Free Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

yaaaawwwwwwwp!”
    “What?”
    “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable!”
    “What the hell are you doing in there?”
    “I’m up!” My attempt to irritate my dad has ended up irritating me as well. Go figure.
    At school, Derek talks about his pizza shop job and how the middle school girls come in to giggle about his sideburns over shared drinks and reheated slices.
    “Are you hiring?” A job might be exactly what I need.
    “You need a job?”
    “I need to be out of my house a bit more.” This is the most I’ve ever admitted about my feelings.
    “Do you have pizza shop experience?”
    “I have eaten in them.”
    “That might be enough.”
    He smiles, but I don’t know if he’s serious or if I’m serious.
    For most of the morning I am drowsy thanks to an entire weekend of insomnia and anxiety. This Monday feels worse than a Monday.
    I run into Beth after lunch and tell her that even though Jorie said she didn’t have anything, I snooped in her room again.
    “Did you find anything?” she asks.
    “I found something.”
    Her face glows.
    “But we can’t use it.”
    “Crapplejacks!”
    There’s a pathetic silence.
    “What is it?” she asks.
    “It’s something that I think she wrote for you, for the
Amalgam.
I think it was supposed to be her . . . barbaric yawp.”
    “Like Whitman?” Beth curls her lip. It’s clear she’s not a fan, but at least she knows what I’m talking about.
    I can’t be sure if I know my sister’s real intentions. It doesn’t seem normal for someone to do something so private and then want to tell everyone. But as someone who thinks about suicide—particularly the thrill of who would find me and how guilty they’d feel—I guess there’s always something public about secrets.
    “Can I see it?” Beth asks.
    “I’d like to let you, but I think it became more a private thing than a piece for the
Amalgam.
You know? It just felt like it was one thing and then became another.”
    I fully expect and prepare myself to accept that Beth will now no longer need to talk to me. Because, honestly, this is the only reason she said hi to me in the first place. To get Jorie’s final piece.
    Nanoseconds pass and I panic.
    “I did have an idea.” I hesitate—if I tell her about my ceiling tree she might dismiss me as the loser I feel like 94.5 percent of the time.
    “Uh-huh?”
    “I take photographs. I thought maybe I could write some poems that have photos to go with them.”
    “Like a photo-essay? Or a photo-poem, I guess?”
    “Yeah!”
    “We don’t print on glossy. So the photos would look cruddy.” She does this thing with her eyebrows and her lower lip that is too adorable to describe accurately. “Actually. There have been requests to publish artwork. Most of it is bad tattoo stuff. Line flowers with thorns. Comic book chicks. That kind of stuff. But it could be worth doing if you have photos.”
    “I can show you some of the photos. It’s nature stuff, but I can do whatever.”
    “Yeah. Yeah! This might work.” I can see her mind working.
    “It’s amazing to see someone who actually gets excited about stuff like this. Writing and art stuff.”
    “According to my parents, I started reading when I was, like, two years old. I love books and stories and poems. My friends only sort of tolerate it. I brought a book on a class trip once and my friends made fun of me. There aren’t many people who would even think of putting photos and poems together for any reason other than maybe if they wanted to burn things. So, I feel like maybe you and I were meant to know each other!”
    She smiles a smile I believe and then darts off to class before I can ruin it by saying something goofy.

18.
    THE GLOW OF MY CONVERSATION with Beth doesn’t fade. The malfunctioning parts of my brain try to find reasons to be discouraged, but the fact is that Beth sees me as someone special. Nothing more—yet—but nothing less.
    Like Walt says:
     
    I have perceived that to