I want Stuart Shah. I want Stuart Shah so bad.
Stuart Shah (proper noun, person): Oh, screw it, I’ll just tell you everything.
Picture this: It’s two years ago. As a critique of capitalism, you have taken to wearing a lot of vintage (fine, used) clothing, mostly your dad’s oversize T-shirts, cutoffs, and your mom’s gardening clogs that you took without permission. You are reading a lot of National Geographic articles about how the ice caps are melting and polar bears are being pushed from their usual habitats, and watching a lot of your mom’s old DVDs of The West Wing. On this particular day, Ms. Cigler (then your Advanced Sophomore English teacher) has asked you to complete the short-answer questions at the end of a Faulkner story, “A Rose for Emily,” about an old lady who sleeps with her dead husband’s corpse. Anyway.
Suddenly, a figure passes by your desk. This person has that smell like they have just been outside, you know what I mean? It’s a combination of sweat and humid air and grass and dirt, and when you’ve been inside air-conditioning all day, you can tell from just one whiff they’ve been outside doing something.
You look up and you see it is Stuart Shah.
You have seen Stuart around before—he’s a senior while you’re a sophomore, one of those kids who’s always eating a sandwich while walking, on his way to the next thing. He’s tall and has an old-fashioned, guy-in-the-fifties haircut and dark, wet eyes like two river stones. It appears that he wears the same thing every day, just like you, except he wears a black T-shirt and black jeans and he looks amazing. He’s friends with everyone and no one in particular. He played Hamlet in the spring play.
Now he’s bending down next to Ms. Cigler, telling her something in a low voice. The corners of his lips turn up in a smile while he’s talking. You watch his long fingers twitch from where they prop up his lean arms on the desk.
Ms. Cigler gasps and claps a hand over her mouth. The class looks up from their work. Stuart straightens and folds his arms, eyes on his feet with a shy, half smile still on his face.
“Can I tell them?” she asks, glancing up at him.
Stuart shrugs, looking up at the class, and then at you, for some reason.
“Stu just got a short story published. In an actual literary magazine. A high schooler. I mean… my god.”
Stuart lets out a little laugh, eyeing Ms. Cigler.
“Ploughshares is a publication I wish I could publish in, folks. Give this young man a round.”
People clap halfheartedly, except for you. You don’t clap. Because you are staring at him, your hand holding a strand of your hair. You shift in your chair, leaning toward him. You catch your eyes running up from his lace-up shoes, to his jeans, across his waistband, to his brown neck, his smooth lips, across his eyebrows like black brushstrokes, down to his eyes, which meet yours again.
You turn hot and look down at your to-do list.
He leaves the classroom, and instead of listening to Ms. Cigler, you find yourself tracing a letter S.
Later, you wonder aloud to Maddie about him at debate practice, and she notices your drifting eyes, your fingertips playing on indiscriminate surfaces, your little sighs.
“Sammie McCoy is crushing,” Maddie says.
“I’m just curious. You know, like professionally. I wonder what it’s like to be published.” That word, published. It comes off the lips like an adult drink, like sweet cherry liqueur. It means that Stuart’s way of seeing the world is so complete, so sharp, so fascinating that important people want to spread it around.
You want your words to be like that. I mean, not in a fictional story, you could never do that, but in general. You want to be a debater (and then a lawyer) so you can look at the world from above, so you can cut it into neat, manageable pieces and fit problems and solutions together like a puzzle, making it fair for everyone. You want to tell people what is correct, what is real. Stuart is already doing that in his own way, and he’s only eighteen.