her.”
Dad, chuckling: “She’s grounding herself.”
Mom: “It’s not funny.”
Dad: “The surprise should do it.”
Mom: “Suppose she says no?”
Dad: “We’ll cross that bridge
when we come to it.”
WHAT SURPRISE?
No way can I fall back to sleep.
What surprise are
they talking about?
Hmmm … maybe they are
going to ship me off
to Grandma Quinn’s in Oregon
for the rest of the summer.
Well, I won’t go.
I love Grandma Quinn.
But Emily Dickinson
doesn’t travel.
NO DOUBTS
The next morning,
I’m back to being Emily
without those
sad little doubts.
Just let my parents
try to
surprise me with
a trip out west!
AT THE DOOR
I’m eating breakfast
when there’s a knock at the door.
Mom peeks out the window.
“It’s Gilbert,” she tells me.
“I can’t see visitors,” I whisper,
choking on my toast.
Mom blows out a long
I-can’t-stand-this-much-longer
breath.
She opens the back door.
“Emily can’t see you, Gilbert.”
I whisper: “Tell him to leave a note.”
Mom glares at me. “
You
tell him—”
and walks away.
THE BIG SURPRISE
I stay behind the open door.
“What do you want, Gilbert?”
Gilbert pokes his head around.
“I have a surprise. Good news.”
“What?” I say.
“I’m going to a Phillies game.
Against the Mets.
August eleventh.”
My heart sinks.
I try not to show it.
“Wonderful,” I say. “I’m happy for you.”
“My dad won tickets from
a radio talk show.
He was the thirteenth caller
with the right answer.”
“Really,” I say.
I am ready for this conversation
to end.
“Don’t you want to ask me
how many tickets he won?”
I’m seeing something sneaky
in his eyes.
“And how many tickets
did he win, Gilbert?”
Gilbert doesn’t speak.
He just holds up fingers.
Four of them.
My heart is picking itself up
off the floor.
“Four?” I say.
Gilbert ticks them off
one finger at a time.
“Me.
My dad.
You.
Your dad.
They’re great seats too.”
I’m halfway out the door.
I want to scream.
I want to hug Gilbert.
I want to turn cartwheels.
But I don’t.
I’m Emily.
I say to Gilbert:
“I’ll have to
think about it.”
DEBATE
You can’t go.
Why not?
Emily Dickinson would never go.
How do you know?
Baseball wasn’t a big deal then.
Emily probably never even heard of baseball.
And she never went to a game.
But why?
Too many people. Crowds of people.
Maybe she had a good friend we don’t know about.
Maybe that friend dragged her to a game once—
just to get her out of the house.
You believe that?
No.
A VOICE
I go from hugs and cartwheels
to a rotten mood.
Dad brings me a note from Ms. Mott.
I toss it aside.
I don’t tell him about the baseball game.
There is also a note
in the porch basket—from Alison!
I toss that aside too.
I tell Carlo:
“I’m having a really,
really hard time
being a recluse.”
I flop onto my bed.
I close my eyes.
I punch the mattress.
I hear a voice.
Where is it coming from?
The hall?
My head?
The fish tank?
It says: Then don’t be one.
DARK
I think it will
never come again—
the dark.
But it does,
and I creep over to Mrs. Harden’s
to talk things over.
BE SUE
Mrs. Harden beams
when she sees me.
She whisks me inside
and gives me a hug.
“I’ve been thinking about you,”
she says.
She points to her craft table.
It’s cluttered with paint
and brushes and rags.
She holds up a poster.
Glued at the top
is a picture of me
in my Phillies cap.
I read the words
below the photo—
BE SUE WHILE I AM EMILY .
I stare at Mrs. Harden.
“Huh?” I say.
IN BLACK AND WHITE
Mrs. Harden opens a book
of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
She begins to page through them.
“It’s a little piece of advice
to her best friend whose name is—”
She looks at me.
“Susan,” I say.
“Exactly. Ah, there it is—”
She points to the first line
of a poem.
“Why don’t you read