Chapter Text
Neil was browsing the shelves of a bookstore, sniffing the pages in search of that special smell that slumbered between the pages of old books. Then Todd blinked and Neil was just a teenage girl with her hair cut short, finely carved face with the same soft eyes peering from behind round, golden glasses.
"What are you looking at?" she snapped.
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare…" Todd’s voice was shrinking away. He swallowed and said, "You just look a lot like… like someone I loved. His spitting image."
Something in his face must have come across to her. "Oh, sorry. It’s just, like, usually when old men are staring, it’s not so innocent." She laughed awkwardly.
"Yes, I should have thought of that. You know, he liked books a lot too, and plays, and poetry. He wanted to be an actor." He sighed, those precious months stretching before his eyes into lonely, empty decades. "Have a good day."
"You too," she mumbled, turning back to the shelves. She was left with the lingering sense she’d dug up something very deep and painful, but she tried to push it out of her mind.
Todd hurried away from the bookstore, far too full of memories. Those shelves were closing in on him like Welton walls. He suddenly remembered why he was there in the first place - he had to buy his grandnephew a birthday present - but he resolved to go back in an hour or so. He just needed some time. Some time and a coffee to clear his head. The chain coffee shop was right ahead of him now. He paused in front of it, the clamour of idle chatter, hissing machines, and crumpling paper bags churning his stomach a bit. The artisanal café and bakery he bought his coffee powder from was right downstairs, he might as well stock up. It was quieter anyways. More room to think, reminisce. And, of course, the coffee tasted much better.
The warm scent of fresh coffee wafted into Todd’s nose. He closed his eyes, savouring the gentle caress of steam around his face, speckled and folded with age. Within the grain of the dark oak table, he read the story of his life, of being swaddled in expectations and legacies to uphold, of being left behind in schoolyard games, of losing his voice. And of how he found friendship and love, and snuck out to caves so he could promise himself on his deathbed that he’d lived, and learned how to speak again. And learning what it meant to lose someone you loved. To have your heart ripped out by an absence. And how to pick it up and put yourself together again. All the long decades of his life twisted themselves into the café table. Neil. The spy plane. Graduation. Kennedy. University. Vietnam. Meeks. It all piled up, the world weaving itself into him and him weaving himself into the world. All the way up to this very moment, where he sat sipping his coffee and revelling in the memory. He exhaled. The cup clinked gently on the table, the last dregs of coffee still at the bottom. Picking up his shopping bag, he left behind nothing but the cup and the gentle click of his loafers.
“Poetry! I’m being chased by Walt Whitman!” Todd could almost see Neil in front of him, young and bright with Todd’s notebook clutched in his hand. He’d just found one of Walt Whitman’s poetry collections. His grandnephew rather enjoyed poetry, but Whitman wasn’t a poet he particularly cared for. Still, he put the collection in his bag for himself. What poets did he like? Todd could never recall, maybe Byron and Thoreau, Frost too- he froze. On the shelf stood “Five Centuries of Verse”. In a daze, he pulled it out, hardly believing it. It was a new edition. It was perfect. He felt an irrational protectiveness, like this book could be snatched away at any moment, and he nearly tripped over himself in his rush to pay for it. The cashier was stone-faced, though, and just silently scanned his two books.
“Wait, could I borrow a pen, please?”
“Yeah, sure,” replied the cashier, pulling one out of a drawer.
Even after all these years, he remembered the poem. It felt only right. He wouldn’t mention the Dead Poets Society though. It felt like a secret treasure. Maybe one day, he’d tell his grandnephew about it. For now, he simply wrote:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life!
To put rout all that was not life…
And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…
-HDT
Carpe diem, Devin. Happy 17th birthday.
-TA
“Thank you,” he said, smiling up at the cashier. “Thank you.”