“It’s yours.” He gave the book to Emily, and she showed it off to everyone. At one point Kayte came over with her phone and filmed it.
The girls bought Collin another drink. They invited him to a party later on that night.
He enjoyed the attention, and then, suddenly, he was tired of it. He started glancing at the door. Actually, he explained, he was waiting for someone. Nobody believed this, but he wasn’t lying. He was waiting for Nina, although he knew she wouldn’t come.
Gold showered down. Autumn leaves so bright that for a moment Aidan covered his eyes. He wasn’t used to this anymore, the dazzling colors, the shifting light and shadow. Opening his new BoX, he felt like a figure in a snow globe, wind blowing, leaves swirling all around.
He heard cheering, tramping in the Trackless Wood—the remnants of his company. Of his sixty-one Elves, only twelve remained. Centuries had passed since they had qwested together, scores of battles had been waged and won. Giants of the dark cliffs had forged an alliance with the Gnomes who toiled underground, and together they’d built an enormous fighting force, the Nord, who had begun raiding Elvish strongholds in an attempt to launch themselves against the Keep.
We’ve been waiting, Aidan’s comrades said. In real life, the company was scattered in living rooms, bedrooms, and basements all around the world. Some guys were fat, some had bad knees, some were just kids wearing pajamas, but in EverWhen they were all Water Elves, tall and elegant, with flowing hair. They wore chain mail and they carried swords. “You’re late, Tildor,” chided Dracon, Aidan’s second in command.
Even as he spoke, the forest darkened and the wind picked up. No, not the wind. Aidan threw himself to the ground as dragons tore through the wood, blackening every living thing. Moments later it was over, but his ears were ringing with the dragons’ screams.
Shaking off ash, he struggled to his feet. Close by his side, Aidan’s old qwesting friends debated what to do.
“March on!”
“No. Hold back and wait.”
Already, moss crept up blackened tree trunks. Ferns sprang up from the ashy forest floor. Withered branches spread and multiplied, sending forth new twigs. Pale folded leaves opened into oak, or maple leaf, or elm, filtering the light and showering charred earth with every shade of russet, gold, and green. The others were appealing to Aidan for orders, but he gazed at the changing leaves, the ever-shifting light, and he thought, How beautiful. How strange the way the woods surrounded you.
“Let’s go,” Dracon urged him.
Aidan lifted his arm and Tildor held his sword aloft. “Follow me!”
He led his Elves to a thousand-year-old beech, a cosmos of its own, with its vast canopy of leaves. The whole company, linking hands together, could not span its massive trunk. “This is the place.” Aidan scored the smooth gray tree trunk with his sword, opening a seam that darkened with a sickening sound of splitting wood. “This is the way,” Aidan called out as the others followed him inside the tree to UnderWorld.
All that night, he qwested with his company. They fought their way to the silver river and took a ferry to the far shore.
“Cover me!” Aidan shouted as he attacked the Iron Man, striking welded joints and eye slits. Battle-tested, he knew how to move, and how to leap, how to manage spectral weightlessness. He could fend off white bats, and navigate labyrinthine passages carved in stone. Even so, the way was difficult, increasingly complex.
They came to a cavern he had not yet seen, a crypt where they found Elves disfigured and leprous with mold. Aidan saw cauliflower ears and wobbling jaws, noses melting like candle wax. “Stand together,” he commanded.
“Put up your swords. We have no power,” a living corpse with blackened fingers said.
Wonderingly, Aidan asked, “Who were you?”
“Fire Elves.”
“Who did this to you?”
The ruined Elf pointed through the archways to a dim-lit chamber, where a rustling creature stirred. Taller than Aidan, a praying mantis whirred, and clicked, and cleaned its folded legs on a dark throne.
“Watch out,” the moldering corpses shouted as Aidan approached the insect king. “Don’t let him bite,” the blackened Elf called after him.
“Wait here,” Aidan told his company, and all obeyed, except for Dracon, who followed him.
