“Other than the”—he bobs his head back and forth as hehums, searching for the correct word—“intenselook in your eyes when you had about a million questions for Dr.B?”
The emphasis he places on the wordintensemakes it clear he wants to use a less flattering one.
He motions to my open laptop. “Is that what you’re working on?” Even slouched like he is now, with his arms outstretched across the back of the bench and one ankle resting on his knee, he looks tall. Long. His stature is highlighted by his extremely skinny jeans and his black Dr.Martens; he’s dressed like he doesn’t realize that emo is going out of style.
I should be doing math homework, but he’s right. Apparently, my “intense” expression has made me an open book. “Yes. Are you going to enter?”
“Doubt it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs. “It’s not really my thing.”
“Then why are you in a creative writing class?”
He tips his head back like he’s going to find the answer to myverydifficult question in the palm tree. Finally, his eyes return to mine; I squint but can’t figure out what colors they are. Long eyelashes, though. Lucky bastard. He shrugs again. “It seemed more interesting than mapping out sentence trees in Grammar 101.”
I think about the way I set my alarm for seven a.m. on the morning registration opened to make sure I got a spot in this class; meanwhile, he shows up with a Top Flight notebook that is probably filled with cartoon penises and swear words and whatever boys doodle instead of the M.A.S.H. game. Angsty song lyrics, maybe. The coolS.Who knows how the minds of human boys work?I don’t, which is why I rarely write humans.
His notebook should have been my first clue that we are not the same. If this guy isn’t committed enough to take proper notes, he probably didn’t spend his high school years writing half-finished novels and bad poetry in his bedroom.
“I’m going to be a writer when I graduate, and I still don’t want to map out sentence trees,” I tell him. Sentence trees are boring.Stories, however, are fun. Stories are an escape. Stories are what I want to spend the rest of my life creating. “I’m Mars, by the way.”
“Like the planet?”
I roll my eyes. Everyone thinks they’re the first one to say that. “It’s short for Margot.”
“I’m West.”
I cock my head to the side. “Like Mae?”
“Who?”
“American actress and sex symbol Mae West.”
He laughs in surprise. “Yeah. I guess so. Just like Mae.”
I brighten. Slacker or not (and guyliner aside), I like him.
He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “What are you going to write when you graduate?”
“Novels. And I don’t know why I said it like that. I’m not waiting for graduation.”
“What kind of novels?”
I sit up straighter. “Oh. I don’t know. Just…whatever.”
He sits back. “Uh-huh.”
He doesn’t believe me.
The next few minutes are uncomfortably silent as I go back to work. My short story—about two traveling con artists who deal in magical potions and eventually fall in love—is on the screen in front of me. It’s nearly impossible to write, though, because West just sits there, coloring the fingernails of hisright hand with black Sharpie. (I’m impressed with how neat it is until I realize he’s probably just left-handed.) It feels rude to put my headphones back on and ignore him, not to mention that I don’t have a single friend in Tucson. At least Mae West here is willing to pretend he’s interested in my writing.
“Fantasy,” I say as the chemical scent of Sharpie stings my nostrils. He’s going to read my story eventually—the entire class will—so there’s no use pretending it’s something it’s not. “And romance.”
He puts the cap back on his marker with two and a half nails to go (slacker) and leans forward again. “LikeTwilight?”
Yes. And also no. My stories are second-world fantasy, not contemporary paranormal. But the blueprint is there. And look, it’s not like I’m embarrassed. I like what I like, and millions of other people like it, too. YA books kick ass. They’refun. And while there are some literary classics I’ll ride or die for, I still harbor emotional trauma from trying to get throughHeart of Darknesswithout dropping dead of sheer boredom.
