Page 13

LOVE SONG FOR A COPEPOD , or My Mom’s Take on My Tennis Coach

Once again, I was excited to get home to the Lily Pad to tell Ros and Touch about my brush with fame.

I mean—he’d touched me on the cheek! There had been a lingering glance! Come on!

I was happy to have something newsy to report. I liked my job, but honestly, the ins and outs of what I did every day were not always the most interesting. I painted over black scuffs in shoes. I restrung pearls on a broken necklace. Meanwhile, both my friends seemed to be having romantic luck outside the Lily Pad, while I was being left behind.

But this —this afternoon with Oliver Teller—this was news.

Unfortunately, no one was there when I got home. I beat back my creeping feeling that this was the new normal—that my Veggie Burger Prophecy was coming true—and tried to look on the bright side. Maybe it’d be nice to have the place to myself. A Tale of Two Cities , my summer reading, was practically rotting from where I’d left it in my suitcase, as were the other books I’d bought at the bookstore on our first day in town. But as I contemplated reading, I took one half look around the Lily Pad and was suddenly struck by the mess of the place. There were errant cans of seltzer everywhere, the half-finished bag of sour candy on the coffee table—definitely Touch and Ros’s handiwork. Shoes had piled up in random places; laundry hung on the line that I hadn’t quite gotten to putting away. When we’d arrived, the space had felt snug, but now it felt cramped, overtaken by the onslaught of our stuff . I was suddenly distressed: Had I been the only one following the chore wheel? We’d been here, what, two weeks? How did the place already look this bad?

I set about gathering the seltzer cans, as well as the loitering cereal bowls and yogurt and granola dishes (even I was contributing to the mess). I set them onto the small island counter, a staging area before I would move them to the recycling or the dishwasher, and that was when I saw it.

A poem.

Ros had written a poem.

They’d written a poem on the back of the chore wheel, but okay, they’d written a poem.

I tried not to read it—Ros didn’t like when people read their work without permission—but their handwriting was big and loopy, and I was able to make out certain words even as I tried to avert my eyes: desert. Gills. Lush.

Unfortunately, those certain words only made me want to read it more.

I covered my eyes with my hand and cheated through my fingers.

Desert. Gills. Love song.

Ros had written… a love poem?

For someone.

Maybe…

Just maybe…

They’d written a love poem…

For me? thought some tiny, pathetic voice inside me—like a desperate little mouse who lived in the back of my head.

Of course it’s not for you , I told myself.

( For me? that voice thought again.)

It had been written on the chore wheel.…

At that moment, right when I was telling myself not to believe in impossibilities, I heard someone stirring from our room. For a brief second, I theorized we were being robbed, before Ros emerged from our bedroom, rubbing sleep from their eyes. They’d been there the whole time.

They’d barely been at their new job—they’d just finished their first few days—but already, the way they looked was changing. Their freckles were emerging with more time in the sunlight, and their shoes were always coated in mud, which they tracked into our bedroom and left on the ground for someone else to deal with. One day I came home to find their upper arm scraped up—they’d gotten into a fight with a particularly ferocious viburnum, they said, no big deal. Still—they looked healthier. They seemed healthier. They seemed more like their old self.

I just wished that I had been the one to help get them there.

“Hey,” they said. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost six,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “You wrote a poem.”

“Oh,” they said, almost embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“You wrote it on the chore wheel.”

“Sorry about that,” they said. “I just needed paper, and it was the first thing I saw. Did I mess it up? I can help you make another one.…”

“Can I read it?” I asked.

“Do you want to read it?” Ros said.

It was a good question: Did I want to read this poem that featured the word love , this poem that most likely was not written for me? Couldn’t I let Ros share this poem with its intended audience and look the other way, like a good friend should? How badly did I really need to rub salt in the wound?

Very badly, it turned out.

“Of course I want to read it,” I said.

They looked at me for a long time, like they couldn’t trust my answer.

“You can read it,” they said finally. “But just know that it’s not very good.”

I took a deep breath and reached for the chore wheel. I looked at the poem, the poem written in Ros’s handwriting, handwriting that I loved so much I’d copied it, adding roofs to my a ’s, a habit that stuck, so that even when Ros stopped writing their a ’s that way, I kept on, little traces of them on everything I wrote. I read:

Love Song for a Copepod

For years, the tops of these trees were thought to be a desert.

Nothing grew. Nothing lived. Up that high—how could there be life?