Like a dying fire, the chamber faintly glowed. The praying mantis turned, and Aidan saw the insect’s mandibles working, outer eyes wide-set and swiveling.
Aidan drew his sword. “Reverse your spells.”
With a dry, rattling sound, the mantis rose up gigantic on its hind legs.
“Reverse your spells, or come down and fight.”
Instantly, the mantis pounced. Aidan sprang back just in time, slashing at the insect’s hard body, its whirring limbs, and pointed face. He sliced one antenna. Instantly, the quivering organ grew back. He stabbed the mantis in its thorax and the insect lost its balance, staggering back for just a moment. Then, like a boxer, the mantis rose up and pounced, toppling Dracon with a single blow.
“Get up. Get up!”
Too late. Dracon lay on the throne room floor, his neck pinched in the insect’s mandibles.
Aidan’s company rushed the room, even as the mantis bent over its prey.
“Stay back,” Aidan shouted, but they didn’t listen and mobbed the insect, attacking with their useless swords. Each blow glanced off the insect’s back, and the mantis fed until Dracon’s body began to swell. His flesh turned white, his face began to curdle.
The other Elves tried to drag away the body. Fenuel seized one lifeless arm, Lorimar the other. Suddenly these friends were stricken too. Their hands withered where they had touched Dracon’s white flesh, their fingers blackened as with frostbite.
Aidan knew death in battle. He himself had been dismembered, impaled, decapitated, but that was just a nuisance and a loss of points. After a few minutes, anyone who died in EverWhen could jump back up again. This was something else, a wasting disease. “Don’t touch him,” warned Aidan as his Elves crowded Dracon.
Once again, the clicking, rattling sound. The mantis? Alarm clock. “I have to go,” Aidan told the others. His mother was still at work—no danger there—but he was on every kind of probation: academic, disciplinary. He had to get to school.
A moment later, he was diving for clean clothes, racing to the bathroom, stumbling down the stairs. After his all-nighter, the house seemed warped and thrown together, the ceiling dangerously low. At the breakfast table, Diana was a headless body. It took Aidan a few seconds to see that she’d buried her head in her arms.
Gradually, the kitchen began to right itself. The sink, the chairs, the window, the apple clock, Diana sitting there with bloodshot eyes.
Was she crying? At first it was hard to tell, and then he saw her tearstained cheeks, and it was hard to look. Long ago Diana would cry when their father hit Aidan. Then Aidan would start crying too. He would shut his eyes and turn away, do everything he could to stop, but once he saw her tears, he could not force back his own. “What happened?”
She pushed her chair away from the table, but she didn’t speak.
She had lost Brynna. Not in a day, not over weeks, but gradually, as the days grew shorter, as rain turned to snow, and snow hardened into ice, Brynna had pushed Diana away. At night she went to parties, while her parents watched Angela. She stayed out with Anton and his friends, Khalil, Dmitri, Sevonna. She was actually seeing Anton again.
Late at night Diana had confronted her by text. What ru thinking? Cruelly Brynna had replied, Ur only jealous. After that Diana couldn’t sleep. She’d lain awake all night, listening to Aidan qwesting.
Light-headed, Aidan watched his sister dematerialize into dots. He gripped the edge of the table and she was herself again—but much smaller than he’d remembered. He had just put away his sword and there she was, slipping on her parka, shouldering her worn-out backpack. She looked so defeated, he forgot her tattling. After all, it didn’t matter
anymore. He had his new BoX and he loved Diana again. He had never stopped loving her—but she should have known that.
He didn’t speak, but he felt for her as she stepped into her snow boots. Those boots looked so heavy, they could have been stone.
—
Diana kept her head down and her coat on once she got to Emerson. Her jacket’s hugeness shielded her as she made her way upstairs past couples kissing, girls gossiping, guys chest-butting like demented stags. Brynna approached, and Diana looked up, hoping for an instant. Her former best friend swept past her.
