(C) 2010 by rmsl 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

Ophelia’s Gamble

Cory’s friends were late. They weren’t really his friends, but two brothers who lived on his street that his mother made him drive home. Neither one was old enough to drive yet and their parents couldn’t afford the busing because they lived two-point-five miles from the school. You had to live two-point-seven miles from Cranwood High to qualify for the free service. He sat in his ’74, reading Beowulf. At least this gave him time to do his homework.

He picked up the reading list for his English class. Shakespeare. He knew he would have to read it this year, but he could never understand it. He tried. Actually, he had a hard time interrupting other authors as well. His words flooded from his head to his pencil, but the words of others occasionally confused him. Especially Shakespeare’s how art thous and hitheros. Maybe it was because he had so much rolling around in his head? That girl reading Hamlet must have been trying to show off. Cory didn’t think anyone understood Shakespeare let alone chose to read it on their own.

“Freshman girls are so silly,” said Bobby as he opened the door to Cory’s car. “I don’t know why you would ever wanna date one.”

“Dude, you got Kelly. I need a homecoming date. It’s more fun to break in new girls than pretending with girls who already know you. Aren’t you sick of looking at that girl yet? A year and half? Wow,” answered Kevin.

Cory watched as Kelly lifted her hand, hatred in her eyes, to slap Kevin in the back of the head. Bobby saved him.

“Dude, she’s in the car. You don’t mind, Core, right?”

Cory shifted his books back into his bag. He grunted, pulling out of the school parking lot. Kelly only lived ten minutes out of the way, why would it bother him to take her home too? He felt like an unpaid taxi service.

He dropped each of them off at their houses and then made his way home. He closed the screen door behind him, throwing his bags on the kitchen floor. His parents wouldn’t be home until six so he had the house to himself for a couple of hours. He pulled out his journal. He had to search the throw-everything-into drawer next to the sink for a pencil. He poured himself a cup of coffee, sugar and cream, and sat down in his dad’s chair.

Writing to him was like an ADHD kid taking his Ritalin. It calmed his chaotic thoughts and simmered his emotions into coherent sentences and phrases. Boy, did he need to write. Poems mostly, but he wrote a story now and then.

Cory sighed as the pencil scribbled on a blank page of his journal. If he let Jason read it, he would love it. No criticisms. No help. He stopped showing him his poems as frequently as he did in the past, but he made sure to feed him one every now and then. He would have loved to show Kym his poems but after what happened in eighth grade it did not seem right, like he was trying to get her to like him the same way another guy had. He kept the original of that first poem taped to the inside of every new journal he kept, though. Besides, he knew what she would say if he told her he wanted to be a poet if baseball didn’t work out for him: “Cory, that’s sweet and all but what are you gonna do all day, sit and drink coffee with a beret on your head and pretend to be sad all the time?” she would ask. “Are there really people who do that?”

The funny thing was that anybody who read his poems, teachers or family members, didn’t think they were good. Cory just figured they didn’t understand them. His mom and dad thought it was silly for him to sit around writing all the time. “Go out. Leave. Find a girl friend,” his brother would say to him when mom made him go and get him out of his room for dinner. Honestly, the only one whose opinion ever mattered to him was Chelsea Blaketelli’s.

Chelsea was one of his favorite memories. He met her the summer after eighth grade at their campgrounds. She gave him the best compliment he had ever received. Chelsea had long, curly black hair and dark brown eyes. She was as tall as Cory and wore glasses that left tan lines above her ears. She was super skinny, toothpick legs and noodle arms, but she had to wear a real bra by the age of twelve. He didn’t remember her as being beautiful anymore, but for that summer she was the most gorgeous girl he knew. He had tried to get over Kym that summer, but it didn’t work.

Chelsea was the only other girl he had ever written a poem to. It wasn’t much better than the first one to Kym, and it didn’t result in a kiss or date from Chelsea, but it was on that swing set Cory decided to become a writer. She read the poem, swinging back and forth, bare feet scraping the dirt patch under the swing set. When she was finished she looked up at him and said: “You should be a writer.” He knew it sounded melodramatic, like a young musician getting his first guitar from his idol or something, but that moment stuck with Cory. He had never thought much of his writing before that day.

It wasn’t until the following summer that it had any impact on him, though. The first weekend out camping he ran into Matt, Chelsea’s younger brother. By this time Cory left Chelsea’s crush far behind him and was dreaming of Kym again. During their game of pool in the game room, Chelsea’s name came up. Matt told him that she memorized his poem and recited it to everyone she met. It shocked him a little, someone remembering it when she didn’t like him like that, but it sparked something in Cory. That night in the tent, he stayed up all night because his mind would not stop running…

“Wake up. Wake up, you idiot!”

Cory opened his eyes. His brother stood next to him, scowling. “Dad’s gonna be pissed. You didn’t cut the grass. If he knew you just sat around all afternoon—”

Cory shot out of the chair. It was 5:45 and his dad came home at six.

Cory listened as Kym read her poem in front of the class. They had finished Beowulf a few days ago and were now on to the Renaissance. The first few weeks of school had been uneventful. He worked out in the morning, drove Bobby and Kevin and Kelly home, and tried to write before his parents came home and made him do his chores. But now it was the poetry section of their literature anthology and Cory felt the excitement bubbling inside of his stomach every time he walked into first period.

