Chapter 7: Chapter Seven
Thursday, October 21st
Creative writing club meeting
“Any comments on ‘Homecoming Havoc’?” Dr. Draper asks after she finishes reading my story, but nobody knows I wrote it. She’s using something called a ‘blind read’. I don’t blink or twitch.
She glances at the wall of silence. None of these people knew Caitlin, and none know me well enough to realize this is anything but fiction. I changed her name to Autumn, probably like she’s changed her name to some nasty porn name.
“Anyone?” Dr. Draper asks. Her idea for the ‘blind read’ was that nobody would feel embarrassed to talk for fear of offending a friend if they didn’t know who wrote the piece. Only a few of us handed in anything, and just one person volunteered to skip the blind reading and share his work aloud. Josh Brown. His reading was supposed to last five minutes. He used fifteen. When Josh started to read, it was as if the party host had entered the room as every eye turned to him.
His new story, ‘Searching for a Heart’, was about a smart, sensitive-type boy falling in love with a beautiful, mysterious girl. The boy’s obsessed with first lines of novels and uses them in conversation. His story was a green light for compliments, but the color changed to red as Dr. Draper asked for comments about ‘Homecoming Havoc’. If a story falls in the woods and no one—
Finally, Kirk speaks up to comment on my story. That doesn’t surprise, but does worry me. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and always has to be first with his normally negative opinion. Once again, he’s true to form, saying about my story that, “The writing needs sharpening. It’s too heavy-handed.”
As Kirk’s speaking, I notice how he’s looking around the room, trying to catch the eye of the writer he’s trashing, but I’m stone facing it. Some bullies need to see the terror. Instead, I’m yawning. Next to comment is Candy Tanner with her monotone voice. I can’t see past her fake blondeness and real blandness. She’s dull and her web comics she brags about all the time are just dreadful. “I wouldn’t say heavy-handed, more like ham-fisted,” she cuts.
I pretend to listen as Dr. Draper reads the next piece, but I’m not that strong. I collapse into myself and try staring at my black Chucks to avoid Josh’s emerald eyes, but I can’t look away. Josh is holding Charlotte’s hand with one hand, the other strokes his soul patch as if he was deep in thought. With his hipster-thin glasses, and dark green clothes—because black would be too cliché—he looks like Johnny Depp, the dream lover of emo, Goth and nerd-proud girls. Looking around, most girls in this club fall into those groups. All the poems Dr. Draper read were about roses, razor blades and romantic vampires. These girls all loved Josh’s story, using words like ‘charming’ and ‘delightful’. He’s got his clique—or harem—in his corner.
The only girl who didn’t say anything about Josh’s story was Gabrielle Gibson. It’s odd she’s here. I’d pegged her as a ball-bouncing blockhead, not a writer. She wears white Chucks, a Detroit Shock T-shirt and an uncomfortable expression. She’s out of place in this club, but that’s normal for her at FHS. There are not many six-foot-tall black girls in the ‘burbs and none in this club.
Dr. Draper reminds us of the next meeting and encourages us to keep writing. Despite the negative reaction, I’m going to stay with this story. Maybe if I write about Caitlin’s past, I’ll find clues to locate her in the present. Since I don’t have access to a time machine, I can’t change her history, but I need to better understand it.
I’m starting to exit when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see Gabrielle.
“Carson, do you remember me?” she asks in a tiny voice for someone so tall.
“Sure,” I lie. This is the second time I’ve ever spoken to her that I recall. I interviewed her last year for that story, but I didn’t bother this year. Caitlin’s body work is making me brain damaged.
“Do you remember what you wrote about me last year?” she says, a little bit louder.
“Right, about you maybe being all-state in three sports. Did you like it?”
“You called me The Great Gabby.” She’s looking at the floor, not me.
“You’re a great athlete,” I lie. I never saw her play since I don’t do girls’ sports. It just sounded like a cool nickname. By reputation, though, she’s one of the best female athletes in school. “I was trying to impress readers of the sports page and fellow F. Scott Fitzgerald fans.”
“Well, I think you’re a great writer,” she says. “I liked your story.”
“Randall said so, too.” Unlike Caitlin, who lived for compliments, they embarrass me.
“Not the story in the paper about me,” she says, but I respond with a blank stare at her interest. “The one about the girl Autumn that Dr. Draper just read. You wrote that, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” I mumble, as I stare down at her Chucks. Her feet are almost as big as mine.
“They were wrong. It was a good story,” she says. “But I hope it has a happy ending.”
I pause, but then say, “That’s out of a writer’s control. It’s where the story goes.”
“Make sure Autumn gets a second chance.”
I look up and she’s staring at me, hard.
“But Great Gabby, Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives.”
“Then maybe Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong,” she says with a dark scowl that melts quickly into the brightest smile. “Carson, doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance?”