thirty-five, I wouldn’t be surprised. She seems more like she should
be teaching first grade in 1955 rather than a high-school English
class in Brooklyn circa now.
“Old habits, Mr. Hart,” she says. Ms. Pippen walks over to her
desk. I can smell the springy wood cleaner she sprays on it between
classes. There are two piles on her desk: homework coming in , and
homework going out . She uses a small Mason jar as a pencil holder and
a red marble apple as a paperweight.
“Now, Mr. Hart, who are these lovely young people joining us
today?”
“These are my cousins, Kurt and Thalia, visiting from Canada.”
Kurt says, in his awkward splendor, “But we also travel a lot,
which is why we aren’t so pale.”
Everyone laughs a little. Look at us: it’s like we’ve been lying
our whole lives.
As everyone giggles and fawns over Thalia and Kurt and how their
favorite place to visit is Italy, I let myself look over at Layla, who
stares out the window. The gray overcast sky is so bright that it
floods everything on that side of the room, and she’s cast in this
kind of angel light, her golden-brown hair loose around her shoulders.
She leans her face against one hand and doodles in her notebook with
the other one.
On a normal day, before the storm, we’d have written each other
letters throughout the day. Nothing specific, just our ramblings. She
showed me how to fold the letters into four-pointed stars. I have a
whole drawer full of them. I can’t remember the last time we wrote
each other one, and that’s when I realize I can pick out her scent
mingling in the expectant burnt-sugary sweetness of everyone else. The
smell of disappointment that’s coming from her-crushed flowers and dew
and the fog before it rains. I lay my hands flat on my desk to give me
something to do, because if I don’t, I’m going to get up and go to
her. What is wrong with me?
“Now, because there are still a few days left to our time
together, we will continue with our Greatest Poems by the Greatest
Poets anthology. Mr. Morehouse, flip so you land on a page randomly.
Please read the poem on the page.”
Wonder Ryan nods, sits up straight, and flips through the pages
like a deck of cards. He lays the book out flat, open to a page
somewhere in the beginning. He glances at Thalia before looking down
at where his index finger is pointing, and his smile falters. It’s
incredible: Wonder Ryan’s kryptonite is poetry. “Uh, it’s ‘Because I
Could Not Stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson.”
“Lovely,” Ms. Pippen says.
Wonder Ryan clears his throat and gives a well-I-guess-I-have-to
kind of smile and reads: Because I could not stop for Death- Uh , He
kindly stopped for me- The carriage held but just Ourselves- And, uh ,
Immortality? We slowly drove-He knew no haste And I had put away My
labor and my leisure too, For his civility-
Someone in the back shouts, “Go, Wonder Bread!” and the short
burst of jeering stops. For a moment, Ms. Pippen frowns. I wonder if
she’s going to reprimand him for being such a shitty reader and the
class for being jerks, but then I think it’s something else. She
smells of lament, of the sea before the storm. Her eyes trace Ryan’s
face and look away just as quickly. “Interesting, Mr. Morehouse,” is
all she says.
I start to feel light-headed with all these smells mixing
together. How the hell can Kurt stand this all the time?
Ms. Pippen stands right in front of Kurt. Her peach mouth is
pursed curiously, and a tiny part of me is annoyed that she never
looks at me like that. When Wonder Ryan has finished, she says, “I
wonder if our visiting Canadian gentleman would do us the honor?”
“Yes,” Kurt says. He flips open to a page in the beginning and
leans against the desk with his forearms. I try to picture him with
his tutors, learning whatever merfolk learn-how to catch dinner, how
to avoid human nets, how to fight a pirate? He’d have no one to pass
notes to, no one to throw him a ball in between classes. But he reads
like a pro, enunciating everything as though he’s up on stage and this
is his own soliloquy.
“‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley.” I met a traveller from an
antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in
the desert…Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies,
whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that
its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on
these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that
fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias,
king of kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing
beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and
bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
There’s a silence in the room that has a lot to do with everyone
staring at him. The scent of burnt sugar is so strong that it makes my
stomach turn. Whatever. He’s just reading. It’s not that impressive.
“That was wonderful,” Ms. Pippen says. She looks out the window,
like she’s trying to remember. Or maybe there’s something she wishes
to forget. Either way, she gives a small sigh and crosses the span of
the room to the window. She cracks it open to let in the cool fog. “I
believe it’s your turn, Mr. Hart.”
I look down at the book. I hate reading in front of people. I
always stumble over the words. I’m great at making my own stuff up,
but have me read Romeo’s lines aloud and I fumble.
Kurt hands me the anthology, and the pads of my fingers flip
through the pages, hoping to land on something written at least in the
twentieth century. Then the bell rings.
“You can start us off tomorrow,” Ms. Pippen says, stepping around
her desk and sitting on the edge like an owl as she watches us leave
her classroom.
I’m the first one out of the classroom and into the hall.
The lights flicker, poltergeist-style.
“That has nothing to do with you, does it?”
Kurt shakes his head. “Not unless I decided to play with
electricity.”
“This smell thing isn’t getting much better.”
“That’s because we’re not meant to live among humans for too long,
especially in such close quarters. It’s making me rather land-sick, to
be honest.” He leans in to whisper. “Like I told you. It’s a predatory
scent. It’s different when you sense something underwater.”
“Like a shark?”
“Oh! Like a typhon eel in the reefs,” Thalia answers. “Oh! Or
those nasty little Buccas near the British Isles. Or those giant
electric jellyfish that are hard to see. But you can steer clear of
them if you can sniff them out.” She taps her little nose.
I hook him and Thalia with my arms. “I know we’re in New York and
all, but we’re trying to keep this incognito.” I change the subject.
“Ms. Pippen was even weirder today than usual.”
“I think she might be a seer,” Kurt blurts out.
“A what?”
“A seer. She can see things that exist in other planes. There are
all kinds of seers. Some can see the future, some only see the past,
and some can only read your soul. In Ms. Pippen’s case, I think she’s
a very rare kind that I’ve only heard about. She can see the future,
but only when she’s entranced in the words of others. For instance,
when she had us read those poems, she was probably seeing at the same
time. Either that or she gets extremely bored listening to you all
butcher the poetic form.”