Addie on the Inside by James Howe Page B

at either end
of the porch swing, lunch on paper plates
between us, napkins tucked under our thighs
so the wind won’t surprise them
and carry them off. They flutter delicately
like scarves.
    The girl hanged herself on a bitter winter day,
tired, at fifteen, of the taunts and bullying,
frightened and feeling alone, even though
she had friends and a mother and father
and a little sister who had given her a scarf
for Christmas.
    Hours earlier she had cried in the nurse’s office.
Walking home, she was hit by a can of Red Bull
thrown from a car by some of the girls who were driven
to hate her, all because she was new to the school,
from another country, had dared to date
one of the popular boys. “Irish slut,” they called her.
“Druggie,” they called her. Texted her: “You deserve
to die.”
    Grandma says, “Why are you crying, sweetheart?”
I didn’t know I was. I hand her the paper, look out
across the street where some children are playing
hide-and-seek.
    What if she had never left Ireland?
What if she had never dated that boy?
What if they had just left her alone?
Why couldn’t they just leave her alone?
What if her sister had never given her that scarf?
What if her sister had not been the one to find her,
the scarf tight around her neck, her sister
only twelve?
What if her dying means nothing?
What if people just keep on hating?
What if she had been stronger?
What if I were weaker?
What if it were me?
    In memory of Phoebe Prince

Ready or Not
    â€œSo many bad things can happen,” I say.
Grandma gently rocks the porch swing as if we are babies
in a cradle needing to be soothed. “That’s true,” she says.
“Bad things can happen, and do.”
    â€œI don’t want to know that,”
    I tell her. “I’m only thirteen and I’ve seen too much I don’t want
to see.” Grandma puts down the paper and reaches for my hand.
“I understand,” she says. “Some days I want to put my head
in the sand. There’s too much pain out there, there’s too much
that scares me. But I wouldn’t be able to breathe with my head
in the sand, and I wouldn’t be able to see or hear or smell.
The world is a lovely place, Addie, despite the sadness it holds
for each of us, despite the terrible things we do.”
    I move our plates, scooch close, lean in to her, smell the lavender
of her shampoo. “Maybe it would be better not to think,” I say.
“Sometimes thinking hurts.”
    â€œIt isn’t the thinking that hurts,”
    she says, smoothing my hair. “It’s the caring.”
    We sit quietly for a time, then begin to eat our sandwiches.
The bread is whole wheat, the hummus homemade, the lettuce
crisp and still wet from washing. Across the street, a girl
calls out, “Ready or not, here I come.”
    And I wonder if I am ready, or ever will be,
for whatever might come.

We Are Lost
Inside the World

Hey
    â€œHey,” DuShawn says when he sees me Monday morning.
He’s acting kind of cool or maybe kind of shy, I can’t tell.
“Hey,” I say back and want to say something more even if
I don’t know yet what it is
    when Tonni calls his name
    like she’s calling a dog to come in
    and DuShawn goes.

Announcement
    November 22, 1963:
The day President John F. Kennedy died.
Grandma says she was in history class
when the first announcement
came over the PA:
“The president has been shot.”
She was in French
when the second announcement came:
“The president is dead.”
Her teacher did not know what to do
so she kept on teaching,
even though tears were streaming
down her cheeks.
Je pleure, vous pleurez, nous pleurons,

tout le monde pleure.

I cry, you cry, we cry,
all the world cries.
    On the bus home, some boys made jokes,
but the laughter was forced,
and they cut it out when somebody said,
“Shut up! Don’t you get it?
The president is dead!”
For four days