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I can hear his slow, rhythmic breathing from where I sit. On the far row beside me and one row up, Noble sits slumped over on his desk with his face in the crook of his folded arms, totally asleep.
With the lights off in the classroom, and some jumpy video playing on the TV at the front of the room, its dull narration crackling on about poetic structure and rhyme schemes, I don’t blame him. My eyes just sort of glaze over, fixated on the gradual rise and fall of his back.
It catches me off guard a little when the harsh overhead lights make a sudden appearance and I watch Mrs. Lovett bent over in a struggle to find the stop button on the VCR. I blink hard and manage a deep breath in an attempt to wake up my brain.
“So!” Mrs. Lovett calls out. “A villanelle. Jamie Reagan, please define a villanelle for us.”
“Um.” I adjust in my chair. “A uh– a poem with nineteen lines–”
“Comprised of?”
“Five… tercets and one quatrain,” I recite, glancing down at my notes.
“That’s right. With alternating repetition. For example, Mister Sanfino…” She raises her voice as she approaches his desk. The lights coming on had done nothing to make him stir.
Mrs. Lovett will make you pay for sleeping in her class and I press my lips together with this kind of second-hand regret that he had let himself.
But I haven’t talked to Noble in weeks. For a while, one-on-one tutoring sessions left us with intentions that became… blurry. Assignments were done but then forgotten about, and instead of taking off like he usually did, he started to find reasons to stick around with me. Sometimes it was to go grab something to eat, hang out in my room, or just go drive around.
But after a few too many of those, and one in particular where he showed up at my house wasted… I had to make something up and get him home and there was a moment when his hand was in my hair as I drove and I didn’t stop him… and– I don’t know, ever since, we’ve just quit hanging out.
“Noble.” Mrs. Lovett repeats his name.
“Hm.” He grunts.
“Sit up,” she commands. “Open your eyes. And grace us with a reading. Right now.”
Lifting his head, he inhales sharply as if he was sunk down in a truly profound sleep. I watch as he takes a moment to let his eyes adjust, confusion drawn across his angular features before he eases back in his seat.
“Page ninety-eight in your anthology,” our teacher directs us and everyone opens their paperback copy of collected poetry. “Mister Sanfino will read for us Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath. One exemplar of a villanelle.”
Noble lifts his gaze to her, waiting a beat to see if she really meant it. He scratches a hand through his hair.
A glance at his empty desk gives away that he showed up to class with nothing. Looking over, his neighboring desk unoccupied, he turns his head and I meet his wordless request when I pass over my book.
He takes it, tugs on his blue uniform tie before he clears his throat finds the page, while the rest of us wait an eternity. Because obviously, Mrs. Lovett has to win this moment.
He pauses when he finds the poem and I watch him lick his bottom lip before he starts.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead,” He reads.
There’s a giggle from somewhere else in the class. It makes his cheek pull up a little in amusement before he goes on.
“I lift my lids and all is born again.
I think I made you up inside my head.”
Damn, I love his voice. Smooth and sleepy like this, it stirs up a reaction inside me. It’s warm and just a little gravelly and makes me think about the times it’s been so close I could feel it in my chest.
“The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”
Shifting, he gets more comfortable, his voice waking up a little.
"I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck–” He says this part slowly, deliberate like he’s taking a moment to consider the lines and not just absently getting through them. “–Kissed me quite insane.
I think I made you up inside my head.”
Without a book of my own to follow along with, I peer down at my notebook, letting my vision go blurry on my handwriting while I listen.
“God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade–” He continues.
“Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”
He leans back, holding the book open in his hands, so goddamn casual now with one long leg propped out straight into the aisle. He does that, he takes up space – his own and mine – when he’s around me. It’s almost intrusive the way it steals some of my air. But when he disappears from me the way he has, and returns the space, the air, it’s like I miss giving it to him. Come back and just fucking take it.
“I fancied you’d return the way you said–” He reads.
I look up, letting my gaze roam his profile.
“But I grow old and I forget your name.
I think I made you up inside my head.
"I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.”
He stops for a slow breath, ending it when he clears his throat before he finishes:
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I think I made you up inside my head.”
Letting go of the pages, the book drops closed and he offers it back to me. When he does, his gaze catches mine and fuck, my throat gets hot from just that connected second. He simply nods, an unspoken thanks, and adjusts in his chair.
“Thank you, that was quite lovely, Mister Sanfino,” Mrs. Lovett notes as she paces the front of the room, back to her desk.
He smirks. “For you, it’s my pleasure.”
“Think you can handle consciousness for the remainder of first period?”
“Yes, ma’am.”