Page 43 of Love Is…?

“English help, you say?” Tessa said, carrying the small stool Grace kept in her walk-in robe.

Grace smiled hesitantly. “Well, it’s not for school, exactly. Actually, it’s not for school at all.” She waved at her laptop. “I…” She stared at the blank document on her screen, then flicked open another document with lines of words double—sometimes triple-spaced, down the page. They were definitely streams of consciousness. A bunch of random phrases. Tessa caught the words ‘truly’ and ‘heart’ before Grace tabbed to the previous screen, then turned and stared beseechingly at Tessa, her hazel eyes round.

“I want to write a poem to someone, but I’ve got writer’s block which I never have because I know I can write when I need to. Mrs Dennis says my writing’s great, but this is impossible!”

Then she inhaled deeply, and blinked.

Tessa exhaled just as fully as Grace’s inhalation. “Okay. Well, the first thing we need to know is the poem’s audience.”

Grace blushed, and Tessa’s eyes widened. This was new.

“It’s…His name is Michael.” At Tessa’s nod, the story of Michael flowed from Grace’s mouth. “Um, well, Michael is a boy at Rawson Grammar, the boy’s school of Rawson Girl’s, and he’s in the drama club and I met him at a theatre sports event, and we got talking, and he knew who I was, you know, the daughter of Abigail Taylor thing, but didn’t make a massive deal of it. Then he told me that he’s into retro art like Warhol and literary classics like Dickinson, Brontë, Stevenson, Barrett-Browning, and Wells. We talked for ages, long after the drama club had finished. I had to get Mr. Hadley to escort me back to school.” Grace sounded like a younger version of Sam—cohesive thoughts masquerading as an entire run-on sentence.

Grace’s eyes were bright and she was struggling to hold an enormous grin at bay. Then she flapped her hand at Tessa.

“This was about a month before you arrived. Anyway, we’ve been emailing each other?—”

“You hate email.” Tessa tipped her head.

“Yes. But this is important so significance outweighs senseless.” Grace nodded as if that explanation was all that was necessary.

“Our emails have been…really nice, and the couple of times in school when we’ve caught up with each other through our combined drama classes, there’s been, like…like a spark?” Again, Grace blushed. “I know I’m different from the other girls, but so is he. You know…different from the other boys. Justine, Hira, Kirralee, and India tease me but not meanly. It’s just a friendship tease, I guess. I think Michael is wonderful and perfect and I want to write him a poem in the Victorian romanticism style because he said he likes that period.”

Tessa studied Grace who, for a normally contained person, was awash with jiggles, wriggles, and eyes that wouldn’t fix on anything. Even her gorgeous mane of golden-brown hair seemed anxious.

She reached for Grace’s hand. “Hey, I can help, for sure. First thing, I need to know what Michael looks like. All art, poetry included, has a muse.”

Grace let loose the grin that had been waiting, then spun around to her laptop, clicked through some tabs and opened up a class photo from Rawson Boy’s Grammar, judging by their uniforms and ordered seating. She enlarged the photo and pointed to a young man in the second row. “That’s Michael.”

Tessa leaned forward. Michael seemed to be about Year Ten. “Fifteen?” she asked without looking away from the screen.

“Yes.”

Dark blonde hair, floppy at the front and short at the sides. A very athletic frame advertised by his shoulders and chest filling his blazer, blue eyes, square jaw, and a small smile as if he likedyou well enough but was yet to make a complete assessment. He was quite tall, if his placement in the second row was any indication. Overall, an attractive teenager. Who played some sort of sport that required muscles. With a love of romanticism and Victorian era creative endeavours.

Tessa knew she shouldn’t be making judgements. She pressed her lips together to ensure her mouth didn’t activate before it had passed through a censor. To her mind, Michael gave off conflicting vibes, which was silly because all she’d done was look at a photo and hear Grace’s perspective. She shook away her ridiculous overprotective thoughts.

“He’s a looker, that’s for sure,” Tessa said, turning to Grace, who minimised the photo, and spun in her chair.

“I know, right? He’s beautiful, and sensitive and friendly and caring and understands me.”

Grace just about swooned, which would have been in keeping with a Brontë novel.

Tessa looked at her askance. “And you want to write a poem to him declaring what?”

“Um. Not my love because that’s silly. I’d need much more time before I do that.”

Tessa thought about her own ‘I love you’ declarations that she’d made in her life. Two months, and four months, and three months. Hmm.

Grace continued. “I want to tell Michael that I don’t feel the rain when I think of him. That I’m found when his image comes to my mind.”

Tessa stared. Grace flicked her hands, rolling over her wrists, then shrugged. “So…yes?”

“Oh my God, Grace. You’ve clearly travelled back in time to interrogate a famous poet until they divulged all the secrets of language that ever were secrets.”

Grace’s worried look dissolved into laughter. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should. So why me? I mean, your mum probably has an entire library of romantic lines in her head.”

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