Work Text:
Todd sat there. Afternoon or morning, the only difference was what side the sun sat on, and whatever direction Todd was facing now, there the sun was. Though the hardness of the desk seat beneath him was crafted of a fine wood, the organic material offered no warmth beneath the three charged stares from all sides. He doubts he would’ve been able to feel his face even if the air hadn’t nipped it numb, a pinkish-red sort of hue quite apparent by his cheeks. The back of his throat still felt the effervescent, bubbling sensation of acidity, and every swallow was prefaced with the knowledge of the following unpleasant taste.
He could hear the doomish echoes of Mr. Nolan’s voice in the room, but it was as if he were encapsulated in his own private bubble. Light was amplified, glinting across his eyes and narrowing his pupils despite their urge to blow out along with the beating in his chest; but sound dimmed so everything was reminiscent of a heavy, drawn out sigh, and the distant thud of an encyclopaedia. Deep and heavy with a long enough echo to notice, dry and tinged with disappointment. Like some foreboding god with vast wells of knowledge was giving up on him–that’s how the world sounded.
Not due to the cold, he was shaking. His eyes darted about anxiously, from the shiny frame containing a picture he couldn’t quite see, to the brass statues standing on the window ledges. Dogs, maybe, but the glare was too strong and his mind was running both far too much and far too little, like uneven circuitry. He felt breathless, and his body felt weightless, but the kind when you step off a curb unexpectedly and immediately think your last thoughts before the road regains your consciousness. The feeling the second after being punched in the gut, the temporary arrest and seizure of muscles after being frightened.
His father shouted, and his bubble, this protective barrier securing him away from physical reality, nearly popped. Shaken, dented, surprised to a point of awareness, but still there floating as if it were otherwise impenetrable. It was like something was compelling him to resist reality—to maintain this fantastical stasis of un-presence, where he heard noise as if he were underwater, and breathed thin air as if he were seated atop of the atmosphere, between the last remnants of oxygen and the compelling zero-gravity of the universe.
Mr. Nolan and his father were discussing recent events, and suddenly they were writing a whole narrative about what had happened in the last few months. Months he had not contacted his parents aside from a generically thankful letter; months he had actively hidden from Mr. Nolan, and writhed under his beady-eyed gaze as if he were a rodent and his headmaster was the vulture watching eagerly from the tree, just waiting for Todd to die of dehydration; the second his weakness overwhelmed him, he would be snatched to join the remains of other fearful boys.
He could only sit there, looking absolutely sick with greased hair and oiled skin, as he refused eye contact. This bubble did not want him to hear what they were saying, the blanket of truth was once again smothering his face and removing him from what the world had to say, and lamely reaffirming what he believed in some desperate attempt at hope. But Todd could hear their deep voices ringing through, like chatter from within a church reaching his ears after reflecting off of every surface possible, and they wanted to pin it all on Mr. Keating.
A perfect scapegoat to keep their gloves clean, Mr. Keating could take the fall and Welton would be restored to its glory as the finest preparatory in the United States. Simply one overzealous teacher who pushed a student too far against his family’s wishes, Mr. Keating’s enigmatic energy and passion for soul and exploration corrupted a perfect disciple. A soon-to-be doctor.
Every poet knew their family expected something from them, and while some like Knox and Charlie didn’t mind playing the part of Future Lawyer and Future Banker, Todd saw Neil tearing himself apart method acting the Dutiful Son–he’d been playing this role for so long, it was consuming him, the script eating away at his mind like aphids on a rose. They didn’t talk about it ever, but once he noticed Todd could feel the insincerity radiating from Neil. Neil was nice, sure, but he never volunteered for this part. He longed to be playful, to dance, clap hands, exalt, shout, skip, roll on, float on. The actor within Neil loved assuming different realities, but there was only so much room within him to be someone else. These older figures in his life were forcing a doll of a human, a barely-animate corpse of Welton pride, into the developing teenage body of Neil Perry.
Because that’s what Neil was to them now. From the depths of academia, the pride of Welton joy, against his perfect record and model behaviour, Neil managed to begin carving a new path. Not one of tradition, but something uncharted; it mangled any sense of honour into an egocentric rampage. To hell with discipline, with excellence, Neil’s actions spat on their forefathers, and someone had to pay. Or so they thought, in their twisted cruelty hardened by the weight of adulthood and expectations.
Rationalising it within his mind, Todd figured it was Mr. Nolan’s obsession with convention, was the problem. He wanted to replace Mr. Keating, he wanted his English classroom back, he couldn’t bear to see things change. That had to be the reason.
And suddenly, breaking from this bout of introspection, they wanted Todd to sign something, something that would forever curse him as a traitor to his beliefs, to Mr. Keating, to Neil. They wanted him to draw his name in ink thick as blood. They were urging him to.
