wherefore art thou » dead poets society

violin concerto

neil wasn't a nervous person. or so that was how he would very much like to see himself. the state of his room, on the other hand, would suggest the polar oposite. for his work, the pages and pens and pencils and rulers, all lay in a crime scene across his desk. the victim? his grades. alas, the boy's eyes were only for those of shakespeare's words, wolfing each line down as if they were his last meal. and she, sprawled in the sun, read over her copy of oedipus rex. a grin stretched out across his face, ear to ear as he leapt about the room in his dance, "here, villain! drawn and ready! where art thou?"

he danced from wall to wall, mimicking laughter, mimicking tears. he swept through the room, sweeping up afternoon sunshine and spinning into his bed, then todd's bed. and evaline, the spectator, would sit on the window ledge and grimace. because, truth was, that's all it was. mimic. a shallow jab, a blind blow at the human condition. and that's what evaline hated most about neil's obsession with acting. because she, being the audience she was, had more than enough time to observe him and learn him. it seemed as though she had crawled her through every crevice of his mind, but he had yet to even glance at hers. but she knew neil. and she knew, better than anyone, that neil loved to escape.

that's why he always took her on walks into the woods. hours. time became liquid and fluid and would slip through greedy fingers, until evaline learned to stop grasping for it. neil loved walking in the woods. he loved the sharp smell of fresh winter snow served with the mellow oaky odor of wet wood. evaline had once joked that neil really had embodied thoreau and he had let out a laugh. what a beautiful sound. she'd said it before and she'd say it again. his laugh was golden. heavy, husky, rooted yet it bore the sparkles of a child's giggle. but sometimes she wondered. did neil ever stop to think? he was such a high-achieving boy, truly. but that's what he was. a boy. a child robbed of his childhood. so what was left? he was always driven to do more. be more. he was always running and running, yet she wondered if he knew where the finish line was. 

neil never talked about his family, so evaline did, instead. that was the one thing neil would cling onto because if he couldn't entirely figure out what evaline was, he could figure out what she was made of. she was her father. she was his passion. she was his force of nature way of speaking and art. she was her mother. she was her anchored, quietness. she was her history of music and art. she was a child of art. a child of subjectivity and that almost scared neil. her intangibility was terrifying to him. her stare. the many, countless, numerous, infinite ways of understanding and perceiving it. her speech -"let's go". the same. he held onto anything about her family because he knew that much about her. evaline was a child born of love and of art and she was every bit symbolic of it.

he muttered line after line as they traversed the woods. her feet would sink into the whiteness, knee-length. a crunch. a pause. a fermata. repeat. bar one. and she'd sing something, ever so softly, with each step they took back towards campus. their voices became a rustic blend of prose and music that seemed to engrave itself to the trees. their lacy branches seemed to bow to them as they strolled. they paid their respects, to the king and queen of the woodlands in all their glory and their art. pretentious, almost. but the love stopped it from being so.

she was not passionately kissing him.

she was watching him get lost in his art. and that was love to evaline. she disagreed with it, entirely, but she loved him and loved his every persona. she just wished he would embrace her favorite role - neil perry. 

"i'll come find you after i'm done, alright?" he huffed, his breath forming little clouds in the morning air. his fingers, stiff, worked her scarf around her neck. she smiled a bit. he stared at her, searching her face for something - anything. he wanted more from her. and instead, evaline just stared back at his deep cinnamon eyes with a bemused quirk of her lips.

the crowd around henley hall began to buzz a little louder. crescendo. he pouted. she shrugged. neil inhaled sharply and began making his way towards the door. doted crochet. quaver.

"good luck, neil. carpe diem."

and he whiped around, beaming like the sun itself. his coat almost flew out behind him, and it was comical to her. evaline chuckled. he was a boy, truly.

she returned to welton - to his room - to wait. and none other than todd anderson was already in the room.

evaline was little taken aback. she hadn't seen him for a while. in fact, she couldn't quite remember the way his bottom lip quivered when he was nervous, but now became painfully aware of his mouth. "oh - i'm sorry. i didn't know you were here."

todd looked at her. lingering perhaps a minim too long. she counted this beat in her head. "s-sorry," he started, shuffling his papers, "i'll leave."

"no - no. stay," she interjected, a little too quickly, a little too pleadingly. "stay. talk with me."

todd swallowed. paused. put everything down and settled himself on the floorboard. he moved slowly, as if his bones were aged and splintered and creaking with his every move. and his eyes also seemed older than evaline had remembered. somewhere in her memory, his eyes were hazel. but they weren't. no, because she was looking right into those glassy blue eyes. they were blue. cold. steel. he was nervous, yes, but less in a way that made him seem like he was caught off-guard. he looked like he knew. that was the best way to describe it. she didn't really recognize him anymore with this new body of his. 

"so, neil. he's at his auditions, right?" todd cleared his throat and began, drawing his knees up to his chest. a defensive move.

evaline gaped in dismay for a split second. semi-quaver. but it's gone, and he didn't really know if he really saw it or if his tired eyes were spitting lies back at him. "yes. he is."

"and you hate it, don't you?"

she felt heat. little claws of a beast picking at the back of her neck. and it quickly began lapping its tongue over her face. embarrassed. why? embarrassed that she was caught off guard like that? that todd had the upper hand? that he was speaking the absolute truth?

"n-no," she tried to correct him, eyes nailed to the floorboards. beautiful floorboards.

"you do," todd pressed again. "you hate it."

evaline finally collected enough courage, gathered in her arms and clutched tightly to her chest so that the courage seared her through her clothes and into her skin and body. "w-why would you say that?" stuttering fool. eyes pried back off the floorboard and now drawn to todd's blank expression.

"because he's lying. lying to himself and to the world, so he doesn't need to think about who he is and what he wants. and you love him too much to hurt him with reality, don't you?"

water hit her hands. the wetness kept falling into her palms. the sky must've caved in, she thought. there must be a hole somewhere and it was leaking. 

todd was telling the truth.

evaline was a liar.