"For five dollars, I'll show you the place where the guy got shot."

The boy, about ten years old, leaned his elbows on the table in the school library as he addressed Cole and another boy. Though they were seated at the same table, corralled there by the elderly librarian, none of the three knew each other.

The second boy hunched over an atlas, carefully working the pages out of the binders. Occasionally Cole heard a soft tear. That boy did not respond to the older boy's offer.

"No thanks," he said, in a low tone.

"Are ya chicken?"

Cole shook his head, then turned his attention back to his book.

"It was badass," the boy said, trying at persuasion. "The shooter aims the gun at this one guy's girlfriend, so that guy jumps him and shoots him back. Serves him right. That's what they all should do. Snatch the gun and shoot him back, instead of running away like total wusses."

"That's stupid," said the other boy with the atlas. "He'd blow your head off."

"Uh-uh. Not if you do it right."

"Do you know how to do it right? Disarm a crazed lunatic?"

"Sure."

"What if he had a hostage? What if he was holding the gun at the girl's head and he could shoot her faster than you could do anything?"

"Then you talk to him. You pretend to be his friend. Then after he lets go of the girl, you ram him."

"What if he doesn't believe you?"

"He will if you do it right."

The librarian came by the table. Cole thought she would reproach them for their loud conversation. Instead, she scolded Atlas Boy for destroying the atlas.

The boy was unrepentant. "It's my atlas. I can do what I want with it."

After he proved that it was, in fact, his own atlas and not the library's, she pursed her lips. "I don't approve of you tearing up any books in the library. It sets a terrible example to others."

"It's for a project," Atlas Boy said solemnly.

"Well, you'll have to finish your project some other time," the librarian insisted, stressing "your project" like she did not buy his story. "In the meantime, find something to read quietly."

She stalked back to the checkout counter. After they were satisfied she was distracted with her work, the boys resumed their conversation.

"I know how to disarm a lunatic," the first boy said. "My dad's a hostage negotiator. He taught me all the secret hostage negotiator moves."

"You're lying," Atlas Boy grumbled. "I bet your dad's real job is mopping the floors in movie theaters."

The first boy's eyelids twitched but he quickly recovered. Atlas Boy did not seem to notice the twitch but Cole did.

Cole asked, interrupting the escalating fight, "Do you know where Curacao is?" The island had been mentioned in the book he was reading.

Atlas Boy automatically flipped to one of the remaining pages in his book. He pointed out an island by the coast of Venezuela. He quirked his eyebrows as if to say, Ask something harder.

The first boy fumed silently.

"This atlas is out of date," Atlas Boy belatedly defended himself. "It's useless, anyway."

Two big letdowns in the poetry class.

The first was that Emma Nelson was in the class. Besides Jimmy Cooper (who was shot by Rick), or Sean Cameron (who shot Rick with Rick's own gun) - and, arguably, Spinner - Emma was the most affected survivor of the shooting. Rick had been pointing the gun at Emma when Sean overtook him.

Emma, of course, was on the list of forbidden people. In the interest of peace, Kendra had negotiated with Rick that he should stay away from anyone influenced by his rampage until she decided otherwise. Her goal was to ensure their safety from any designs of revenge Rick may still harbor.

The other thing wrong with the class was Mrs. Lucas's lesson plan.

"Poetry is about expressing the truth," Mrs. Lucas yammered. "Often the truth is not discovered until you take the time to examine it. And unlike a scientist who discovers the world through the world, the poet discovers the world through oneself.

"Humans are complex beings. Our whole lives are spent not knowing who we are or who we have the potential to be. We think we know ourselves. We define ourselves by our hobbies and achievements, our likes and dislikes, our friends and families, but that is not all we are.

"Society often discourages us from discovering our true selves. We are taught to suppress emotions, to pretend to be happy when we aren't because we think our problems will inconvenience others, or that emotions are simply undesirable because we should have more control over them. I will correct one misconception now; it is not releasing emotions that endangers us. The dangerous ones are the ones who seal their emotions inside them, who refuse to acknowledge the emotions that will hurt themselves or others."

Several students looked towards Emma when Mrs. Lucas referred to Rick's infamous death. The tall blonde girl sat up rigidly in her seat, as if she wished she could fade out of sight.

"Emotions need release. And the arts are one of the ways that we can safely direct our emotions. I'm going to pass out the journals you are to use all summer. For the first couple of weeks, I want you to concentrate on noticing your emotions. I want you to explore what you feel. Observation is key here. I want you to describe the effects on you and your life. How does it interfere with your everyday life? Does it affect your relationships with your friends and family? Remember these journal entries will make up fifty percent of your final grade."

Here Mrs. Lucas paused, letting the students flip through the journals. They were ordinary notebooks from the school store.

Kendra could never understand these assignments. She kept a regular journal at home, so the problem was not the writing. It was the "pour out all your inner feelings and turn them in for me to grade" that violated the decency that any real journal would possess.

