Laura Hollis sat on a folding chair in the multipurpose space of her dorm, going through her rigorous pre-slam ritual. She read each poem through one last time, even though her roommate Betty swore she sometimes recited them in her sleep. She had just one earbud in, listening to her Lady Empowerment playlist (which was just transitioning from "Feelin' Myself" by Beyoncé and Nicki to "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways). And she was chewing Juicy Fruit gum (always Juicy Fruit—it had to be Juicy Fruit), keeping her mouth busy and her anxiety in check.
Even though this definitely wasn't her first time performing, Laura still felt deep anxiety in the pit of her stomach every single time she entered this room. Sometimes she hoped it would go away eventually, although admittedly, it did keep her on her toes.
When Laura accepted a scholarship to Silas Academy for the Arts, she hadn't been entirely certain she belonged there. Everyone seemed to have their thing—she knew a girl down the hall who'd written an entire musical, and then had it performed at a local community theater with completely sold out performances. She'd talked to another who'd once sold an abstract painting for $100,000, enough to cover tuition many times over, but who talked about the sale like it was just the sort of thing that happened to her on any regular Thursday.
Laura didn't have her thing. She just loved books, and maybe wanted to write some of her own someday. She'd written a few pages of song lyrics, and some weirdly erotic Harry Potter fanfiction back in the day, but she didn't think that counted as an impressive body of work, and wasn't something to bust out during bragging hour in the dining hall.
And then she'd decided—on a whim, honestly, after finding a meeting on the events page of Silas's website—to check out the university's slam poetry group. It was related to her field, and she needed friends, and honestly, she had seen the end of her Netflix queue, and it wasn't pretty.
She'd been impressed at the array of different poems she heard there. She'd read E.B. White and Emily Dickinson in high school, of course, but this was…different.
Rather than sitting stagnant on the page, with most of the life kicked out of them after many years of silence, these poems were new, modern, captivating in a way that grabbed Laura by the shoulders and said, "This is something to pay attention to." There was a girl there named Perry who wrote beautiful image poems, but tripped over her tongue as she tried to read them out loud. LaFontaine read one of the funniest poems Laura had ever heard. And then there was Danny.
Danny was the president of the group, she'd explained before they began for Laura's benefit, so she didn't recite her poetry as much as the others. She'd done her time. Danny judged the slams, and was one of the main people to impress if you wanted to get on the competition team to go to ACUI, the annual college poetry slam invitational.
But she'd recited a poem that day for Laura; it wasn't that often that they had a new member in their midst, especially a couple of weeks into the semester. Danny knew what she was doing in front of the crowd. She wrote political poetry, full of anger and passion and so much red that Laura had been immediately enraptured.
Laura had heard them all slam that first night—LaF had won; she still remembered how widely they'd smiled—and had immediately gone back to her dorm to write. She'd had to turn the brightness down on her laptop; she was up even after Betty came home and collapsed into bed.
It had all been crap at first, of course. Despite the fact that she wrote at least one poem a day, and sometimes three or four, often scribbled in the margins of her notes for English class, she didn't have anything to bring to the group for a full month.
She'd had to reintroduce herself when she went back, and endured skeptical looks when she signed up for the slam. She was just a freshman, after all, and not a very artsy looking one at that; she didn't even own a beanie. But that day, she'd listened to everyone slam really well-constructed poems, and still got out of her seat and tried her best to deliver hers.
She hadn't memorized her poem. Last time she'd been there, there had been several members who had papers in front of them. But this time, everyone else stood alone, arms waving, fingers pointing. So even though she'd felt self-conscious, she just read it from a folded up piece of printer paper.
That poem was a mess, she realized now. She wasn't sure she even still had it on her hard drive. It was a weird hybrid of the images, political fire, and humor she'd heard at the first meeting, with a tiny bit of herself mixed all up in there. It was about her dad, the bear spray, the way loneliness and love could coexist at the same time—it covered a lot of ground. But she'd managed to deliver it without bursting into tears, or even sputtering once, and she'd actually gotten some snaps (mostly from Perry) and a couple of whoops (thanks, LaFontaine) along the way.
After she finished, she sat down, terror still singing at the back of her throat. Doing that for the first time, really standing up there, that vulnerable, was one of the scariest things she'd ever done. She was almost glad when she didn't make it through to the second round, so that she didn't have to do that twice in one day.
"Hey Hollis," Danny said, walking up to Laura as everyone cleared the space after the meeting.
Her heart almost stopped. Why was the leader of the group talking to her.
"That was some pretty good stuff you brought tonight," she continued, looking straight at her.
Laura looked straight down at her sneakers. "Well, it wasn't exactly up to snuff…I did get out in the first round, after all."
Danny laughed. "I'm not saying you didn't deserve it, because that would be unprofessional of me. But no new kid ever gets past the first round. Club tradition. If they're not too discouraged to come back, they might have a few solid poems in them."
Laura paused. "That's…actually really smart. I have to admit, I was feeling…preeeetty discouraged. Everyone was really great tonight."
"Yeah, but you were going to come back though," Danny said, a small smile on her face.
"Are you sure about that? Because, honestly, I wasn't sure about that.
Danny laughed. "Give yourself some credit. You might have stayed away for a couple more weeks, written a whole new batch of poems…but you would have come back and showed us something. I know these things."
Laura blushed. She wasn't sure Danny was right about what she would have done, but now? From that moment, she knew she was part of the Slam Society to stay.
Now, her Juicy Fruit was going stale. It was almost time for the slam to start, and she was definitely fired up. She could feel her toes tapping in her boots, feeling tiny and excited and anxious all at once.
Since that day, Laura had made huge strides. She'd stopped mixing metaphors and trying to recite page poetry at a slam competition and bouncing around too much on stage. The workshops they had every week along with the slams helped a lot, her poems going through vigorous revision. Now, she was to the point that she could barely get through a couplet without yells of encouragement; she was the freshman, and she was to be protected.
She was also quite sure that she would be attending the slam this year, pretty uncommon for a freshman. Kirsch was okay, but his poems lacked structure (and most of them were thinly-veiled poems about Danny, and the club's leader didn't love that, even when he was being romantic rather than lewd. J.P. was also a contender, but he tended to recite sonnets, and let's be real: nobody liked sonnets. So there were five slots, and she would fill one of them.
Laura took her headphones out of her ears and caught Danny's eyes, letting her know she was ready to go. The two had grown closer over the past few months, to the point that LaF and Perry immediately bolted out of the room after every practice, hoping something would finally come of it. Of course, it never had, but if asked, Laura would say they were close to something...approaching the something station.
Danny gave Laura a huge smile from behind the judge's table and gave her two thumbs up. She wasn't supposed to be biased, but this was almost definitely just a sign of overall encouragement, from one team member to another. Laura smiled back a huge, stupid smile, all of her teeth showing, her eyes scrunched up. When she opened them again, Danny had her eyes crossed, her tongue curled into a perfect "u."
Laura had just started head banging, her hands in two devil's horns, when she heard the double doors creak open behind her. She wondered for a moment who it could be—everyone was definitely already here.
She turned around to see a girl. She was hoping for a nervous freshman, someone who'd come once to slam a poem about her dog, who would definitely be out of here by the next meeting. Instead, this girl wore leather pants and combat boots, and even though she wasn't very tall, her aura quickly filled up the room like smoke.
The girl caught Laura staring, and she actually raised one single, perfectly-shaped eyebrow at her.
As she sauntered up to the front of the room to put her name on the list, Laura could already tell: she was in trouble.