Their homework last night was to write a four-stanza poem about anything they wanted. Kym’s poem was cute but she forced a couple of rhymes and tried to match a long a sound with a short o sound. Student’s giggled while she read it but she laughed too when she sat down. Cory didn’t care how bad the poem was because he would’ve enjoyed listening to her recite the phone book. He met her eyes when she walked back to her seat and mouthed, “It was good.” She gave an appreciative smile and sighed.

“We have time for one more. How about…” Mr. Maragelloto said, scanning the turned down heads and eyes trying to avoid his, “…Mr. Sutton?”

Cory walked to the front of the class. Joey called out “flower child” disguised as a cough. The class laughed. Cory couldn’t understand why Joey was in this class, let alone any of the other honors classes he was in. But he was perfect. He dated Kym.

Mr. Maragelloto quieted the class down. Cory unfolded his paper and read his poem. It was about an old baseball player describing how the field was so beautiful to him and how he would never reach the major leagues now that his career was coming to an end. He used assonance and consonance beautifully in each line and colored imagery of the green grass contrasting the brown dirt and white, chalky lime. When he looked up from his paper during stanza breaks he made eye contact with Kym. She smiled at him each time. He wondered if she knew the poem was actually a metaphor for their relationship.

Most of the students doodled in a notebook or whispered to someone next to them. But Kym and Jason listened. During the last stanza, Cory felt another set of eyes on him. The feeling was so bothersome that he had to glance up. It was the Hamlet reader. Her eyes were large and so was her mouth, but she wasn’t smiling or laughing. Her stare was constant and it made Cory feel uncomfortable. He rushed through the last few lines as if someone pushed the fast forward button on a DVD player. The bell rang.

Students rushed out of the room. Cory felt crushed. Another moment with Kym wasted. Jason brought him his literature anthology and they walked out together to second period.

Cory did not even notice he left his journal on his desk.

It wasn’t until the middle of third period Cory realized his journal was gone. His stomach fell to his feet. Don’t panic. It had to be in one of the classes. A teacher probably picked it up.

He had been so depressed and confused about what happened in English class that he zoned through second period. No one’s going to care about his journal. It only mattered to him.

Cory couldn’t wait until lunchtime so he could go and ask his teachers if they found it. Jason noticed something wasn’t right and asked him about four times what was wrong. Finally Cory just told him that he was tired, working out in the morning and all. Jason accepted the answer. Jason would’ve been the only other person who cared about the journal. But Cory couldn’t tell him he lost it. Jason would go around asking everybody if they had seen it and Cory didn’t need any more drama in his life or another reason for somebody to laugh at him. So he waited. Until lunchtime. Maybe Kym found it?

As Mrs. Green told him that she didn’t find any books left after class, Cory felt faint. Mr. Maragelloto didn’t find anything either. His heart zigzagged inside his chest like a caged bird spooked by a cat. He walked to the lunchroom feeling like he was in a tunnel and everything around him was dark. Who would take it? It wasn’t Jason because he would’ve given it to him right away. Did he wish Kym had found it? Maybe his secret would come out. What would happen then? It sickened and excited him at the same time.

When the last bell of the day sounded, Cory almost couldn’t get out of his seat. He wandered the hallways of the school as if his journal would just be lying on the ugly colored tiles waiting for him. He didn’t care if he kept Bobby and Kevin waiting. He realized he was being silly and that his journal was gone so he left through the front doors in search of his car. He didn’t remember where he parked it.

“If you keep wimpin’ out,” a voice said, “no one will ever know who you’re writing about.”

Cory looked up from the steps and almost tripped. The Hamlet girl was sitting on a step about twenty feet away with his journal opened on her lap. She had long, straight brown hair that reached far below the middle of her back. She was tall as well, probably as tall as Cory. She had bulging brown eyes and a large, oval mouth. She wore green shorts that went past her knees, cut from a pair of sweat pants, and a yellow shirt with arm length sleeves. She was plain and more of a geek than he was. She stared at Cory the same way she did during class. He shivered.

“Here,” she said, handing his journal to him. “I found it in English class.”

Cory couldn’t believe he had his journal back.

“I didn’t actually find it. I sort of took it. I wanted to read more of your stuff.”

Cory leafed through it as if to make sure none of the words were stolen from its pages.

“You read it?”

“Yeah, well most of it. You’re really good. I can’t write like that. But you need to open yourself up more. Let people feel with you.” She took the journal out of his hands and searched through it. “This one’s my favorite.”

Cory snatched the journal back and stuffed it into his bag. He was too shocked about the way this girl acted to even be mad.

“I was thinking maybe we could get together some time and you could read my stuff,” she said.

The nerve of this girl! He had never really felt hatred towards someone before, even Joey, but this girl was about to make history.

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on. I’m just trying to make friends. I told myself I would this year.”

“You have a pretty sick way of making friends. Stealing is always a good start.”

She smiled politely like Cory had just told a bad joke and she wanted to be nice. She came over to him and grabbed his hand, shaking it up and down. “I’m Leigh Ann Reynolds. But you can just call me Leigh. How’s that?”

Cory even hated how her voice sounded and her name made her sound like a man. He glared at her and walked past.

“Hey, does that girl in English class know you like her?”

He stopped and turned around. “What?”

“That girl in class. The one you wrote your poem about.”

How could she know that? For a moment Cory forgot his anger, surprised someone could interrupt his poem.

“It was wonderful how you compared her love to the major leagues. And how beautifully you described the field, it was obvious you were writing about her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I gotta go.”

From his car he watched her walk around the building and then he pulled away.