Anton arrived, and his blond hair was short and spiky, his eyes hard. He’d nicked himself shaving, so you could see a spot of blood on his neck. Diana tortured herself, watching Brynna drift toward him. She looked so soft and gentle, her thick hair wafting over her shoulders. She was nothing like Anton, and yet she stood with him by the lockers. Hands in each other’s back pockets, they were practically married.
“Congrats,” Diana said as she walked by.
Brynna pretended that she didn’t hear, but Anton snarled, “Dyke.”
A moment later, Anton’s head smashed into the metal locker doors. It happened so fast even Diana was surprised. She barely understood what she had done when he surged back and seized her shoulders. His fingers clawed through her down coat.
Voices all around her, cheers, and catcalls. Mr. Allan yelling, “Whoa. Walk away. Walk away.” She didn’t walk. She kicked and scratched. Like a creature shedding her second skin, she slipped from Anton’s grasp. Lithe and strong, she left her puffy jacket in his hands.
He dropped the jacket and she flew at him as he fought her off, ignoring Mr. Allan’s threats and Brynna’s pleas. The bell was ringing, the hall flooding with students. Teachers were struggling to pull Diana and Anton apart, but it was Aidan who charged between them. He had followed her to school, shadowing her all the way upstairs.
“You touch my sister and I’ll fucking kill you.” Aidan’s cheeks were blazing. He was white light, he was the dazzling sun.
—
Ten minutes later, Aidan and Diana sat together at the round conference table in DeLaurentis’s office. Anton sat at a little distance on the other side.
Mr. DeLaurentis spread his hands. “Can we work this out?”
The three of them sat silent. Anton stretched out, with his chair pulled back from the table. Aidan stole a glance at Diana. Her eyes were bright, her tears gone. She looked taller, as though she had thrown off a crushing weight. And it was strange, but he felt taller too. He had not realized how heavy her sadness had become.
Mr. DeLaurentis told Diana, “We don’t tolerate bullying.”
She pointed straight at Anton. “He bullied me.”
“As for you…” DeLaurentis turned to Aidan.
“He didn’t do anything!” Diana interrupted. “He was protecting me.”
“This conflict didn’t happen on its own.”
Aidan settled back, preparing for the onslaught. It was always like this at school. The actual fight lasted just seconds. The discussion afterward took hours.
—
Diana was still stuck in the principal’s office when DeLaurentis ordered her brother to return to class. Aidan felt guilty about leaving, because he knew exactly what would happen next. She would have to see Miss Sorentino, who made you talk until you would admit anything. You were bored at school, you were tired of your life. She got you to the point where you confessed feelings you didn’t even have.
Slowly he made his way to English, arriving in a tide of whispered speculation.
“Where’s Anton?” Sofia whispered to Aidan, as soon as he sat down.
Rafael asked, “What did you do to him?”
“Was he expelled?”
“Okay, let’s concentrate.” Miss Lazare handed Aidan a ballot for Poetry in Action.
Lazare was calling on each kid, one by one. You had to stand and recite your chosen poem from memory, after which the class would vote for one student to represent them in the school competition. Unless you were into theater like Becca, the whole thing was a nightmare until your turn was over. Then you could sink down and watch other kids rock back on their heels, and forget their lines. Miss Lazare said, “That’s okay, just take a breath,” and it was torture, but she never let you give up. She made you stand there. Naturally people chose the shortest poems eligible. “Fog” by Carl Sandburg. William Blake’s “The Sick Rose.” “Do not vote for me,” they whispered to their friends.
“I need your attention,” Miss Lazare told the class. Nico was reciting Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” The whiskey on your breath…But Aidan was the center of attention; even those who hadn’t seen him challenge Anton had heard about the brawl.
“Did you really break his nose?” Sofia whispered.
“Would I be here if I’d actually hurt him?” Aidan retorted, enjoying his notoriety.
“Aidan,” Miss Lazare said, as soon as Nico had finished.
He waited for the reprimand. Don’t talk in class.
“Get up there.”
Oh. In the excitement, he’d actually forgotten.
“Your turn.”
