Every Last Word

I’ve positioned myself in line so I’ll be the last one through the door. When I pass AJ, I feel his fingers brush against my waist, and I slow down so they can linger a moment longer. I want to kiss him right now, right here, right in front of all the other poets. We’ve been keeping “whatever this is” under wraps for two weeks now, and I’m not sure I can handle it much longer. It’s all I can do to walk away from him.

“Are you reading today?” Sydney asks as we head toward the couches.

“No.” I can’t read. All my poems are about AJ now. They’d know immediately. “You?”

She waves an Auntie Anne’s pretzel wrapper in the air, then takes it with both hands and snaps it taut. “You should prepare yourself, my friend, because I’m about to wax poetic on the many virtues of cinnamon, sugar, and butter on warm dough. This—” She snaps the paper again. I can see her handwriting scrawled on it. “This may be my finest work yet.”

Sydney sits in her usual chair. Abigail’s already taken the seat next to Jessica. Caroline’s not here yet, but I see an open spot next to Emily, and I decide to sit with her today instead. She and AJ are friends, and eventually, when the two of us aren’t a secret anymore, it would be nice to know her better. She scoots over to make a little more room for me, but she doesn’t make eye contact.

Before we start, I take a moment to scan the room and take it all in like I always do. I feel safe here now, not overwhelmed or unworthy, and the familiarity feels comforting. Still, Poet’s Corner feels magical. I hope it always does.

I have nine poems on these walls. Nine.

Cameron’s on stage alone. I’ve never seen him up there without Jessica and Abigail. He adjusts his glasses and opens a piece of paper. “I wrote this in my room last night,” he says, and then he reads a poem that’s heartbreaking and angry, and it takes me completely by surprise. I hold my breath as he reads the last line, wondering what’s ripping him apart from the inside out. His face is bright red as he slaps his poem hard against the wall.

“Is he okay?” I whisper to Emily.

She leans in close and tells me that his parents are getting divorced. “He hasn’t talked about it in a while. Jessica and Abigail have been trying to take his mind off it with ‘The Raven.’”

“I had no idea.” He’s always so on, one of those people who seems to have his life together at all times. Now I have a lump in my throat. I thought I knew him better than this, but I realize I don’t really know anything about him at all. I make a mental note to go read his poem now that I have proper context. Maybe it’ll help me figure out the right thing to say to him as we’re leaving today.

“Who’s next?” AJ asks from his usual spot. We all look around. Sydney’s directly across from me and I see her start to stand. Her timing’s good. After that, we could use some comic relief.

But then I hear Emily say, “I’ll go,” from my other side.

She steps up onto the stage, and I realize how different she looks today. She didn’t even try to cover up the thick dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and if she brushed her hair this morning, she got caught in an especially strong wind between then and now.

“I’ve had a really tough week,” she says, her voice cracking on the last word. My stomach knots up.

“This is called ‘On My Way to You,’” she says. “I wrote it last night in my mom’s hospital room.”

I’m pretty sure we’re all wondering how she’s going to get through a whole poem, but she takes a deep breath, sits straight up on the stool, and launches in, voice steady and strong.

I drag my feet on my way to you.

Way over there.

Too far away.

Skin. Thin, practically translucent.

Eyes. Sunken. Skeletal. Bruised.

Tubes. Colorless and everywhere.

You. Not you.

Gone. Not gone.

Not yet.

Hand. Warm. Slack.

But still familiar.

So familiar.

I shouldn’t have dragged my feet.

I look back at Caroline. She has her palms pressed into the couch cushions and her gaze fixed on the floor. Sydney has her hand over her mouth.

Tears are flooding down Emily’s face when Jessica hurries up to the stage. She hugs her hard, then looks right into her eyes and says something the rest of us can’t hear. She hands her a glue stick, and Emily finds a spot on the wall for her poem.

The room is quiet for a long time after that. Across the aisle, I can see Sydney playing with her Auntie Anne’s wrapper, folding and unfolding it, before she finally shoves it under her leg.

“Okay, someone please go,” Emily says. No one moves or says a word. “I already saw the wrapper in your hand, Syd.”

Sydney shifts in her seat, looking around, assessing the tone of the room, trying to figure out what to do. We make eye contact.

