September 19th, 2012
Already two weeks had passed so far since the first day of school, and still, almost nothing had changed.
Situations between Noelle and Andrew remained as they’d been for years, and they continued to walk around like they were as in love as they’d ever been. I felt quite the same every day walking into school, and I left feeling the same. My workload in classes was not tremendous as was my junior year, but it definitely wasn’t easy. Overall, my entire life remained average, as it’d always been.
But about a week before that very Wednesday, Ms. Calloway had already assigned us to write a creative writing piece about anything we wanted; she said she wanted to see our writing skills “shine through,” and see what we were capable of. In simplest terms, it could be about literally whatever we wanted; just so long as it wasn’t about something creepy or sociopathic, like a crazy murderer with five wives.
Unfortunately, that was an example of exactly what someone wrote.
“Winter, I think I need to send this to guidance.”
As I was picking up my textbooks, I could overhear Ms. Calloway’s conversation with our new student. Winter leaned over the desk, begrudgingly listening to every word our teacher said with a look on her face that pleaded to leave.
As I slowly packed up my things, I reflected on how over the past two weeks I’d been observing Winter from a distance, she’d seemed almost exiled from society. She’d made no friends, talked to no one, and never raised her hand in class. I had this image in my mind of her after school, walking to an empty home, locking herself in her room and drowning herself in a book, or music. Sort of like what I did.
So because of that, it was the first time since the first day of school that I’d heard her speak, as she replied defiantly to Ms. Calloway.
Winter frowned, crossing her arms. “Well, with all due respect, Ms. C, I don’t see why you need to do that.”
She looked at Winter with wide eyes, the story on her desk, under her protective watch. “Well, Winter, it’s rather disturbing. And you completely disregarded my directions.”
“You told us to write about whatever we felt like,” Winter protested.
Ms. Calloway sighed, “I told you that you could write whatever you felt like, with restrictions.” She said, adjusting her spectacles, “Now, I don’t want to harass you or make you feel bad about your writing, but it’s just…too…disturbing.”
“It’s what I like to write.”
Ms. Calloway narrowed her eyes cynically, “…You like to write about polygamist serial killers?”
Winter shrugged, crossing her arms across her chest despondently. “People have done worse.”
“I just think it’s inappropriate for school.”
Winter licked her lips, looking like she was pondering something over. “Well, I don’t think that’s any reason to give me a D.” She said, pointing to the low grade that would send my mother into a cardiac arrest if she saw it.
Ms. Calloway, stumped, looked back at her short story and sighed. After a moment had passed, I’d collected all my things and tried to quietly leave the room without a trace when I heard my name being called.
“Um, Henry? Could you come here for a moment, please?”
Wincing, I turned around to see Ms. Calloway beckoning me over to her desk. My eyes met Winter’s for a third time, and I quickly averted her icy gaze in the fear that it’d freeze me solid. I looked at my teacher nervously and nodded, “Um, yes, ma’am?”
She smiled sweetly, like a mother who’d ask a favor of their child. “I believe I have a proposal for you.”
I looked up and frowned, my legs buckling under the weight of the situation. I licked my dry lips, “Oh?” I said feebly.
She nodded, and went to her folder to fetch a short story with my name on it. “Your story was positively excellent, Henry. It was one of the best things by a student I’ve ever read.”
“Oh, um, wow. Thank you.”
She smiled, “Of course,” she said politely. “So far, you’re the only person in all of my classes with a perfect average.”—she gestured to Winter—“but Winter, here, is struggling. I was thinking, perhaps you could help her out after school with her comprehension of the text and her writing skills?”
“Oh,” I breathed, not sure what to say. I looked at Ms. Calloway blankly, my eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Well, I—”
“I don’t need a tutor,” Winter objected, slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder.
Ms. Calloway folded her hands placidly over our stories, “I think you’d really benefit from it, dear.”
Winter sighed, rolling her eyes. “Well, I’m busy after school.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can make just a little time for Henry.”
“I actually can’t,” Winter said with a shrug of her shoulders, slinging her bag around her shoulders, as if preparing to leave. Ms. Calloway and I both looked, confused, at her. She stared at us blankly, and said with a completely straight face, “I’m quite busy slaughtering families and marrying unsuspecting young women.”
Ms. Calloway’s face diminished into a frown, not sure whether to be amused or worried. I would have laughed, if it wasn’t for the dry awkward air that filled the room like a gas.
“Um, alright, then. Just consider it,” Ms. Calloway noted, busying herself by adjusting a stack of a few untouched binders.
Winter nodded towards her and looked at me, a bright glint in her eye. Feeling my breath caught in my throat, I was barely able to function as she passed by me, her shoulder lightly brushing mine on the way out. I heard the door shut behind me, and she must’ve left, because Ms. Calloway began to speak again.
“Sorry to volunteer you like that,” Ms. Calloway said with a sad smile. I looked at her, and she had begun to fiddle with her thumbs. I didn’t know teachers did that. “I’ve just felt bad for the poor girl, is all.”
