The Trouble with Emily Dickinson (25 page)

Kendal rounded a corner, and began to walk up
a flight of stairs backwards, facing JJ who lagged behind her. “I’m
learning as I go along,” she said, with a playful smile.

“As you go along with what?”

“As I go along with us.” Kendal skipped up
the last few steps and disappeared from view.

When JJ reached the landing, her heart sped
up excitedly. She scanned the second floor quickly, trying to see
through rows and rows of bookshelves as if she had X-ray vision. As
she made her way toward the biographies section, she saw Kendal
waiting patiently in front of one of the study rooms with a single
key dangling off the end of her pinky.

“You don’t want to sit at a table?” JJ asked,
eyeing the key.

“This kind of studying needs to be done in
private,” Kendal replied.

JJ gulped, and desperately tried to calm her
nerves. She watched with anticipation as Kendal unlocked the door
to the study room and pushed it open. The room was no bigger than a
closet, seating three or four people at the most. A single oak
table with attached benches stood in the center. The walls were
soundproof, and there was no window except for the one on the door.
Because of the type of seclusion they provided, study rooms had to
be signed up for and reserved in advanced.

During exams, they were extremely hard to
come by. Student library assistants were often bribed in exchange
for direct access to study rooms. And since exams were right around
the corner, JJ had to ask.

“Where did you get that?”

“What?” Kendal played with the key. “This?”
She held it up.

“Yes, that.”

“I have my ways.”

“Oh, really?”

Kendal shook her head and laughed. “Relax,”
she said. “One of the library assistants is on the cheerleading
squad. All I had to do was ask her for a room and she saved me a
key.”

“Cheerleading connections. I should have
known.”

Kendal closed the door and sat down at the
table with the Emily Dickinson book spread out in front of her.

JJ remained standing, not sure whether she
should sit down next to Kendal or across from her. She decided to
test the waters first. “What did you mean back on the steps, when
you said you’re learning as you go along?”

“This whole thing is new to me,” said Kendal.
“It’s a learning process.”

“What whole thing exactly?” JJ pressed.

Kendal shot her a look, “I thought you said
you were ready to listen.”

“I am.”

“Well, I don’t see you listening. All I see
you doing is talking.”

“I’m just trying to understand what’s going
on here, that’s all.”

“Sit down, JJ,” Kendal ordered. She patted
the open seat next to her, and then turned her attention to the
book on the table. She pointed at the cover, “I used to hate her,
you know?”

“Who?” JJ asked as she slid onto the bench.
“Emily Dickinson?”

“Yes,” Kendal sighed. “She used to torment me
at night. I’d see her sitting there on my desk in the morning,
waiting for me to lug her to class. It was like she was this
reminder of everything I wanted to ignore.” She looked up at JJ.
“Everything that was right in front of me.”

JJ could feel the sweat forming on her palms.
When Kendal looked at her that way, it knocked the breath straight
out of her. “I know I’m supposed to be listening,” she managed.
“But, can I ask you just one question?”

“I suppose.”

“Did you have—at anytime were you
interested—” JJ’s voice trailed off, her nerves getting the better
of her.

“Interested in you?” Kendal finished.

JJ nodded, unable to speak.

“The interest never went away,” Kendal
confessed. “The only difference is that I’m not afraid of it
anymore.”

“So what happened the night you stood me
up?”

Kendal reached over and tapped JJ gently on
the ear. “Remember how you’re supposed to be listening?”

“Oh—right,” said JJ as she sat back
quietly.

Kendal returned her attention to the book in
front of her. As she flipped intently through the pages of Emily
Dickinson’s poetry, she knew exactly what poem and page she was
looking for. Page 152. How could she forget it? The poem rang
through her ears whenever JJ was around. It had been there from the
beginning and it was there that day under the weeping willow, when
she’d been trying to make sense of everything that was happening
around her.

