Take A Risk

Recoiling

“Writing is so hard.  Why do you do this for fun?”  Kiera said.

            “I like being in control.  Being able to visualize something and build it through words.  It helps me understand things… and myself.”

            “Can you understand me?  When you read my writing?”

            Phrases and snippets of dialogue from her story float through my mind, singular notes in a song, brushes in a painting.  Each is a layer, hiding something beneath it.  It was guarded, restricted, but every so often there was a hole which allowed me to see through, a small window.

            There was a budding realization within me.

            “You… you’re restricting yourself.

            “I’m not, I told you I just don’t like writing.”

            “You can’t think of any ideas?”

            “No.”

            “So you draw from experience?”

            “Sometimes.”

            “But that hurts too much because something happened and when you start to write, you think about it and you think about it too much.  So you restrict yourself.”

            Kiera’s eyes opened up until they were as big as the sky and threatened to lose me in their depths.  There was a long pause, heavy and full with waiting.  Somehow she seemed immensely vulnerable in that moment.

            “Is that why you can’t write?” She asked quietly.

            “This isn’t about me.”

            “You don’t think so?”

            “I’m here to help you write!”

            Gone was the vulnerability as Kiera smiled like she knew some terrible secret that I didn’t.  She got up and— to my utter surprise— climbed on top of her desk.  I jumped forward, looking at the door to make sure no one was watching.

            “Get down from there,” I hissed.

            “You get up here.”

            “No!”

            “You can’t.  You won’t.  You keep to yourself, you follow the rules, and you go on like no one else is there.  Mrs. Meyer’s didn’t do this just so I could learn to write.  She did this so you could learn to talk to people.”

            Kiera turned around, and walked from one desk to the other across the room, leaving in her wake, rows of crooked desks.  She opened the door and left the room.  I slumped down, amid the mess of papers and pens, scrawled words and crossed out lines.           

**** 

            The page swam in and out of focus.  A splotch appeared in the book, blurring the letters.  I leaned back against my pillow, brushing at my face with the back of my hand. 

            Deep breath.

            Reading usually helps to take my mind off everything.  But I can’t escape.  You keep to yourself, you follow the rules.  I was dislodged, a raft floating aimlessly amid the wide expanse of blue.  You don’t know how to talk to people, she says.  I don’t need to; I just need me, me and my writing.  (But I can’t write.)  That’s where I’m comfortable.

            You don’t understand me; I’m different than you.

            I would never be able to help her with writing if she doesn’t even want to write.  She told me she doesn’t even care about writing, she… she’s never been able to experience it before.  She’s never lost herself to the words as I have, she’s never found the wonder hidden away just under the surface.  She just has to want to write and she would do so much better.

            As I closed my eyes to let sleep carry me away, I made it my challenge to get Kiera to want to write.

*** 

            “You are a great writer, you know,” Kiera said, passing the bundle of papers back to me.  It was a short story I had written a while back.

            “You can tell?”

            “Yes, your story, its amazing.”

            I tried looking her in the eyes, but that sent my heart to pounding.  I looked at the papers on the desk.  Planned out what I was going to say.

            “What else could you understand?” I asked.

            “You… you see things with so much wonder.  You can do what you want in your writing and that’s why you love it— I think— because you can do things you normally wouldn’t, or can’t.”

            She had stripped me bare in just a handful of words.  I think she saw something in my face because she started to apologize. 

            “No, don’t apologize— that’s what you are good at.  You understand people.  You have so many friends, and your around them so often, you have learnt to know them.  That’s how I want you to write.  Like you’re studying a friend, you’re writing down what you understand about them.  Let the writing come from you, so people can read it and understand you.  Write when you’re lonely, when something is stressing you out.  Writing can relax, it can change, it can teach.  But you have to want to write.”

            Kiera leaned forward, thick, dark hair spilling between her fingers and across her shoulder.  She smiled— so easily, so effortlessly conjuring up into existence a fragile thing of beauty.

            “I do.  I want to write, Emery.”

            I had a sudden and vivid vision of myself reaching forward and running my fingers through her hair and holding my hand to the back of her head.  Leaning forward and pressing my lips, so softly, to hers.  I wondered what they would taste like.

            I shook away the thought.

            I talked quickly and excitedly as I got wrapped up in teaching her and in building the story, the world.  I guided her to the right words, taught her how to breathe life to characters.

            It was like an expedition, mapping an unknown rainforest and I was the leader.  I was drawing the maps and organizing the equipment and showing everyone else the path through the trees.

            The bell rang all too soon.  I left the room, smiling like a fool.  I thought about that lunch for the rest of the day.

            The weeks go by.

            I teach, she listens.  I imagine.  The nights I treasure, staring and smiling stupidly at my phone as we talk the hours away.