Eventually someone climbed.

And what she found was lush gardens of ferns, and moss growing a foot thick on branches, and furred flying squirrels that didn’t know how to be afraid of people. A wandering salamander—no lungs, no gills. Up there, a tree makes her own water, dense enough that creatures breathe through their skin.

In certain basal hollows, there are copepods: tiny, near-invisible shrimp meant to live only in the ocean. Impossible. And yet—

They’re here. I cup one in the palm of my hand.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and as I said it, the tiny part of me that still hoped this poem was for me just up and died. This poem wasn’t for me. I didn’t even get it, this love poem that was supposed to move someone—move guess who —into falling in love with Ros. I couldn’t quite parse what it was trying to say, and I was sort of hung up on the copepod part—how could “tiny, near-invisible shrimp” be romantic? But I guess that’s why it wasn’t meant for me.

“So you like it,” said Ros, looking relieved.

“It’s different from what you usually write,” I said. Ros was a good writer, though normally, their poems made me laugh. They’d written one I particularly enjoyed about how bad the month of February was: “O February, Thou Deepest Pit of Suck…”

“You sound nervous,” I said.

“Well, I don’t usually write love poems,” said Ros.

“Right,” I said again, and I felt regret over having read it in the first place.

“Do you think she’ll like it?”

“ She ,” I repeated, playing dumb. I wanted Ros to say her name.

“Jess,” said Ros. “It’s for her. Well. It’s about her.”

Of course it was for her. My heart sank. I felt like Ros and I were on two separate conveyor belts, pushing us toward some inevitable future that wasn’t shared, and what I wanted to do was make mine run backward, to get us back to the point in time when we’d been on the same one.

“I know you don’t like her,” Ros said.

“I like her fine,” I said. This was a lie, but it wasn’t that I disliked her. I was just hoping that she would fade into the background, disappear like that character they’d introduced in the season two premiere of Power Jam as Blade Mendoza’s love interest, only they never brought her up again. 12

“That’s a ringing endorsement,” Ros said.

“What I mean is I don’t really know her. I like her about as much as I like someone who I watched punch someone at a party.”

“We kissed,” said Ros.

They kissed! They kissed? Oh my God, they’d kissed.

“Really? When!?”

“This afternoon,” they said. “She took me to see this all-white redwood tree. It was incredible.”

“This kiss, or the tree?”

“Both,” said Ros.

I thought for a second I might vomit, which would be especially unpleasant in our tiny bathroom, but I was distracted by Touchstone waltzing through the door, reciting lines from a monologue he’d had to memorize as part of an exercise for Young People’s Company.

“‘O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew’—what’s going on, everyone?”

“Ros kissed Jess Orlando and wrote her a love poem,” I said.

“Thanks a lot, Celia,” Ros said.

“The walls are thin! He’s going to find out soon enough!”

“Damn, Ros. Well played.” Touchstone grabbed my bag of (gluten-free) granola and starting eating fistfuls straight from the bag, sending bits of oat and nut skittering across the kitchen floor.

“Thanks, dude,” said Ros.

“Audrey and I kissed today, too.” More granola fell to the ground.

“You’re making this place a mess!” I said.

“Celia, you kiss anyone today?” said Touchstone. “It might chill you out.”

“ Mean , Andrew!” said Ros.

“Believe it or not, I actually worked today, thank you very much. And I’ll remind you that the whole point of this place is that you’re supposed to fall out of love. And furthermore, the contract said we were supposed to have a summer of VERY MODEST FUN and VERY SERIOUS FRIENDSHIP, not half-hearted friendship while everyone pursues their own romantic interests.”

“Celia, you a little jealous?” asked Touchstone rather annoyingly. Of course I was jealous! Of course I wanted to make out with someone! The only person I’d ever made out with, besides Touchstone, was Garrett Watkins on the swim-team trip, and he’d burped into my mouth. 13

“What I want,” I said, “is for this place to be clean.”

“Let me see this poem,” Touch said. “We can do some workshopping if you want.”

“Here,” said Ros, passing him the chore wheel. “I haven’t shown it to her yet. I wanted to get your opinion on it. Celia’s, too.”

“You know what we should do , now that we’re all here?” I said. “Is clean up the Lily Pad .”

“What’s a copepod?” said Touch.

“The poem answers it if you read.”

“Yeah, but do you want people to get stuck on not knowing what something is right away?”

