Page 103 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

The scary monster comes first, all dark shadows swirling around a human-like figure. Then another.

Then a third.

They lurk on the edges of the page, encroaching on the poem.

Poetry is not what I should be writing, but an itch to open the notebook and try again began soon after Penn mentioned reading it.

I give one a sadistic smile with my eraser. One doesn’t have a mouth. The third just a straight across line, no hint of teeth or bravado or joy. It feels done enough, so I turn the page.

I draw a phone with a text bubble. In thinner pencil, I write: Where did you go?

L. has all but vanished. The last time we spoke was on the phone, his voice too low to decipher. The mystery of it is driving me mad. There are little to no details to focus on or exploit, which leaves me at worse than a dead end. I don’t even have a beginning.

It’s worse than the bruises on my ass, which remind me of the run in the woods every time I sit or put on pants or lean over. The cuts have scabbed over. There’s another bruise on my shoulder from where he bit me.

I touch them sometimes. It’s more about remembering—that I want to remember—than the one around my neck. Thankfully, that’s starting to heal and fade. It’s moving through the ugly phases, but every shade lighter it gets, the less time I have to spend blending concealer around it.

The writing class has shifted from entertainment to fiction. We each picked dates to turn our stories in. Since they’re longer, more like ten pages than the shorter ones we’ve been writing, we’ll be analyzing and critiquing two stories at a time.

In essence, I don’t need to hand mine in until three weeks from now.

So it’s on the back burner, although I have a few to read.

My gaze drops to the smudged outline of a phone, and I have to steel myself not to reach for my actual phone and send him that message.

And in the end, I fucking do anyway.

Me

Here’s a lie:

I miss talking to you.

I got attached to you.

I’m afraid of who you are.

L.

That was more than one.

I’m afraid for you to find out who I am.

I miss talking to you.

When I heard your voice on the phone, I immediately regretted not recording it so I could listen over and over again.

What made you text me in the first place?

Curiosity.

What made you reply?

You were different. It’s weird, but the fact that you were telling me to ignore everyone else made me feel a little better.

Were you bullied when you were a kid?

I was called white trash, had my book bag regularly dumped in the hallway. Once, it was outright stolen from my locker. We didn’t have the money to replace it, so when that happened I ended up carrying everything in a plastic grocery bag.