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Todd’s never been at an all boys’ school before. Neither has he been to boarding school. His mother had always said he was too meek, a fond smile on her face as she brushed his hair behind his ear and chastised him. The old memory makes him smile, but does not help his nerves. The school seems to be swarming with boys, some half his age, all jostling joyously and reconnecting with friends. Todd tries to slip unobtrusively by.
His roommate is a bright boy, bursting with the same energy that pervades the school on its day of reunion. Todd feels as if he’s descended into a whirlwind, introductions flying around his head, names unattached to faces, and faces blurring one upon the next. When the door finally clicks shut on silence Todd is sure he will not survive the year. He doesn’t want to go home, but he can’t stay here.
The first week of classes only hammer the fact home. Todd has been told he is brilliant. The school happily accepted him when they saw his test scores. But in classes he is failing. The professors are intense. They want answers, verbally, now. Todd fears he is only passing mathematics, where he can write the correct answer on the board and quietly return to his seat.
It’s the third day, and after Mr. Keating’s class, Todd has to go out behind the English building to sit on the back steps and breathe. He’s still shaking from yelling at, with?, Mr. Keating. He doesn’t know how much time has passed when Neil peers out the back door.
“There you are!” Neil keeps track of people, not quite the mother hen of the group, or the instigator, but perhaps gifted with the kind of organization vital to any group of people. Todd feels lucky they gave him Neil for a roommate. Had it been the kind of person who didn’t go out of their way to include others he might be friendless.
Neil sits down beside him, looking out across the grounds to a stand of trees just beginning to turn.
“You okay?”
Todd nods. He’s not crying, he’s barely shaking, he’s not even angry anymore. The teachers are just trying to help. His mother had told him: It’s just like that pointing to a chrysalis of a butterfly she’d collected from the back yard. They’d kept it safe all winter, and in the spring it’d emerged a beautiful winged thing. Our first science project his mother had laughed. She’d said You’re like the butterfly, staying quiet, growing and learning until you’re ready to show others your beauty. Your teachers may not understand how important it is to grow quietly. Those words had made his first day of school easier. Then he’d just been waiting till the moment he’d emerge from his cocoon. These days Todd thought he might just stay like this forever.
“I’m okay.” Todd answers, standing and brushing his pant legs. Smiling briefly at Neil in thanks for his concern he mounts the steps back inside.
Neil loved the idea of the Dead Poets Society. Todd loved how enthusiastically Neil loved it. Still he couldn’t, wouldn’t…and then Neil had shrugged,
“What if you don’t have to read?” and smiled at whatever he saw on Todd’s face. Like that it was decided. Todd had never had anyone, since perhaps his mother, who’d been willing to change the rules for him like that. He never asked, and no one ever offered. Todd still felt hemmed in, in his classes, but with Neil and his friends, Todd no longer longed to leave.
There was an unusually warm week in early October. Todd went out to sit on the spectator risers while his friends skirmished in the warm light of the autumn afternoon. It was a bit late for an Indian Summer, but it felt the same and not long into the game Nwanda stripped off his shirt. Todd still wasn’t sure what to make of the name change, but couldn’t help envy his bearing. Nwanda was anything but meek. If there was an instigator of the group, he held that place. A few minutes later the other boys were following suit. They divided the teams, those with shirts against those without. Todd watched distractedly while continuing the rote copying of endless Latin conjugations. It was easy to pick out Neil from the other players, though maybe living with the other boy just made it easier for Todd to recognize him. All the Dead Poets Society members had a certain different quality. Perhaps it was a confidence, a slight energy to their steps that spoke of enthusiasm or imagination, a way of living in the world where they knew themselves. Todd doubted he shared the trait; he’d never be able to take off his shirt and race across the field with whoops of excitement. But, perhaps reading aloud could be learned. Lately, Todd had been practicing, quietly to himself. Neil had walked in once on Todd reading, but he hadn’t said anything. He’d just grabbed a ruler from his desk and left with a smile.
Todd still hadn’t been able to read in class. It felt like Mr. Keating was picking on him, but Neil was always there. Before and after class he gave encouragement. He’d been there when Mr. Keating had forced him to speak, to write, there in front of the whole class. Even with his sight blocked by Mr. Keating’s hand Todd could feel the eyes of his classmates, and he thought very hard that one of them was Neil. Neil wouldn’t laugh at him. It helped, somehow. And when he opened his eyes, shaking with adrenalin, and a foreign smile rising behind his eyes, he’d found Neil’s grinning face, and finally let it loose. He still couldn’t read but maybe it was less scary. The next time Neil walked in as he was reading Todd raised his voice, so he was reading for Neil and himself. And Neil stayed. They started doing their English homework aloud. Todd thought, maybe he might, someday, read at a Dead Poets meeting after all.
