Part 9 (1/2)

”Karma?”

Karma pulls back from Devon, her voice sweet again. ”Yes, Ms. Coughran?”

Ms. Coughran is leaning against the stool now, her arms crossed. ”You have something you want to share with everyone in the room?”

”Sure. I'm just explaining to . . . to . . . ”-Karma snaps her fingers-”. . . um . . .”

”Devon,” Ms. Coughran says.

”Oh, yeah!” Karma says. ”Sorry! I was just explaining to Devil-”

”Devon, Karma.”

Laughter erupts around the room, some of the girls repeat it: Devil. DevilDevilDevil.

”Oops, gosh. So sorry, Ms. Coughran,” Karma says. ”I was just telling her why it is we count out the pencils.”

”I'm sure you were,” Ms. Coughran says. ”But next time, let me do the explaining. All right?”

The noise in the room drops to quiet and still.

”Absolutely, Ms. Coughran. As my friend Anonymous always says, 'The less you say, the more you don't have to apologize.' It's good advice to put into practice.”

Ms. Coughran holds Karma's gaze a long moment before turning back to the cla.s.s. ”Now, ladies,” she says, ”direct your eyeb.a.l.l.s to the board.” She tells the girls how they're to use the list of words in a poem, explaining that poems don't always have to rhyme. ”We call it a poem, but it's really like a story, a story that ties together into one theme. Try to use as many of the words up here as you can, okay? If you can't do anything else with them, at least use each word in a sentence. And you can use any form of the word, in any order.”

Devon looks up at the board.

Shadow

Imagine

Stars

Twist

Twilight

Courage

Sail

Clutter

Release

Diamonds

One girl raises her hand; she doesn't know what twilight means. Another wants to know if it's sail as in boat, or sale as like at a store when stuff's cheap.

Are these girls really that dumb? To not know the meaning of simple words? Devon sighs in exasperation.

Devon hears the sound of pencils rubbing across paper in the otherwise silent room. She has a piece of paper in front of her and a pencil, the eraser worn down flat. She sees Karma working beside her, her own pencil moving over her paper, her arm s.h.i.+elding her work from prying eyes.

Devon doesn't need an eraser because she can't write, not this a.s.signment. She won't even pick up the pencil, hold it in her fingers. She doesn't like poetry, not anymore. Poetry makes her feel and remember too much, and she doesn't want to remember. Or feel. Not about poetry. Not about that night, that first night, with him.

Devon sits there in her seat and stares at the blank paper.

The moonlight is overhead, spilling onto the walkway and illuminating the poetry etched in concrete under their feet. The water ebbs and flows softly against the sh.o.r.e like a whisper, its frothy white foam a delicate lace.

”Really cool idea,” he says, ”whoever thought of doing this.”

Devon looks at him. ”Um, sorry. What?”

”The poetry.” He points to the sidewalk.

”Oh. That. Yeah . . .”

They are quiet and shy, now that they've left the noise and distractions of the restaurant. It had been easy to talk then, to tell him about playing soccer and the music she liked, the concerts she'd been to, the movies she'd seen. Easy then to laugh at his jokes and nod and smile at all the appropriate times while he told her about Denver, where he lived with his mom, and the summers he'd spent in Tacoma visiting his dad, and playing baseball.

But now, in the quiet dark, with him walking beside her along Point Defiance, where the land gently juts into the Sound, she has nothing to say. It's one of those uncomfortable moments when two people are walking together, but not touching. When they aren't saying much, but the silence is not companionable. When they're trying to read the other's signals, trying to figure out what the other is thinking, feeling. The tension is there, the fluttering is there, the wanting to initiate something is there, but the fear of making the wrong move holds them back and to themselves.

Then he does the perfect thing; he begins reading the sidewalk poetry aloud.

They stare down at the words.

”Well.” He grabs Devon's fingertips with his and laughs. ”Isn't that an upper?”

But Devon doesn't say anything, not immediately. That last line about the slippery grip on life. That is so like her mom-always reaching for something, but that something is always slipping out from between her fingers. No matter how tightly she holds on, she'll always, always, lose it.

But that's not Devon. She has a grip. She knows what she wants and where she's going. Devon shakes her head. She doesn't want her mom's intrusion here.