, so we’d started to exchange casual hellos, just nodding, maybe smiling on Fridays. Then one day when I was waiting for my mom, he was the only guy out there. We talked. His name was Thomas. He didn’t much like reality TV—he wanted to work in movies—but he figured he had to work his way up. He was from Omaha and he liked Minneapolis better than LA. He didn’t mind the cold. He did mind Trisha Meier. (I asked.)

As always, I looked for him in the group of smoking kTV guys. There he was. He didn’t see me. He was very absorbed in something. Something green. Some green-tinged newspaper.

Now that I knew to look, I saw that all the other cameramen were holding them too.

Call me clueless, but I had no idea what that meant. I felt triumphant for infiltrating kTV. I wondered what Coluber would think if he saw them reading it. Then I started thinking about whether the triplets had found my Cheez-It cache, how much homework I’d have to do that weekend, how much homework I could postpone till Monday morning before school.

I didn’t remember to tell anyone that the
Contracantos
had infiltrated the coterie of cameramen. I didn’t call Jackson, or Elizabeth, or Luke.

Instead, I played Candy Land with my sisters on the kitchen floor. My mom was cooking dinner. We were driving
her crazy. She hates Candy Land with the fire of a thousand suns, so we play in her vicinity whenever possible.

“I am Queen Frostine,” said Lila, holding the card to her forehead.

“Just because you get it doesn’t mean you are it,” chanted Tabitha.

“Yeah,” said Olivia. She snatched the card. “Now
I’m
Queen Frostine.” Lila snatched it back. That card looked like it’d been chewed by Baconnaise.

“Guys,” I said. “I mean, girls. How about you all are Queen Frostine?”

They looked at me with the pity one generally reserves for lobotomy victims. “No,” said Tabitha. “There’s only one Queen Frostine.”

“Duh,” said Lila.

“Duh,” said Olivia.

“Fine. But what about me? Maybe I should get to be Queen Frostine.”

“You’re too ugly.”

“Plus, you’re a boy.”

“You can be Plumpy.”

“I am not Plumpy!”

“Actually,” said Olivia, “Ethan looks like Gramma Nutt.” Lila and Tabitha cackled.

“Mom!” I said. “They’re calling me Gramma Nutt!”

They found this hilarious.

I sprawled onto my stomach and began to flail. “Don’t wanna be Gramma Nutt!”

My mom stepped over me as she carried a pot of noodles
from the range to the sink. “Ethan, if I spill boiling water on you, it’s your own fault.”

“Cooked Gramma Nutt,” said Lila. More hilarity. Sometimes I envy those girls. It must be fun to be part of a living, breathing tricolon.

I’d barely noticed that Josh DuBois, Maura’s new love interest on
For Art’s Sake
, was in our Latin class. Not until the Monday after the next episode.

“Children,” said Ms. Pederson, “please give me an example of the dative of possession.”

I could give her an example of possession. Because I was possessed, obsessed, by the sprawled figure of Josh DuBois. He was tall, but not so tall that it was necessary for him to spread his legs wide and stretch them into the aisle. That was totally a pose. It was the pose—pardon me; it must be said—it was the pose of someone who thought he was so well hung he couldn’t make his thighs touch.

“Ethan,” whispered Jackson, “you’re acting creepy. Stop glancing back.”

“He’s the creepy one! Did you
see—
”

“We all saw,” said Jackson wearily.

Ms. Pederson fixed us with her strict Swedish gaze and we shut up, fast, before she asked us to translate.

Friday’s episode had been at the Landscape Arboretum, and everyone had gradually developed a faint blue tinge from the cold. When Trisha wasn’t reminding everyone that it had been Damien’s idea to film outside in February, she kept flogging the upcoming live finale. It’d been so boring that I’d paid way more attention to Baconnaise, who was now a boss funambulist, than I’d paid to the show.

Until Elizabeth said, “Yuck.”

All I could see on-screen was a large shrub. But you could hear Miki F.R.’s voice, and it was going, “Mmm.”