It was like the world had come to a full halt.
Mr. Nolan’s words finally caught up to him now, the lingering silence of the office like a final break from the pitchiness of tinnitus and the world was empty and loud.
”If you’ve nothing to add or amend, sign it.”
God, this couldn’t be happening. There was no way. But somehow, right in front of Todd’s very eyes was a treacherous piece of paper and the individual signatures of each of his friends. Friends who… he honestly thought they wouldn’t. Maybe some naively hopeful, childish part of him thought their vigour would outweigh their trepidation, but they were just teenagers too. When Knox gave him a cheeky thumbs up before climbing the stairs to Mr.Nolan’s office, Todd thought that had meant something. He thought his new friends were braver than him, stronger, but maybe behind their loud personalities they were just as terrified, shaken, stirred.
There are times when terror is secondary to your faith, Todd thought. And he wanted to devote himself to something, someone. He knew who, and he’d known somewhere in his heart since he was first asked to join the poets’ study group.
He was afraid too, afraid that signing this was no better than signing Mr. Keating’s death warrant, hammering the final nail into the coffin. If he signed this, he became less than an amoeba. A dirty speck on the petri dish of mankind. One of many, apparently.
When he asked, “What’s gonna happen to Mr. Keating?”
They replied, “Sign the paper, Todd.”
And he knew the only source of compassion in the room was him. The only one who would remember this event was him. The other boys had already signed, and he could only wonder if they put up any resistance—likely not, he hadn’t either. Below him, Cameron’s name was written in full, as were the others’, though with the type of penmanship you would pay someone to use on a card for an anniversary or wedding. Not the hand of someone who had just decided their path at the fork in the road, or someone who could feel the stabs of guilt while they penned the name they had been given to destroy their mentor’s career.
If Todd could do something right now, he could change things. If he could do just one thing right for the first time in his life. He couldn’t stop Neil, he could barely stand in front of his classmates. These were his parents here, his headmaster, his future. Everything rested on his next move. The pressure was near indescribable, a warped sort of feeling of the world bending around him; the air becoming thick as he had to think to breathe, every sound wave developing as white noise in the darkroom of Todd’s mind. He could feel his stomach churning slowly and thickly if he weren’t so conscious of the cold sweat pouring down his hands, pooling in the creases of his palms.
And he again remembered Mr. Nolan’s love for tradition–it was impossible not to in this office that reeked of decaying paper and leather-bound books; an old but settled musk brought a sense of maturity to the environment, dampened by a hint of must that filled Todd’s lungs with cotton, no doubt from the syrupy layer of dust hidden between each spine in the bookshelves. It reminded Todd of the comfort of impracticalities like poorly made blankets from grandparents when they were what you had grown up with.
The inability to change, the heavy hand of sentimentality, fastening your roots and absolving yourself to live in the past. Old, well-loved, points of heritage and heirlooms you can’t let go of. He thought of this as Mr. Nolan passed a pen, barrel first, to him. And he couldn’t settle for a Bic, no, he just had to have a fountain pen still. And he couldn’t use just any paper for the contract, no, it had to be that thick sort between paper and card. And he was reminded of his parents, his mother, who had been wearing the same parfum from her visit to Lyon for as long as he could remember. His father’s lucky golf putter he insisted on using despite the dent, unless he was playing with the bastards from Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs. If he thought hard enough, he thought perhaps he could be transported back to a time where these things didn’t exist; his father would still be putting trips, but Neil would be there in the world. Not in the same world as Todd, somewhere else where their relationship didn’t yet exist, but he’d be there. Two boys in New England, maybe not even destined to meet in each lifetime, but who had met in at least one.
Todd had no such luck now, and his fortitude had always been quick to waver.
His whole life, Todd had only been dragging himself down; Mr. Keating was relying on him now for his career, for his dignity. The others had given themselves away, and the only thing left between the fading memory of Neil Perry was Todd himself. He was beyond daunted, but to face the world daunted, he believed, was to face it with a strength unknown to most. Someone wrote that once, he knew he’d heard or read it before, and it was like all he could do was generate words in his mind while assuming some form of muteness, a trick of fate to give him the world’s lexicon and not the mind to say it.
So sitting there, in that stale room, Todd took the pen, making no contact with the folded and creased wrinkles of Mr.Nolan’s hand, paper thin and ghostly pale. It was cold and weighted with ink, and an old model he wasn’t quite acquainted with. And Todd wasn’t unfamiliar with the scrawl of a fountain pen, but his lettering did tend to be heavier when he did try his hand. And though his left felt natural, he balanced it in his right hand under the bated breaths of his parents and Mr. Nolan. He knew they wanted him to hurry up, to live his quietest existence as he had previously. Cameron, Meeks, Knox, they couldn’t take back their actions, but their parents had already left Welton, being driven away to continue their lives while their children blossomed at the boys’ school. Todd felt like he was fermenting in this very chair.