You should read, I mouth, and she makes a face, like she’s not sure. I gesture toward the stage and mouth read again.

Sydney walks to the front. Once she’s settled on the stool, she looks out into the crowd. “This is dedicated to my friend Emily. Who, I bet, has never enjoyed the sweet, sweet goodness of Auntie Anne’s.”

Emily’s still dabbing her eyes, but now she’s shaking her head, and laughing too.

“I call this one ‘Pretzel Logic,’ and I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I wrote it”—she snaps the bag taut again—“at my favorite aunt’s house.”

At Auntie Anne’s, I always ask for

soft, sugary, slippery sweet

pretzels. Perfectly prepped and pinched,

rolled into rings and ribbons,

twisted into tantalizing tastes that tease my tongue and

deliciously, delightfully destroy my diet.

Sydney pulls her skirt to one side, curtsying while everyone claps and whistles. She looks directly at Emily. “Better, darling?”

“Much.”

“I’ll bring you a cup of cinnamon sugar nuggets tomorrow. Crappy mall food cures everything.”

I cringe at the word “everything” because I’m quite certain nothing they sell at the mall cures cancer. But Emily blows Sydney a dramatic kiss, making it clear she wasn’t offended by her choice of words.

Sydney runs the glue stick along the back of the wrapper and steps off the stage. She hands it to Emily. “Will you find a home for this piece of alliterative genius, please?”

Emily’s smiling as she sticks the poem to the wall next to the one she just read about her mom. Sydney sits next to me.

“Was that okay?”

“It was perfect,” I tell her. “And yes, your finest work yet.”

“Thanks. I thought so too.”

The sound of a guitar pulls my attention back to the stage. I’m still trying to get my bearings after Emily’s poem, but AJ’s there now, perched on the stool with his guitar slung over his shoulder in that confident musician way that makes me feel light-headed.

He’s plucking at the strings, just like he did in his room on that day, but the tune doesn’t sound familiar. “I haven’t written anything new in a few weeks,” he says. “I don’t know why. I guess I haven’t felt like it.”

My heart’s already been through enough today, but his words make it sink even deeper into my chest. My yellow notebook is almost full because of him. He’s all I think about, all I write about. Doesn’t he want to write about me?

“A few weeks ago, a friend of mine reminded me about this song,” he says, his music still floating around the room. “I’ve always loved it, but I didn’t know how to play it, so I decided to learn, and it’s felt like a bit of an escape, I guess. Like a…vacation.”

The strings he plays begin to morph into something new, and slowly, I start to recognize the first notes of “Bron-Yr-Aur.” I wrap my fingers around the edge of the cushion and squeeze.

“You guys know I love words, but this song reminded me that sometimes they’re not necessary.” He settles back against the stool and plucks those notes again, but this time he keeps going, playing the next ones.

His eyelids are lightly closed, his head moving gently up and down with the rhythm. Then he opens his eyes and his gaze settles on me, and like the song, he doesn’t need any words because that look on his face speaks volumes.

This song is for me.

He gives me the smallest smile and turns away before anyone notices.

When he plays the last note, we all stand, clapping and cheering as he throws his guitar over his shoulder in that sexy way he does, and pulls a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “I wrote out the music,” he says. Even his musical notes have that signature AJ slant to them.

He steps off stage and heads straight for Emily. He holds her face in his hands and says something I can’t hear, and then she points at a sliver of empty wall space on the other side of the poem she read today. “Right there,” she says.

I can’t stop watching him. He’s so kind to her. And Emily’s looking at him with such gratitude.

AJ slaps his song on the wall. Then he pulls Emily into a hug, and she clings to him like she can’t let go. I can hear her crying, working hard to catch her breath. AJ tightens his hold on her.

Then Abigail stands up and wraps her arms around the two of them. Jessica joins, and so do Cameron and Chelsea. Sydney grabs my hand and we step into the circle. Caroline’s on my other side, one hand on Chelsea’s back and the other on Jessica’s.

Without thinking about it, I’m moving toward Cameron and tightening my grip on Sydney. Tears are rolling down my cheeks, because my heart is breaking for a girl I didn’t even know three months ago.

I glance over at Caroline. She smiles wide and mouths, Told you.