Clu was sitting quietly, paging
through an old Philosophy textbook--well, that's what everyone
thought he was doing, but in truth, he was reading the latest
issue of X-Men. He giggled and Carey, Irene, and
Molly stopped what they were doing to give him strange looks.
He cleared his throat and pretended to be reading seriously
again. He was right in the middle of the climactic battle
scene when Jack grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the
hall.
"What
is it, man? I was just getting to the good part!
Well, they're all good parts, but the super good part, you
know, where--"
"Shh. I found it," Jack whispered, passing the
paper to Clu in a covert handshake.
"What did you find? The cheat codes for--"
"No! The poem. The one you wrote! Annie
found it and thought I wrote it to her, which obviously wasn't
true, but I figured it--"
Clu looked down at the paper and read it over silently (Jack
noticed that his lips were moving. Oh, how his lips were
moving! They formed the words so inaudibly and beautifully,
and... well, never mind what else he noticed.)
how
I long to fall just a little bit,
to dance out of the lines and stray from the light.
but I fear that to fall in love with you is to fall
from a great and gruesome height.
"Dude,
I didn't write this. You know I'm not a writer."
Jack recoiled, fearing his secret had unwittingly been revealed
through his false assumption. "I, I know you didn't, I
didn't mean that you wrote it, I just meant that maybe you knew
who did write it--"
Clu rested a hand on his shoulder. "I know what you
meant, man. It's cool."
"No, seriously, I didn't mean that I, like, thought you liked--"
"Shut up, Jack. But we should figure out who did write
this, you know?"
"No, no, no, I do not want to get involved in yet another
wacky mystery, so count me out." He sort of pouted and
walked away, slamming the door to his compartment.
Hm. So if Jack didn't write it to Annie, and I didn't write
it to Jack, who's left? Clu stood there for a moment, lost
in thought. Then it hit him like the proverbial ton of
bricks. Fi!
