Chapter Text
Todd’s eyes followed Neil’s sun-soaked figure as he strode across the lawn of Welton Academy. Todd was sitting as he usually did, his back pushed against the wall with one leg straight and the other bent to support the notebook he was writing in.
He had caught Neil out of the corner of his eye and had all but forgotten his homework as he watched the boy disappear behind the arches of Welton. He could tell his roommate was happy about something. Neil had a way of walking when he was, a hybrid between a skip and a stride. Todd doubted that any of the other boys knew this and smiled secretly to himself because he did.
The door opened and he turned his head to see a slightly breathless Neil. His roommate fell onto his bed, an action that was followed by a deep sigh. Todd angled his body to the boy. The lowering sun cast a long streak of light into the room, dividing it into two.
“I got the part,” Neil said as if he was asking Todd to confirm it.
“Oh,” Todd said, as his roommate sat up from his bed.
Neil’s eyes prompted him to continue.
“Oh,” Neil said, echoing Todd’s deadpan statement while arching his eyebrow, “’Excellent weather we’re having, don’t you think?’ ‘Do you have the time?’ ‘How’s your mother?’” Neil sarcastically retorted.
Todd knew that this outburst was not directed at him but the delicate situation that surrounded the word “acting.” It would do no good to voice what Neil already knew so he let his silence speak for him.
“You don’t think I can make it work, do you? Neil asked. In truth, Todd thought that if anybody could make it work, it would be Neil.
Todd had not forgotten how talented Neil was when it came to acting. He always seemed to know when to pause and when to speak a line in a way that left both him and whoever else happened to be watching breathless. Timing and tone were innate to Neil. Everything Neil did, he did naturally, the opposite of Todd in other words.
Todd, doing some acting of his own, turned toward his roommate. “I’ll help you make it work.”
Neil locked eyes with Todd and seemed to see something in them that had not been there before. A smile broke out across Neil’s face. The boy leapt from his position on the bed and found his footing on Todd’s window perch before he stood, inviting the boy to stand with him.
Todd did what he always did, which was whatever Neil asked him to do. The two boys were now shoulder to shoulder. “If thou avows to keep his word, thou shall take a leap of faith,” Neil sang.
There was nothing left to say, Todd jumped from the window onto the dark wooden floors of their room.
__
Life at Welton Academy carried on as it always did, with bells designating when students should move to their next class while participating in extracurriculars that were primarily meant to look good on one’s college application. However, beneath the daily drudgery was a secret developing. Todd shared something with Neil that none of the other boys did and this thrilled him in a way that nothing else could. Whatever consequences he could face blurred into the background.
As Todd exited the stuffy interior of Welton Academy out onto its courtyard, a frigid Vermont wind swept his hair up. He could see Neil in the distance, weaving in and out of the opposition on the soccer field. In spite of his height, Neil was exceptionally nimble. Todd found his seat near an oak tree, his back pressed against its ancient trunk. Its leaves had already begun to discolor into the vivid red that consumed the Vermont landscape in the autumn.
Todd tugged at the fleshy part of his hand as he waited for Neil to finish the match. A whistle blow later and the match was over. Not wanting to waste any more time, Neil dogged the pats on the back his teammates tried to bestow on him and jogged straight toward Todd. In characteristic style, Neil threw his back against the tree Todd sat at. Heat still radiated from the boy’s body and contrasted greatly with Todd’s cold skin, causing him to shiver involuntary.
Neil craned his head toward him. “Cold?” he asked.
Todd had to shake his head twice because Neil knew that the boy sitting beside him would not say he was cold even if he was.
Neil’s back relaxed against the tree. “Let’s go through it one more time.” A silent understanding existed between the two boys, Neil did not need to elaborate on what “it” meant.
The plan was that they would go to Headmaster Nolan’s office. Todd would say that he needed tutoring in Latin, which was not a complete lie, and considering that Neil has the highest grade in the class he was hoping he could tutor him. Of course, Neil is more than willing to help out a fellow classmate. He felt that no one should miss out on the beauty of Latin. However, they would need access to the library after curfew considering that Neil’s schedule was already full. And no, no one else could do it.