Halloween wasn’t much of a holiday at Welton Academy. But Nwanda wouldn’t see the night out without some mischief. Todd had gotten used to sneaking out at night. This was no different. Running across the grounds, their dark school-issue coats blending into the night, so many fleeing shadows. They headed not for the caves but the body of the woods themselves. Their flashlight beams darted through the trees like fairylights and their laughter echoed back from odd corners of the wood. Todd stopped to catch his breath and it puffed out misty in the damp chill. The scene before him, the dark unknowing woods, running among familiar faces and voices, gave him déjà vu. A dream, not recurring, but vivid. He remembered leaves beneath his hands, perhaps Nwanda playing a violin, and he’d been trying to find…
Todd was jarred out of his ponderings, as Neil appeared beside him, breathless. Clapping a hand on his shoulder Neil said,
“Come on, it’s this way,” and Neil was turning, running after the dancing lights. And Todd remembered. Suddenly, viscerally, as if it were the memory of reality and not a dream, he remembered clutching leaves between his fingers as Neil rolled over him, his smile wide, bright and familiar as he leaned down and kissed him. Todd’s first kiss, though it had never happened, and yet he still knew the feeling of those leaves.
The lights were farther away, and Todd was out of breath when he reached the opening in the trees. The figures of his friends were waiting impatiently at the edge of the water. Steam was rising off the pond. Nwanda and Pitts were already removing their coats and shirts, bouncing a little in the cold. Todd opened his mouth to object it was too cold but Neil was grinning and tugging his shirt over his head and Meeks was carefully folding his socks into his shoes. Todd hadn’t known the plan for the evening and now balked, but Nwanda was already wading into the water, yelling a bit and windmilling his arms, his back shining white like a beacon in the dark. Todd turned to find Neil standing in boxers behind him. Neil grinned, gently shoving Todd’s shoulder. Then he skinned out of the last of his clothing and dashed forward, diving in a blur and splash into the water.
Todd and Meeks were left the only two on the shore. Meeks was almost naked. Todd averted his eyes and quickly divested himself so as not to be left alone on the shore. The others were floating out towards the middle of the lake, treading water, or resting on their backs. The water was bitingly cold, but the first two feet were not entirely frigid. Nwanda was blowing water like a fountain and Knox and Cameron were busy splashing water at one another. The lake was fairly shallow, but deep enough not to touch bottom at the center. Todd’s limbs quickly grew tired, so he drifted back to the shallows where his toes brushed the pebbled bottom, and the water lapped at his shoulders.
Turning to the left Todd’s eyes caught the pale shape of another figure, head and shoulders out of the water, probably sitting, several feet closer to the shoreline. Todd drifted closer and Neil looked over, a pensive expression on his face.
“Hey,” Todd said quietly. Neil nodded, before looking back out over the water. Todd tucked his legs under him; sitting huddled in the water a few feet away. He felt at once the chill of the water, and as if he were superheated. Todd watched the moonlight play on the water and his friends swimming far away across the pond. In five hours the sun would rise.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Neil asked. His voice was hushed in the quiet. Todd stared mutely out. It had been weeks since Todd had trouble talking to Neil, but now he couldn’t speak.
“Hey you okay? We could go back? I know you weren’t all that excited for this swimming thing.” For a moment Todd was afraid Neil would reach out and touch him. The water felt like it carried an electrical charge. Todd shivered. “Yeah, it’s cold. The guys won’t be mad if we go back.”
Todd nodded, “Yeah let’s go home.”
Todd eased his way to the shore, lying to be fully covered by the water, then like a shot he scrambled up the last few inches and ran for his clothes. He hastily pulled them on. The fabric tangled and caught on his wet skin frustratingly. Finally he was dressed, coat pulled on tight, hood up over his wet hair. Neil was fully dressed and tugging on his own coat. He smiled at Todd and they started walking. The quiet wasn’t strained, but Todd still felt jittering energy skittering across his nerves.
When they were just beyond the school grounds, Neil stopped, turning. Todd stopped as well. And then Neil’s hand was on his shoulder, pulling gently but firmly. Then Neil was kissing him. It was only moments, perhaps, long enough for Todd to reach his arms around Neil’s shoulders. And then it was over, and they were walking again. The silence was heavy. Todd’s head buzzed with so many questions but no words to form them with.
They snuck back inside safely. The four walls of their room seemed insulating, safe. Neil had said nothing, and wasn’t looking back at him. Sitting on his own bed, wrapped in a blanket, staring at Neil, Todd found his voice. Softly Todd asked,
“Why?”
Neil looked up, his face sharply serious.
“Because I wanted to,” he said simply. They both kept their voices low so as not to draw attention beyond their room.
“How did you know I…?”
“You do? I didn’t, exactly. My mother always says: ‘if you feel that strongly it’s likely they feel the same’, she was talking about girls but well…And then, at the pond. I figured, why not? My dad might withdraw me from school after this whole,” Neil waved his hand expressively in the air, “So I have till December. Why not make the most of it? Do what I want to do, that is, if you do too? Carpe Diem?”
“Your dad would really not let you come back?” Todd asked, shocked. Neil had been so sure, so confident and happy in his plans.
Neil shrugged, “It’s a possibility. He’ll be very angry, but once he sees me, maybe he’ll understand.” Neil grinned. “How can he not? It’s going to be amazing.” Todd knew it was true, just from hearing Neil practice in the room.
“You’ll be great, and … yes.” The last was barely a whisper, but he held Neil’s eyes. Neil’s answering smile made Todd feel like he was holding pure luck in his hands. He held his hands out and Neil quickly crossed the room to him.
The two of them hugged awkwardly across the bed. Then they shifted until Todd was propped up, with Neil tucked around him. He carded his fingers through Neil’s hair. The quiet was perfect. He neither needed nor wanted to say anything. Todd thinks he will remember this moment as the first he truly understood the value, and power of silence.