“I mean, it probably just means distance or something like that,” Miles said.
Ganke side-eyed his friend. “That’s the best you could come up with? Really? If anything, it means desk breaker.” He swiveled in his chair back to his laptop. His fingers clicked and clacked on the keys, then his eyes shot left to right. “Hmm,” Ganke hummed again. He picked the laptop up, rolled back over to Miles and set it in his lap. “Here. Read.”
Miles tilted the screen back.
Miles /’maIlz/ is a male name from the Latin, miles, a soldier.
“Soldier?” Miles’s eyes narrowed, scrolling up and down the screen to verify.
“Soldier.”
Miles should’ve known something was up in Ms. Blaufuss’s class when Alicia didn’t want to share her name poem. As a matter of fact, Alicia didn’t participate in class at all. After the class turned in their name sijos—including the soldier poem that Miles wasn’t very proud of, and Ganke’s piece, entitled “Korean Untitled”—Ms. Blaufuss went on a nerd-rant about this poet, U T’ak, and this sijo he wrote about a spring breeze melting snow on the hills. Ms. Blaufuss prodded the class to respond.
“What does he mean when he says he wishes it would melt the aging frost forming in his ears?” she asked. Miles expected Alicia to answer, because he knew she understood poetry in a way most people didn’t. But instead, Ryan offered his interpretation.
“The way I see it, the breeze is really like a soft caress,” he said. He was met by a chorus of groans. Except for Alicia, whose face was slanted down at the notebook on her desk as she scribbled ferociously through the entire class. She and Miles hadn’t spoken, which was no surprise, but Alicia hadn’t really spoken to anyone. Not Winnie. Not even Ms. Blaufuss, besides a short “Hey” at the beginning of class.
After lunch—Ganke tried to get Miles to imagine what a catfish would look like if it were actually half-cat, half-fish—Miles headed to history class. He came in, took his seat at the now shaky, bowlegged desk, while Mr. Chamberlain started his usual routine of writing a quote on the board: the text of the Thirteenth Amendment. Alicia walked in among a bunch of other students, sneakers squeaking, backpacks hitting the floor, chair legs scraping against linoleum. Alicia beelined for her seat, dropped her bag. She glanced at Miles quickly, but just long enough for him to see something in her eyes. Not fear. Rage. She whipped around and strode right up to the chalkboard where Chamberlain was mid-scrawl, and picked up a piece of chalk from the chalk tray.
“Alicia?” Mr. Chamberlain eyed her as she began to write just underneath his quote in all capital letters.
WE ARE PEOPLE
WE ARE NOT PINCUSHIONS
“Alicia!” Chamberlain shouted. But Alicia continued.
WE ARE NOT PUNCHING BAGS
WE ARE NOT PUPPETS
Miles couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The entire class was silent. Even Mr. Chamberlain stood frozen in shock. Finally, he grabbed an eraser and started erasing what he could, but Alicia just moved to a different spot on the board, as if playing an intense game of tag, and scribbled on.
WE ARE NOT PETS
WE ARE NOT PAWNS
WE ARE PEOPLE
WE ARE PEOPLE
WE ARE
“That’s enough, Alicia!” Chamberlain dropped the eraser. “Have you lost your mind?” He reached over and grabbed her arm, yanking it away from the board.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling away from him. Miles lifted himself off his seat instinctively, the backs of his knees sizzling, ready to pounce. Chamberlain stepped back. Miles eased up. “Don’t ever, ever put your hands on me.” Alicia scowled, and then she began to recite what she had written out loud: “We are people. We are not pincushions. We are not punching bags.”
“Go down to the office, right now,” Chamberlain growled, his nostrils flaring.
Alicia turned to the rest of the class, all of whom sat with their mouths open, some, like Brad Canby, surprisingly, nodding.
“We are not puppets. We are not pets. We are not pawns.”
“Get out of my class, Alicia! This is out of line. I’ll have you suspended! Expelled!”
Alicia looked directly at Miles. Directly into him, her eyes glazing over. “We are people. People.” She looked back at Mr. Chamberlain. Threw the piece of chalk on the floor, grabbed her backpack, and left.
So Wednesday wasn’t totally uneventful.
Not as uneventful as Thursday.
Miles had pretty much been on his absolute best behavior. No hangouts, his secret crush had basically been crushed, and unfortunately, no Campus Convenience job to go to. Just school. And wondering about Alicia. He knew she had been suspended, and he couldn’t help but think about what he could’ve done, even if it just meant reciting the words with her. But he couldn’t do that. No, he could’ve. He just didn’t.
But she was back in class on Friday, the last day of their sijo unit. She took her seat, keeping her back to Miles. He tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Somehow he’d misplaced his hellos.
Ms. Blaufuss wrote on the board in loopy cursive, If only…
“This is how I want each of you to begin your poems. You will all write one, and before class is over, we will read them one after another as a single continuous poem, the perfect cap to this unit.” Ms. Blaufuss, who was wearing an old-school Janet Jackson concert T-shirt, gave the class thirty minutes. When the time was up, she started at the front of the room with Shannon Offerman and worked backward. The ongoing poem snaked through the room, jumping from issues with mothers, to the desire to have longer hair, to “If only I could love you”—that one, of course, coming from Ryan. Eventually it landed on Alicia.
“If only life weren’t such a strangely complicated pattern,
every person in the world a single fly stuck to the web,
And fear is the spider waiting for the right moment to feast.”
Ganke slapped Miles on the back.
“She talking ’bout you,” he whispered.
“No, she’s not,” Miles replied, even though he felt like she might’ve been. But she hadn’t been paying him any mind, so he pretty much spent most of his class time trying to pretend she wasn’t there. Every time he met her eyes, he immediately felt like he was somewhere between naked and invisible.
Winnie was supposed to be next, but she was absent, so Miles was up. Perfect. He cleared the cobwebs from his throat. “Um…” he croaked. “I think I might’ve done this one wrong.”
“No such thing, Miles. As good as your name poem was, I’m sure it’s fine. Maybe different, but not wrong,” Ms. Blaufuss reassured him.
Miles gave a half nod, stared down at his paper and began.
“If only is what’s circling in my mind every morning
before I breathe in beauty and breathe out bad decisions;
If only is the cool breeze before I spin the world apart.”
Miles could hear Ganke’s paper rustle behind him.
Ms. Blaufuss’s lips spread into a warm smile. “Very nice, Miles. Next, Ganke.”
“Skip,” Ganke said.