Free The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer Page B

me a smile. Not a big smile. She didn’t even open her lips. Really, it was less a smile and more a brief tension in her cheeks. But it was for me, and nobody else, and it let me know that our conversation had happened, that things had changed. Just when I thought I couldn’t fall any further for her, I found a new level. It was like an amusement-park ride, when there’s been a bunch of drops that you were expecting and then there’s suddenly another one, unanticipated and fresh and sweet. You feel your insides questioning you: what are you doing, and why have you left us behind? That was how fast I fell. That was how deep this went.
    “A long poem,” said BradLee, “is so long, so all-encompassing and comprehensive, that it can embrace an entire culture’svalues, history, traditions. It can hold multitudes. And the poet must view himself—or herself, of course—as the one who leads the way through this cultural labyrinth. He can see the things nobody else can see. He can change things, and he can change.”

CHAPTER SIX
    And whose reptilian plots and schemes
    Have slithered round to crush our dreams?
    His scales are coins, his tongue a dart
.
    The Vice’s jawbone gapes apart
,
    Devours whole the Rat of Art
.
    —
THE CONTRACANTOS
    While we suffer through a week of school, you get to hear about the Selwyn property.
    Fifty years ago, the
Minneapolis Sun-Gazette
folded, leaving behind a building that had housed the entire process of creating the paper. Selwyn’s founders got it dirt-cheap and did their best to transform it into a school. Despite renovation, some quirks remain. For example, the math hallway, where the papers got folded and packed up, still looks industrial. The metal ceilings are thirty feet high, and there’s a lot of exposed pipe.
    Also, the printing presses remain in the basement. Why waste good machinery? They use them to print the
SelwynCantos
and the lit mag. They’re antiquated by now, but they work.
    The following Monday, a bunch of us were hanging out in BradLee’s classroom before school, since lately the hallways had been staked out by some territorial janitors. I was on the floor, playing Spit with Luke, Jackson, and Elizabeth. People were stepping over us, some groggily, some making a game out of it, doing jetés or whatever. BradLee was rushing in and out, making last-minute copies and looking flurried. Valerie Menchen had her violin out and was playing klezmer music, and because it’s Selwyn there were some improvised dances going on. It was seven-fifteen on a Monday morning but it felt like a party.
    Does that make me sound lame?
    It was the best I’d felt since Friday night, for sure. The episode had been more of the same. Now that Brandon was out of the picture, Josh Slimeball DuBois and Miki Frigging Reagler had intensified their pursuit of Maura. She’d told me it wasn’t real. I trusted her, I swear. And I could see how the frankenbiting worked, how they took different scenes and cut them into a collage of flirtation and intrigue and drama. But the thing was, while I was watching it, I believed it. It was that good. It sucked you in.
    When we were chilling in the Appelden before the episode, I’d taught Baconnaise his colors. Or at least, with the help of some treats, I trained him to always go for the green yarn. He was so smart. I didn’t even think nocturnal animals could see colors. (Maybe most of them couldn’t. I’d always suspected that Baconnaise was a highly evolved genius mutant gerbil.)
    Once I’d firmly established the link between “green” and “raisin,” I called over my friends.
    “Watch,” I told them. I lined up the three colors of yarn. “Baconnaise, you ready?” I released him. “Choose green, Baconnaise, you stud!” I snapped my fingers. “Green!”
    He ran to the green and looked back at me expectantly. I gave him the raisin.
    “Let me try,” said Luke. “Choose red, Baconnaise!”
    “He only responds to my voice,” I said. “We