Slammed (Slammed #1)(49)

“Some of you in here have performed at the slam this semester. I appreciate it. I know it takes a lot of courage." He holds up his own copy of the collection of poems.

"These are your poems. Some were written by students in my other classes, some by students in here. I want you to read them. Once you’ve read them, I want you to score them. Write a number between zero and ten, ten being the best. Be honest. If you don't like it, give it a low score. We're trying to find the best and worst. Write the score in the bottom right of each page. Go ahead.” He sits at his desk and watches the class.

I don't like this assignment. It doesn't seem fair. I'm raising my hand. Why am I raising my hand? He looks at me and nods.

"What's the point of this assignment?" I ask.

His eyes slowly make their way around the classroom. "Layken, ask that question again after everyone's finished."

He's acting strange.

I start reading the first poem when Will grabs two slips of paper off of his desk and walks past me. I glance back just as he lays a slip on Eddie’s desk. She picks it up and frowns. He walks back to the front, dropping the other slip on my desk. I pick it up and look it over. It's a detention slip.

I glance back at Eddie and she just shrugs her shoulders. I wad my slip into a ball and throw it across the room to the trashcan by the door. I make it.

Over the next half hour, students begin to finish their scoring. Will is taking the stacks as they are finished and he's adding up the totals with his calculator. Once the last of the points have been added up, Will writes the totals on a sheet of paper and walks to the front of his desk and sits.

He holds the paper up in the air and shakes it. "Is everyone ready to hear which poems sucked? Which ones got the most points?" He's smiling as he waits on a response.

No one says anything. Except Eddie.

"Some of us who wrote those poems may not want to know how many points we got. I know I don't."

Will takes a few steps toward Eddie. "If you don't care how many points it’s worth, then why did you write it?"

Eddie is quiet for a moment as she thinks about Will's question.

"Aside from wanting to be exempt from your final?" she asks.

Will nods.

"I guess because I had something to say."

Will looks at me. "Layken, ask your question again."

My question. I try to remember what my question was. Oh yeah, what's his point?

"What's the point of this assignment?" I ask cautiously.

Will holds the paper up in front of him that contains the tallied scores, and he rips it right down the middle. He reaches behind him and picks the stack of poems up that everyone scored and he throws them in the trash. He walks to the chalkboard and begins to write something on the board. When he's finished, he steps aside.

"The points are not the point; the point is poetry." ~Allan Wolf

The class is quiet as we take in the words sprawled across the board. Will allows a moment of silence before he continues.

"It shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks about your words. When you’re on that stage-you share a piece of your soul. You can’t assign points to that.”

The bell rings. On any other day, students would be filing out the door. No one has moved; we're all just staring at the writing on the board.

"The points are not the point; the point is poetry." ~Allan Wolf

"Tomorrow, be prepared to learn why it's important for you to write poetry," he says.

There was a moment, in the midst of all the distraction in my head, when I forgot he was Will. I listened to him like he was my teacher.

Javi is the first to get up, soon followed by the rest of the students. Will is facing the desk with his back to me when Eddie walks up, detention slip in hand. I had already forgotten he gave us detention. She gives me a wink as she passes me and stops at his desk.

“Mr. Cooper?” She’s being respectful, but dramatically so. “It is my understanding that detention proceeds commencement of the final class period at approximately three-thirty. It is my desire, as I’m sure it is Layken’s desire as well, to be punctual, so that we may serve our fairly deserved sentences with due diligence. Would you be so kind as to share with us the location in which this sentence shall be carried out?”

Will never looks at her as he walks toward the door. “Here. Just you two. Three-thirty.”

And he’s gone. Just like that.

Eddie bursts out laughing. “What did you do to him?”

I stand up and walk to the door with her. “Oh it wasn’t just me, Eddie. It was both of us.”

She spins around wide eyed. “Oh my god, he knows I know? What's he going to say about it?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I guess we’ll find out at three-thirty.”

***

“Detention? Duckie gave you detention?” Gavin laughs.

“Man, he really needs to get laid,” Nick says.

Nick’s comment causes Eddie to laugh and spew milk out of her mouth. I shoot her a cease and desist look.

“I can’t believe he gave you detention," Gavin says. "But you aren’t positive that’s what it’s for, right? For skipping? I mean, he already mentioned that at the slam last week and he didn’t seem too mad.”