“I was so confused,” Kendal began. “You were
so unexpected and at the same time you were everything I had been
looking for. Only, you’re a girl and that complicated things. I
didn’t understand how another girl could be making me feel
something I had never felt before. But it wasn’t just the feelings.
It was the way I started questioning everything else around me. It
was the way I started looking at my friends differently. Everything
that had made perfect sense to me before, suddenly made no sense at
all. And I didn’t know how to deal with the feelings.”

Kendal sighed again as she ran her fingers
over the words of the poem in front of her.

“I didn’t realize what was happening until
Christine lied to me about how everyone at school was talking about
me, and assuming things because I was hanging out with you. She
said that everyone on the squad complained about how different I’d
become and that if I wanted to remain on the squad and not ruin my
reputation I had to stop hanging out with you. That’s why I stood
you up. That’s why I avoided you. I didn’t want to stop seeing you
but at the same time I didn’t want to lose my friends and
everything I had built at Sampson over the past few years. It
wasn’t until I read this poem again that I knew that my heart had
already made up its mind. And that I didn’t want to stop seeing
you, no matter what anyone else thought.”

JJ scanned the poem and smiled as she read
the familiar Dickinson poem silently.

WILD nights! Wild nights!

“I finally get it,” said Kendal softly. “I
finally get the meaning behind it. The feelings I have whenever I’m
around you are my own ‘wild nights.’ I don’t care what anyone
thinks anymore, not my friends, not the squad, and especially not
Christine. All I know is that I want to be around you. I don’t need
a compass and I don’t need a chart, because my heart knows exactly
what it wants. And that’s you.”

JJ opened her mouth to respond but nothing
came out.

“You don’t have to say anything,” said
Kendal. “I just wanted you to know how I really felt about you, and
how you helped me change my perspective.” She pointed to the page,
“And why this poem means so much more to me than Dickinson could
have ever imagined.”

“I think you’re giving me way too much
credit,” said JJ, still unable to look Kendal in the eyes.

“I knew you were going to say that,” said
Kendal. “You are way too humble, you know that?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard
that.”

“You once said that the trouble with Emily
Dickinson is that she writes so ambiguously, and that her words
aren’t supposed to be taken so literally. But that isn’t the case.
The trouble with Emily Dickinson is that she knew exactly what I
was thinking and feeling, even when I didn’t know myself.”

Kendal reached over and lifted JJ’s face to
hers so that they were eye to eye. “The trouble with Emily
Dickinson is that she turned my world upside down the day she
brought me to you.”

She didn’t wait for JJ to respond this time.
Instead, she seized the moment, leaned in and kissed JJ directly on
the lips. It took JJ less than a second to realize that she wasn’t
dreaming and she welcomed Kendal’s soft lips with each kiss that
followed, each one growing more intense than the last and tasting
ever as sweet.

***

Later, when JJ was lying in bed that night,
still wired from the nervous electricity flowing through her entire
body after kissing THE Kendal McCarthy, she silently thanked God
for Emily Dickinson at least a hundred times before she finally
fell asleep.

CHAPTER 37

JJ was resting on her stomach, sprawled out
on her unmade bed with books, scattered papers, and worn folders
spread out in front of her. She had taken three of her four exams
so far and felt confident that she’d done well on all of them. The
last and most daunting of them all was scheduled for later on in
the evening, and it was hardly an exam.

If JJ could study for it, she would. But how
can you study for a poetry reading? The worst thing anyone could do
is panic, which she already was an expert at.

The night JJ had been dreading for almost the
entire semester was upon her. The poem that Mrs. Clark had selected
for her to read aloud was sitting to her left on a stark-white
sheet of paper. JJ had scribbled notes in between the lines of the
poem to indicate where she should pause or add a slight inflection
to her voice. She had gone over it again and again, so much so that
the words were now imprinted on the inside of her forehead. When
she closed her eyes, she could read them as they floated by.

“Caramel latte with an extra shot of
confidence,” said Queenie as she slammed the door shut behind her
with the heel of her sneaker. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Thanks.” JJ reached for the cup in sheer
desperation, as if Queenie somehow had just unearthed an elixir to
cure stage fright. “I need it.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Queenie said, sipping
from her own Styrofoam cup. “I swear—if I have to answer one more
question on supply and demand, I’m going to lose it.”

