Love Story(7)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Gabe was busying himself with administrative duties again. Copies of the stories had to be found for the additional student. The dude whose story we were reading today, Kyle, didn’t have an extra copy of his story for Hunter. Neither did the other girl. I did, but hell if I was volunteering that information. No matter. The girl sitting next to Hunter, Isabelle, had already read the stories in the library, like we were all supposed to, and she slid her copies in front of him.

“I explained this,” Gabe said, “but it bears repeating. When your story is being discussed, you are not to join the discussion. Creative writing tends to be very personal. We are more defensive of it than we realize. If you were allowed to respond to everything your fellow writers said about your work, discussion would quickly break down into an argument. You’ll have a chance to respond to the critique, but only at the end.”

Gabe was still talking. He was saying that we would discuss Kyle’s story first, then the girl’s. Ten minutes before, I would have been relieved that I wasn’t absolutely first, but now the delay meant two-thirds of a class period of torture until Hunter read my story. I pretended to turn my attention to Kyle’s story in front of me, but out of the corner of my eye I watched Hunter. He shuffled through the three stories. Paused over one, examining the title. Or the byline. Slipped it out of the stack and put it on the bottom.

I TRIED TO RESPOND INTELLIGENTLY to the first two stories. I had read them in the library and made notes on them. They were not to my taste. Kyle’s story was told from the point of view of a wolf whose ecosystem was disappearing, an environmental apocalypse tale, although I could tell from his description of the forest and his accent in class that he’d rarely explored past the boundaries of Brooklyn. The girl’s story was about an old man sitting in a café and mulling over his regrets about things left undone in his life. I would have gone to sleep if the man hadn’t been taking in so much caffeine. But constructive criticism was part of this class and part of our grade, so on behalf of the writing community and my internship, I did my best to say something helpful in a shaky voice that told Hunter my heart was doing acrobatics in anticipation of my turn.

Finally everyone slid “Almost a Lady” out of their short stacks and put it on top. My stomach dropped as if I’d just crested the tallest peak on a roller coaster and was about to barrel down the other side. Hunter’s head was bent. If he hadn’t been reading my story before, now he was.

“Manohar,” Gabe said, “why don’t you get us started?”

Manohar glanced up at me and smirked.

Uh-oh.

“First of all,” he said, “I wanted to check something. Am I reading this right? Did this Captain ‘Vanderslice’”—he made finger quotes—“get his family jewels shot off in the war? Isn’t that stolen directly from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said haughtily. “That’s like saying you can’t have somebody cross the street in your scene because James Joyce wrote about somebody crossing the street one time. All of literature and only one character can get shot in the nuts?”

Everyone around the table leaned in. I focused my anger on Manohar, but I could see the other students in my peripheral vision and feel them as the air in the room got hot. Only Hunter lounged in his rich chair, reading my story, cool as ever.

“Now you’re using the term ‘literature’ very loosely,” Manohar said, with more finger quotes. “It reads like a romance novel.” He tossed imaginary long hair over his shoulder. “‘She saw him from across the room and knew he was the one for her, the stable boy.’”

“Do you read a lot of romance novels?” Summer asked him.

Several guys hooted with laughter. I would have smiled, too, if I had not been on my deathbed.

Manohar turned bright red, but he was laughing. “I—,” he began.

Summer was not laughing. “Because you would base that judgment on something, right?”

I felt bad that she was talking out of turn instead of me, disobeying Gabe on my behalf. On the other hand, she was a lot cuter than me, and harder to be angry with. Manohar only tilted his head while she ranted.

“Everybody knows how a romance novel goes—,” he began again.

“Not if they’ve never read one, they don’t,” she insisted.

He talked over her. “All I’m saying is that there’s no place for that kind of crappy writing in an honors creative-writing class.” His voice rose at the end of his statement because several girls gasped when he said crappy. “I know I’m not the only one in this class who thinks so. You’re not supposed to write a romance novel for an honors creative-writing class.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, wishing the angry tears out of my eyes.

“How could you miss it?” he insisted. “In high school, didn’t people make fun of you for writing romance novels? Even for reading them?”

“Of course they did.” My hand pounded the table. Everyone jumped, including me. I removed my hand from the table and sat on it. “My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such ass**les. Heaven forbid I pursue a career writing romance novels. Romance is only fifty-three percent of the paperback market, and I would hate to earn a steady income while the rest of you are living in your parents’ basements, writing novels about dead wolves—”

“Hey!” Kyle exclaimed.

“—getting rejected from The New Yorker, and cutting yourselves.”

Two boys on the other side of Summer laughed together. I could see them over her head. One of them said a little too loudly in a faux drawl more reminiscent of Tennessee than Kentucky, “Heaven forbid!”

“You’re assuming this is publishable,” Manohar told me. He’d seemed cocksure before, a superior intellect cutting down a Southern girl in class. Now his black brows pointed down in a V. “This is not publishable. You could read it out loud and make a drinking game out of knocking one back every time it says bosom. And I don’t think any story you turn in for an honors creative-writing class should contain even a single instance of the word nipple.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I shouted over the laughter, “but there’s nothing in the syllabus for this class that says we can’t write nipple.”

“Because that’s understood!” Manohar exclaimed.

“Is it?” I asked. “Maybe you’re just bothered by nipple personally.”

“Everybody is bothered by nipple,” he said, karate-chopping the thick table with each syllable. “Serious writers know this. You would not find a nipple in The New Yorker.”

“She didn’t write this story for The New Yorker,” Summer said.

Manohar gestured widely with both arms. He hit Brian in the chest and didn’t seem to notice. “Exactly!”

I shook my head. “I don’t think this is about my story at all. I think it’s about you, Manohar. I can tell that reading this story made you uncomfortable, and I wonder why that is. Either you’re a very curious virgin, or you want a stable boy of your own.”