“Yeah,” I half agreed awkwardly, wanting to leave so I could get to my next class. I looked at her with an attempted smile, “Well, I should probably go—”
“It’s just, you’re very good, is all.” Ms. Calloway interrupted again, suddenly her eyes meeting mine. She grinned, “I honestly think you could very well make a living out of it one day.”
Just as soon as my mind was set on leaving, my mind came back to reality. I looked at her in surprise, my eyes wide. “…You think?” I said, astounded.
“Absolutely,” she chirped, her eyes wide with excitement.
I looked at her and shrugged simply, “Well, I would, but I’m more used to just reading them, usually.”
“Well, readers make the best writers.” Ms. Calloway said, a quaint smile spreading across her face, two dimples indenting her cheeks. She leaned back slightly in her chair, “And I feel you could definitely go places in the writing business, when you leave this place.”
I looked at her, grateful for her words, but moreover unresponsive. I ran a hand through my black hair, unsure of what to say. So I shrugged and said the first thing I could think of.
“Well, I don’t really have much to write about.” I told her simply.
She smirked and held up my story in her hands. She counted through the pages; all ten of them, a significant difference from most of the two paged and three paged stories. She looked at me, “Well, I think you can find something.”
I shook my head, frowning. “I just made that up, though. There’s no meaning behind it.” I said, directing to the paper. If there was one thing I’d been taught by teachers and books, it was that there wasn’t use writing anything if it didn’t mean anything to you.
Mrs. Calloway looked at me, setting the paper back down. She pushed back a strand of hair from her eyes, “I think, Henry, that all you need is a muse.”
I was confused. I frowned at her, “A muse?”
Ms. Calloway nodded, “A muse.” She repeated, “You know—a person or a thing that gives you inspiration; something that stands out in your life that is worth writing about.” She said, her smile spreading, “You just need to find that one little thing. Then, the rest is easy.”
I looked at her, absorbing her words as best I could and nodding. I smiled, feeling grateful towards her. “Okay,” I told her, “I’ll think about it.”
“Great,” She said with a delighted smile. And as I approached the door to leave, she looked at me, “And Henry?”
I looked back at her quickly. I raised an eyebrow, “Hm?”
She smiled, pursing her lips. “I think you might find a good friend in Winter,” she said. “I think you might benefit from knowing her. And she might benefit from finally making a friend, too.”
I looked at her, pondering it over. I shrugged, “Well, I suppose so.” I said, unsure of exactly what she might really be meaning. But before I could ask, she’d already turned away to her stack of papers, and the bell had already rung. Quickly, I abandoned the classroom and dashed off to my next class.
❄
“I heard that Ms. C asked you to stay late after class,” Andrew told me, once the bell had rung and we had finally departed from school. Andrew had promised me a ride, and Noelle had run off with one of her friends from her cheering squad for practice.
I looked up at Andrew with wide eyes, surprised news of that nature would travel so quickly, if at all. I licked my lips and meekly adjusted my glasses, “Uh, yeah.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair, his blackish eyes meeting mine. “I also heard Winter was there,” Andrew said, a small smirk spreading across his lips. Looking at him, I immediately knew where his mind had went. You didn’t need to know Andrew for as long as I had to know something like that, after all.
I suddenly felt myself tense the slightest bit. I frowned at him, “…Where’d you hear that from?”
“Pete Sanders told me,” Andrew said, referring to one of his good friends on the soccer team that happened to sit two seats to the left of mine. He crossed his arms, “So? Is it true?”
I grimaced, “Is what true?”
He chuckled, “That Henry Carson finally has his eyes set on something other than a girl in a novel?”
Hearing that, I found myself turning a burnt shade of red. I looked away from him, preoccupying myself with the parking lot ahead of us. Shoving my hands in my jeans pockets, I shook my head, “I don’t know where you’d get that idea from.” I disregarded, “’Sides, I’ve never even talked to her.”
Andrew shrugged, “Well, you two give each other the stare down whenever you walk by each other. It’s kind of creepy, actually.”
I bit my lip, thinking. “It’s not like I’m out to get her, or anything. But she always looks at me strangely.” I said with a sigh. Moments passed, and we finally approached Andrew’s car. After he unlocked it, I hopped promptly into the passenger’s seat, looking at Andrew who was buckling his seat belt. “Do you think it’s because of what I saw at the party?”
Andrew frowned, revving up the engine. He shook his head, sure. “What? Her getting slapped by that gorilla of a guy?”
I nodded.
He pursed his lips, as if he was spending a moment to think. But after that moment had passed, he looked almost positive when he shook his head again, “Nah, probably not. I mean, they were probably both too drunk to even remember it.”
I sighed, unsure. I leaned back in my seat, buckling myself up moments before Andrew began to pull out of his parking spot. “I don’t think anyone’s likely to forget something like that.”
“Well, you never know.” Andrew said, making a turn onto the road. He glanced at me in the mirror, “Remember when I forgot Noelle’s birthday, and she threw a bitch fit? That was a pretty big thing to forget.”
I frowned at him, remembering that awkward summer day a year ago when Noelle came crying to me about how Andrew had forgotten her sixteenth birthday.