"I'm not setting a word count or demanding any of the usual requirements for your journal," Mrs. Lucas said generously. "although I want you to date your entries. Are there any other questions? Then I have a poem to pass around. It will not take long to read, and I'm sure you will appreciate its simplicity."

After the short discussion of the poem Mrs. Lucas chose (an e e cummings poem about plums, which thankfully had no heavy emotional subtext), the class ended.

Kendra strode up to Mrs. Lucas after the classroom emptied out.

"Mrs. Lucas?" she asked. "I was wondering if we would be learning how to write real poems."

"We are doing the preliminary stages," Mrs. Lucas said, smiling.

"But what about forms?" Kendra argued. "You know, sonnets, couplets, haiku? What about meter and feet and scansion? Are we going to do any of that, or are we just doing . . ."

She trailed off. She had about to say "feelings crap," but stopped to search for something more polite.

"To answer your question about form, yes, we will be covering the popular forms. But because there is more than one universal form recognized by poet circles, I want to impress on the class of what makes poetry distinct from other forms of writing. And because this is an English class, I want to give students a chance to improve their overall writing skills."

"So why do we have to write about our emotions?" Kendra blurted out. "This isn't a psych class."

Mrs. Lucas, unperturbed by the question, said mildly, "My focus for the assignment was about observation. I could hold up an object or send you to a picturesque site and ask you to describe it, but I am looking for more variety than that. Also the object or site will have little relation to your life, and a writer has to learn to draw from life experiences."

Exactly, Kendra wanted to answer. Her own life experiences, what few of them there were, were precisely what she wanted to avoid. Her life experiences were not Mrs. Lucas's call to grade.

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Kendra," Mrs. Lucas encouraged her. "I understand you've done some writing before. Mr. Simpson tells me you have a talent for it. Do you have a question, Emma?"

Emma Nelson poked her head in the room. "Just a quick question," she uttered shily. She fixed her eyes past Kendra, straight on Mrs. Lucas. "About the journals. Do they have to be about feelings?"

Mrs. Lucas gave Emma the same kind smile she gave Kendra. "Listen, I'm not asking for all your life's secrets. I'll give the same advice to the rest of the class as I'm giving to you two now. Start with something small. Think of a movie you enjoy or something that annoyed you this week. Trust me: the assignment won't be so difficult once you get started."

"OK, thanks," Emma spoke first before she hurried away. Kendra echoed the same thing, lying through her teeth because it was not OK and there was nothing to thank the teacher for. Then she, too, departed.

Emma was nowhere in sight when Kendra exited the classroom.

Rick joined Kendra at the library entrance. "So what do you have to do, memorize a poem?"

"Worse. I have to write about my feelings."

"My anger management mentor had us memorize 'Casey At The Bat,'" Rick said. "He claimed it works better than counting."

Guess he was wrong, Kendra thought nastily to herself. Her anger at Rick surged anew. If it were not for him, her assignment would not provoke such anxiety.

She detoured to the library to pick up Cole. Cole was waiting at the door. He tossed a goodbye to a sullen boy named Finn.

"Nice friend," Kendra quipped, her nasty mood remaining.

Cole brushed that off with a shrug.

"Do you want to check out anything?" Kendra asked more kindly. That short snarky comment had diffused her anger.

"An atlas," Cole mumbled. "But it would be safer if I bought one instead."

"So, to the bookstore?" she clarified.

"If it's all right with you," Cole answered with his characteristic tentative politeness.

Rick tagged along with them. While Cole browsed the atlases, Kendra wandered to the poetry section and peeked at a few books which gave instructions on writing poetry. Except for the occasional dryly worded dictionary of related terms, most of them took the same approach as Ms. Lucas in how to write passionately.

Cole ended up the cheap folio of world maps. The steep price of the large, hardcover atlases factored into his choice. Some of them ran up to eighty or one hundred Canadian dollars.

"You could build a fort with some of these," Rick quipped. Cole glanced at him with raised eyebrows. "Hey, I was a kid once. It's not like I'm advocating you build a fort here."

"I'm just getting this one," Cole replied softly.

Rick heaved one of the larger tomes to the floor and opened it. It revealed a detailed map of Italy, with insets of Sicily and Sardinia.

"You ever been to Europe?" Rick asked, as he turned the pages forward. "Or anywhere overseas?"

"No," Cole exhaled.

"Me neither." Rick sounded wistful. "Now, my ex-girlfriend Teri, she's done some modeling. She traveled to a few places. Nowhere very exotic: just around the continent, maybe some islands in the Caribbean or Hawaii. But I've never been out of Canada."

And now he won't be able to, Cole deciphered. Dead people did not have the same freedom of travel; they were too tied down to their reasons for lingering after death. Unless Kendra jetted off to some scenic location, Rick was not going to ever see one of those places himself.

Kendra found them. "I got my books. Are you ready to go?"

Cole nodded. "I've got money," he offered.

"American or Canadian?"

"Both."

They stopped at the counter to pay for their books.