The following morning the students sat excitedly for Mr. Keating's lesson. As predicted by him, having Maria seated at the front of the class certainly did draw the boys' focus toward where Mr. Keating sat solemnly in his chair beside his desk.
He held in a smile. His niece would be the center of attention for all these young gentlemen, he was quite certain of it. He thought it would be good for her, a little bit of attention would help a girl like Maria to bloom in self-confidence, to shed herself off her shy exterior. Of course, he'd step in if the boys got a little too rowdy - he knew that teenage boys tended to go over the top with such things - but yes, this would be good for her.
"Boys and lady," he said as the class bell rang, "open your Pritchard text to page 21 of the introduction. Mr. Perry," he gestured towards Neil, "kindly read aloud the first paragraph of the preface entitled 'Understanding Poetry.'"
The class found the pages in their textbook obediently and followed as Neil read: "Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evan Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech, then ask two questions..."
Maria braced an elbow on her desk and rested her cheek in her hand as she listened to Neil. How bland a perspective - how bland a way to look at poetry. It was too structured, too rigid for something that ebbed and flowed as poetry, for something that was supposed to be the literal rendition of art.
There would be no way Uncle John would allow such a stiff way of looking at words in his classroom.
"...thereby revealing the poem to be truly great," Neil finished.
Uncle John suddenly stood and Maria watched with a knowing smile as he moved toward the blackboard, drawing a graph on its surface. There was a deep frown on his face as he urged Neil to continue with a wave of his hand and gave Maria a subtle wink.
"As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows, so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry."
Neil stopped and looked up toward Keating and Maria watched on with quiet amusement while her uncle grabbed onto his own throat and screamed horribly, "AHHH!" Several of the students in the classroom jumped, and pulled out of the temporary reverie they had slipped into while Neil was reading.
"Refuse! Garbage! Pus! Rip it out of your books. Go on, rip out the entire page. I want this garbage in the trash where it belongs!" Keating proclaimed loudly and dramatically.
It was like the classroom stood frozen for a moment before the sound of paper ripping sounded at the back of the class.
Maria turned back to see Charlie grinning at Keating, holding up his ripped-out textbook pages. She allowed a small smile, how predictable it was that it was he who was the first person to leap for such an instruction.
"Very good, Mr. Dalton!" Keating gave him a thumbs-up and swept his eyes across the classroom. "Now, go on."
It was as if those three words had turned a dial and the boys in the classroom happily tore the pages from their books.
"Get rid of the entire first chapter, gentlemen. Tear it out! I want nothing left of it! Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D., you are disgraceful!" Keating strutted around the classroom as the sound of paper ripping and laughter grew louder and rowdier.
Fire and excitement danced in Keating's eyes and when he turned to his niece, he nodded at her. "Maria, would you be a dear?" He gestured toward the backroom and Maria nodded, slipping out of the chair and into the room to grab the wastebasket.
The noise of the English classroom caught the attention of Mr. McAllister, the Scottish Latin teacher in Welton and he stormed into Keating's classroom quickly, ready to put a stop to whatever ruckus this was. "What in the hell is going on here?" McAllister bellowed, baffled by the sight in front of him.
The boys froze. Charlie quickly slipped a crumpled ball of paper into his mouth upon seeing the Latin teacher. It was almost comical the way some of them were frozen still in the act of tearing out pages from their school book.
"Where is your -"
"Mr. McAllister," Keating smiled at the front of the classroom, stepping discreetly to the entrance of the backroom.
Maria froze, shrinking behind her uncle and praying that she was effectively hidden from view. She wasn't exactly supposed to be in a Welton classroom - her uncle was practicing some rebellion by having her here - and she wasn't so sure if McAllister would run off to tell Nolan the minute he saw her.
"Sorry, I didn't think you were here," Mr. McAllister said.
"I am."
"Ahh, so you are. Excuse me," Mr. McAllister said before backing out of the room and quietly closing the door.
Keating turned to Maria, grinning and wiggling his brows at her. "Close one wasn't it?" He said, stepping aside to let her out and taking the waste basket from her hands. He strode down the rows of desks, stopping to let the boys deposit their ripped-out pages into the basket.
"This is battle, boys and girl," he cried. "War! You are souls at a critical juncture. Either you will succumb to the will of academic hoi polloi, and the fruit will die on the vine - or will you will triumph as individuals."
He spun around dramatically as Maria slipped back into her seat and tore her own pages from out of her school book.
"Have no fear, you will learn what this school wants to learn in my class; however, if I do my job properly, you will also learn a great deal more. For example, you will learn to savor language and words because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world. A moment ago I used the term 'hoi polloi.' Who knows what it means?" Keating stopped beside Knox's desk who looked a little dazed. "Come on, Overstreet, you twerp."
