Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Welcome,” he said with a broad smile. “We were expecting you yesterday. Jamie?”

The Afro bobbed.

“Well, come in. Dean Farber tells me you’ve transferred in from St. Francis’s?”

“Yeah,” Jamie said. His voice was slightly muffled and husky, as though he was getting over a cold.

“And before that you lived in Chicago?”

“My dad was a professor at the University of Chicago.”

“Ah, I see,” Mr. Tipton said, his eyes sparkling with appreciation. “Well, welcome. Take a seat.”

Jamie looked around the room. He looked at the empty seat next to Amina and then chose the one directly across the classroom, sliding into it. His eyes flicked up. They were a deep, unnerving green, protected by ferocious eyebrows.

“So, Mr. Anderson, in the last two weeks, we’ve plunged straight into Heart of Darkness ,” Mr. Tipton said. “Everyone else has read the first hundred pages, so you’ll need to catch up over the weekend. Meanwhile, I don’t suppose you brought a copy?”

Jamie lifted the paperback. The cover was different from the one available at the Mesa bookstore.

“Great,” Mr. Tipton said. “So who in the class can fill Jamie in on the broad themes in the book? Amina?”

“It’s okay, I’ve read it,” Jamie said, to her utter relief.

“Really? I was told St. Francis’s doesn’t cover this particular work until senior year.”

“I read it on my own over the summer.”

“Oh! Great! So I expect you’ve got some insight into some of the prevalent themes.”

“Maybe,” Jamie said.

Amina’s stomach clenched with nervousness, as though she were being ratcheted up a ramp on a roller coaster. Maybe?

“So we were talking about the river,” Mr. Tipton said, hands jamming back into his pockets. He rocked on the balls of his feet. “Who can tell me what the river is?”

“Life.”

“Death.”

“A journey.”

“Obsession.”

“Good!” Mr. Tipton said. “These are all good thoughts. Jamie, anything to add?”

Jamie tugged at his left ear. “A river.”

The collective titter gave way to a tingling silence. Mr. Tipton did not smile. “That’s all?”

“In a sense.”

“In what sense, exactly?”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders.

“No, no,” Mr. Tipton said, “go on, I’m interested. Please tell us in what sense the river is just a river.”

Jamie muttered a little, his ears reddening, and Amina shifted in her seat.

“No? Okay, let’s move on,” Mr. Tipton said, resuming his pacing. “So. A journey. What kind of jour—”

“In the sense that in order to experience this book, really experience it, the best thing anyone can do is to get rid of the need to label every symbol in it.” The flush spread fast over Jamie’s face, covering everything but the white half-moons under his eyes.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, if you’re really plunging — you said plunging, right? — into this book, then tethering yourself to every single guidepost along the way isn’t really going to make that happen.”

Mr. Tipton’s mirth was palpable. “So you think critical reading is a useless activity? That your classmates are just, what, not experiencing the book?”

“I think the best way to experience this book is to let it happen to you and think about what it all means later.”

“Later when?”

“Later when you’re a high school English teacher.”

Amina was sure she wasn’t the only one who gasped audibly, but somehow it was her face that Jamie locked onto. She swallowed.

“Mr. Anderson, let’s take a minute in the hall, shall we?”

Jamie got up and walked out first. Mr. Tipton carefully placed down his chalk and walked out after him.

“Holy shit,” someone laughed, and someone else let out a low whistle, the kind reserved for pretty girls and danger.

The mouths were disastrous. Every single one of them. She hadn’t drawn them well, to be sure, but the mural had taken a turn for the worse when Akhil insisted that all the lips be shades of pink or peach. The Greats had the smiles of country club mothers.

But if the failure registered at all with Akhil, he wasn’t showing it as he led Kamala down the halls to see the progress.

“Let me see, let me see,” Kamala said giddily, as though Akhil wasn’t doing just that. The door to his bedroom swung open, and Amina let her eyes rise to the ceiling, seeing, for the first time, how the mural darkened the ceiling like a gargantuan spider. Kamala circled under it, hands clasped over her heart.

“Fantastic!” she said.

Akhil, too pleased to hide a smile, looked away.

“Who are they?”

“In order, they’re Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Che Guevara, and Rob Halford.”

“Of course they are! Which one is Gandhi?”

“The one with glasses.”

Kamala squinted.

Akhil sighed. “The one on the left.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Kamala smiled enthusiastically. “And who is this baldy fellow over here?”

“Rob Halford.”

“He’s lead singer of Judas Priest,” Amina explained.

“Lovely,” said Kamala. She looked so tiny in Akhil’s room, gazing at the ceiling and hugging herself tightly, as if to keep her joy close to her. “And now what? You’ll do more? Or something else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe the sky?”

Akhil frowned, looking at the ceiling. “The sky?”

“You know, for background. Use the sponge!”

“Oh, yeah. Good idea, Ma.”

“Good idea,” Kamala repeated. She and Akhil studied the ceiling together, heads turning this way and that while Amina watched from the bed. “It’s really good, Akhil. I can’t believe you did this whole thing by yourself.” Kamala hesitated before reaching out to gently squeeze Akhil’s shoulder. She let go of it quickly, walking out the door before he could turn to see the tenderness on her face.

The sky began that night, tattered clouds making their way across an orange and red sunset. Below them, a crucifix-shaped flock of snow geese flew into endless twilight. As an afterthought, Akhil also labeled each of the Greats, block letters making clear what artistic longing could not.

Had she known it was going to be an exercise in complete humiliation, Amina would not have come to the dance at all. As it was, she sat in a whirlpool of disco lights trying not to watch every single person in the entire school (including Akhil, including Dimple) make out with someone else. It wasn’t easy. God knows she had already scrutinized the streamers scaling the gymnasium walls, the monster-large speakers floating over sweet-smelling smoke, the disco ball spinning like the eye of a Cyclops. “Only the Lonely” blared through the speakers like some kind of cosmic taunt.

She hated it. She hated the lights and her shoes and her hair and the fact that the wistfulness of the singer’s voice made her wish for a nuclear war or an earthquake or really anything that might make someone else want to kiss her.

“What are you thinking about?” A face spinning with white stars leaned over hers, and Amina shot up straight, almost smashing into it. Jamie Anderson stood beside her, jean jacket collar turned up, some sort of velour shirt underneath. Colored lights illuminated his enormous puff of curls, making him look like a candied dandelion.

“What?”

“You look like you’re thinking about something.”

“Bombs,” Amina said, wishing instantly she hadn’t.

Jamie nodded, like of course she was thinking of bombs. “The ones in the mountain?”

Amina looked at him warily.

“By Kirtland Air Force Base,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about.”