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I have been one acquainted with the night, the poem began.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain . . .
Brian actually wasn’t trying to look over his friend’s shoulder at his homework. What do you think the poem means? the essay question went.
But Brian did happen to glance, and he caught sight of the first lines of Phil’s essay:
The poem “Acquainted with the Night” is about being alone, it said. The narrator walks back and forth, in the dark, and doesn’t talk to anyone. Maybe because the narrator has a secret, a big bad secret, and he can’t tell anyone, so he just walks alone in the dark—
“Hey!” said Phil, slamming a hand down, hiding the beginnings of his essay. “Don’t look at my homework!”
Brian put his hands up. “I wasn’t,” he said. “I was just—”
“You were looking,” said Phil, and then his hand shook or something, because then his whole heap of messy papers went tumbling, whoosh, onto the floor of the bus.
Instinctively, Brian bent to help pick them up. “Here,” he said. “This one went under the seat. I’ll grab—”
Phil said, “No, wait, don’t.”
But Brian had already put his hand down to the paper. He saw the one on top and froze.
It wasn’t homework at all.
It was a drawing of a scarecrow. But not just any scarecrow. This scarecrow had a stitched-on scowl and stabbing garden rakes for hands and a long, ragged black coat. Brian knew this scarecrow’s name.
“Jonathan,” he whispered. He picked up the paper without thinking. The page was covered with drawings of scarecrows. Some with sewn-on grins, some with gaping scowls, some with pumpkin heads, some with heads made of burlap sacks.
Phil snatched the paper back. His face was very red. “Dude,” he said. “You shouldn’t just grab at private stuff. That’s mine! You don’t have any right to look at it!”
Brian said, “But, Phil. I thought you didn’t remember.”
“Remember what?” Phil demande
d suspiciously.
Brian stared. “October! The smiling man!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Phil.
“But,” said Brian, confused. “Where’d you get all this—the ideas for all those?” He pointed at the sketches.
Phil was still glaring, his mouth shut up tight. Then he said, “Just dreams, that’s all. Just dreams.”
Brian licked his lips. “Bad dreams?”
He thought Phil wasn’t going to answer. Then he said softly, “Yeah. The worst dreams. The worst dreams in the world.”
Phil shoved the drawings under the rest of his messy heap of paper and then went back to his essay. Brian didn’t know what to say. He’d been sure—he’d been completely sure—that what had happened to them in October had just disappeared from everyone else’s minds. That he, Ollie, and Coco were the only ones struggling, the only ones in trouble.
And if they weren’t? What did that mean?
* * *
—
The rain stopped before recess, and a watery sun broke through the pearly spring clouds. Brian texted Ollie and Coco as he was heading out of English class.
Maple tree.
