It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura

Author:Misa Sugiura
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

23

OH. MY. GOD.

Jamie’s left the poetry notebook in my locker, with a new poem: “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!” by Emily Dickinson. And a note:

This makes me think of you. Not just because of the wild nights part (haha), but also because you’re like my harbor in a wild ocean.

Love, J

I reread the last part of the poem:

Rowing in Eden

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor—Tonight—

In Thee!

I’m her harbor. My heart is melting. Other parts of me are heating up, too, but in a different way. Wild Nights. Wow.

I don’t think I can put this one in Ms. Owen’s journal.

The poem that Jamie left for me in my locker has me moving through the day in my own personal bubble of happiness. I want to hug myself and spin around every time I think about Jamie, about the way she looked at me, about the poem. And if I did spin around, tiny sparkling stars would come streaming out of my pockets. Everything is ice-cream sundaes and rainbows and Christmas all rolled into one, and most of the time it’s enough to make me forget about Dad and That Woman. When that memory threatens to burst my bubble, I take a peek inside the poetry notebook and immediately feel better. Until one time it occurs to me that the poem could refer to Dad and That Woman, too. Ick. I shove that thought out of my head, out of my bubble. Just concentrate on Jamie’s signature and how it says “Love, J.”

There, that’s better.

After cross-country practice, it’s difficult not to hold Jamie’s hand on the way to my house. It’s really difficult not to fall right onto my bed and start making out the moment my door is shut. Well, let’s be honest. It’s impossible. We spent all of Sunday apart after our first kiss(es) on Saturday—what do you expect?

Eventually—reluctantly—we take a break and get our books out. When I’ve managed to concentrate on my trig homework for almost forty minutes, I reward myself by looking up at Jamie, who is lying on the bed scribbling notes in the margins of The Awakening—another fun nineteenth-century book about adultery. It’s about a woman named Edna who feels trapped in her marriage, and she falls in love with a man who’s not her husband. In the end, she can’t bring herself to subject her family to the scandal it would cause if she were to run away with her lover—but she also can’t bring herself to go back to life the way it used to be. So . . . she drowns herself in the ocean. Cheery stuff. I feel sorry for poor Edna, trapped in a time when women had no choice but to become housewives and have lots of babies. Though I’m mad that she killed herself. I wish she’d fought back. Then I think about what’s okay to do in society today, and what’s still scandalous.

I remember how Jamie started to put her arm around me at the dance.

“Do your friends know? I mean, about.

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