wherefore art thou » dead poets society

d minor

something felt wrong. the feeling of entering a room only to gage that everything you owned had been replaced. the sensation of your belongings — the bed sheets, books, chairs — all looking the same but different. the inkling that not everything was what it had once been.

this feeling — this parasite — wedged itself snug in evaline's mouth as her shoes found themselves nose to nose with the aged wood of the wooden door ahead of her. oh how she tried to savor that moment — every last drop of it. she breathed and smelled the musky earthiness of the oak surface, she touched and felt the sharp coolness of the metal handlebar, and she listened and heard the soft crying of the sweeping wind outside.

two knocks. the wood scathed her knuckles, and she felt nails scraping down her spine, splitting flesh.

there's a shuffling of shoe soles on worn floor and the barricade before her eyes begins to pull away from her. her fingers twitch, but she doesn't move.

she doesn't quite know where to look.

there's a copy of the odyssey on table. bordeaux red, leather-bound, waxy finish. must've been new. there's a porcelain teapot next to it. there's a lack of steam rising from it. in fact, it almost seemed to absorb any warmth in the air. there's also an empty teacup. just one.

"evaline."

what's it to a name? after all, it was just a familiar sound to cling to. no, she hated the way the word sounded.

a chill scurried down towards her toes. maybe there was a delicate balance she didn't quite master yet. a precarious waltz on the edge of the abysmal force of the human state. yes, she should seek out a no man's land between falling and safety.

only she leaned a little too far over the edge and began toppling.

her father's eyes. stern. for the first time, she began to notice folds that weren't there on his face. how to light met his features and seemed to chip away at his youth. funny how sometimes you forget who you are. how the battering of tree branches against glass can sound like the marching of troops headed to the front line. same pulsing rhythm. how two eyes can feel like a slap to the face.

"we've been given a formal warning."

"i'm sorry, father. i really - "

a look did appear on keating's face. a sort of palimpsest of sadness and gentle understanding. he stopped speaking, and she left.

how do you speak to your father? welton bore a generation of degenerates who lived in fear of father figures. but john never beat evaline. he never even raised his voice at her. instead, which was far worse, he would stare at her. not cold, really. eyes that seemed to rip chasms in the earth. she couldn't -- no, she wouldn't -- look back because it hurt so much. and so, she never spoke back to him. she did her best, as all obedient, hardworking children do, and tried her hardest to avoid that look.

but some days, it would prey on her like a vulture on a mouse. and with talons sinking into her shoulders, evaline made her way into town.

while evaline would spend her time with the degenerates of welton academy, she had never actively sought out to be anything more than an attachment to neil. tall, handsome neil and his quiet, beady-eyed girl. there was something about these boys that evaline had both anticipated and hadn't -- they were alive. they shrieked, laughed, cried, drunk and high on what could only be teenage love. a love for life. and it had suddenly occurred to evaline that maybe she had been wrong all along and that she wasn't one of the boys who lived. the sad truth was that maybe she hadn't really changed. she fell in love, sure, call it what you will -- blind admiration, teenage pining, seeking something that she didn't even understand -- but at the end of the day, she couldn't look her father in the eyes. she still didn't know how to tell neil that she thought of him as the clouds in the sky, always two steps out of reach. she didn't know how to tell todd that she thought of him as the earth beneath her feet, always following two steps behind her. and she didn't know how to tell herself that she was miserable. that she was tired of living but not living, of telling herself that she was sad, of watching new buds of spring peek through glistening blankets of snow and not knowing that winter had ended.

so, how do you speak to your father? to the people you love? to yourself?

she bought herself the cheapest bottle of red wine she could find and hid it in the lining of her thick winter coat. of course, it stuck out in strange places, and amidst her frantic shuffling back towards welton and trying to hide it as best she could, she soon realized she passed by henley hall. she quickly backtracked and stopped trying to shove the bottle into her clothing. she thought she could hear him, the soft warm rumble of his voice. or maybe it was just all in her head as she stood outside the doors. waiting. and waiting. she waited until the afternoon sun bled into a sunset and when the sky began. sometimes his voice came in a triumphant cry but sometimes it was a shrill plea. sometimes it was an elated laugh or but sometimes it was an agonized sob. she stood there and listened to the sound of his joy.

he lived.

and only when her hands became stiff around the bottle neck from the cold did she start heading back. she didn't live, not really. but she could pretend. she could feign being alive as best she could in the enclosure of her room. if she took a gulp of wine, the bottle became sparkling french champagne. if she took one more, her room became a ballroom and the worn floorboards became marble. one more and she could get herself to speak.

to her father. to neil. to todd. to herself.

and maybe at sometime past midnight, neil returned from his rehearsals and stumbled upon a feasting animal of a girl. her lips, cheeks, body flush against his and a laugh that smelled like grapes and bitter regret. maybe she took his face into her hands, fingers curled around cheekbones and stared into eyes of deep onyx, that held all the mysteries of the earth in their pupil's golden viens. and maybe she kissed him, all teeth clashing against teeth and tasting of spoiled jam and empty promises. and neil found himself swept up, drinking in that foul-tasting liquor and her sweet soul all at once.

"here's to us," she cried, brandishing the now empty bottle as a sword. evaline grinned, ear to ear, eyes squeezed nearly shut. and neil who let out a belting, tumbling laugh, leaping up onto her bed.

"to the greatest who ever did live," he roared.

"to the greatest and mightiest! may they never take us alive!"