Every Last Word (13 page)

“Stay down here as long as you like. Read the walls; they’re covered with a decade’s worth of words written by more than a hundred people. Meet everyone. Then write something
of your own.”

“Okay,” I whisper. His expression is soft and kind, and his eyes shine when he talks about the room and me becoming part of it.

“Lock the door and turn off all the lamps when you’re done. I’ll be waiting for you at that table by your locker.”

“Okay,” I say again.

He starts to step away from me, but he stops. “Oh, and if you want to, practice reading aloud. The stage doesn’t feel quite as scary when the room is empty.”

He squeezes past me and I press my back against the wall to give him room.

“AJ?” He turns around. I don’t want to say it, but I feel like I need to, because I don’t want to be uncomfortable down here and I certainly don’t want
him
to be. And if they’re all gearing up to judge my sincerity, he should understand how much it means for him to forgive me.

“You don’t have to do this. If you don’t want us to be friends, I get it. It was a long time ago, but the things I said and did when we were kids…” I trail off,
thinking about the day Kaitlyn and I crank-called his house over and over again, until his mom finally picked up and screamed in our ears, begging us to stop. Or that time we sat behind him on the
bus and cleaned out our backpacks, dropping all our gum wrappers, paper scraps, and pieces of lint down the back of his shirt. I shake my head and bite my lower lip hard. “You’ll never
know how sorry I am.”

He doesn’t speak right away. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asks.

“I guess…I sort of…” I stammer, searching for the perfect words. “I wanted to be sure you knew. Just in case you thought I didn’t mean it the first
time.”

He gives me another smile. That makes three today. This one looks even more genuine than the others. “If I didn’t think you meant it the first time, you wouldn’t be down
here.”

I have no idea what to say to that, so I just stand with my thumbs hooked in my front pockets and rock back on my heels.

“But since we’re blurting here,” he says, “I’ll be honest. It wasn’t easy for me to let you come down here today. I’ve accepted your apology, because I
think it’s genuine and I’m not one to hold a grudge, but let’s not push the ‘friends’ thing, okay?”

As he walks to the door, he raises his finger in the air and circles it above his head. “Read the walls, Sam.”

I
spend the rest of sixth period and all seventh reading the walls of Poet’s Corner. The poems here are silly, heartbreaking,
hilarious, sad, and many are absolutely incredible. They’re about people who don’t care enough and people who care too much, people you trust and people who turn on you, hating school,
loving your friends, seeing the beauty in the world. Sprinkled among them are heavier ones about depression and addiction, self-mutilation and various forms of self-medication. But most of them are
about love. Wanting it. Missing it. Actually being in it. I read some of those twice.

None of the poetry is marked with anything that makes its author identifiable—aside from the fast-food wrappers, which appear to be Sydney’s trademark. Hard as I try, I can’t
figure out which ones Caroline penned, but AJ’s proved to be fairly easy; as soon as I found that first song, I had no trouble finding more of his right-slanted, narrow handwriting.

By the time the final bell rings, I’ve read hundreds of poems. As eager as I am to say I covered every square inch of this place, I’ve already been alone down here for over an hour.
AJ’s sitting at the table, waiting for me to return, and I still have a poem of my own to write.

My backpack is still sitting in front by the couch, so I take a seat and thumb through my notebooks. I skip the red one because I’m not angry, and the blue one because I’m not
thinking about the pool. The poem that’s building inside of me is a yellow one. My head falls back into the cushions, and I let my gaze travel around the walls one more time before I take my
pen to the paper. I tap it three times. Then I let everything go.

I
’m perched on the edge of the diving block at the end of lane number three. I adjust my swim cap, press my goggles into my eyes with
the heels of my hands, and step into my stance. I scratch the tape three times and dive in.

I spent the whole drive here thinking about my afternoon in Poet’s Corner. Sitting on the stage alone. Reading the poems. Writing my own. And AJ, who may not be my friend, but at least he
no longer seems to hate me.

But now, everything is so quiet. Not just the pool, but my mind, too. I don’t even feel the urge to swim to the beat of a song. I’m mentally spent. Out of words. Out of thoughts. It
feels so good to be this empty. It’s so peaceful.

Is this what it’s like to be normal?

For the next forty minutes, I follow Coach Kevin’s instructions, but I wish I were here alone, without him yelling at me to swim faster, push myself harder. When practice is over and the
rest of the team heads for the showers, I hang back in the water and keep swimming a slow freestyle, back and forth.

Fifteen minutes later, the club is clearing out. The rest of my teammates are in their sweats and swim parkas, heading for the front gates, so I pull myself out of the pool and reach for my
towel. As I’m rinsing off, I start thinking about what’s next. If I’m serious about joining Poet’s Corner, I’ll have to step on that stage and read next Monday. If
they let me stay, I’ll have to read again. And again. I’ll have to come up with an excuse to miss lunch twice a week.