August 3rd. How could he forget?
I nodded at him, keeping my thoughts under wraps per usual. “I remember,” I said. “But then again, you have a shit memory.”
“Shut up,” Andrew chuckled under his breath, though he knew it was true. I supposed that his shoddy memory could contribute to his straight D average, which he usually didn’t like to talk about in conversation.
As we found ourselves idly chattering about the day for the next few moments it took to get to my house, I found Winter still in the back of my mind, even once she’d been removed from the conversation.
“So what did Ms. C want, anyway?” Andrew asked, mere seconds away from my driveway.
I looked at him once he shifted the gears to park, and took the key from the ignition. I ran a hand through my hair messily, picking up my backpack. “Oh, nothing. She wanted to compliment my short story, mostly.”
“Oh?” Andrew said, looking almost like he was trying to be surprised. “What’d she say?”
I bit back a smile, “She said that I might be able to make a living out of it.”
Andrew’s eyes widened. I couldn’t be shocked that he was surprised, though. I’d never discussed with him anything other than the present. I’d always thought that Andrew would go off and be something miniscule after high school, like maybe a salesman, or a mediocre businessman. Judging from his grades, he wouldn’t make it far in anything other than soccer, which was one of the few things he really excelled at. I couldn’t imagine, though, that Andrew would have ever spent the time to think about what I might do once I graduated; his mind was too cluttered with thoughts of Noelle, and his other friends. He didn’t have time to bother thinking about me.
Andrew, whose face had looked like someone had paused it for a moment, coughed. “Wow. Do you think you’d want to?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know. She said I’d need a muse.”
Andrew’s nose crinkled, looking confused. “The fuck is that?”
For the sake of not wanting to make Andrew sound simple minded, I lied, “Not sure. It’s silly, anyway. Let’s just forget about it.”
Andrew paused, only to nod in agreement. Andrew was one of those guys that lived their best years in high school, and didn’t want to be ripped away from the happiest times of their life to realize that it’d all be ending sooner than they knew. So we both bid each other goodbye, and I left his car to walk up my steps and enter the house, where my feet found my room without even thinking.
Tossing my book bag aside, my legs walked almost subconsciously to the chair in front of my desk. With thoughts of the day lingering in my mind, I found my laptop and immediately logged in, clicked open a browser, and typed in Google.
I found myself looking aimlessly at the screen for a long while, my mind having drawn a blank. The calm before the storm, I think they called it. Slowly, as I regained my ability to think coherently, my fingers typed two simple phrases in the search engine before I hit click.
Winter McLane.
I knew quite well that searching someone was creepy; I also knew quite well that for some reason, there was something about Winter that made me think more than usual. It was like my head was itself a computer, whose hard drive was busily trying to put the pieces of her together, like she was some sort of puzzle that I just couldn’t figure out. And I guess I just didn’t like that; not being able to understand something that should be so simple.
The results finally loaded, and I’d quickly begun to scroll through them. But as the seven million or so links presented themselves to me, while none of them seemed remotely accurate, I felt my heart sink a bit. I furthered my investigation, searching more social media networks than I knew existed, only to remain empty handed.
After searching again for about ten minutes, I relaxed back in my chair, tired. I knew I could really just ask Noelle more about her, but I didn’t want to risk Noelle thinking that there was something going on that she didn’t know about. But still, questions raced in my mind about this girl and her appearance at the party that I needed answers to. Like, what business did she even have being there? And who was that guy who hit her? And moreover, why did he hit her?
I couldn’t understand why anyone would be compelled to do that. Winter couldn’t have done anything to deserve that. Despite seeming a bit like a rebel type, Winter didn’t give me the vibe that she’d bring any enough harm to anyone to make them want to hit her. But then I thought of Noelle, and her warning. “She’s only ever brought anyone trouble, and that’s all she’ll ever do.”
I wonder if that’d apply to me, too then, as well.
The barrage of thoughts and questions running through my head, I tried my best to calm myself and process them in a healthier way than just running around in circles like I already was. Trying to preoccupy my mind with something else, I could only think of what Ms. Calloway had said about writing. And that’s when it hit me.
To distract myself, I’d write.
Hoping my feeble attempt at a plan might work, leaning for my laptop, I opened up a Word document and began to type everything that cluttered my mind. This was strange for me, though. Usually, my key flaw as a writer was the inability to think of anything to write about, like I’d informed Ms. Calloway about.
Only now, as these thoughts of Winter swirled around in my head, was I able to write without a problem. And I realized, as all my thoughts poured out onto the screen, I felt more and more relieved, my mind cleared.
Moments passed; and those moments turned to minutes, which turned to hours, and before I knew it, I was floating in a world of my own creation. I looked at the document, scrolling through the numerous pages I’d already written. It wasn’t much, but it was a start to what Ms. Calloway may have been talking about. And it was all thanks to the thoughts rushing through my mind that I’d usually ignore. It was all because of her that I was able to put these things I’d never been able to word onto a physical document.
And then, looking at the small fragment of a story, I realized something I hadn’t before.
Winter was my muse.