𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑

06. 𝒓𝒉𝒚𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒓

The poetry classroom was cold and obnoxiously lit. The autumn chill had set in overnight and when you left the high school earlier that afternoon there was still frost clinging to the front lawn. 

Neil offered you his cardigan when you first walked into the classroom, but that started a domino effect of boys rifling through their satchels, looking for jackets to offer up. You felt bad turning anyone down so instead you pretended that the cold never bothered you in the first place as you shuffled to your seat in the back.

But apparently you were a bad liar because once the fuss died down, Charlie rolled his eyes and tossed his navy blue pullover onto your desk without saying a word.

The first few minutes of the class period were spent mumbling to one another in hushed tones until Keating waltzed in, hands clasped neatly behind his back as if he were going on an afternoon stroll instead of commanding a class of private school snobs. 

He held a comfortable air about him that didn't command the same attention as Nolan or your father did. But that only made you want to pay even better attention.

As he paced around his wide wooden desk, you scrambled to pull out your textbook, brushing aside the little wads of notebook paper that Charlie had been pelting you with since you sat down. They had crude jokes printed on them in his charming, messied handwriting but you didn't want to give him the satisfaction of laughing out loud.

"Class, won't you please open your texts and turn to page twenty-one of the introduction?"

You found the page easily, dipping through the book as you tried to conceal a cheerful smile. It barely crossed your mind how Keating would attempt to address a classroom consisting of one girl and approximately two dozen or so other boys. Not many other professors that you knew of would go through the effort of trying.

"Mr. Perry," Keating continued, his smile shining through his voice. "Would you read the opening paragraph?"

A few rows up, Neil fidgeted with his reading glasses that looked all too large for his slim face before clearing his throat and reading aloud from the page. "Understanding Poetry, by J. Evans Pritchard PhD."

And just like that, all your hopes of this being an interesting class vanished into thin air.

Without entirely meaning to, you rested the weight of your head on your open palm and turned your gaze to the window directly to your right. A few of the first year students were on their afternoon break and you could hear their muffled conversations through the ancient glass.

"...A sonnet by Byron might score high on the vertical, but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area and thereby revealing the poem to be truly great."

As Neil reads, Keating scribbles the arbitrary graph onto the chalkboard. Your finger twitched against your pencil. Should you be writing this down? 

You didn't know enough about attending Welton yet to decide whether you should trust Cameron, who was on his third page of notes already, or Charlie, who was sketching a pair of highly inaccurate breasts in the margins of his notebook.

You swore up and down that he could fill a landfill with all of them that you found scattered throughout his schoolwork.

Apparently through with his reading, Neil sat up straight and tossed his glasses aside on his desk. The entire class watched unassuming as Keating halted between the chalkboard and the first row of seats.

"Excrement," Keating said. "That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard."

Your jaw dropped and Charlie sat up straighter in front of you, abandoning his fifth anatomically-incorrect drawing halfway through. You couldn't see anyone elses' face, but you assumed they were similar in reaction.