The bush shook. I squeezed Baconnaise. “Who’s back there with him?” I demanded.

“Um,” said Jackson delicately, “it may be Maura.”

“Frankenbiting!” said Elizabeth. “Remember frankenbiting!” That was probably to keep me from squeezing poor Baconnaise to death. I was a little tense.

“That had to be frankenbited. Frankenbit? Franken-bought?” she said during the next commercials.

“Yeah, that wasn’t even a good one,” said Luke lazily.

But the next scene opened on Maura, rehearsing a dance in yoga pants, tennis shoes, and a puffy coat. (Not a good look for most people. A good look for Maura.)

“Hey, girl,” said Josh. “Let’s get outta here.”

“To where?” said Maura.

“Isn’t there somewhere we can—be alone?” He performed a suggestive eyebrow-raise. I didn’t even know the suggestive eyebrow-raise existed in the wild.

“Let’s see,” Maura said. “Maybe behind a bush?”

“WHY CAN’T THEY FILM BEHIND THE BUSH?” I’d shouted in the Appelden.

“Well, according to FCC regulations—” began Jackson, but Elizabeth cut him off.

“Use your imagination, Ethan.”

Now, in Latin, I shot another furtive look back at Josh. His pants were way too tight to sit with his legs so far apart. I hope the seams split, I thought bitterly. That bulge. That bulge was like roadkill. I couldn’t look away. Frankenbiting. It was all frankenbiting, right? I had to believe that. I was pretty sure I
did
believe that. But I still wouldn’t mind taking my newly sharpened pencil and aiming it over my shoulder and with the precision and force of a professional backward dart-thrower hurling it right toward that bulge, which would emit a sad little
pop!
and then deflate, the air whistling out—

“Ethan, please translate line forty-nine,” said Ms. Pederson.

“Like a punctured tire,” I said dreamily.

“Excuse me?”

Jackson’s pointy elbow found the gap between my ribs.

“Ouch! Um, sorry. I, uh, misheard. Line forty-nine?
If you complain about the timber of a long love
”
—

Timber of love? What? The stuff that comes out of my mouth in Latin class makes it sound as if I’ve just woken up from a coma.

Which, come to think of it, is not completely erroneous.

“Your vocabulary is abysmal,” said Ms. Pederson. “Will someone help Ethan, please?”

“Please,” I echoed.

At least the universe wasn’t so ironic that she called on Josh. Jackson ended up jumping in. Our Latin suckage is at about the same level. He can’t do literary analysis for shit, but his vocabulary is immense. He also wrote an app for his phone that can parse any verb. I’ll spend forever staring at a god-awful form like
proficisceremini
that may bear all responsibility for the fall of the Roman Empire, and his phone will be like, duh, it’s second-person plural imperfect subjunctive.

Josh probably couldn’t have provided much help anyway. The one consolation of Friday’s episode had been how dumb his performance was. The challenge had been to integrate art and nature. They’d even brought in two locals from the North Star Sierra Club to help judge. Josh had run out of time to prep a monologue—no comment on why—and he did an improv scene about spring, in which he impersonated a flower, the sun, and a bear cub coming out of hibernation. It was dreadful.

But he hadn’t even been kicked off. Kirtse was so mad about him and Maura that she’d outright refused to perform.

“The show must go on!” Trisha screamed.

“Not here, not now,” said Kirtse. It was the first time I’d ever felt any respect for her. Then she ruined it by breaking into “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from
Les Mis
as she marched offstage. Quitting a reality TV show, leading a revolt in Paris: am I the only one who sees a difference?

*   *   *

Over the weekend, Jackson had spent some quality time with the Selwyn shared drive. He told us that the next opportunity to hit the printing presses would be the following Thursday, when they’d be filming a challenge downtown. We spent that whole week putting together another issue, and I thought about little else. It was still big news. I’d overheard four or five groups a day wondering who’d had the balls to publish it.

