“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he began. It did seem as if he was speaking only to me. I felt like getting up and running out of the room. “Thou art more lovely and more temperate… But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest…”
When he finished the sonnet, he held his gaze on me. I held my breath. What was he doing? He was drawing all the attention to me. I thought it wasn’t only embarrassing for me but also for him. He was a grown man. Why didn’t he realize this?
“So,” he said, finally pulling his eyes from me, “who wants to try to explain this in more modern terms?”
Mark raised his hand quickly. Mr. Burns looked surprised.
“You’re inspired, Mr. Daniels. What could have made our most recent new student more inspired than my old crows?”
“Such is the power of real beauty on me and you,” Mark replied. I glanced at him and saw he was staring right at me. The other girls in the class looked as if they would chorus in a deep, heartfelt sigh. Some of the boys were grinning from ear to ear. Mr. Burns seemed lost for words for a moment but quickly regained his composure and started to ask his usual questions about the imagery and meter.
Never since I had begun in this school had the sound of the bell ending class been more welcome. I practically leaped up to lunge for the door before anyone could say anything to me. Mr. Burns shouted out the assignment. I barely heard him. I didn’t look back.
Marla was waiting for me at the entrance to the parking lot. Even my little sister, unsophisticated, still more boyish than girlish, looked up with surprise at what she saw in my face.
“Something wrong?” she asked. “Some boy say something sexy to you?” She looked hopeful that it was true.
I shook my head. “No, c’mon.”
“Oh,” she said with disappointment, and followed me out.
Ava was waiting in the car. I moved as quickly as I could toward it, but heard Mark shout out, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”
“Huh?” Marla said, looking back. “That boy is t
alking to you, Lorelei.”
“Forget about him,” I said, and turned her toward the car. I had hoped somehow to escape Ava’s scrutiny, but she was already gaping at me through the passenger-side window, her face a portrait of disgust and disappointment.
“It’s not my fault,” I said, getting in quickly.
She hesitated, continued to look toward the school entrance at Mark Daniels and some other boys who had joined him, and then put the car in drive and headed away. Her silence was a deception.
“What did you do?” she finally asked.
“Nothing. I followed your advice, your orders. It really wasn’t my fault.”
“You’re not telling me the truth,” she said, nodding. “Who is that boy, and what was he shouting?”
“It’s a line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He’s a relatively new student. I hadn’t said a word to him until today.”
“So you did speak to him,” she said, practically leaping out of her seat.
“I had no choice, Ava. He came over to me in the cafeteria.”
“What did he say? What did he want?”
“He wants me to go to a party with him this weekend.”
She glanced back through her rearview mirror and then looked at me with a scowl on her face. “You obviously didn’t shut him down firmly enough.”
“Before I could say no, he got up and left,” I said. I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her about his joke, using famous people as personal references. In fact, saying anything positive about him would be a disaster.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “If he approaches you again, shut him down clearly enough, even nastily enough, to end it firmly, Lorelei. Did you hear me?” she asked when I didn’t respond.
“Yes. I just thought…”
“What? What did you think?”