This was their plan and it worked. It helped that Neil was Neil, one of the most promising boys to pass through Welton Academy’s doors. It also helped that Todd was Todd, one of the most unpromising boys at Welton, at least to Nolan. All good lies, it is known, have some truth buried in them. It was true that Neil’s schedule was full. It was also true that they needed the library. However, they lied about what they needed it for. Rather than learn the language of the Romans they would learn the language of Shakespeare.
As the two boys made their way to the Welton library at night a sense of eeriness engulfed the abandoned halls. Their shadows bounded around them. Walking the halls after curfew filled the boys with the overwhelming sense of unbelonging that overtakes one when they encounter a familiar space at an unfamiliar time. Take, for example, the Welton library at night. Neil led the duo and walked straight ahead with a slight forward lean, as if he always had somewhere to be. Todd’s posture could be described as a kind of collapsing inward.
It was Neil who finally broke the echoes of their footsteps in a silenced whisper. “Thank you.”
The taller boy slowed his stride enough so as to be side by side with Todd. Todd shrugged in response, his involvement in whatever plan ensured Neil’s happiness was inevitable to him not a choice. Neil stopped and Todd walked a few more steps before noticing his absence. Even though the distance that separated them was small, Todd could just make out Neil’s silhouette in the oppressive darkness as he turned around. The boy seemed to emerge out of it like a vision, close enough now for Todd to study his face, which of course he did not. He opted for Neil’s shoes instead.
“I’ve never felt more alive.” Something in Neil’s voice made Todd look up.
He had never felt more alive either.
The library and all its oaken desks looked realer in the dark. Todd remembered reading that at night our eyes desperately use what little light there is to form outlines of what’s around us. At times, he felt he experienced life in a similar way: in outlines.
Neil turned on one of the lamps on the desk and Todd instinctively eyed the floor as his eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light. Neil talked as he began taking Latin textbooks out of his bag and positioning them on the desk, flipping to random chapters.
“Just a precaution,” he said as he caught Todd’s eye.
A look of comprehension crossed over Todd’s face.
“We have to make it at least appear that we’re invested in Latin” Neil clarified.
The taller boy said something in Latin before turning to face Todd, his hair framed by the warm light.
“That is what you will be translating tonight,” Neil said with a feigned seriousness that would fool anyone but Todd.
Out of his bag, Neil took out two scripts of Romeo and Juliet – his copy was already littered with annotations, some crossed out and others running into the words of the script. This play now belonged as much to Neil as it did to its original author. Todd, on the other hand, was already overwhelmed by the words that made up the script.
“We have to read all of this?” he said, the sound of uncertainty infiltrating his speech.
“Only the scenes that I-,” he corrected himself, “that Romeo is in.” “That means you’ll be whoever else is in the scene.”
“Obviously,” Todd said to himself.
__
Neil had one foot on a chair and the other foot on one of the many long desks that he had labored over while at Welton. Todd stared down at him, being that he was standing atop the desk.
Without looking at the script, Neil followed it, taking Todd’s hand in his while stepping up with his other foot thereby bringing Shakespeare’s two lovers face-to-face and alone with each other for the first time.
“My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand / To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” Neil said, his voice emulating the elations of first love through each inflection.
Todd was still acutely aware of the warmth of Neil’s hand in his own when he looked down at the script.
“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, / Which mannerly devotion shows in-” Todd’s eyes absently trailed to the bottom of the page and landed on the stage direction “Kisses her”. Juliet’s words caught in Todd’s throat and he stared back up to Neil, breaking the momentum of the scene.
Todd opened his mouth in apology when the grandfather clock chimed, designating 11:00 PM and the end of their extended curfew.
Todd felt that the inanimate clock must have sensed his internal distress. Neil, however, was unaware. The boy jumped down from the desk. Todd’s eyes followed Neil as he walked around the library.
