Taking Off Read online

  He looked at me. “How old do you think I am?”

  I laughed. “If I guess right, can I put my gloves back on?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You may.”

  I could feel my lips twitching as I tried to stop the smile. “I’d say … twenty-five.”

  He gave me a slow smile. “Your hands must stay naked.”

  Girls behind me giggled. The boys were probably scowling. Mr. Williams was an outrageous flirt, but nothing beyond that. He had a long-haired girlfriend working on her master’s at the University of Texas. I’d seen her at school a few times, visiting him, calling him “Marty.”

  She always had a vintage bag thrown over her shoulder. It was well worn and all about a life I didn’t have. That bag had probably grooved to Beat poets on the decline and dozed in the sun on a blanket at Woodstock.

  After class, Mr. Williams asked me to stop by his desk. A friend wiggled her eyebrows at me.

  “Harmless,” I whispered as she walked past.

  “Yes, Mr. Williams?” I asked, pulling on my gloves.

  He handed me a paper. “Excellent essay, Annie.”

  I nodded at the A. “You only read mine?” I asked, confused by the stack of papers on his desk. No grade on the one at the top of the pile.

  “I started with yours and didn’t want to ruin my good mood.”

  I laughed, flattered. “Okay. Thanks,” I said, holding up the paper.

  “Your argument about Lear is solid, that Lear’s epiphany has value despite his death.”

  “I think I read that somewhere, Mr. Williams. It’s not my original thought.”

  “But you took it beyond the more traditional argument of Christian redemption. You got it, Annie, and argued it well for a …” He stopped and looked at me.

  I laughed. “For a teenager?” His praise made me feel a little awkward, so I tried to cover it up with teasing: “And how many years has it been since you were an ignorant teenager?”

  All of a sudden he looked very serious. I thought I’d gone too far in our playful bantering.

  “Annie,” he said. “Have you thought about where you’re applying?”

  “What? For college?”

  “Yes, for college. I want to write you a recommendation.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Williams.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  I pulled at a piece of yarn. I wanted some new gloves. Maybe red ones. A brilliant red. I wondered if I had enough money for yarn. A string of words popped into my head: Red yarn, color, craving color, this is going nowhere. Like me.

  Was this normal? Did normal people have random words and phrases floating around up there, interrupting them when they were trying to have normal conversations?

  “Annie,” he said again.

  “My mom doesn’t have money for college, Mr. Williams.”

  “You’re going to hang out in Clear Lake at the movie theater all your life?”

  “Hey, how did you know I worked at the theater?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you there.”

  “I want you to think about college.”

  “What? You want me to be an English teacher?”

  “What do you want to be, Annie?”

  I have an impractical dream. One that makes no money. One I’m so horrible at, it only makes me cry and wad up paper after paper.

  I shrugged, hearing my grandma’s voice in my head telling me not to shrug. “I like the theater.”

  “An actress?” he asked, looking puzzled.

  “No. I mean, the movie theater. I like selling popcorn.”

  “And you want to work there the rest of your life?”

  “I like movies a lot,” I said in a teasing voice.

  “Get out of here, Annie.”

  “Yes, Mr. Williams.”

  “Annie?” he asked.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand.

  Mark was waiting for me out in the crowded hall. He threw his arm around my shoulders when I came out the door. “What did he want?”

  I shrugged.

  A girl glanced at us, though probably more at Mark. Mark was only about five feet eleven, not nearly as tall as the rest of the basketball team. But his maker had put every inch of his body to good use. He looked and moved like an athlete. He wasn’t cocky, but he did act like he was comfortable in his body, that it fit him perfectly.

  He pulled me out of the path of a wild but friendly tussle between two freshmen. “He talks to you too much.”

  I laughed. “Are you jealous of Mr. Williams? Come on.”

  “He’s too interested in you.”

  This made me secretly happy. And I was comfortable with secrets. “He wants me to go to college.”

  Mark pulled me to him, kissing the top of my head. “You wouldn’t leave me, right?” He did smell good, a mixture of soap and just him, so familiar, like home should be.

  But lately, I was feeling like something wasn’t right—about us. I slipped away from his grasp to open my locker.

  He leaned beside me, peeking at me from behind the open door. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I have a paper,” I said. He swung the door back and forth, pulling my hair every now and then. “Come on, Mark.” I tried not to show him just how much this irritated me.

  “I miss you, Annie.”

  His eyes were brown and quite beautiful, but I wouldn’t get drawn in. “We’ve been together almost every day for two years.” I stared at the books in my locker. Where was I going? What was my next class? “I can’t tonight.”

  He closed the door of the locker and gently pushed my back against the lockers, his face close. “You look so beautiful today.”

  Ah, he felt good, so warm and strong against the length of me. I gave him a quick kiss, but saw Mr. Williams walking down the hall. He caught my eye and didn’t look away. But I did. I pushed Mark back a little. “Teacher to my left.” My cheeks felt warm.

  “Since when do you care about that?”

  I watched Mr. Williams’s back, glad he was gone. “I just don’t want the hassle,” I said, giving Mark a quick hug. Then I wriggled out of his arms. “Gotta go, Mark.” The bell rang. “Really have to go.” I turned away from his disappointed face and jogged to my next class, slipping in the door before the pad of pink slips was pulled out of the drawer.