The class laughed as Keating spun onto Todd. "Anderson, are you a man or a boil? Do you know what 'hoi polloi' is?" The class laughed again, and everyone looked expectantly at Todd.
He tensed visibly, and, unable to speak, jerkily shook his head. "No."
"Maria, my meadow mouse," Keating aimed toward his niece. "I know full well that you do know what 'hoi polloi' means."
She rolled her eyes at her uncle's light jab. "The 'hoi polloi' means 'the herd'."
"Precisely, my dear, Maria. It's Greek 'for the herd.' However, be warned that when you say 'the hoi polloi,' you are actually saying, 'the the herd,' indicating that you, too, are hoi polloi!"
Keating stomped to the back of the class, dropping the waste basket to the floor and slammed his hand against the wall behind him. "Well," Keating whispered. "I say - drivel! One reads poetry because he - or she - is a member of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion!"
"What is passion? Mr. Perry?"
"Something that drives you to do something?"
"Good! Mr. Dalton?"
"Passion's something that makes your blood boil in the best kind of way," Charlie answered expertly, winking as Maria turned back to look at him.
She rolled her eyes at him and stuck out the tip of her tongue, pulling a smile from him.
"Exactly so. Thank you, Mr. Dalton. Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry. No, we will not have that here. No more of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard," Keating shook his head fiercely. "Now in my class you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savour words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world."
Maria smiled in admiration as her uncle stalked the classroom and gave his speech.
"I see that look in Mr. Pitt's eye like nineteenth-century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school. Right?" He surveyed the class expectantly. "Maybe. Mr. Hopkins, you may agree with him thinking 'Yes, we should simply study our Mr. Pritchard and learn our rhyme and meter and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions.' I have a little secret for you all."
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, and engineering, are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for!" Keating eyed Maria and grinned widely. "Maria, would you be so kind as to quote Whitman for us all?"
Maria winced, ready to shake her head and beg her uncle to move along to someone else or say the quote himself, but she caught sight of Todd watching her steadily and remembered what she had told him. She had told him that she'd teach him how to fake it, wasn't that so? How to push out of their shy shell to get over the nerves that tied them down?
She had seen herself in Todd. A younger version of herself. The version of her that existed for quite a few years after her parents had passed and despite the insistent badgering of her uncle, had maintained itself until it weaved into her being.
In Todd, she saw a Maria who was constantly looked over in class because she was so quiet that her teachers often did mistake her for a meadow mouse.
The nickname didn't just come out of nowhere.
It was only in the last year or so - after her aunt had stuck her into vocal lessons - that she had started to find her voice, or at least, figured out how to push down the belittling voice in her head that told her she was little and insignificant and awkward and odd.
"Come on, Maria," Uncle John was looking at her with kind eyes.
She took a deep breath:
"O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish, ...
What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here - That life exists and identity!
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse!"
Keating smiled proudly and let the message of the poem sink into the fresh minds around him. He had asked Maria to quote it in place of him because he found that she read poetry like she sang - his wife had been so clever to stick her in vocal lessons, indeed.
Maria's voice undoubtedly drew the attention of even the most bored in his classroom.
He glanced around. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Maria gripping the side of her desk, her knuckles growing white, but she was smiling to herself in the prettiest of ways.
Steven Meeks and Gerard Pitts, two out of the six boys Keating had seen his niece have lunch with were looking over at her with impressed faces.
Neil Perry and Knox Overstreet, another two, were grinning at her and giving her discrete thumbs-ups.
Charlie Dalton had leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest, and had the most fascinated of expressions on his face.
And Todd Anderson, Keating noted, was looking at his niece in pure admiration.
Keating repeated, "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
He slowly made his way back to the front of the class, passing by the rows of students seemingly deep in thought, deep in their own heads, mulling over his words. He made it to his desk and whirled around. "What will your verse be?"
••●••
After Uncle John's English class, Maria made her way back to her quarters and into her room. The boys had other classes to attend but promised her they'd come to fetch her right after their last class before lunch.
She twirled her pen between her fingers, staring mindlessly out of the window overlooking the field. She had finished most of her homework already with a little bit of Chemistry left that she'd have to go over with Neil later on during study group.
What will your verse be?
She smiled to herself, thinking of her uncle's dramatics. They had rounded off the class talking about Wordsworth's notion of romanticism, but her uncle's profound question of had effectively stuck with everyone in the room.
What will your verse be?
What would her verse be, she wondered.
Her eyes drifted to the leather-bound journal that sat tucked between her History and English textbook - the latter now being a smidge lighter after losing its first chapter. The journal was significantly smaller than the other books, but Maria thought that the author of this was much more important than the likes of Pritchard.
