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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.”