Rising (5 page)

         
“Well, desire can encompass more than
the physical.
 
It might be other
desires—longings of the mind or passions of the heart.”

         
“Interesting,” said Mrs. Jaden,
smiling.
 
There was no response from the
rest of the class, but silence only encouraged our flamboyant teacher.
 
“Which would you prefer, Clara?”

         
Clara glanced warily around the room
at the many pairs of eyes bearing down on her, except for me.
 
I’d remained very still with my eyes fixed
forward, pretending I wasn’t that interested.
 
I waited anxiously for her reply.

         
“Fire.”

         
“Yeah, baby,” howled Steven,
high-fiving his dorky friend Alex next to him.

         
“Settle, boys,” warned Mrs.
Jaden.
 
“Would you explain, please?”

         
“It seems,” began Clara hesitantly,
“it seems that Frost compares ice with hatred, which can kill just as easily as
passions.
 
I wouldn’t want to die from
hatred.”

         
I felt my own emotions mounting, and I
didn’t even know why.
 
I had taught myself
how to manage and control the feelings I felt coming from others, but I
constantly struggled with managing my own.
 
Mrs. Jaden made it a point to persuade her students to express their
inner feelings on a regular basis.
 
Somehow, this very topic made my blood rise.

         
“I would prefer ice,” I said abruptly
before I even knew that I would.
 
Now,
all eyes swiveled to me.

         
“Excellent.
 
Please go on,” said Mrs. Jaden, excited by
the debate.

         
“I just don’t see how being smothered
and burned by one’s emotions would be preferable to sleep.
 
I mean, I know that when people die from
freezing temperatures, they simply go to sleep and peacefully drift into
death.
 
Wouldn’t that be better than
actually burning to death?”

         
“Well, I think Frost is using these
terms metaphorically, not that you would actually die from burning or
freezing,” said Mrs. Jaden.

         
I looked at Clara, who had her bright
eyes fixed on me.
 
I could feel a redness
flush my neck.
 
She seemed not to hear or
notice Mrs. Jaden.

         
“I would prefer to live and die by my
passions than to turn cold with hatred,” she told me, holding my gaze.

         
“At least you would be in control of
yourself in the end, just as Seneca suggests,” I snapped back, gesturing to the
board but never taking my eyes from her.
 

         
“But, what kind of life would that be,
without passion?” she asked pointedly.

         
The last question lingered in the
air.
 
I had no response.
 
I was trying to cool my thoughts and
emotions. They had flared into a fury whenever Clara spoke to me, and I was
still trying to figure out how she could make my blood boil so easily.
 
The entire class seemed transfixed by our
heated exchange.

         
“Well,” said Mrs. Jaden, “that is the
perfect place for us to jump off to our first Anglo-Saxon poem.
 
Now, I know many of you were probably
wondering why I would assign the reading of an American poem for homework when
we are beginning British Literature.”

         
“Actually, Mrs. Jaden,” said Steven,
“I was wondering why we have to read a poem at all.”

         
His entourage of brainless followers
laughed again.
 
Mrs. Jaden ignored him,
but shot an icy glare down the aisle.

         
“The
reason
I wanted you to read Frost’s poem was so that we might have
an intellectual compare and contrast discussion with the Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The
Seafarer.’
 
Does anyone know who the
Anglo-Saxons were?”

         
Although I knew exactly who they were,
having paid close attention to Mr. Hampton’s ramblings about the fierce
Norsemen the first week of school, I was still regaining control of my
overheated temper and couldn’t answer.
 
Derek’s hand shot up.

         
“Um, they were the pagans who
conquered Britain, establishing their new country as Angle-land, later becoming
England,” pronounced Derek in his overly arrogant way.

         
“Very good, Derek.
 
Close enough.
 
The Angles and Saxons were both a warlike people from lands now known as
Denmark and Germany, who conquered the British Isle.
 
We know them mostly by the name of Vikings.”

         
“Awesome!
 
Is this poem about killing and pillaging?”
asked Steven, proclaiming himself an idiot—again.

         
“Actually, this poem is an
elegy
, which is a sorrowful poem about
the good old days of this seafarer.
 
And,
it is set after Christianity has taken root in England.”

Steven slumped back in his seat, completely
distraught that there would be no blood and guts.
 
Poor guy.

“ ‘The Seafarer,’ which is anonymous, tells us
the sad tale of a wandering Viking sailor.
 
So, let’s read.”

         
Mrs. Jaden pointed to the page number
posted on the board and began to read in a melodious rhythm.
 
I became entranced by the words and the grief
in the sailor’s heart as he wandered alone on the sea.
 
Steven and his crew began to nod off since
the poem was more than a page long and their attention span was about the same
as a five-year-
old’s
.
 
There was something inexplicably stirring about this poem, and I
couldn’t figure out why.
 
It felt so
familiar, like a distant memory.
 
I
became aware of the sudden increasing of Clara’s dizzying sensation passing
over me again.
 
I glanced sideways.
 
She was engrossed in the poem. I couldn’t
take my eyes off of her.
 
I could hear
Mrs. Jaden’s muffled voice as my thoughts grew more distant.
 
What had compelled me to speak so violently
toward this girl?
 
Was it that I couldn’t
control whatever wicked vibe this was she had about her?
 
