Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 79.

Elle
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There are people who poetry is written about, and there are people who are the poetry themselves. But then there are the people who are both; the unbroken reason the verses were created to begin with. Because there was no better way to describe people like them.

Luckily, I was close to making a career out of writing about those people. That person. If only I would've fallen in love with him before I fell in love with literature first.

"Graduation is tomorrow," Mrs. Archer announced, assuming her position in the front of the classroom and leafing through the stack of papers set in front of her. There was no telling what they were, but they looked important. They had to be, or else she wouldn't have kept them hidden in the cabinet she'd pulled them out from moments ago.

She kept her eyes down on them half the time she was speaking, and the other half was spent getting one last look at her students. "How does everybody feel about that?"

Cheers ran through the group, boys fist bumping obnoxiously and girls mindlessly coiling their hair around their pencils while watching their idiotic counterparts. My shoulders relaxed, my mind deadening with a feeling that couldn't be expressed.

"Great," I uttered through clenched teeth, eyeing the stack of papers as they began looking more and more familiar by the second.

Archer carried her eyes over the room with empathy settling into her face. A small smile pulled on her lips, "Good to see everybody's ready to get out of here just as fast as you came in."

Her words did not sink in, for they conflicted with the code of my internal thoughts. Was I ready to get out of here? To drop everything and meet Seattle in the pouring rain? To spend the rest of my life writing about something I once had? Is anyone ever ready to get out of here?

My jaw tightened, shaking my head towards the ground to avoid biting through something on accident. I was ready. The problem was: we weren't.

The ambiance of the classroom eventually relaxed into something more bearable and calm. The woman's voice rose to the top of the silence once more, narrowing the room with its tone. "We've done a lot this year. You guys have done a lot this year. I'll be honest, I've never taught an honors class with such creative minds." She glanced down at the sheets for an extended second. "Reading your work is really something else. Which is why I want you to do it again."

In synchronization with the rest of the faces in the classrooms, my eyebrows creased together sharply. Various students spat out inquiries regarding what she was about to make them do after thinking they were off the hook with work for the rest of their high school career. They were clearly pissed to their cores. The teacher's mouth curved into a grin of amusement, using her hand to gesture the room to lower the volume of their voices.

"Relax, relax," she coaxed, successfully silencing the masses. "It's something you've done before. Something that might've been a little harder at the beginning of the year, but hopefully you've learned a thing or two since then."

The color drained from my expression, being replaced moments later with an extra burn balancing around my cheeks. She didn't have to elaborate on what it was, I already had a creeping feeling, but she decided against my hopes and grabbed onto the stockpile of paper anyways.

"At the beginning of the school year, I asked you to write about love. What it meant to you, what it didn't, strictly based on what you know," she reminisced as she cradled the writings. She looked effortlessly poised and confident in her teachings. "I did that for a reason. Because I knew that even though you were at the top of your class and could elaborate on anything when it came to writing, this was something that couldn't be put into words. Until you learned that writing isn't about the words; it's about where they come from."