  “You almost didn’t make it,” whispered Lea.

  I grinned. “But I did.”

  “Miss Porter.”

  Mrs. Moore was staring right at us. I cocked my head. I always thought her face had the shape of a hexagon. I wondered if math teachers ended up looking like geometrical figures, just as dog owners started looking like their pets.

  I started writing down equations I didn’t understand.

  CHAPTER 3

  I was nine when I realized that wanting to be a poet was best kept secret.

  I’d found poetry on a headstone in the cemetery next to my grandma Winnie’s house and was so taken with it. With one hand gripping the cool stone, I’d whispered the engraved words over and over, liking how they sounded, yearning to find the meaning created by the words, but not quite understanding. It seemed a wonderful mystery for a Sunday afternoon.

  Grandma said the poem was by Emily Dickinson, and I thought it was so nice of Miss Dickinson to write the poem for the woman who died. I asked my mom if that was what I could be when I grew up, a poet who found the words for someone’s life. She laughed. My aunt laughed. Then my cousins laughed. Mom said, “No, you can’t. Go play.”

  The doorbell rang, interrupting my reminiscing.

  “Could you get the door?” Mom yelled from her bedroom. “It’s probably Mark.”

  I put down my library book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. It was dark out. I had my pj’s on.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Annie? Are you getting that?”

  I threw on a jean jacket lying on my floor. “Got it,” I called out as I went down our short
hallway.

  It was Mark. He leaned in, his arm on the doorframe. “Wanna come out and play?” He grinned.

  I put my hand on his. “It’s late.”

  “I gave you time to finish your paper. You got it done, right?”

  “Yes. But now it’s late.”

  “Not even ten.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. No Mom. I thought I’d heard her on the phone. She was on the phone a lot lately. “We have school tomorrow.”

  “I have a present for you.”

  “For me?” I asked, my hand to my chest. Mark was always giving me little things: a key ring, flowers, a Swiss Army knife, a cassette, anything. He took my hand, opening it, placing a small red heart in the center of my palm.

  “For your charm bracelet,” he said.

  “Ooh, so pretty,” I said, caressing the metal and admiring the color. Mark knew I liked color. “Thank you.”

  “Come out and look at the stars with me, Annie.” He touched my cheek and gave me a gentle kiss. A surge of delight shot through me. He knew how to woo me.

  I put my heart in my pocket and let Mark lead me out onto the cool grass.

  My mom and dad and I had spent a lot of time in our yard watching the stars. Mom would spread out a blanket and the three of us would lie down on it, with me in the middle. Dad would show us Polaris and Venus, the constellations Orion and Cassiopeia, and tell us stories about them. Over the years, I’d listen to him, watching him point out the stars, and think I had the smartest father in the whole world.

  When my parents split up, something inside of me ripped open. I didn’t realize it at first because I was only eleven. But I carried around an empty feeling that seemed to stretch from the pit of my stomach to right behind my eyes.

  No one wanted to look at the stars anymore. But I did it anyway. It was hard at first, not so much because I was alone, but because I’d remember what it’d been like to have my mother on one side of me and my father on the other. Those first few nights, the sky felt as empty as what had opened up inside me.

  But the stars were beyond beautiful and held such promise. And they were constant. Then Mark came along and would look at the stars with me. That empty feeling inside me wasn’t completely gone, but his love had pushed it to a small corner of my heart. I loved him for that.

  He and I sat down cross-legged, looking at one another. He took my chin in his hand and gave me a slow, sweet kiss.

  I pulled back and grinned. “This is looking at the stars?”

  He laughed and fell backward onto the grass, with his arms out. I lay beside him, using his arm as a pillow. We looked up.

  We stared and stared, not saying anything for a few moments.

  “You know what Van Gogh said about the stars?” I asked him.

  “The painter?”

  “Yeah, I found a book of his letters the other day. He said: ‘For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.’ ” I turned my head to look over at Mark, tears pricking my eyes. “Isn’t that so lovely and true?”

  “It is,” he said, squeezing my shoulder, still looking up.

  Van Gogh saw so much in the sky.

  For me, the stars shone wonder and hope—the unknowable in an amazing night sky. A simple image, really: white twinkling lights against a background of deep black. But it was more than that. It was what it suggested. It showed us what was beyond us, but also what was inside of us. It reflected back our souls.

  I wished Van Gogh was beside me now. I couldn’t tell Mark the way I felt about the stars, but after reading Van Gogh’s letters, I thought the painter might understand. His words had made me feel less alone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Much nicer than the bus!” I said, slipping into the seat, welcoming my ride to school. “You are the best boyfriend.”

  Mark gave me a kiss, smiling and looking into my eyes for a moment. He grabbed my hand and backed out of the driveway.

  “It’s nice getting into a warm car on a cold morning,” I said, unbuttoning my coat.

  Mark smirked and shook his head. “It’s probably fifty-five degrees out, Annie.”

  “That’s cold!” I ignored him. He and I never agreed about the weather. “One more day until Friday, and then finally the weekend will be here. Yes!”