She dropped her pen onto the table and reached for her father's journal, her heart pounding in her chest. Her mother's garnet ring glinted on her finger and something about this exact moment - when her hand adorning her mother's ring touched her father's journal - made her heartache.
Maria was certain that the feeling of being an orphan - the pain of being an orphan - was something that only those who were orphans could understand. People liked to pretend like they understood how she felt. They used to hold Maria in an uncomfortable hug, smooth down her hair, and mumble into her ear about how sorry they were for her, or how they understood her pain.
A terrible feeling would rip through her whenever that happened. She wanted to pull out of their grasp and scream at them, tell them they couldn't possibly understand how she felt because they still had their parents. Because even if they had lost their parents, they had still spent the majority of their lives knowing them.
Maria only had a blurry image of her father in her head. Her mother was a clearer memory, but even still, it had been ten years since she was an orphan. She was sixteen now. Maria had spent more than half her life as an orphan.
She had never gotten to know her parents. She knew of them. She knew them through stories and recounts, through other people's words and other people's memories. She didn't know them, not really.
But this - she ran her fingers over the embossed letters on the leather journal - this would be her chance. The letters J. R. K. were pressed deep into the center of the leather, shining in dull gold:
J. R. K.
Joseph Richard Keating
Reading her father's journal would be like getting to know him from him, from his own words.
She took a deep breath, flipping open the cover to the first written page of the journal. Her father's handwriting was a scrawling cursive that slanted slightly to the right. His letters swooped across the page, letters dipping low and reaching high to look expansive and mighty.
This is the journal of I, Joseph Richard Keating.
As such, this journal is for my eyes and my eyes only so if you are one of the measly boys on my floor and you've somehow gotten your grubby little hands on my journal, I suggest you stop reading and close this book before I find you and drown you in the lake.
I am a son. I am a brother. And as of today, I am a junior at Welton Academy - or rather, Hellton Academy.
And most importantly, I am a member of the great and profound Dead Poets Society.
Maria slid her fingers over the dried ink, trying to imagine her father at sixteen - at her age - sitting in one of those dorms and writing in his journal and found herself teary-eyed and emotional.
She twisted her mother's ring, ready to flip to the next page when she heard a noise. She sniffled, swiping her fingers across her eyes as the voices drew closer to her door. She closed her father's journal carefully, slipping it back between her textbooks just as someone knocked on her door.
"Yes?" She called out, clearing her throat when her voice cracked just a little.
"Maria?" It was Knox on the other side of her door. "Come head out to lunch with us."
She got up from her desk, moved across her room to open the door and was met with Knox, Charlie, and Todd. "Hi," she said softly.
Knox smiled at her and gestured behind him to Charlie and Todd. "The others have gone to claim us a table, but these two wanted to come along despite me telling them that I could go get you myself," he said. "Since I'm the only one who knows where your room is."
He puffed his chest out proudly and Charlie rolled his eyes, whacking him across the chest to push him out of the way. He cast a curious gaze into Maria's room, trying to peek around behind her. "I've always wondered what a girl's room looked like..."
Maria stepped out of her, effectively blocking Charlie's wandering gaze, and gave him a mocking smile. "What a shame you'll have to continue to wonder," she said and pulled the door shut behind her.
Knox snorted and even Todd gave a small smile at that.
Charlie rolled his eyes and turned on his heel, stuffing his hands into his pocket. "Well, come on. Lunch calls."
••●••
After finishing saying grace, Keating tucked into his meal. He looked around the lunchroom, eyes searching for his niece and he smiled to himself when he found her seated between Knox Overstreet and Todd Anderson. The other seats at her table were filled by Charlie Dalton, Steven Meeks, Gerard Pitts, and Richard Cameron.
She was smiling and nodding at something Mr. Overstreet had said and looked like she was settling in just fine.
Good, Keating thought. This was very good, indeed. It was good that Maria had taken to such a group of boys. They seemed polite enough and vibrant enough to pull her out of her shy nature and with Todd Anderson - whose shyness rivalled that of Maria's when she was younger - Keating had a feeling the two of them would have much to learn from one another.
"Quite an interesting class you gave today, Mr. Keating," Mr. McAllister said beside him.
"I'm sorry if I shocked you, Mr. McAllister."
"Oh, there's no need to apologize. It was very fascinating, misguided though it was."
Keating paused a moment from eating his meal. "You think so?"
"You take a big risk by encouraging them t be artists, John. When they realize they're not Rembrandts, Shakespeares, or Mozarts, they'll hate you for it," McAllister said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"We're not talking artists, George," he said. "We're talking free thinkers."
McAllister made a sound equivalent to a snort. "Freethinkers at sixteen and seventeen?"
Keating merely smiled. "Funny, I never pegged you as a cynic."
