Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce Read Free Book Online

breasts.
    “I wouldn’t.” This from Jason Burkie, who only talked if he could be antagonistic.
    “Why not?” I asked.
    He shrugged his thin shoulders. “What’s the use?”
    His shrug tipped the debate. One after another, the students agreed with him.
    “I think the whole point of writing is to be heard,” said Lillian the cheerleader. “Like you write so you can have a voice in the world. You know, to protest evil and things.”
    Another student: “What good is it if you’re just listening to yourself?”
    And another: “Who cares about voice? If you want to entertain people you have to keep their expectations in mind.”
    On and on it went. One reason after another why an author should burn her pages and step off a ledge if unsuccessful at publication.
    “But don’t we write for more than just entertainment?” I asked. “What about writing for therapy? And doesn’t a person who has been given the passion to make art have an obligation to use that talent no matter what attention he or she receives?”
    Convinced I was now playing the devil’s advocate, and that by opposing me they were doing precisely what I wanted them to do, they completely denounced any such notion. A writer should strive to be read. Writing that was not read was wasted paper. They rarely got this excited, but I didn’t want to hear any more. I said it was Friday and we all needed a break: They were free to go early.
    As they shuffled out of the classroom, I erased the day’s notes from the board. It seemed a monumental task.
    I turned to find Lonnie waiting at the front of the room.
    “Lonnie! I didn’t know you were standing there.”
    “I wanted to turn in my story.”
    “You know it isn’t due for two weeks,” I said.
    His eyes, so intent upon me in class, were now fixed on the floor. “Well, you know, it was getting to me up here. I have deadlines for the paper, and I can only have one story in my head at a time.”
    Lonnie was the assistant editor for the Copenhagen Campus Chronicler , which said all I needed to know about the quality of that publication.
    “I just need to let this one go,” he explained.
    I accepted the manuscript from his badly chapped hands. His mouth was similarly red and chafed above the lip. During class he often ran cherry ChapStick over both his lips and his raw knuckles. He wore windbreakers everyday and never took them off. Altogether, his life seemed one constant battle against a secret gale.
    “I’ll try to read it over on the weekend.”
    “You don’t have to,” he replied, crossing his arms. He glanced up, blushed, looked back down. “I mean if you want to, but whenever is fine with me.”
    I said okay again, and he left the room with a hasty good-bye.
    My feet throbbed. I sat down in one of the student’s desks, having lost the motivation to collect my notes and the day’s papers. Curious, I flipped to the first page of Lonnie’s story:
    Rinaldi: A Story of Love and of Rage
    Beneath a blistering fester of Remus’s third sun the weakened Rinaldi was pacing his way fastly towards the tower. He was thinking one thing: of Roseanne and her hair like a flowing waterfall of ember flame… .
    I cradled my forehead in my hands. I felt a headache coming on.

4
    Zoë’s latest project was Eli Morretti, the boyfriend of an old college roommate. He lived in Cincinnati where he’d been working as assistant curator for Juxtapose Gallery. Though he never came to see Zoë during his visits to campus where his girlfriend, Jillian, was still a student, Zoë frequently drove downtown to Cincinnati to support one or the other of the many exhibitions he was particularly passionate about. These trips stopped in September when Juxtapose unexpectedly closed its doors, leaving the city without its more adventurous gallery and leaving Eli now three months out of work. This misfortune had been further followed by pestilence: In a matter of weeks his apartment had been overrun with an infestation of