“Ros, can you not leave crusted-on oatmeal dishes around the house? This is how we get ants.”

“What if I change that part to ‘tiny shrimp’? Is that too redundant?” Ros asked.

“I mean, ‘tiny shrimp’ isn’t very erotic. Do you want it to be erotic?” Touchstone said.

“Touchstone, is this flannel yours, or Ros’s? You know what, I’m just going to divide everything into piles according to person, and everyone can then deal with their own pile.”

“I wanted it to feel, like, miraculous,” Ros said. “Like, there’s this whole world up there that you didn’t even know existed. Does it feel that way to you?”

“I guess I feel that way. I’m just sort of hung up on the opening line,” Touchstone said. “I like the part about basal hollows.”

(I liked that part, too.)

I turned the sink on and started furiously scrubbing the dishes.

“Celia, what do you think?” said Ros, and I pretended I couldn’t hear them over the running water.

“Celia,” said Touchstone, louder.

“Celia!” said Ros, and I turned off the sink. “Do you really need to flip out about the state of the house right this very second ?”

“I’m not flipping out ,” I said. 14 “We just… promised Henry we’d take care of his house, and the summer’s not even a third of the way through. I don’t want him to come back and see that we destroyed it. Ros, have you been watering the plants?”

Silence. I filled up a pitcher.

“We won’t wreck the house,” Ros said. “We can clean up all the rest of the night, I promise. Just. Can you please come here and take a look at this?”

“Fine.”

I approached the counter. I read through “Love Song” again. I liked it more this time. I still liked the part about basal hollows. I liked the opening line about the desert. I liked the part about furred flying squirrels. I agreed with what Ros said, that there was something about it that felt miraculous. But as I read, there were things I didn’t like, too.

I didn’t like that I couldn’t write poetry.

I didn’t like that I didn’t know the names of plants, including the dramatically wilting one I’d just watered.

I didn’t like that this poem was for Jess Orlando, and not for me.

I didn’t like that I felt devastated by this love poem, and also jealous, and petty. I didn’t like that I couldn’t just be happy for Ros, who seemed much more alive than they had in a long time. I didn’t like that my feelings for them were getting in the way of my being a good friend.

And I really didn’t like that I felt like I was losing. No—I felt like I had already lost. That Jess Orlando and Ros would be together, and there was nothing to do now but slink into my room, find A Tale of Two Cities , and prepare for twelfth-grade history.

“Celia? What do you think?” Ros said expectantly.

“Yeah, Celia,” said Touchstone, with an expression that looked almost like a smirk. He was loving this, my heartbreak. “You’re the brains of the operation. What do you think?”

He passed me the poem/chore wheel, and my wet hands made the paper thin, quick to tear. I could cry on this, I thought. I could cry on this poem and drench it, and then rip it apart.

And then I had a thought.

Sometimes, in a tennis match, if I was already losing by a few games, I would think to myself, If I lose now, I can go home faster . My coach had told me once I needed more fight—not frustration, not anger, not rage, because I had plenty of that. What I needed, she said, was to dig deep and find the place that wanted to win, very, very badly, and tap into that place, and give myself over to it. 15

So what if I was losing? I didn’t need to cry now. I needed to fight .

“Okay, not to repeat questions, but what even is a copepod?” I said, passing the poem back to Ros. “Have you seen what they look like?”

I looked it up on my phone, and my heart soared a little. They were disgusting: horrible, translucent sea lice, with little legs like hairs and gnarly antennae. Some of them looked like literal tiny penises.

“Oh dear,” said Touchstone.

“Not the most flattering comparison,” I agreed.

“So what?” Ros said. “It’s not about how they look . The poem is about how they’re, like… this unexpected tiny life-form living where they shouldn’t.”

“I dunno, Ros,” I said. “It’s not a very flattering comparison.”

“So you think I shouldn’t give it to her.”

“I think you need to think about whether it needs revision,” I said. “I’m not sure handing her a poem that compares her to a shrimp is the most romantic thing. Even if you have already kissed.”

They looked so downtrodden that I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I should have stopped there. But I just kept on.

“And furthermore, criticisms about copepods aside, what’s the rush?”

“The rush,” Ros repeated, like they’d never heard the word before in their life. Like they weren’t made of rush. But while Ros was the sprinter on the swim team, I was the long-hauler. I did long-distance swims, the 400 IM, slow and steady. If I wanted Ros to decide they wanted to be with me—and I definitely wanted that—I needed to convince them that their relationship with Jess Orlando was a 400 IM situation. I needed them to pump the brakes so I could buy myself some time and figure out my next move.

