Every Last Word

I close my notebook, and for the first time since Friday afternoon, I smile. It feels good. As I gather my things, I check the time on my phone. It’s 4:18. I’ve been down here for more than two hours.

Before I leave, I walk to the closest wall and run my hand along the brown paper bags and candy wrappers, the ripped-up scraps of paper and Post-it notes, the napkins and receipts, thinking about all the people who have spent time in this room. Every person with a poem on this wall has a story to tell.

I need to know more.

I feel that familiar swirl start to build inside me, that craving for information, and more information. My breathing speeds up and my fingers start tingling. I want to know every single person’s story, and I start to feel excited by the idea of researching each one until I’ve pieced it all together. And then the swirl stops, as quickly as it started.

I don’t need to know hundreds of stories. I only need to know seven.

I’ve never asked any of them to tell me how they found Poet’s Corner. I never asked Caroline. I never even asked AJ.

AJ.

I flip off the last light and race back up the stairs and into the student lot. My mind needs music, and I start to turn on In the Deep, but then I spot Grab the Yoke and choose it instead.

I think about that day I first drove around with AJ, telling him how I named my playlists. He asked about this one. I told him how I sometimes wanted to “fly the whole mess into the sea,” and when I said the words, he looked at me like he was worried I might actually do it. Did my words remind him of Caroline, the founder of his beloved poetry club? She grabbed the yoke.

My mind is on overload and my stomach is in knots as I throw the car in reverse, peel out of the student lot, and make the turns that lead to AJ’s house. At the top of his driveway, I pull the emergency brake hard and scramble out of my car.

The wind is picking up, whistling through the trees and stinging my cheeks, and I tighten my jacket around my body as I climb the stairs. I start to knock, but then I hear AJ’s guitar coming from the other side of the door. It’s too faint to make out the song, but I can picture him with his fingers pressed into the strings, forming chords, sliding up and down along the neck. I knock before I lose my nerve.

The music stops, and few seconds later, he opens the door. “Hi.” He looks surprised to see me.

“Hi.” I lift the cord over my head and hand it to him. “Thank you,” I say. He stuffs it into the pocket of his jeans. I look down at my shoes.

We’re both silent for a long time, me trying to muster up the courage to say what I came here to say, and him probably trying to figure out the fastest way to get a psychotic girl off one’s porch.

I stand up straighter, cementing my feet in place and looking right at him. “I found her corner.” I bite my lip to keep my chin from trembling. “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me more about her. More about that room and how you found it, and how you got the key.”

He opens the door wider. “Come in. You’re freezing.”

Nope. Just terrified.

I haven’t been inside his house since that day I drove him home, when he taught me how to play guitar and I learned all about Devon. I step inside and drop my car keys on the entry table where I left them last time.

And that’s when it hits me. I jumped out of the car without checking the odometer. For a split second, I consider going back outside, but AJ is already walking toward his room. He looks over his shoulder, sees me hesitating, and gestures for me to follow him.

I force myself to walk down the hallway, trying to think about him and nothing else, ignoring the intense urge I’m feeling to sprint back to the car and park correctly.

Last time, when he closed the door behind us, I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but this time, I walk straight to his bed and sit on the edge. I’m relieved when he sits next to me. He leans back on his hands, looking serious. Or maybe he’s still freaked out, I can’t really tell.

“What do you want to know?” he asks.

I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. “Everything,” I say.

The small smile that forms on his lips makes me relax a bit.

“Mr. B told me the whole story when he gave me the key at the end of last year. He met Caroline when she was a sophomore. One day during lunch, he opened the door to the storage room next to the cafeteria, and found her hiding in there, all alone. It took some doing, but eventually she admitted it wasn’t the first time; she had been eating there every day since the middle of her freshman year.”

I picture her in one of her funny T-shirts, eating a sandwich while nestled among mop buckets and dustpans, and I want to cry. Or punch something. Possibly both at the same time.

“I guess people were mean to her. She told him she didn’t have any friends, and she was too embarrassed to eat alone in the quad, so she ate alone in the storage closet because she couldn’t think of anyplace else to go.”

My heart sinks deep in my chest. I remember saying almost the same thing to Shrink-Sue at the beginning of the school year. She asked why I wouldn’t leave the Crazy Eights. I said I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Caroline and Mr. B became friends. He started bringing his lunch and joining her. At some point, she told him about her poems, and eventually she let him read some of them. She told him about this crazy idea she’d had to start a secret poetry club.

“Mr. B didn’t think it was so crazy. He showed her a room underneath the theater that the drama department hadn’t used in years. He installed the lock, hid the seams with paint, and moved some furniture inside. Caroline started filling one corner with her poetry. Over time, she met a few people she felt she could trust. She told them about the room, and by the end of the year, the other walls were filling up, too. I guess she wasn’t the only one who needed a place to go.”

