Halo

math and science while I was drawn to the arts.

“Literature’s my favorite subject,” I announced to him one day in the cafeteria as if it were a vital discovery. I was carrying my booklet of literary terms, and I let it fall open at a random page. “Bet you don’t know what enjambment is.”

“I don’t but it sounds painful,” said Xavier.

“It’s when one line of poetry runs into the next.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to follow if you just put in full stops?” That was one of things I liked about Xavier; his view of the world was so black and white. I laughed.

“Possibly, but it might not be as interesting.”

“Honestly, what is it you like so much about literature?” he asked with genuine interest. “I hate how there’s no right or wrong answer. Everything’s open to interpretation.”

“Well, I like the way each person can have a completely different understanding of the same word or sentence,” I said. “You can spend hours discussing the meaning behind a poem and have reached no conclusion by the end of it.”

“And that doesn’t frustrate you? Don’t you want to know the answer?”

“Sometimes it’s better to stop trying to make sense of things. Life isn’t clear-cut, there are always gray areas.”

“My life is pretty clear-cut,” Xavier said. “Isn’t yours?”

“No,” I said with a sigh, thinking of the ongoing conflict with my siblings. “My world is messy and confusing. It gets tiring sometimes.”

“I think I might have to change your world,” Xavier replied.

We looked at each other in silence for a few moments, and I felt as if his brilliant ocean eyes could see right into my head and pull out my thoughts and innermost feelings.

“You know, you can always pick the lit students,” he continued, grinning.

“Is that so? How?”

“They’re the ones who walk around wearing berets and that I-know-something-you-don’t expression.”

“That’s not fair!” I objected. “I don’t.”

“No, you’re too genuine for that. Don’t ever change, and don’t under any circumstances start wearing a beret.”

“I’ll do my best,” I laughed.

The bell sounded, signaling the start of the next class.

“What have you got now?” Xavier asked.

I cheerfully waved my glossary of literary terms under his nose by way of answer.

I was always happy to be going to literature with Miss Castle. It was a diverse class despite there being only twelve of us. There were two sullen-looking goth girls, who wore black eyeliner and whose cheeks were powdered so chalk white they looked like they’d never seen the sun. There was a group of diligent girls with neat hair ribbons and well-equipped pencil cases, who were obsessed with grades, and they were usually too busy taking notes to contribute to class discussion. There were only two boys: Ben Carter, who was cocky but astute, and loved an argument; and Tyler Jensen, a brawny rugby player, who invariably arrived late and sat through the lesson wearing a stunned expression and chewing gum. He never contributed anything and his presence in the class was a mystery to everyone.

Due to the small size of the group, we’d been relegated to a cramped classroom in the old part of the school that adjoined the administration offices. As the room wasn’t used for any other purpose, we were allowed to shift the furniture and put up posters. My favorite was one of Shakespeare depicted as a pirate wearing an earring. The room’s only advantage was that it came with a view of the front lawns and palm-lined street. Unlike other subjects, literature class could never be described as lackluster. Instead, the very air seemed to be charged with ideas all vying to be heard.

I sat next to Ben and watched him look up his favorite bands on his laptop, an activity he kept up even once the class had started. Miss Castle arrived carrying a mug of coffee and an armful of handouts. She was a tall, slender woman in her early forties with masses of dark curly hair and dreamy eyes. She always wore heavy-framed glasses on a fine red cord around her neck and pastel blouses. Judging by the way she carried herself and the way she spoke, she would have been more comfortable in a Jane Austen novel, in which women rode in carriages and witty repartee flew across a drawing room like sparks. She was passionate about language, and it didn’t matter what text we were studying, she identified vividly with the heroine every time. Her teaching was so animated, people sometimes stopped to look into the classroom, where they’d see Miss Castle thumping the teacher’s desk, firing off questions or gesticulating wildly to illustrate a point. I wouldn’t have been surprised to walk in one day and find her standing on top of her desk or swinging from the light fixtures.

We’d started the term studying Romeo and Juliet in conjunction with Shakespeare’s love sonnets. Now we were assigned the task of writing our own love poems, which would be recited to the class. The studious girls, who’d never had to rely on their own imaginations before, flew into a panic. This was something they couldn’t look up on the Internet.

“We don’t know what to write about!” they wailed. “It’s too hard.”

“Just think about it for a while,” said Miss Castle in her floaty voice.

“Nothing interesting happens to us.”

“It doesn’t have to be personal,” she coaxed. “It can be a total figment of your imagination.”

The girls remained uninspired.

“Can you give us an example?” they persisted.

“We’ve been looking at examples all term,” said Miss Castle in a dejected tone. Then an idea for a starting point came to her. “Think about qualities you find attractive in a boy.”

“Well, I think intelligence is very important,” a girl named Bianca volunteered.

“Obviously, he should be a good provider,” her friend Hannah piped up.

Miss Castle looked at a loss. She was spared having to comment by a contribution from a different quarter.

“People are only interesting if they’re dark and disturbed,” said Alicia, one of the goths.

“Chicks shouldn’t talk so much,” drawled Tyler from the back of the room. It was the first thing we’d heard him say all term, and Miss Castle was graciously prepared to overlook its derogatory nature.

“Thank you, Tyler,” she said with underlying sarcasm. “You have just proved that the search for a partner is a very individual thing. Some say we can’t choose who we fall in love with; love chooses us. Sometimes people fall for the complete antithesis of everything they believe they’re looking for. Any other thoughts?”

Ben Carter, who had been rolling his eyes and wearing a martyred expression throughout the discussion, put his face in his hands.

“Great love stories have to be tragic,” I said suddenly.

“Go on,” encouraged Miss Castle.

“Well, take Romeo and Juliet for example: It’s the fact that they’re kept apart that makes their love stronger.”

“Big deal — they both end up dead,” snorted Ben.

“They’d have ended up divorced if they’d stayed alive,” announced Bianca. “Did anyone else notice that it took Romeo all of five seconds to switch from Rosaline to Juliet?”

“That’s because he knew Juliet was the one from the moment he met her,” I said.

“Puh-lease,” Bianca retorted. “You can’t know that you love someone after two minutes. He just wanted to get in her pants. Romeo is just like every other horny teenage boy.”

“He didn’t know anything about her,” Ben said. “All his praise is for her physical attributes: ‘Juliet is the sun’ and blah blah blah. He just thinks she’s a babe.”

“I think it’s because after he met her everyone else became insignificant,” I said. “He knew right away that she was going to be his whole world.”

“Oh God,” groaned Ben.

Miss Castle gave me a meaningful smile. Being a hopeless romantic, she couldn’t help but take Romeo’s side. Unlike most of the teachers at Bryce Hamilton, who competed to see who could get to the parking lot first after the