“I don’t think you’ll be running into any
economic questions at the poetry reading.”

“Thank God for that.”

JJ marveled at Queenie, whose desk remained
devoid of second-hand notes and worn textbooks.

“How do you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Pass all of your exams without ever taking a
single note or cracking open a textbook?”

“I don’t know,” Queenie said honestly. “I
just can.” She hopped up on JJ’s bed, scattering notes and papers
everywhere. “It’s sort of like the way you can just write. And the
way some musicians can just play an instrument by ear. We’re
naturally gifted. What else can I say?”

“What’s your gift? A photographic
memory?”

“I prefer to consider myself a genius at
large.”

“You would.”

“So where is THE Kendal McCarthy?” Queenie
asked as her eyes searched around the room. “I thought you two were
hunkered down in the library studying?”

“We were earlier this morning.” JJ eyed the
clock beside her bed. “She’s probably finishing up her Women’s
Literature exam as we speak.”

“You know, I hate to admit it, but she’s
pretty cool.”

“I’ll spare you the ‘I told you so’
then.”

Queenie held up her hands to protest. “No,
no. I won’t take your charity. I deserve any ‘I told you so’ you
can throw at me. I was wrong about her.” She paused momentarily. “I
feel like I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately.”

“Wait a second. Did your conscience suddenly
grow back again?”

“I’m serious,” Queenie insisted. She jumped
up and tossed her cup into the garbage can with a single hook shot.
“I never realized how cynical I could be.”

“Sure, you can be cynical sometimes, but we
all can.”

“I know—it’s just that I started thinking
that maybe I’m part of the problem. I never give anyone a chance at
a relationship because I’m already convinced that it won’t work out
anyway. I’ve spent a great deal of my adolescent life expecting the
worst when I could be missing out on the best.”

“Looks like you’re finally putting that
genius of a mind to good use.”

“If I’ve learned anything from you over the
past three years it’s that sometimes your heart is going to get
broken and sometimes it isn’t. But if you never take that chance,
you’ll never know the difference between the two. I don’t know what
it feels like to put your all into someone. To take a risk like
that.”

JJ watched as Queenie slumped sadly down onto
the floor. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I just—” Queenie stopped and looked up at a
poster on the wall, then longingly at a collage of photos arranged
on the corkboard hanging on the back of their door. “I’m sorry. I’m
not sure what’s going on with me, but I think you might be right. I
think I’ve gone and grown a conscience after all.”

“It happens to the best of us.”

“Hey, do you remember when I said I was going
to slip in the ‘I’m a big, scary lesbian’ secret during my maid of
honor speech at my sister’s wedding?”

“How could I forget? It’s the only reason I’m
going to the wedding.”

“I’ve decided that maybe—just maybe—it isn’t
such a dandy idea after all.”

“Oh?” JJ climbed up off of her bed and sat
down on the floor beside Queenie. “What tipped you off
exactly?”

“Besides the fact that it’s an incredibly
self-serving, devilishly-motivated, not to mention childish, thing
to do?”

“Yes, besides all of that.”

Queenie sighed. “Well, it’s that whole risk
thing I was talking about. My sister is taking that risk. She’s
putting her all into someone, and that’s something that deserves to
be celebrated. It’s something special, and who am I to take that
away from her?”

JJ reached over and put her arm around
Queenie’s shoulders. “It only took you three and a half years of
private school to mature into a well-adjusted, morally-sound young
woman. I’m so proud.”

“Moral?” Queenie asked in disbelief.
“Well-adjusted? Please! Let’s not go overboard here. I still plan
on making a colossal splash into my parent’s pool of normalcy by
declaring my homosexuality to the rest of the McBride family soon
enough. It’s simply a question of when.”

“Graduation perhaps?”

Queenie smiled deviously, “Perhaps.”