Where the Staircase Ends(18)

My hands were shaking when Mrs. Johnson finished reading the poem to the class and called on me for my analysis. Eyes followed me as I made my way to the front of the room, and I imagined them picking me apart the way my mother always did.

Don’t slouch like that, Taylor, or you’ll end up hunched over like your grandmother.

Stop mumbling, Taylor. You sound like you have a speech impediment.

Don’t frown like that, Taylor. It makes you look ugly.

I cleared my throat. “Maybe she’s dying emotionally,” I said, the words shaking on their way out of my mouth. I heard a chuckle from the front row and fought to keep my eyes away from Brandon Blakes, who was the most likely source of the laughter. Instead, I stared at the place where the wall met the ceiling. “Like maybe this big thing happened—maybe her boyfriend broke up with her and she’s really upset about it—and she’s thinking about him and this big life-changing thing that happened to her when a fly buzzes in and interrupts her thoughts.”

I fought to say it confidently so people wouldn’t know how nervous I was, and tried to think of my father’s advice for overcoming my fear—picture everyone naked. The only problem was that Justin was one of the people I had to picture naked, and that was almost as terrifying as everyone watching me. I was glad I had the foresight to wear a black shirt that day so people couldn’t see my pit stains.

“Interesting. Tell us more about that, Taylor,” said Mrs. Johnson. Her glasses slipped down slightly on her nose, making it look like she was actually interested in what I had to say.

I cleared my throat again, trying to dislodge my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Most of all I tried to keep my eyes away from Justin’s face, because if I looked at him, what little resolve I had left would slip through the cracks.

“The fly is like this normal everyday thing, and it’s juxtaposed by this big event.” I said, moistening my lips. “She’s commenting on how during the most dramatic personal events, when it feels like you’re going to die because it’s such a major deal, the world around you has to, like, keep going. And normal everyday things like flies just go on about their business because life has to, you know, go on.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised when Brandon Blakes started chargrilling me when it came time for questions. The guy loved to hear the sound of his own voice and was gunning for valedictorian, so he would say or do just about anything to get a few extra participation points in class.

“So let me get this straight,” he started, not even trying to hide his sarcastic tone. “You think Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about her boyfriend dumping her?” His forehead looked like it might fold in on itself from frowning when he said the word “dumping.” You would’ve thought I’d dropped the f-bomb or told Mrs. Johnson to sit on her thumb and spin.

“Well maybe not her boyfriend. But something big and emotional happened, and there’s this fly—”

He held up his hand like he was a crossing guard and I was some unruly child who’d tried to run across the street into oncoming traffic. “You said she was ‘dying emotionally’ because her boyfriend broke up with her.”

Of course he had to go and use air quotes when he said “dying emotionally.”

“I said maybe she’s dying emotionally—”

He held up his traffic-cop hand again and opened his mouth to say something else, but Justin cut him off before he could start squawking.

“Actually, I found your analysis to be pretty spot-on.” Justin laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair, like he was relaxing beside a pool rather than saving my ass from Brandon’s onslaught. “Technically I think she’s supposed to be physically dying in the poem, but I think it has more application like you said. I think it can pertain to any big event that happens in life—a break-up as well as a physical death. And I think you’re completely right about her juxtaposing an everyday housefly with a major event like death. It’s absurd really, that someone is on their death bed about to take their last breath and something as common as a housefly interrupts. It’s a pairing of the momentous and the mundane.” He paused and gave me a little wink, and if I wasn’t already completely in love with him then I totally fell in that moment, with that wink.

For good measure, he added, “It’s like that John Lennon phrase, ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.’ She’s making plans to die—be it physically or emotionally—and life just happens. This fly just happens. Like you said, life goes on regardless of the big stuff that happens to us personally.”

Like I said, he was smart smart. Not to mention a knight in shining armor. He articulated it way better than I did, and he saved me. Right there in front of douche-kabob Brandon, who hated being shown up in class. But of course the difference between people like Brandon and people like Justin was that the Brandons of the world had to work hard to outshine other people while Justin just did it. It’s like he couldn’t help it.

Justin gave me another wink (and I said a silent prayer for the black shirt again because I was definitely sweating), and then he gave Brandon the best go-to-hell look I’ve ever seen. Man, I wished I had a picture of Brandon’s expression. His face was scrunched up so tightly it looked like he’d eaten a raw lemon, and his fingers gripped the desk with so much force that he would have cracked the plastic molding if it weren’t for the fact that he had the upper body strength of a six-year-old girl.