Aidan remembered nothing. He had prepared, of course. Lazare herself had practiced with him, but when he stood in front of the blackboard, he could not recall a single word of Dickinson.
Curious, his fellow students stared at Aidan. Their ballots fluttered all around them.
He glanced at Miss Lazare, who waited in the back of the room with her clipboard in her hands. He didn’t care about the others, but he hated himself for letting her down.
No. He had to think. Back before the lecture in DeLaurentis’s office. Before the fight, before Diana at the breakfast table and the long qwest underground. He had to tunnel through all the battles he had fought and won and lost. Mantis king and Iron Man, silver dragons and three-headed dogs.
The moment stretched too long. Not a moment, but an entire day, a year. The class grew restless, but he closed his eyes and fought to uncover words small as insects, black and quivering.
“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died.” His voice was deep and deadpan, eerily calm, even as he searched his memory.
“The Stillness round my form / Was like the Stillness in the Air…”
The whole class hushed in horror and in sympathy. No one had heard the poem quite that way before. He was struggling but he would not give up. “The Eyes beside—had wrung them dry…” Searching for each word, he seemed to be improvising on the spot.
There had never been such silence in that room. Not a word, not a breath. “I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away / What portion of me I…” Long pause. “Could make Assignable, and then…”
He was like a diver. They could barely see him anymore as he swam deep underwater to retrieve each phrase. His classmates watched as he held his breath and sank into the abyss.
In a trance, he swam down to his own death, his own body on the hospital bed. “There interposed a Fly…With Blue, uncertain…stumbling Buzz.” His voice was strange, not his at all, but cold and numb. “And then the Windows failed—and then / I could not see to see.”
Silence again, and then everyone was clapping, because he had found the words, and brought them back alive.
Nina could not stop smiling. All traces of the teacher vanished from her face.
Look at Miss Lazare, kids told each other. Total joy! The little jump you always hoped for, but hardly ever got to see.
“I knew it,” Nina told Aidan after school. She had known instantly that he would win the class election. She’d seen it in the students’ faces. He would represent them in the assembly.
“That’s crazy,” said Aidan. He had no interest in reciting for the school, but Miss Lazare’s response captivated him. She seemed like an entirely new person, her eyes alight.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “Fantastic.”
She gave him all the credit, and, at the same time she felt that teaching him was the best thing s
he’d ever done. Bright, dreamy, obsessed with fantasy, Aidan was a natural, seizing language for himself, inhabiting simile and metaphor. He was born for poetry.
Was it that ability, or was it fear? Was it simply practice? Understanding what she was looking for? He was using what she gave him, making connections, drawing inferences. If she spoke to him about one image—death as a fellow traveler—he found a complementary example: The Carriage held but just Ourselves— / And Immortality.
“He listens,” Nina had told Jeff at their weekly lunch meeting.
“Of course he does. He has your undivided attention. The bigger question is how you want to use your time.”
“I don’t think I’m taking anything away from the other students.”
Jeff warned, “You don’t want to play favorites.”
“I’m not!” she protested. “He’s a student at risk.”
“He’s not alone.”
“But he really learns this way.”
“Everybody does.”
She knew what he was thinking. Another white-middle-class success story. “I just feel like I’m finally doing something.”
“You see him every day; you’re spending five hours a week with him. That’s an entire class of one.”
Waiting for Aidan after school, Nina opened her copy of Dickinson on her desk. Jeff cared about metrics. He believed in trying for the greatest impact possible, and by impact he meant reaching the many, not the privileged few. Nina had privileged Aidan, lavishing her time and her attention on him. It was not her mission to run private tutorials at a public high school.
But what if this was the way she taught best? What if this was how she made a difference? Test scores didn’t matter to her in the aggregate. I’m not big-picture, Nina thought. I doubt I’ll make an impact on a hundred kids—but I’m teaching one.
She didn’t care what Jeff said or how he warned her; she knew that she was getting something done at last. Listen to Aidan recite. Look at his written work. She had his essay marked good and wonderful, lying right there on her desk.
The Chalk Artist Page 26