“When Romeo’s line ends, Juliet seamlessly completes it while following the rules of iambic pentameter and vice versa.” Neil had to catch his breath. “They literally finish each other’s sentences.” The brown-haired boy held the script close up to his face again. “In this scene alone, their fourteen lines form a sonnet.” This is how Neil spoke when he loved something: unfiltered and relentless.
Todd could follow the poetic conventions Neil was detailing thanks to Mr. Keating and his peculiar pedagogy.
“They’re soulmates,” Todd quietly said, voicing Neil’s unspoken conclusion.
Neil turned to face him, his cheeks red from exertion. He looked younger than he was in the frail light of the library. “They’re soulmates,” he affirmed.
The phrase, as it happens, was the last Latin translation of the night.
__
All eyes were transfixed on Mr. Keating as he read aloud from a well-worn novel. When he finished, there was a period of silence before he spoke again.
“This is a case of narrative verité, a moment when the writer is speaking to us outside the text. The story then is the medium in which narrative verité – what the novel is actually about – gets expressed. In this way, narrative verité is a politicized tool that early writers use to evade censorship laws while still condemning those same laws and the society that enacts them.”
Keating closed his eyes before reading again. “As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose!”
“-and to such little purpose!” he said again more somberly, emphasizing each word.
He gently closed the novel before meeting each pair of eyes in his classroom. “Wilde’s final suggestion is that you can tell more about the state of a society based on how it treats something beautiful and natural rather than how it treats the worse parts of itself.”
Todd had stopped taking notes a while ago. He wouldn’t need to write these words down to remember them, he couldn’t fathom forgetting them. He felt he had been given the words he did not know he was longing for – like the breath exchanged from one body to another during resuscitation.
He cast a side long glance at Neil who met Mr. Keating’s stare head-on, the boy’s glasses doing little to conceal how deep in thought he was. Neil turned to face him and his expression softened.
Todd had started the term sitting at the back of the class. Then, one day, Neil hailed him to sit next to him. In a compromise, Todd choose to sit behind him. He traced the outline of his shoulders many-a-days and observed how his muscles tensed when he raised his hand. It came down to this: Todd liked to observe Neil without having to worry about being observed in return. This went on for a month in all the classes they shared together until the seat behind Neil was unexpectedly filled one day.
Of course, Todd didn’t own the seat, but it was his seat. He eyes, out of habit, landed on what formerly was his seat, the desk in the back row and, as he intended, closest to the door. He could be the first to leave class that way. He moved to the back of the room slipping his messenger bag off his shoulder when Neil called his name.
Todd saw the open desk next to him in the front row and he hesitated. When he met Neil’s expression again he went over, convincing himself that once Mr. Keating arrived he would move to the back of the classroom.
Neil never stopped conversing with him though, not even when Mr. Keating walked in. With no chance of escape, Todd felt trapped in the front row. That was a few months ago and in the front row he had remained ever since. However, he no longer felt trapped, just slightly inconvenienced.
The bell sounded and all of Welton Academy’s student body poured forth into its halls. It was Friday and, for most, this meant two days of respite from the monotone lectures of the teaching staff, excluding Mr. Keating.
For Neil and Todd, the weekend meant a halt in their nightly library excursions. Because curfew was extended on weekends there was no way to confess Shakespearean love discreetly in a room full of students supervised by a rotation of teachers.
Fortunately, they were members of the Dead Poets Society and they had the cave.
The cave would have to wait until Saturday night however. There were some expectations that they could not escape from, namely Mr. Perry’s Friday night call to his son.
__
The two boys had abandoned their uniforms as soon as they could. Neil was attired in an emerald green woolen sweater with a checkered collared shirt underneath. The sweater seemed made for him, whereas Todd felt that his sweater engulfed his frame.
Neil was talking in hushed tones in one of the more secluded sections of Welton, the phone pressed to his ear. He looked utterly fatigued, he always did when his father was concerned.
