“Get out of my room!”
With some grumbling (and pulling up their pants), the guys stumbled out.Red Sox kept giving me death glares.I hadn’t seen either of them before.Maybe Hugo had issued an open invitation to everyone in Providence.
I shut the door and lay on the bed, but the music continued to pound, and even here, in our room, I felt like there were bodies pressed up against me.Finally, I opened the window and stepped out onto the little Juliet balcony.Stepped out was a loose term.It was more like crouching on the sill, my feet squeezed onto the narrow platform.The air was cold and smelled like the dumpster and the alley and snow that probably wouldn’t fall.
I didn’t hear Hugo until he was settling onto the sill next to me.Rum.Rummy breath warm on the side of my face.
“You’re missing your party,” he murmured, one arm sliding around my waist.
My party, I thought.
“Are you having a good time?”
His head settled onto my shoulder, and it made me think of that expression on his face earlier.Sometimes, in some ways, he was still such a kid.The question, with its earnestness, was just another example.
“I’m having a great time,” I whispered as I stroked his hair.“Thank you for throwing me a party.”
2
Teaching creative writing to college freshmen—particularly to freshmen who were already convinced of their own genius—had its ups and downs.On the one hand, these college freshmen were, undoubtedly, smart and determined and high achievers.On the other hand, they knew it.Which meant, in the span of an hour, a class could go from argumentative to devastated to elated and back to argumentative again.Especially when we did critiques—their egos were on the line, after all, and everyone had something to prove.
And then, every once in a while, I got a student like Andrew Ferreira.He was smart.And on top of being smart, he was a good writer—especially for an eighteen-year-old.He was polite and responsible and friendly.He had a sense of humor, and he managed to keep it even when people were ripping his work apart.The first time we’d done critiques, I’d said something about a choice made by one of his characters.Something like,That decision really turned me off.And without missing a beat, he’d murmured,Then I definitely won’t do that again.Everyone had broken up laughing, and Andrew had flashed a big, white smile.
We were doing critiques again when my phone buzzed.I glanced down to where it lay in my bag and saw a message from Hugo.
“—I understand what you’re trying to do,” Roderick was saying, “but as cat owner myself, I just didn’t believe a real person would act that way—”
My phone buzzed again.Another message from Hugo.
“—this story would be better if he kissed the cat directly on the mouth and then told the cat that he loved him and that he’d never leave him and that the cat was his special little guy and that he couldn’t trust anyone else in the whole world—”
I managed not to say,Good Lord,out loud, but I thought anyone who glanced my way would see it in billboard letters above my head.Fortunately, Roderick’s time was almost up, and we’d move on to someone with, uh, a slightly different focus to their feedback.
But my phone buzzed again.
The student next to me, Stephanie, glanced over.She didn’t make a face or anything, but my face still turned red.I grabbed my phone.I caught a quick glimpse of the messages:
Hey babe, how’s your day going?
Where are you?
What are you doing?
And then it vibrated again:Hey, just checking in.
I turned off my phone.When I looked up, the classroom was silent, and every set of eyes was staring at me.
A prickling rash of heat.Flop sweat.“Sorry about that,” I said.
Andrew gave me a quick grin and a roll of his eyes.
I smiled in spite of myself.“I think Cameron was next.”
Things went smoothly after that, and before long, the bell rang.As students filed out, I packed up my papers.
“Hey, Mr.Dane.”
“Hay is for horses, Andrew.”I slung my bag over one shoulder.“And you know you can call me Dash.”
