The Words We Keep

I sneak out to meet Micah again a few nights later, armed with poster boards, tape, markers, and an idea. He follows me to the track, where I lay the boards on the ground and start writing my latest poem, a line on each poster.

Be someone different.

Someone better.

Micah watches for a minute and then gets to work on his own poster board. He draws a man, a smoky whisper of a being, all black strokes and billowy form being stripped away into nothing. Then we set up the hurdles on the track, evenly spaced all the way around, and on each one we hang a poster board.

Micah reads the last line of my poem out loud, “Someone who isn’t all wrong.”

“It occurs to me”—he pauses while ripping a piece of tape with his teeth to stick the poster on the hurdle—“that there are two Lilys. The Lily who writes these poems, and the one you want people to see.”

Uh-oh.

Here it comes,

the you’re-crazy-and-I-know-it conversation.

Frankly, I judge him for not saying it earlier. It’s been a week since he saw my bathroom-stall poem, and he hasn’t run away screaming or done any of the things I’d expect someone to do after getting a glimpse into the chaos of my mind.

“This from the king of enigmatic double lives,” I say, deflecting about as hard as I can. Micah looks at me through the dark, opening his arms wide.

“I’m an open book. All you have to do is ask.”

“Okay,” I say, thinking about the rumors on the Underground about his expulsion from his past school. “Where did you get your scar?”

“Playing catch with my dad as a kid. Baseball broke the skin, and it kept busting open so many times, my eyebrow never quite grew back.” He walks toward me in the dark. “But that’s not really what you want to know, is it?

“You want to know if the rumors are true. If I’m the guy they say I am. The kind of guy who could hurt someone.” He’s within a foot of me now. “What do you think?”

I remember how he looked when Damon soaked his sketch pad. The darkness in Micah’s eyes. Damon definitely deserved to get hit, but Micah stopped.

“Honestly?” I say. “Jury’s still out.”

“Well, I eagerly await the verdict.” Micah smiles. “And the answer to the question you didn’t actually ask is yes, I am that kind of guy. Or at least I used to be. For a long time, maybe even since my dad died, my depression didn’t exactly look like depression. It looked a lot like me being pissed off at the world. And this kid at my old school said something about my dad, and I just—lost it.”

Through the dark, I can see the outline of him, the bright socks and T-shirt with a big yellow smiley face on it. This is not a boy with anger issues.

“So when did you go from that guy to the one who subscribes to the dorky-sock-of-the-month club and idolizes a make-love-not-war icon like Bob Ross?”

“I told you, when you get to the point where dying seems like the answer, you have two choices: change or fade away. I chose to change.” He looks down at his legs, at the zebras on the bright green fabric. “And the socks? I guess they help me remember I’m still here. Living out loud. Still screaming into the void.” Micah holds up his poster board, eyeing the smoke man fading into nothing. “Sometimes, though, the void still wins.

“Plus,” he continues, “living out loud has the extra awesome benefit of pissing off people like Damon. People don’t like unpredictable. They want to put you in a box. I’m the depressed kid. You’re the A-plus student. It makes people nervous when you’re not what you’re supposed to be.”

I read my words that loop around the track. The loop I’ve run a million times. Always pushing to be the best. Because that’s what I’m supposed to be. That’s my box.

“So is that the point of the Hundred Acre Wood? Bears and pigs and tigers who don’t fit into boxes. A bunch of weirdos against the world?”

Micah shakes his head and laughs. “Keep guessing.”

He tapes his drawing to the final hurdle and then lies down in the grass next to the track, his hands behind his head as he stares up at the night sky. I lie next to him, inhaling the sweet scent of the April orange blossoms. Without the sun, the night air has a nip, and when I shiver, Micah scoots closer.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he says. “Just don’t want my partner freezing to death before our project’s done. Now your turn. Why the two Lilys?”

I don’t know if it’s the obscurity of the night or the track where I’ve spent so much time chasing a better time—a better me—but I don’t stop the words.

“Because I’m afraid,” I start. “Of losing control. Of becoming—”

“Like Alice?”

I nod, ashamed.

“There are worse people to become,” he says.

I pick at a blade of grass on the field.

“I just—I just don’t need people knowing about the monsters in my head.”

He leans up on one elbow, giving me the same look as on the cliff, the one that makes it hard to remember that I have no time for boys.

He taps my leg with his foot. “I know, and I’m kind of okay with you.”

“Yeah, but you’re different.”

His smile pierces through the dark as it spreads across his face.

“Oh my gosh. Stop throwing yourself at me,” he says. “What part of just partners do you not understand?”

I kick him lightly in the shin, and Micah laughs, a rich, genuine sound that fills the empty track. We pick up our supplies and leave the field, walking over our sidewalk chalk art. My words and his monsters are smudged and fading. He pulls his bike upright and nods toward the handlebars. I hop on, and he starts toward my house.

“I go to this therapy group a couple times a month,” he says while we ride. “Just some Fairview friends and indigestible refreshments, but you could come. If you want.”

“You think I need therapy?”

“I think everybody needs therapy.”

I turn my head to look at him in the dark. “Because I’m a head case.”

“No, I just—”

“You’re just ruining guerrilla poetry with this therapy talk, is what you’re doing.” The last thing I need right now is therapy. Someone with a degree on the wall diagnoses you, and suddenly that’s all you are anymore. One more box, one more label. “I am not about to lie on some overpaid therapist’s couch while looking at inkblots that totally are all penises, but you can’t say they’re penises or you’ll be diagnosed as a grade-A sicko who wants to murder puppies or whatever.”

“Wow. So that’s a no to therapy. But you should talk to someone. What about Alice?”

“Told you—not gonna happen,” I say. Stick to your life, and I’ll stick to mine, she said.

“Still shutting you out?”

We’re almost to my house, and Micah pulls over to let me off.

“And sneaking out at night. Ignoring me. So can you please just drop this?”

“Yes.”

“Thank y—”

“In exchange,” he continues, “for an evening of your time.”

I cross my arms, trying to figure him out.

“Do you ask all your project partners out on dates?”

“I’m officially horrified that you think I’m capable of something so conventional.” He starts pedaling away into the night but yells back at me. “Tomorrow. Pick you up at seven!”

The Ridgeline Underground

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The guerrilla poet strikes again! The track this time. Anyone know who it is??

72 comments

No idea. But I love it!

Wish I’d thought of it

The drawing kind of looks like something I saw on that Micah kid’s page

Ummm…his partner is Lily Larkin

LOL never mind. She’s about as deep as a kiddie pool. Maybe one of his friends does the poems.

That guy has friends?