Todd could not imagine what it would be like to have parents who wanted to talk to him, let alone ones who prearranged to do so. Todd’s parents always seemed to talk about him in the third-person, even when he was present. Students at Welton often had a hard time adjusting to being away from their parents but it felt like nothing had changed for Todd.
Todd didn’t know which was worse, oppressive expectations or none at all.
Neil put the handset back on the hook. He let out a deep sigh before he composed himself.
“Shall we my fair Juliet?” he said, his usual hint of playfulness returning to his voice.
“I will follow thou anywhere.” A smile spread across Neil’s face.
The way to the cave was precarious in the night, their breath colliding with the frigid air in a white cloud. The two boys could not risk turning their flashlights on until they distanced themselves from Welton. There movements were further impeded by the fog that clung to the landscape all around them. Trees seemed to arise out of the layer of fog and became visible only when the boys were upon them.
Through various warnings uttered in the dark and coat grabbing to prevent a hard descent to the ground, they found themselves across from each other in the shelter of the cave.
Wax drippings from previous visits lingered on the cave walls and Todd felt compelled to speak.
“I’m sorry” he said, eyes downturned as he scuffed his shoes on the opposing rock face. With only two members of the normally seven occupying the cave his voice echoed, closing in on itself.
“For what?” Neil said.
“Your father.”
Neil gripped the script in his hand harder. “I don’t know what makes it worse, the fact that I can’t tell him or that I already know what his response would be if I did.”
“The latter. It makes you feel like you are at fault for telling him in the first place, a sword breaking skin before you even have time to lift yours in defense.”
Neil smiled. “Is that from one of your poems?”
Todd looked up with wide eyes. “How do you know about those?”
Neil looked a little hurt that Todd had asked the question in the first place.
“How could I not know about them? Your fingers always have ink smudges on them and every free moment you have is spent bent in half over a piece of a paper.”
Neil’s eyes held his own. Todd was not used to being the center of attention. He didn’t even think he could be and now that he was a feeling of uneasiness overcame him. Another thought entered his mind, compounding his unease: Neil had been observing him.
“You’re gifted,” Neil said, shattering Todd’s line of thought, “Mr. Keating knows it too.”
Todd broke away from the boy’s warm brown eyes, bringing his hand to his neck in an unconscious ploy to draw the same eyes away from his face.
“Thanks, but- well, it won’t lead anywhere.”
“It won’t lead anywhere or you’re scared it won’t lead anywhere?” Neil gave voice to something that had previously only known the innermost recesses of Todd’s mind.
Todd felt incredibly tired. He was not used to having these conversations let alone having someone to have them with.
“Don’t tell me what I am or am not scared off, you can’t even stand up to your father,” Todd bit out.
He instantly regretted saying this. However, Neil was laughing.
“Poetry has helped you find your voice I see,” the boy said, his hair falling in his face.
In spite of his best efforts, Todd couldn’t help but laugh with him.
“You forget,” Neil said, “I am standing up to my father, with your help”
Their laughter died out.
It was Neil who spoke at last. “You tell your father you’re going to become a writer and I’ll tell mine I want to be an actor.”
The silence took on an entirely new presence. This was the kind of silence that followed words you always wished to hear, not words you wish you never said.
The tension of the moment before left Todd’s shoulders. “I doubt mine would care either way.”
“Perfect, you can write for me and I can perform your work.”
Neil leapt up from his seat. He grabbed his flashlight and held it up to Todd’s mouth like a mock microphone. “Tell me Todd Anderson with your recent success with Neil Perry what will you do now? The people are dying to know,” Neil said in strangely authentic reporter voice that suggested he had practiced it before.
Hearing his name conjoined with Neil’s in the same sentence thrilled Todd to the point of personal embarrassment.
Under the veil of darkness with Neil pelting him with questions and looking at him in anticipation, Todd felt that the future Neil envisioned for the both of them was not just possible, but already in motion.
More importantly, Todd wanted it.