What am I going to tell the Eights?

My heart is racing as I change into my sweats, and my fingers start tingling as I’m heading for the parking lot. I’m almost out the gate when I spot Caroline sitting cross-legged on
the grass by my car.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

She sits up a little straighter and I read her T-shirt:
PROCRASTINATE NOW
!

“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. I figured you’d be here, and I didn’t get to see you after, you know…what happened at lunch today.”

“What happened at lunch today?” I joke. With a dramatic face palm, I fall back onto the grass next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, laughing.

“Did you tell them about my OCD and my anxiety attacks? Is that why AJ apologized and brought me back downstairs?”

“No,” she says matter-of-factly. “I never said a word.”

“You swear?”

She draws an X across her heart.

Then I remember what Sydney said in history when she invited me to go downstairs with her. I meant to thank Caroline when I first saw her in Poet’s Corner, but I never had the chance to.
“You know, they let me back in because of the poem you helped me write,” I say, coming up on my elbow.

“
You
wrote that.”

“Not alone.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she knows it’s true. If she hadn’t helped me find the right words to apologize to AJ, he never would have forgiven me.

“Thank you.”

She grins. “Anytime.”

“I have to get back on that stage on Monday.”

“I know. And you’ll be fine.” She sounds so certain. I wish I felt that confident.

“And let’s just say for the sake of argument, I pull it off. Then I’ll have to come up with more to read. Which could be problematic since, as you know, most of my stuff is
about the…” I spin my finger in a circle around my right temple, but I can’t bring myself to say the word “crazy.”

“They can handle it, you know? The…” She mimics my gesture without saying the word either.

I’m sure they can. But it’s taken me five years to tell anyone outside my family about my disorder, and even though I let Caroline in on my secret, I’m not ready to share it
with the rest of the members of Poet’s Corner. Besides, I want their vote, not their sympathy. “I just want to keep it between you and me. At least for now. Okay?”

“You got it.” She presses her lips together and turns an imaginary key, locking my secrets inside.

“W
here have you been?” Kaitlyn asks as I find a spot in the circle.

“What do you mean?” I start unpacking my lunch bag. “The bell just rang.”

“Not today. Yesterday.” When I look up, she blows her straw wrapper at me and it bounces off my forehead. “You weren’t here at lunch, and Olivia said you missed fifth
period.”

“I was just worried,” Olivia says, playing with her food. “Everything okay?”

“I wasn’t feeling well so I went home after fourth.” I take a sip of my soda. In my peripheral vision, I can see them all looking at Alexis. “What?” I ask, feeling
the familiar adrenaline rush that always kicks off the panic attack. I steel myself for whatever it is Alexis is supposed to report regarding my whereabouts.

She saw me talking with AJ at my locker. Or sneaking into the theater with Sydney.

“I saw your car in the student lot after school.” She sounds apologetic, but there’s a little accusatory lilt in her voice. An unsaid
Aha. Caught ya
.

I don’t want to lie to them, but I can’t tell them where I was yesterday. A version of the events I’d been planning when I ran into AJ yesterday pops into my head, so I go with
it.

“I went to the office and the nurse took my temperature. Since it was high, she said I wasn’t allowed to drive, so my mom had to come down here and get me.” I add a dramatic
eye roll to punctuate my lie, and give my sandwich my undivided attention, trying not to appear guilty.

They must not have any other evidence against me because Alexis says, “Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.” When I look up again, she’s mixing dressing into
her salad. Hailey gives me a sheepish grin, like she’s relieved to discover that I have a good reason for abandoning them without a word.

It worked for today, but I’m not sure how I’ll skip out of lunch on Monday. What am I going to do if I’m invited to join Poet’s Corner—fake an illness
every
Monday and Thursday? I’m going to need a better cover story.

Olivia starts telling us about this new band on her dad’s label, and how he wants all of us to go to their next show and bring a bunch of friends to help fill the room. While
everyone’s busy checking the concert dates on their phones, I use the opportunity to disappear into my own world, thinking up ways to get out of lunch.

It’s too early for yearbook. I’m not in any other clubs. They’ll never believe I’m spending two afternoons a week helping a teacher with some project or preparing for a
big science lab or something. Then it hits me. As usual, I’m saved by water. It’s perfect. I don’t typically swim in the school pool until team practice starts in the spring, but
it’s open and heated until early December. There’s no reason I couldn’t start earlier.

When there’s a lull in the conversation, I jump in. “I’ve got a few big meets coming up, so I’ve decided to start swimming during lunch a few days a week.” I offer
the information casually as I gesture in the general direction of the school pool. “I’m getting crushed by homework and it’s getting harder to get to the club. I’m just
mentioning it so, you know, you don’t wonder where I am.”