From a Distance: Stories in Second Person

07. Writing Lessons

She can't write, but she gives writing lessons.

***

It's raining, today, the kind of rain that pools in the crevices between your bones and worms it's way under the layers of sweaters and dry socks—well, once-dry socks. It's the kind of rain that presses against your heart and makes it cold, but in a nice way, a kind of numbing cold that spreads to the rest of you. 

You're exhausted by the time the doors have unlocked. He's already here, somehow, at the desk with his feet propped up, studying something. When your footsteps announce yourself, he sits up straight, his sock feet flat against the ground, and waves. You return the gesture and settle into the hard-backed chair in the corner. At 7:15, just as you've finished sorting through the papers and lined sheets, Natalia arrives. She's a shy one, pushing open the door slowly, idling at the desk while you pull up a chair and do your best to smile on this empty day. As the minutes wear on and the room is filled with the sound of him, across the room, talking about infinities and irrational numbers and the 3.15 billion seconds that is a hundred-year life, Natalia is slowly thawing. 

Her words are beautiful, you think, but don't tell her. If you let her know, she'll freak. Not literally, but she'll be afraid to show you her unfiltered writing—suddenly, it'll have to be grammatically-perfect, vivid, well-structured. It'll have to be mechanic and obedient, twisted and pigeonholed into a template. She admires you but doesn't say so; you find it gratifying, and slightly amusing. You're only human, after all, only four years her senior, and exactly her height. 8:00. The timer on his desk cries out—out goes Natalia and her effortless writing, in comes Jason with his ripped spiral notebook and two-inch pencils.

The first third passes quickly. Jason's easier, thawing out immediately, his fingers telling you stories of action figures coming to life and international spies—unconventionally conventional, but engaging. Jason was gifted with a universal sense of humor—mocking, sarcastic, observant. The kind of person that PIXAR and Disney hires to make the whole world laugh. He's embarrassed, though, you can tell this. "It's not that great," he'll tell you, handing the paper across with anxious sidelong glances. "I mean, anything I can do—you can be blunt, you know, I'm good with all that. I really am." You laugh and reassure him, quietly wondering how long his writing will last. When will the pressure to pursue engineering and mathematics increase, when will it break him? When will studying medicine and money and football crowd out the words? His friends don't know he writes. His mother, who consults you sometimes, asks you what he writes about. Amazing things. She laughs, ever the skeptic, and says that boys his age shouldn't spend so much time writing, for God's sake. You'd always bite your tongue and choke out a small laugh, secretly wishing you could adopt Jason, maybe. Now, his face blooms when he sees the passages you've traced, the ones you've drawn smiley faces around. It's a practice your old English teacher did, that you liked—"You're very quote-worthy," I tell Jason. He has a never-ending bank full of one-liners stored in his attic.

8:45, he gathers up the sheets and books and trots out, throwing you a wave over his shoulder as he hurries out for football practice. Mrs. Golding ushers in her unhappy son, too large for his age, too sensitive for the world. You are careful with him, gentle, but he's smart, too, he's very clever, so he must not think you're pitying him. And you're not, hell, you admire him, the quirks of his writing. You were supposed to help him with his writing, recommend him books, but most of the 45 minutes is spent listening to his husky voice talk about characters like they exist. He loves them. You chime in on the books that you've read, but he always astounds you with the depth of his understanding—he knows them, you think, maybe better than their creators. Characters don't live in the pages. To him, they hover above his shoulder, hidden, until every Saturday morning when they can safely reveal themselves to me. It'll be an interesting girl who wins his heart, you think, who can best all the female protagonists in the world. At the last minute, he lays his writing, printed and formatted perfectly, on your desk, avoiding your eyes. Perhaps in time you can persuade him to take pride in his writing, but not yet. You know that he doesn't write for you the way he'd write for himself, but someday he'll show you what he truly thinks about.