I wasn’t an irrational person, so why take it
out on her?
 
I’m sure she had no idea
what effect she was having on me just sitting there so properly, answering all
of Mrs. Jaden’s questions.
 
That’s when I
finally tuned in and listened to what she was saying.

         
“The Viking sailor
knows that no matter how much he longs for the warmth of
home, it is the icy call of the sea that is his true home.”

“Absolutely right, Clara,” beamed Mrs. Jaden.
 
“It appears that the icy realm that he longs
for is actually where he finds the fiery stirrings of his heart.”

         
And then it came to me, why I’d
furiously debated with Clara earlier.
 
It
was because I longed to cloak my emotions from the world forever.
 
I knew that I was actually arguing that it
was best to live my life without ever opening myself up.
 
I didn’t know what would happen if I ever
allowed my wall to crumble and my supernatural sense to take over
entirely.
 
Now, this strange girl comes
along and basically announces to the class that I’m a fool for thinking you
should bottle your emotions forever.

         
I faced forward, unable to hear Mrs.
Jaden or anyone else for the rest of class.
 
I refused to even glance in Clara’s direction.
 
When the bell rang, I left in a hurry without
a word to anyone.
 
I robotically moved
through my last few periods—French II, Astronomy, and Art.
 
Everything felt like a blur, because I
couldn’t get her out of my head.
 
My
emotions bounced from curiosity to anger to admiration, dramatically jumping up
then down until I was exhausted.
 
What
was so strange was that wave of tranquility coming from her.
 
I couldn’t grasp how someone with such a
depth of calm could goad my own feelings into a violent storm.
 
I made it to my Jeep before Ben could catch
up with me, then tore out of the parking lot.
 
Thankfully, I had the canvas top down.
 
The gusting wind blew away my anxiety, ridding me of this
heaviness.
 
By the time I drove down
Sugar Mill Road toward home, I felt lighter.
 
Clara was out of my thoughts, and I was at ease again.
 
The tall green stalks of sugarcane whipped
wildly as I passed.
 
I was so distracted
that I’d forgotten all about my haunting dream.

2

GABE

A sheet of white mist covered and smothered the
morning.
 
I sped through the empty
streets toward the practice fields at BCHS.
 
Most of the town was at Sunday mass or happily sleeping late.
 
I wish I could sleep at all.
 
I didn’t mind early morning soccer drills
since I’d been having these nightmares.
 
Every time I fell into a deep sleep I found myself surrounded by cane
stalks scraping against my bare chest, a dark burning stone in my hand, and
something whispering in the shadows ahead of me.
 
This dream was persistent, but what did it
mean?
 
Troubled by night, I found comfort
in the day, even after my bizarre first encounter with Clara Dunaway.

This past week, I’d successfully avoided any
more outbursts in Mrs. Jaden’s class.
 
Once or twice, Ben tried to get me to join in a conversation with Clara,
but I pretended to be doing something for another subject.
 
When Mrs. Jaden launched into
Beowulf,
outlining the traits of a true
hero and of the monstrous villain Grendel, I never said anything that might
start some new argument with Clara.
 
The
truth was that my supernatural sense was strangely off-center when she was
around.
 
The numbing sensation I felt
whenever she was near me had not dimmed at all.
 
Actually, it had grown stronger.
 
So much so that when she accidentally bumped into me as we left class
one day, I nearly passed out.
 
It made me
feel weak.
 
I hated it.
 
I always left class quickly to try and get
away from her.
 
No one seemed to notice
any change in my behavior.
 
I guess
everyone was used to my withdrawn personality by now.
 
That shouldn’t surprise me.
 
Every now and then, I’d let down that wall
I’d built around me, letting down my defenses.
 
Then someone devastated by a family tragedy—divorce, abuse, or
death—would pass by me in the hall and send my emotional sense off the
charts.
 
It was at these times that I’d
spend time in silence, trying to recover as if from a physical injury.
 
Ben always knew what was up.
 
He would make excuses for me and everyone
would just leave me alone.
 
So, no one
noticed that I’d become suddenly abrupt and rude.
 
Or, they pretended not to.
 
This girl Clara troubled me, because I
couldn’t figure out why she was affecting me.
 
I was almost glad that today I wouldn’t have to find some reason to
avoid her.
 
Almost.

I slowed my Jeep to let a tractor hauling sugar
cane turn into the mill.
 
Harvest time
was at its peak. Tractors bumbled along the back roads, dropping mounds of mud
as they went.
 
Clouds of puffy white
smoke churned into the morning sky from the stacks of the mill.
 
The bittersweet stench of burning cane filled
the air.
 
As the musty odor blew around
me, I was reminded that Fall was coming.
 
There was something else coming, but I didn’t know what.
  

I made it to school a few minutes late and
wheeled into a parking spot behind the gym.
 
I jerked my duffle bag from the backseat and jumped out of the Jeep when
a shadow flitted in the corner of my eye.
 
I glanced to the right, thinking another player might be running up
late, too.
 
There was no one there, just
a few empty cars in the lot.
 
A wave of
negative energy flowed through me then was gone.
 
An eerie chill crept up my spine.
 
I glanced behind me.
 
No one.
 
Nothing.
 
My dark dreams must be
playing with my head.