On Thursday, English was the penultimate class of the day. I had something important to tell Luke and Jackson. But Luke was too interested in BradLee, and Jackson was totally absorbed with his take-notes-in-binary-code thing. Effing Thursdays.

“How were the
Cantos
received?” said BradLee. “Here’s one example.”

Luke was rapt, and I was annoyed. I’d spent bio preparing a summary of the incident. It would have taken him thirty seconds to read it.

BradLee switched on the projector. “This is a poem by Basil Bunting.” Note to self: do not name children after alliterative herbs. “It’s entitled ‘On the Fly-Leaf of Pound’s
Cantos.
’ ” I was annoyed at BradLee too, for hogging all of Luke’s attention, but I read the poem anyway.

“Interpretation?” said BradLee.

Luke raised his hand and BradLee, unsurprised, nodded at him. “He’s saying the
Cantos
are immovable,” said Luke. “They’re eternal, at least as far as humans are concerned. They’re not going anywhere, so we’d better deal with them, rearrange our worldviews to admit them.”

No wonder teachers liked Luke.

I liked his explanation myself, because understanding this poem made me like the
Cantos
more. The lines I’ve taken out of context may have deluded you into thinking that this is a normal poem. False. It’s impenetrable. Here, I’ll turn to a random page—okay, on
one page
of my 824-page edition, the proper names include Manes, la Clara, Dioce, Kiang, Han, Herakles, Lucifer, North Carolina, Odysseus, Sigismundo, Duccio, Zuan Bellin, and La Sposa. And—on
one page
—the languages include English, Italian, transliterated Greek, actual Greek, and Chinese. Totally impenetrable.

Much like the Alps.

Hmm.

I raised my hand and said so.

For the first time all class, I had Luke’s attention. But I couldn’t hold it. He snapped back to BradLee and my summary remained unread on my desk. But allow me to tell
you
, dear Reader, of the latest conversation I’d had with Maura Heldsman.

I’d walked right up to her. Where did I get the gumption? From the
Contracantos
. No one would have ever suspected I
was a part of it. But I felt this delightful buoyancy every time someone said, “But who would have the
balls
?” Because I got to think:
ME!

That morning, I’d been at Selwyn alone and early. Jackson was off failing an eye exam. (He does it on purpose, so his glasses correct him to 20/10. He says raptor vision is worth the occasional headache.) My mom had wanted to take me to school before the triplets woke up. So I’d thought, Why not stroll through the dance hallway? Then—thank you,
Contracantos
—I’d actually strolled through the dance hallway.

Sure enough, there was Maura Heldsman, sitting cross-legged, a binder on her lap that I sure hoped was English. I ambled over. So frigging suave.

“It’s Ethan Andrezejczak,” she said.

“Maura Heldsman.”

“I get more points for knowing your last name than you do for knowing mine. Are you going to live your life with that thing?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure. You could take your wife’s name.” Ethan Heldsman. “Andrezejczak is sort of adorable, though.”

I felt myself go beet-red. Suddenly, I loved my name. Thank you, I thought fervently. Thank you, Slavic forebears, ye heavily into consonants. Ye fans of high-scoring Scrabble tiles. Ye who boldly dropped z’s where no z’s had been dropped before. I appreciate it.

“So,” she said.

“So, how’s life?” Desperate grasp for the conversation to continue.

“If you want to know how life is, you’re going to have to sit down.”

Gladly.

“On second thought, you might have sat down for nothing.” Never. “I don’t even know what to say. Life is dance. Dance is life. I’m always rehearsing and filming and practicing. If not, I’m eating. Occasionally sleeping. Never doing English homework. Want to help?”

We’d had to write a short analysis of a few lines from canto 81. I’d done the assignment fast the night before, but reading the lines now, the paper held in her hands, her wrists knobbly, her thumbnails short and square and human and unbeautiful—well, those lines got a whole new significance. The fabric of her sweatshirt touched the fabric of mine. I would have wanted to be the sweatshirt, except I was so happy being me. I’d never liked Pound so much.