He’s got some promising students this year.
Mom rolls her eyes at them both
because she’s a real estate agent
and doesn’t think anything is funny.
She has a new listing she can’t wait to sell.
Maybe this is the one that’ll make her stop working so
hard.
That will make her smile instead of frown at the phone
she’s glued to.
I clear my throat, and they all stare.
Because I get lost in metaphors they don’t understand.
My stories live in daydreams
written in verse
I never, ever share.
Unfit for lighthearted dinner conversation.
Every. Single. Night.
“My day was good,” I say.
“We got our project partner assignments.”
They wait, and I see Mama crumple a little bit when I say,
“Kodiak Jones.”
Mom’s face twists like it’s sour,
but I know it’s not the wine.
She’s friends with Kodiak’s mom.
Both real estate agents,
same church,
play on the same recreational softball team.
They share secrets like they share recipes.
Dad doesn’t care about Kodiak.
“What did you decide on for your project?”
“Poetry, that’s wonderful—can I help?”
But he teaches Shakespeare, not poetry.
“‘It is a wise father that knows his own child’—
William was a poet!”
He jokes.
He quotes.
He always jokes and quotes.
“Be careful,”
Mama says.
“That boy is trouble.”
Who is this boy you see?
Kodiak isn’t trouble.
He’s troubled.
Before he was “trouble” he was
“Kodiak.”
And he was the boy I spent every Tundra Cove summer
following around on my bike with skinned knees
and terrible tan lines where my shorts met my thighs.
The one whose family used to go to the fair with us
—a 2-hour drive—every year.
And our parents would walk around
while we ate corn on the cob
and rode the Tilt-A-Whirl until we felt sick.
He was the same boy who taught me how to whistle.
And when his mouth curled around like a little O
I felt my heart skip a beat for the first time.
The person I shared my first poem with.
And it was okay,
because he was sharing poems with me too.
Kodiak was my best friend
before I even knew who Sana was.
And one day
on our way home from school,
kicking stones down a muddy path
under giant spruce trees,
I told him about my first crush.
That my stomach felt a little funny
whenever he was around.
And that I played out entire conversations
with him in my head,
wondering if I’d ever have the courage
to tell him out loud
what I felt in my heart.
Kodiak never smiled
and never teased.
And I never said
I was talking about him.
It happened slowly.
First he stopped walking home with me
to hang out in the woods behind the school.
That’s where he started smoking.
And one day when I walked back
to where trees protected the gnarled roots
from snow—
they were all gathered around a pit
with empty cans and trash everywhere.
I asked him why.
He told me,
“Sometimes you do things you don’t understand
to make sense of the things you do.”
But he wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking at her.
Liv. The new girl with a wild smile and purple hair.
And once he was Liv’s, he wasn’t anyone else’s anymore.
He looked at her
the way I always wanted him to look at me
and they kissed
the way I wanted to kiss him.
When his mom sat at our kitchen table crying
because she walked in on them in his room,
she said she didn’t know
what to do with him anymore.
She found cigarettes and vodka and
at-least-they-were-being-safe condoms.
He was skipping school.
He wasn’t coming home.
And in the hallways,
when I’d wave,
he didn’t look at me
like a boy I ever knew.
I thought maybe we’d lost him for always.
But then everything last year happened
and he changed again.
Then when I saw him in the hallways
he started smiling again
like maybe he had made sense of what
he didn’t understand before.
Sana-Friend ♥
Sana: Deeeeeelia
Deeeeelia!
CORDELIA ANN KOENIG ANSWER MY TEXT RIGHT NOW
Me: You know my middle name isn’t actually Ann, right?
Sana: Bullshit.
Me: What do you need, friend of mine who can’t let me eat dinner without blowing up my phone?
Sana: I just got an email from my new advisor. They switched me to Mr. Kim.
So racist. I bet I got paired with him since he’s Asian AF and I’m half Asian AF.
Me: Well, Ms. Nadeer is Indian and I’m white AF, so there goes that theory.
Sana: I had Ms. Nadeer! That’s what I don’t get. All of a sudden they switch me to Mr. Kim and I got paired with Madison Lee. See where I’m going with this?
Me: This doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you and Maddy basically run the soccer team and both your senior projects involve soccer, plus Mr. Kim happens to be the coach?
Sana: Plus they didn’t pair me and you as project partners which is STUPID. Literally everyone else I know who made requests got them.
Me: I know! I got my letter too!
I had Honors English with Maddy sophomore year. She’ll be great at helping you with the written portion.
Sana: You’re still going to help me record some soccer lessons right?
Me: Find a student yet?
Sana: Yeah! There’s a girl three trailers down who wants me to teach her. Her mom told me she’ll pay in cigarettes so that’s cool.
Me: That’s perfect! Starting your prison money stash early, I see.
Sana: Who’d you get paired with?
Me: I’m afraid to tell you.
Sana: Shut up. It better not be Emma. If it’s Emma Daniels I’m going to scream.
Me: . . .
Sana: Oh my fucking stars. It’s Emma Daniels. Can you please ask her if she’s gay?
Or bi?
Please let her be at least a little bi.
Me: Why don’t you use your internet sleuthing skills to figure that out?
Spoiler alert.
It’s not Emma.
Sana: As if I haven’t tried. Can you still ask her?
Me: Staaaaaaahp! I am not going to ask her if she’s gay.
Sana: C’mon. I’ve only liked her since ninth grade.
Me: Back when you were still pretending to like boys.
Sana: Yes. Think of the heartache Emma could have saved Liam.
Me: Poor Liam.
Sana: May he rest in peace.
Me: He’s not dead!
Sana: He is to me! He did not react well at all to me coming out.