Mrs. Steig’s arms drop. “I’ve not heard of her. She was more prolific than Shakespeare?”
“No, he was dead by the time she came up,” I say. “But she wrote a lot and made good money for it. She was a legit full-time writer, which is not what you think when you imagine guys in tights and long curly wigs.” The Restoration is one of my favorite time periods. You’d think everyone was all prim and chaste, but they were anything but. “Read her poem ‘The Disappointment’ and tell me if Hester wouldn’t have been one of Aphra’s contemporaries.”
That poem is bold.
A shepherdess is crazy into this shepherd and wants to lose her virginity by banging his brains out. And this poem about a girl wanting to bone sold like hotcakes during the 1600s. It’s kind of nuts.
Mrs. Steig gets her phone out and pulls it up. She swizzles her head and shoulders all cheesy-like, fake stage style, and reads in a booming voice:
“ONE Day the Amorous Lisander, By an impatient Passion sway’d,
Surpris’d fair Cloris, that lov’d Maid, Who cou’d defend her self no longer ;
All things did with his Love conspire,
The gilded Planet of the Day,
In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,
Was now descending to the Sea,
And left no Light to guide the World, But what from Cloris’ brighter Eyes was hurl’d.
In a lone Thicket, made for Love, Silent as yielding Maids Consent,
She with a charming Languishment
Permits his force, yet gently strove ?
Her Hands his Bosom softly meet….”
Mrs. Steig stops. She reads far ahead, eyes widening, and puts her phone back in her bag. “Oh my, we can’t read this in class.” Now everyone’s all writing the name of the poem for later. I grin to myself. If there’s one charming thing passed down through time, it’s that humans are all a bunch of horny nerds who can’t wait to talk about it.
Wait until they get to the end. The shepherd dude can’t seal the deal, and the girl—the girl!—has blue balls. I didn’t even know that was possible, but turns out I’m about four hundred years behind the times.
“Well, that’s an alley I didn’t anticipate getting clubbed in,” Mrs. Steig says. “Where did you learn about Aphra Behn?”
“A podcast.” And then I found a book of her work at Powell’s and read that too.
Everyone in class stares at me, but in a good way. They’re floored. This girl Bailey and I have a pissing match over grades, and even she crinkles up her nose with admiration.
“Must’ve been a heck of a podcast,” Mrs. Steig says as the bell rings.
I merge into the flow of traffic in the hall and get carried away to my locker. A note gets dropped in my lap by a cute girl who sprints away so fast, I barely have time to be confused. I think that was JP’s newest girlfriend? It’s so hard to keep them straight. All the note says is Adam Michaels?
Shit. I turn the other direction to find the wing where the seniors have their lockers. Everyone in the whole school can’t wait until they have the senior wing’s because their lockers are painted glossy black and left in the far back of the school where nobody bothers them. I find Adam Michaels crouching in a ball on the linoleum floor and cramming last-minute this and that into his messenger bag.
He peeks at my wheels. “You owe JP,” I say, dropping my voice and giving him a long, hard stare.
“So?” Adam Michaels stands up, and all six feet, two hundred whatever pounds of him looms over me. Well, this has never happened before. How curious. Today of all days, I have to be in this chair?
I stand up and now I’m the one looking down at him. Two can play at this game.
Adam Michaels gathers up the last of his things and zips out of reach on a pair of fleet feet. Frigging Mercury over here. “What’s a cripple like you gonna do about it?” he says, leaving me in the hallway like a skid mark on a fresh pair of tighty-whiteys.
“Shit,” I mutter to myself. Stupid chair. Stupid JP.
I’m not chasing after him, the hell with that.
I sit back down with a plop and hope no one saw. Then it’s like…Dammit. Now I feel obligated to beat the ever-loving shit out of him just to keep my edge.
Had a similar incident last year, but it didn’t end well for that guy. There was this junior who wanted a sweet set of rims that looked like razor wire for his Toyota Camry, but he didn’t want to wait until Christmas (because let’s be honest, Jesus, Santa, and the Easter Bunny would laugh their asses off with that one). So JP gave him the money. Unfortunately, the guy thought he could blow off repaying some scrawny freshman with a dewy pout and a fat wallet. I proved that junior wrong.