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We both stay silent at first, before I elbow Bennett and raise my eyebrows. I did the talking. Your turn.
He doesn’t speak.
“Bennett should go first. I thought his views were very . . . sanguine.” My partner’s cheeks heat at my words but he’s still grinning enough that I feel a bit like dancing in my seat with the victory.
“Yeah? Then tell me, Mr.—”
“Reiner,” Bennett says, sitting up a little straighter. “We were just discussing the overall theme—life or death. We had a disagreement about the meaning.”
“You and every other critic that’s ever read the work. Did you find it uplifting or haunting? How about a precarious line of both? I think I’ve felt several different, contradictory emotions about this one.”
“Isn’t that the point?” Bennett asks. “To use the landscape and descriptions to lay out a greater metaphor and not explain what the metaphor is meant to be.”
“If we can compare Green Eggs and Ham to the efforts of communism, I think that we can view intentionally obscure poems in whatever way we can defend.”
Bennett’s eyes are sparkling and he’s smiling with teeth now. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know that he looks so enthralled by the professor’s words.
“See?” I say proudly, growing more comfortable next to this confident version of Bennett. “He’s a poetry savant.”
I’ve said something wrong by the way Bennett’s entire face shutters. All my previous comfort dissolves like passing smoke.
Dr. Britton leaves us with a quiet, “Good work,” muttered as he moves on to the next group. Bennett starts to pack up, which makes me furrow my brow until I check the analog clock on the wall and realize class is nearly over.
I watch him again, more blatantly than before. He’s meticulous, just like he was with his hockey gear. Smoothing the paper’s creases, tucking it into a dark blue folder, which then tucks into a greater binder and then into his backpack—big enough for his books, but almost too small against the broadness of his back.
A buzzer sounds the end of class just as he stands up. He walks away, three steps, before turning back to me and fidgeting, eyes staying glued to my sneakers and his thick brows furrowed.
“Have you read more of him? Frost?”
It feels like an odd question. Maybe it wasn’t the one he intended to ask.
“Yeah, sure.” I shrug, shucking the tote bag I brought over my shoulder and stepping over to walk ahead of him. “I don’t hate him, but that one is boring.”
“Then which one do you like?”
I spin on my heel and turn back toward him with a wide smirk. “‘Devotion.’”
Bennett’s eyebrows jump, like he’s surprised I didn’t name “The Road Not Taken” or “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I start walking again. He keeps stride with my shorter legs easily.
“What other poems do you like?” Bennett asks.
“I’m not really a big fan of poetry, especially like this. It’s really . . . there’s a lot of rules.” His hopeful expression melts into deep disappointment, as if I’ve personally delivered the news of some tragic loss.
“It’s . . . you should try it again.”
It makes me smile for some reason, that Bennett wants me to like poetry.
Why?
“Maybe I will.”
The honesty of my words haunts me long after I’ve returned to my dorm. I stare up at my bedroom ceiling and rethink every word I said.
Chapter 11
THEN: Freshman Year, August