"Not a cynic, a realist," McAllister said with a shake of his head. "Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams, and I'll show you a happy man."
"But only in their dreams can a man be truly free," Keating said. "'Twas always thus, and always thus will be."
"Tennyson?" McAllister asked with a sniff.
"No," Keating smiled again and winked. "Keating."
McAllister laughed.
••●••
"You've figured out today's math problems already?" Meeks asked Maria with wide eyes.
Maria nodded shyly, eyes dropping to her plate when the boys around her all turned to openly gape.
Meeks grinned. "I knew I liked you for a reason," he winked at her playfully. "Smart girl."
Maria flushed pink at the same time Cameron scoffed and shoved a fork-load of food into his mouth. "It's probably easy," he said.
"Remember how she figured out problem 12 before you did last night?" Charlie said, shooting Cameron a dirty look. "I think Maria might be more of a genius than either you or Meeks."
"No, no," Maria said quickly, shaking her head. "I'm stuck on some of the Chemistry problems, actually. I was going to ask Neil about them tonight. Where is Neil, by the way?"
She looked down the table and frowned when she realized Neil wasn't seated with them.
"He said he was going to the library," Pitts said from the end of the table. "Not sure why though."
"Hold up," Meeks said, lifting a hand in the air. "We're not giving this as much focus as we should be. Maria, you figured out problem 12 last night? When?"
"She figured it out before any of us," Knox answered for her.
"I told you," Charlie said. "Our girl's a genius."
Our girl.
Maria looked up from her plate quickly and locked eyes with Charlie who was sitting across the table from her. She froze, feeling her heart skip a little in her chest when Charlie's brow arched slightly and the corner of his lip tugged upward.
He was wickedly handsome, wasn't he? With his preppy look and angular features. Maria would have to be blind to deny that, but a part of her thought it was too cliche to swoon for someone like Charlie, a smooth-talking rebellious boy, who liked to tease her and throw out flirty comments here and there.
She pushed those flittering butterflies aside and focused on his words instead.
Our girl.
That was what had caught her off-guard.
"'Our girl'?" She repeated, looking directly at Charlie. "I wasn't aware of the fact I was any of yours."
Charlie smirked, keeping his gaze locked on her. "Of course," he drawled. "We've called dibs on you since we found you lost on the first day."
"Dibs?" She repeated with disbelief.
"We've practically adopted you," Knox chirped in quickly as the other boys - save for Cameron - nodded enthusiastically.
Maria surveyed the faces of the boys around her and her heart swelled in her chest. It had to be some sort of record, she thought, how quickly she had grown comfortable with these boys, and how readily they had accepted her into their circle.
"Is that a jab at me being an orphan?" She faked a sad expression and held in a giggle as the boys' faces turned pale and they shook their heads quickly.
"No, absolutely not!"
"Maria, no!"
"How could you even th-"
Knox was the one that caught her facade slip first and reached out to tug one of her curls as she grinned behind her fingers. "You little sneak," he gasped at her, but he had a wide grin on his face too.
"You should've all seen your faces," Maria giggled.
Knox shook his head and tugged at a curl again. "We've adopted you though," he said firmly. "Right, gentlemen?"
Nods followed.
"Who have we adopted?" Neil joined the table, seemingly out of nowhere and slipped into one of the open seats.
"Maria," Knox replied. "We've adopted, Maria."
"Oh, that's a given," Neil said with a smile. "I thought that was an unspoken fact."
"You're all ridiculous," Maria said, shaking her head. "What's that you've got there, Neil?"
"I found this in the library," Neil said, placing the book in his hand on the table and flipping it open. "It's Mr. Keating's senior annual."
The others shifted toward him to see the picture of younger Keating on the page.
"Listen to this," Neil said, "Captain of the soccer team, editor of the school annual, Cambridge bound, Thigh man, and the Dead Poets Society."
"Man most likely to do anything," Cameron read after Neil.
"Thigh man. Mr. K was a hell-raiser," Charlie said while Maria stuck out her tongue.
"What's the Dead Poets Society?" Knox asked curiously.
"I don't know," Neil said with a shrug.
"Is there a picture in the annual?" Meeks asked.
Neil shook his head. "Nothing, No other mention of it," he said and turned to Maria. "Maria, do you know?"
Maria hummed. "Kind of," she said. "Uncle John never really specified exactly what it was, but I think my father was also in the Dead Poets Society too. Do you think they have my father's senior annual in the library, Neil?"
"Probably," Neil said with a nod. "I'll help you go find it later if you'd like."
"Yes, please," Maria said, suddenly fixated on the idea of being able to piece yet another part of her father into this new compilation she was creating from reading his journal and being in the school he was once in.
"We should ask Mr. K what the Dead Poets Society is," Charlie said.
"That's a good idea."