Will & Indie

9.

I frequently visit cloud nine,

My favorite natural high,

I could reach up and touch the sky,

I feel better; now I know why

Will could hardly contain his happiness as he sat down in Creative Writing class. He stared out the window by his seat, replaying the moment he'd spent with Indie when they befriended the stars in the sky and made the night their own. It was impossible to wrap his head around the fact that Indie was now, officially, his girlfriend. He'd been writing more poetry than ever before, outlining his excitement and hopes and dreams for their future. There was not a doubt in his mind that Indie was his soulmate; he'd never been so certain of a fact in his life.

Will was pulled out of his daydreams as Mrs. Boho began walking around the classroom, collecting everyone's haikus. Will rifled through his full-of-every-paper-imaginable binder. He hoped he'd find his haiku sheet before Mrs. Boho made her way over to his desk.

He did not.

Mrs. Boho held her hand out and gave Will an unsurprised look as he frantically searched for his assignment.

"Looks like you need a trash can," Mrs. Boho clicked her tongue. "I'll come back around-"
"No, wait, I found it." Will pulled a slightly crinkled paper out of his binder. He passed it off to Mrs. Boho without hesitation.

Mrs. Boho laughed. "You never fail to amaze me, Mr. Whitlock." She deadpanned.

"Uh... thanks?"

Mrs. Boho continued collecting papers down the line. She turned back to Will and mouthed, "Sarcasm!"

Will began to blush. Mrs. Boho organized the papers she'd been handed, each of them in very different conditions. She placed the stack on the edge of her desk and set a turtle paperweight on top of it.

Mrs. Boho stood behind her podium and folded her hands. "Alright, for our next assignment, we're bridging the gap between poetry and public speaking."

Will's eyes widened. He looked up from his desk at Mrs. Boho, just to ensure he'd heard her correctly. He hoped he hadn't.

Mrs. Boho grabbed a stack of rubrics and began passing them out. "To close out our poetry unit with a bang, I wanted to give y'all a little creative freedom. So, your final poetry project is to write a poem—a few stanzas will do—about something, anything, you're passionate about. At the end of the week, I'll draw names at random and everyone will read their poem to the class."

Will felt his heartbeat quicken in his chest. This couldn't be happening.

"Any questions?" Mrs. Boho asked, wandering back to her podium. After being met with stares, glares, and a random cough, she nodded. "You may begin."

Will looked around at his classmates, who had already begun writing outlines in journals, typing on their laptops, or scribbling randomness on miscellaneous lined paper. He looked at the rubric, scratching the back of his neck. All five sections were worth ten whole points, including the public speaking portion. If he refused to present, the highest grade he could get was an 80 percent.

That definitely wasn't good enough.

He got out his pocket journal and flipped through it, hoping a poem would jump off the page at him, but all of them felt far too vulnerable for him to share in front of his entire class. He couldn't write anything he was truly passionate about down for fear that he would never be able to show his face in front of his fellow man ever again.

Will sighed. He decided to admit defeat. He took the walk of shame toward Mrs. Boho's desk, rubric in hand.

"Alright, Whitlock, where are my grammatical errors in this one?" Mrs. Boho asked, her gaze focused on her computer screen as she click-clacked away on the keys.

Will laughed weakly. "I- no, that's not why I came up here." He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Not today, anyway."

Mrs. Boho turned to Will, raising her brows. "Hm. Alright then. You have fifteen seconds."

"Ok. Is presenting in front of the class mandatory?"

"Yes."

Will's mouth stood agape. Mrs. Boho's quick respond took a second to fully register. "But... why?"

"Will, I know this assignment scares the hell out of you... pardon my French." Mrs. Boho smirked devilishly. "But I can't make an exception for you just because of that. You either present, or you get ten points off. That's just the deal."

"But..."

"You're a good kid, Will." Mrs. Boho said, quieting her tone. "And your writing is stellar, too. You're one of the best students I've had in any of these English classes." She continued, her hands clasped. "You need to use this gift that you have... which means you have to do things that scare you from time to time. If you want to do something amazing with your art—which I am in full support of, by the way—you need to dispel those fears and just start putting it out there." She readjusted her glasses. "If you're truly passionate about something, something that people could relate to and appreciate with their whole souls, why on earth would you keep it to yourself?"

Will tried to process everything that Mrs. Boho had said.

"But... all my writing feels too... raw and emotional. I'd feel too vulnerable to share it with anyone... especially my peers." Will glanced at his classmates. He felt like he was surrounded by people who knew how to fit in; people that were more popular than him, more attractive than him, smarter than him. People that immensely intimidated him.

Mrs. Boho gave Will a look. She beckoned Will closer with her finger and lowered her volume even more. "That's exactly why you should share it."

Will felt as if he'd been swept off his feet. Was there a possibility that people actually could relate to his writing, and he was just grossly overthinking the entire matter?

He pondered on that thought for a moment, took a deep breath in and out, and nodded.

"I... um... thank you, Mrs. Boho. I'll remember that." Will stammered, holding the rubric tight.

"And don't let it go to your head, young man." Mrs. Boho rolled her eyes.

"I won't." Will smiled warmly. Before Will made it back to his desk, he turned around. "Hey, Mrs. Boho?"

Mrs. Boho looked up at Will, clearly unamused at his second interruption of the day.

"You forgot an apostrophe in 'you're' in the third column."

Mrs. Boho shook her head. "Thank you, Mr. Whitlock." She deadpanned.

Will sank down in his seat and truly thought about what Mrs. Boho had said. She was right—this project did scare the hell out of him—but he was tired of being afraid, tired of watering down his emotions in writings that he knew he'd have to turn in.

He grabbed his pencil and a random sheet of paper he found in his binder and began to write any and every word he could think of.