He went into those woods to make friends, he went into those woods to follow Neil. It was now his turn to live deliberately.
The whole year thus far he had achieved nothing, had done nothing. Perfectly passable scores, relationships held on by a thread from a boy he could no longer know further. The narrative of Todd’s life started and ended with Neil, a heavy full-stop burdening his future. Every blip of his existence was a mere footnote in a life without grandeur of a restrained boy too scared to be anything.
He imagined Mr. Keating’s hands over his eyes as he shut them in each moment, like lining up film to overlay the images. The world went dark.
”Don’t think, just answer,” he had said at that moment.
Opening, Todd hovered the pen over the blank space awaiting his name in cursive. The instrument felt like lead in his hands, heavy as it pulled him forward to make contact with the page. The ink pooled ever so slightly, less than a blob but enough to bead and reflect back the light of the sun as a tiny white spot, as the pressure forced the nib. He balanced the force in the musculature of his hand, feeling the near imperceptible bend of metal.
“Now give him action. Make him do something.”
Breathing shallowly, each signature on the page had seemingly been penned from the very device he now held, becoming warmer as his grip fastened, wet with nerves. Neil had stared at him in such wonder and awe after his performance in the classroom, the wide-eyed look in his utterly absorbed demeanour something Todd had never seen before, let alone solely for him. A soft sight in his eyes, Todd would mistake it for devotion were he any braver. It made him feel something—warm, seen, heard, like he really did exist in the same plane of reality as at least one other person. Like he could spend a lifetime just staring across a room at someone who could look at him that way, even if the fuzz in his head removed the clarity from the borders of the scene, the vignette of his mind.
Minutely flexing the muscles in his hand, he could feel his father’s growing annoyance. He couldn’t be Todd right now, Todd wasn’t brave. To do this he had to embody someone else, to try his hand at the stage and act. He could never read lines, but he could channel movements and desires. At the dock, when he and Neil acted out parts of plays he wasn’t familiar with, it felt like the characters’ energy would course through him–or more accurately, Neil’s energy would thrum in his veins, lighting him up electric-blue with a vigour he had never before felt.
“I’m being chased by Walt Whitman!” He could hear Neil shout this with glee, with a lighthearted giddiness, the past feelings of dread and hot shame secondary in this retrospectively endearing moment.
And Walt Whitman was a madman .
He gave his character action as he forced the pen further through the page, deep teak or mahogany of the desk below mightier than that of the centimetre of metal in this old and used pen. It snapped. The pen had actually snapped. This well-worn tool, no doubt writing relaxed and smoothly as opposed to the awkward stiffness accompanied by the un-limber nib of a new pen, now existed in twain. The piece of nib flew upwards, the sound of it hitting a dog ignored as the ink spilled out from the cartridge like a wound over the paper, bleeding from Todd to Knox to Meeks. Deep blue veins of writing soon amassed into a pool of illegible liquid as the cartridge bled out, being readily drunk by the page. He felt his father’s slap clearly, knuckles knocking against his cheekbones, but his eyes didn’t falter, maintaining a fearful stare devoid of regret. Just observation.
He didn’t know if he’d be expelled, only seconds had passed. He could see each particle of dust pass by through the streams of sun like molasses how time seemingly slowed, but if the mess on the desk was anything to go by, Mr.Nolan smearing ink across the page with a half-cream half-blue handkerchief, he had done something. The damage to the paper was enough that surely at least Meeks and Knox would need to sign it again, despite their parents being well on their way to the airport and their townhouses. Cameron might even be able to redeem himself, if the large smudge across his name was any indicator.
Todd sat in that chair, having accomplished exactly one thing in his lifetime, and though his cheek stung and his back was smarting, his cascading watercourse of resolve would surely allow him to cry in a few minutes’ time, and he might have just evolved to be a real person. The consequences awaited him in reality, but so did the opportunity for his friends to set things right. There was a chance for something to change. This may not be the reality where Todd and Neil met and stayed met, but it is the reality where Todd spoke up before it was too late. Neil didn’t see him stand on Mr. Keating’s desk in the classroom, but he may have seen this. And if he was not devoted then, surely Neil would forgive him now. He didn’t know if he could ever properly forgive Neil back, this undying longing burrowing itself like something permanent in Todd’s heart, but so goes the push and pull of every relationship, stagnant or not.
He didn’t quite say something, not with his words, but they had to listen, and wherever Neil was now, if his consciousness was anywhere at all, Todd hoped to God that he would never butt out.