I came over to AJ’s house today because I needed to know what brought him to Poet’s Corner, and when he says that last part, things begin to fall into place. My eyes well up.

“You needed a place to go,” I say, and he nods.

“Emily and I had freshman English together. It was still really hard for me to talk in class, and she caught me doing my strumming-on-my-jeans thing. She asked me about it. Eventually, she brought me downstairs.”

“AJ,” I whisper. I wipe my eyes, but all I really want to do right now is throw my arms around his neck and kiss him like I’ve done so many times over the last few weeks. But I’m so afraid of what will happen if I do. Will he push me away? Will he tell me it’s over? I don’t want to lose him, and I can’t tell if I already have. I wish he’d touch me. My heart starts racing, my hands feel clammy, the thoughts are gathering and swirling, and I start panicking.

Why won’t he touch me?

And then, as quickly as they began, the thoughts stop. Completely. Inside my head it’s eerily quiet. And I know what I need to do.

Caroline’s been giving me words, and they’ve worked. But they were never her words. They were always mine. My words got AJ to let me into Poet’s Corner, both times. When I told him how I name my playlists, he paid attention and wanted to know more. When we were at the pool that night, he begged me to talk to him. When I finally told him what I was thinking, he kissed me. Every time I talk to him, he comes closer.

He wants me to talk to him.

And suddenly, I hear Caroline’s voice, calm and clear, as if she were sitting right next to me.

Don’t think. Go.

I look over my left shoulder, expecting to see her there, but the space is empty. I follow her instructions anyway.

“My mind messes with me,” I say, talking in that unfiltered way he likes, not measuring my words and not quite certain about what’s coming out until I hear myself say it. I scratch the back of my neck hard three times, no longer caring if he notices. “It’s been happening as long as I can remember. I can’t turn off my thoughts. I can’t sleep without being drugged into it. My mind just…never stops working.

“I was diagnosed with OCD when I was eleven. I’ve been on antianxiety medication ever since. I have this amazing psychiatrist named Sue who is, like, my lifeline, and I see her every Wednesday afternoon.”

This is harder than I expected. I take a moment to gather my thoughts, looking around at his posters and his messy desk. I see his clipboard on the floor next to his guitar, and together, they seem to calm me. I shake out my hands.

“For a long time, my friendship with the Eights has been…challenging for me. So when school started, Sue and I decided to channel my energy into positive things, like my swimming,” I say. “That’s been good. Then I met Caroline, and that was really good. And then I found Poet’s Corner, and started writing poetry, and met a bunch of amazing people, and then there was you. And I felt healthy for the first time in years. I thought I was getting better. But as it turns out, I was getting worse.”

I study his body language like I do with Sue each week, watching the way he moves in direct correlation to the words I say. It’s slight, almost imperceptible, but I notice when he props his hand on his bed and leans in a tiny bit closer to me.

Let your guard down.

“Caroline was my friend,” I say as the tears slide down my cheeks. “And now she’s gone and I can’t quite decide how I’m supposed to feel about that. I’m embarrassed that I made her up in the first place, but I’m also so sad that she’s not part of my life anymore.”

Keep talking.

“But when I was downstairs this afternoon, I realized something: I don’t regret bringing her to life. Not even for a second. Because she’s this better part of me, you know? She speaks her mind and she doesn’t care what people think about her. I’ve always been too scared to be that person, but that’s who I want to be, all the time, not only when I’m alone with you, and not just on Monday and Thursday afternoons during lunch.”

I can tell I’m rambling, but I can’t stop now. I’m letting the words tumble out of my mouth, still wishing he’d touch me, hug me, kiss me, do something—anything—to make me stop talking. But he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t move. He just listens.

“It was as if she knew it was time for me to tap into this better person. So she showed me where to find you. All of you. These seven amazing people who seem to know how to pull her out of me.”

“Sam,” he says, and before I can interpret the tone in his voice, he closes the distance, and finally, I feel his thumbs on my cheeks. He rests his forehead against mine, just like he did that night in the pool, and I wait for him to kiss me, but he doesn’t.

Keep going.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about me. I should have, but all my life, I’ve just wanted to be normal. You made me feel like I was. I was afraid that if I told you, I wouldn’t feel normal anymore.”

He laughs. “I made you feel normal? You do realize I’m pretty far from normal, right?”

“I don’t care,” I say, brushing my lips against his. “I like you too much. Remember?”

I kiss his dimple first, and then I cover his mouth with mine, kissing him, thinking about how perfect he is, maybe not in every way, but in every way I need him to be. And I’m so relieved when he kisses me back. I feel the thoughts that have haunted me for the last four days pop like bubbles, disappearing into the air, one by one.

“I like you too much, too,” he says.

“Still?” I ask.

“Still,” he says with a huge smile on his face. “Way, way too much.”

After that, we stop talking.