Forbidden Literature

39| Distances

It wasn't my favorite decision, not even in the slightest, but Jasper and I both knew that it had to be done. About a week and a half ago after his meeting with Dr. Porter, we agreed over the phone to remain distant from each other, in every sense of the word. We cut all connection pertaining outside of school for good measure. We even included monitoring our behavior when I was in his class or saw him on campus. I suppressed my feelings for him even more so than last week before the meeting happened and treated him like any other professor, even if it meant not greeting him in the hallway.

With rumors flying from both students and staff, we had to take every precaution there is to think about. So for the last week, I am basically back to being single which. I acknowledged that I'm not twisted up because I'm single, but because I shouldn't have to be. After all we accomplished from Ms. Harrington and confessing our love at Lake Ella, this is what it leads to. I kept reminding myself that it will come to an end soon, but that only eases the pain until I go to bed in cotton sheets rather than black silk with no arms to hold me.

When you are away from someone you see almost every day, you start to realize things about your relationship that you didn't notice before. For instance, I never realized how many texts and phone calls I received from Jasper until they all stopped leaving behind the absence of sound. When I woke up, it was silent, when I got home, it was silent, when I went to bed, it was silent. I have no idea how I lived in such silence before he came into my life. Of course there is always Sara who is anything but silent, but still she couldn't fill that void completely. The lack of communication from Jasper was deafening yet louder than a million fireworks going off at once.

The good news at least is that there are nearly two more weeks until graduation. Coincidentally, that is also the bad news. Now I have nothing to do but hope that I make it out with a decent grade. Although majority of my classes are fine, my thesis for my American Literature paper is nowhere near being done. Because of this I use all my free time in the library, like today, holed up in some collection surrounded by books and pulling my hair out. I don't know how many Walt Whitman books I have scanned through, but I think I am finally getting sick of him.

I want to vent my frustrations to Jasper so badly about this damn paper and everything else that is going on, but I know that I can't. Sara has reverted back to being my vessel and thankfully she is very understanding. Hell, I even some times vent to Kenji because he's around. The look on his face is priceless when he realizes that I'm talking directly to him and not Sara. After he defreezes he can give some pretty good advice like which section to find a book in the library, but that's as much as I can get out of him.

For now, I am on my own huddled in the 'W' section searching for anything meaningful about Walt Whitman. I can confirm that he loves nature, but that's about as much as I can gather, which is not nearly enough for a paper. I sighed and moved on to another book.

I was about to pull out a promising looking edition from the shelf when my phone went off. My heart skipped a beat when I saw who the sender was and immediately opened my phone.

3:03pm: Ms. Miller, please do not forget to add in Rodney Phillips to my scheduled meetings. I am not seeing him on my planner but he insists that he emailed me about it. -- Dr. Andrews

Because it is in my nature as an English student to dissect every form of literature to find its meaning, I quickly noticed how Jasper refers to himself as 'Dr. Andrews' now instead of 'J.P.A' like he usually does. There is no hint of my Jasper in the text, he is strictly Dr. Andrews, the professor. So I texted back as my role of the dutiful assistant.