“I don’t think there’s any harm, waiting on giving it to her,” I said.

“Maybe not,” said Ros.

“And also—not that you asked me but—I just think, outside of the poem, I do think you should proceed with caution. With Jess, I mean. I’ve heard some bad things about her from Phoebe.” This was what we called in school unethical treatment of sources , but I barreled fearlessly onward.

“Oh, come on, Celia,” said Touchstone, almost as if he sensed that I was stretching the truth.

“Bad things, how?” said Ros.

“That they’re trouble,” I said. Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe I would go so far as to twist Phoebe’s words to better serve my purpose. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just let Ros be happy with Jess?

“What does ‘trouble’ even mean?” said Touchstone.

“We didn’t really get into specifics,” I said, glaring at Touchstone. “Phoebe is very circumspect.”

“Don’t listen to her, Ros. It’s just gossip.”

I snatched my (nearly empty) bag of granola from Touch. “Look, I just don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve been through so much this past year… maybe just hold off giving it to her? And just tell her you want to be colleagues?”

“Colleagues,” Ros said, turning the word over in their mouth like they were practicing a word on our Spanish vocabulary list. They let their poem fall to the counter, chore-wheel side up. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. They looked miserable, and I was sorrier than they knew. Was this what winning felt like? Why hadn’t anyone told me that victory was going to feel so awful?

“It’s funny,” Ros said. “I know the copepod part is weird, or whatever, but I felt more like myself writing this poem than I had all year.”

At that, my stomach turned. It was one thing to persuade Ros to stay away from Jess Orlando; it was another to keep them from doing something they loved.

“You should keep writing,” I said. “Or maybe we should watch Power Jam or something? Or maybe we should go out to dinner… Touchstone wants to try the Dropped Acorn, I know.…”

“I’m pretty full from your granola,” he said.

Ros shrugged. “I’m not really in the mood,” they said. “I’m gonna go lie down for a while or something.”

They beat a retreat to our room, and no sooner had they closed the door than Touchstone looked at me and said, “ Woowwwwwww .” I furiously hushed him. Sound traveled all too easily in the Lily Pad. He rolled his eyes and wrote on the back of the chore wheel beneath Ros’s poem.

That was messed , he wrote.

Oh, shut up , I mouthed.

Is that stuff about Jess even true?

It could be , I wrote.

He took the pen from me and wrote, Celia Gilbert = next Machiavelli?

I shoved him off the barstool, and he landed with a yelp.

Talking Ros out of things with Jess wasn’t Machiavellian. I didn’t think so, at least. I really didn’t want Ros to get hurt. But I kept thinking about that, even long after we’d left Lovesick. What does that even mean , not wanting someone to get hurt? It was so hollow. Meaningless. Completely out of touch with reality. People get hurt all the time. Even in fairy tales, people bleed: They cut off their heels to fit into shoes and get their eyes pecked out by birds. Hurt is inevitable—if it wasn’t Jess, it would’ve been someone or something else. What was I saying? That I didn’t want Ros to experience life?

And besides: I may have been worried about Ros, but what I was really worried about was myself . I was worried, not even three weeks into our summer, whether our friendship would survive this, this Jess Orlando, and what this summer would mean for us. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d just said, I love you, and I’m glad you’re my friend . Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d just said, I’m worried we’re growing apart . Or perhaps: I’m worried you’re going to leave me behind .

Maybe I should’ve been less worried about who might hurt Ros, and who might hurt me, and more worried about who I might hurt.

I scratched out what Touchstone had written and rehung the chore wheel. I’d pressed so hard with the pen that it puckered through on the reverse side, like something living that was trapped inside and trying to get out.

Footnotes

12 Fans had all kinds of theories that this girl, whose character was called Eva, was going to come back in season three, if the show ever got renewed for a third season, and complicate the love triangle between Blade, Kenna, and Louisa. Eva was a rugby player whose team shared the weight room with the Soul Crushers and who had a flirty verbal sparring match with Blade over who could lift more weight (the answer was Eva, by quite a lot).

13 Regrettably, for both of us, he’d eaten stromboli. The kiss was memorable, and not in a good way.

14 I was definitely flipping out.

15 My mom hated this coach. “I’m sorry,” she said, “am I the only one who remembers this is MIDDLE SCHOOL TENNIS?”