  “We’re early. Want a doughnut?”

  “Doughnuts and coffee!” I’d been drinking coffee since my grandmother had been sneaking it to me.

  The radio was on, the volume low, but I could still make out the song “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” coming out of the speakers. Mark switched to another station.

  “Hey! I like that,” I told him.

  “Since when have you liked the Beach Boys?” But he flipped the song back on. I started singing along to it. I had the most awful singing voice in the world. You know your boyfriend loves you when he lets you sing songs he doesn’t care for sung in an off-key voice, first thing in the morning.

  I belted out the chorus, glancing over at him with a smile.

  He laughed. “Remember when we used to talk about getting married and how we’d live in Hawaii and I’d surf and you’d read while I surfed?”

  “And we would work here and there for a little money?”

  “And just go from beach to beach, until we’d seen them all?”

  “And then we’d start all over again,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Hey,” I asked, pulling my stolen copy from my purse, “you want me to read to you from People magazine?”

  “Since when have you started carrying People around with you?”

  “This article about Christa McAuliffe is fascinating.”

  “It must be. You’ve been talking about her for days.”

  “Have I?” I asked. “You would like her, Mark. It says she’s interested in how ‘the common people lived through the ages.’ ” I looked up at him. “Are you listening?”

  “Hey, we’re here. What do you want?”

  We ended up getting two coffees and two dozen doughnut holes. Sugar and oil, almost as good as salt and oil, I thought. The doughnuts were warm and sweet, and the coffee was hot and milky and sweet. We’d finished the doughnuts off by the time we pulled into the school parking lot.

  Lea ran toward us as we walked toward the building. “I’ve been waiting for you two!” She broke our hands apart and got in the middle of us, throwing her arms around us both. She touched Mark’s cheek with her hand and he jumped back.

  “Get some gloves, woman. Make her some, Annie.”

  “No way,” I said, tugging at my own black ones. “She would just lose them.”

  “I would,” said Lea, nodding.

  “But you’re rich,” said Mark. “Your parents would buy you more.”

  Lea started hitting him on the shoulder.

  “Ow. Ow.”

  “Stop being that way!” Lea told him. “Stop it now!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?” asked Mark. “Want to be tickled?” He knew how ticklish I was; just the thought of it made my skin laugh somewhat madly.

  “No, no.” He reached across Lea and kissed me. His lips were sweet from the doughnut sugar.

  “Okay,” said Lea, “I’m gone.” She started walking backward. “My house, Saturday night, Annie?”

  “Yes!” I yelled as Lea ran off. I looked up at Mark and saw his face. Not again. “Mark, what’s wrong?”

  “You’re going to her house on Saturday?”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you Friday night. And all day Saturday.”

  “At work? You’ll see me at work?”

  “Mark—”

  “I gotta go, Annie.” And then he was gone, and I was staring at his back moving away.

  Ducked head. Hands in pockets. My jealous boy.

  I wouldn’t call him back. In a way, it was a relief not to have to argue with him. He was probably hurt Lea hadn’t invited him over too. Sometimes I felt torn between the two of them. When
the three of us were together, I couldn’t make either one of them happy.

  But a guilty thought needled at me. Mark hadn’t always been this insecure about us. It was partly my fault. Senior year was making me withdraw, not just from Mark, but from others too. My friends were looking to the future. And I wanted to cocoon in my house.

  I liked my little house, my life with Mom. I liked that my dad hung out there. It felt as if we were still together in a way.

  At least I was getting out of the house on Saturday to meet Christa McAuliffe. I had this feeling it was important for me to go. I wanted to know what kind of person went from teacher to teachernaut. I’d always seen teachers as practical people who wanted their feet on the ground.

  Of course I was nervous about meeting her. I didn’t think I had it in me to get strapped into a seat in a rocket to be hurled into space. It didn’t seem real. That was probably why all these conspiracy theorists thought the moon launch was faked. To them, that level of deceit was a more likely possibility.

  I walked slowly. I enjoyed the quiet of the parking lot now that most everyone was already inside, driven in by the cold and the lateness. The wind felt good. It was cold, but not bitterly so, and blew gently, like whispered tiptoes against my ears.

  I envied the wind: moving, but with stillness at its center. But of course, the wind couldn’t be moving and be still. So I wasn’t sure what I meant. Maybe that stillness was a sense of peace, or a certainty—stillness in purpose. I couldn’t find the right words. I’d try to capture the feeling in a few lines later.

  I didn’t tell anyone I wrote poems. People thought poetry was a waste of time. It was no longer popular, not practical, and to some, as elusive as a moon landing.

  Most likely, though, they’d think I didn’t have the talent. That was what I thought. Poetry was for the Walt Whitmans, the Ezra Pounds, the Marianne Moores—not for a regular girl living in Texas. One of the masses, one of the millions. You either were born with the gift or not.

  And there was something else too. A poet couldn’t keep herself at a distance from her own poetry—at least if her poems were to say something new. Van Gogh felt paintings came from a painter’s soul. I wondered if he’d felt he was leaving behind pieces of Vincent on each of his canvases.