The Cure for Dreaming(12)

He sent me to a progressive school. And yet my lunatic father was still considering hiring a stranger to obliterate my thoughts.

Algebra was challenging enough without worrying about a cure for female rebellion, but with that new fear bearing down on me, I failed to complete five equations on the weekly examination. In domestic science I somehow lost my little white baking cap and caused a small grease fire that singed the cuff of my right sleeve. History was a blur of dates and long-dead generals (although, to be fair, that tended to be the case every day in history). And in physical education, down in the musty high school basement, I twisted my ankle when Mrs. Brueden squawked at us to jog faster in our whooshing black exercise bloomers.

English fared somewhat better.

Percy was in that class with me.

My eyes drifted to the back of his combed auburn hair one row over and three seats up, and with nearly soundless squeaks, I swiveled back and forth in my stiff oak chair, my elbows resting against the steep slope of my desk.

Percy scratched his shoulder with his chin, his eyes turned downward, and I held my breath, wondering if he had caught me staring at him. His eyelashes rose. His gaze met mine. The right side of his mouth curved into one of his sly grins, and I smiled, too, while the back of my neck prickled.

“Mr. Acklen, what do you believe Longfellow meant in this last stanza?” asked Mr. Dircksen, our white-haired teacher with furry sideburns that reminded me of rabbits sticking to his cheeks. His broad shadow loomed across Percy’s desk and somehow chilled my own arms with gooseflesh.

Percy returned his attention to his reader and straightened his posture. “Um . . . I think it means, sir, we’re all trying to see more in life than what there actually is to see. The moon makes everything look more . . . spiritual. I think.”

“Are you positive about that?”

“Yes. That’s my interpretation, at least.”

“Mr. McAllister, would you care to go one step further?”

Quick-witted Theo McAllister launched into a detailed interpretation of the poem, and Percy’s shoulders relaxed. He peeked backward again to see if my eyes were still upon him—which, of course, they were.

I mouthed three words to him: “I brought Dracula.”

“What?” he mouthed in return.

“Dracula.” I pointed to my toffee-colored book bag hanging on a hook on the wall next to all the other bags.

“Ah.” He nodded, and with an eyebrow cocked, he added, “Corrupt me.”

My cheeks burned. Percy snickered.

“Mr. Acklen!” Mr. Dircksen whacked Percy across the head with the palm of his hand, hard enough to knock him out of his chair. “The first rule in this classroom is respect.”

Everyone in the room collectively stiffened. My stomach turned with guilt as Percy—red-faced, shoulders hunched— crawled back into his chair and rubbed his ear.

Mr. Dircksen stood up tall above Percy’s desk with his hairy neck stretched high. “Turn around in that chair one more time, and you’ll be facing the paddle in the principal’s office. Do I make myself clear?”

Percy combed his hand through his hair. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Dircksen then pointed a bony finger at me. “You, in the back there. I forgot your name.”

I choked on my own saliva.

“What is your name?” he asked in a voice that slapped me on the back and made me cough out the words.

“Olivia Mead.”

“Miss Mead”—Mr. Dircksen tapped his reader against his opened hand—“do you require a firm reminder of the first rule of this classroom?”

“N-n-no, sir.” I shook my head until the classroom went fuzzy.

“Good. Now, where were we before this interruption?”

I clutched my desk, doubled over, and spent the rest of the class trying to remember how to breathe.


AT PROMPTLY ONE O’CLOCK, MR. DIRCKSEN EXCUSED US. I grabbed my book bag and hustled out to the hallway ahead of my classmates, hoping for a whiff of fresh air, but all I inhaled was the smell of pencil shavings and other students. Even worse, Henri Reverie’s eyes haunted me from another black poster that someone had pinned with thumbtacks to the burlap-covered bulletin board across the hall, next to a notice for the school’s banjo club. The dramatic yellow letters—all capitals, all screaming to be seen—peeked at me from between the passing hair bows and the male heads with severe parts combed down the middle.





THE MESMERIZING HENRI REVERIE



“I’m glad he didn’t wallop your head, too,” said Percy from behind me.

I spun around, my book bag sliding to my elbow.

Percy walked toward me, his satchel slung over one shoulder, his hair falling into his eyes. He rubbed his ear again. “I’d use a word to describe teachers like him, but that would guarantee I’d get the paddle.”

“I’m so sorry about that. Here”—I dug into my bag and tugged out Dracula—“keep it. It’s yours now.”

“Keep it?” he asked. “But you love it.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

He flipped the novel over and studied the cover illustration of Dracula’s angular castle perched atop a lumpy hill. “I like the way the little bats are soaring around the towers. It looks like a corker of a book.” His eyes returned to mine. “But I don’t know. I think you owe me more than just a ghost story. Don’t you?”