The English assignment changed everything once again, and even more drastically this time. They were supposed to write sonnets, which was one of those things that made even the more ambitious kids in class groan in disdain, for fear of losing coolness points otherwise. Yet the next week, as the students handed in their homework, Duke gave Mrs. Manning a whole bunch of papers.
"Here," he said when she didn't immediately take them.
She looked up, frowning. "What's this?"
"My homework," he said. "I made a full crown. It would have been a redoublé, but..." He shrugged.
"You made a whole crown?" she asked. The shocked tone in her voice was warranted. Duke rarely did any homework, especially not in English, and for him to go above and beyond was unheard of.
"In the style of Shakespeare's finest," Duke said with a smirk. "Except with Italian rhymes. I liked that better."
"Well, thank you, Duke," she said feebly, adding the papers to the pile. "Thank you very much."
Nathan wasn't the only one waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Duke to geek out over something as uncool as poetry, there had to be a joke buried somewhere.
As they got started on the next page of the textbook, detailing other types of verse, the class waited, eyes on the homework pile, while Denise as the chosen student read the introductory paragraphs out loud in an even flatter voice than she usually mustered for such tasks. Yet it wasn't until a full fifteen minutes into the class, when everyone got started on the questions on the second half of the page, that Mrs. Manning picked up the pile and started reading.
"Duke Crocker!"
As expected as the exclamation had been, it was still sharp enough to make the class jump. Little red spots had appeared in her otherwise pale face.
"How dare you!?" she cried, voice shivering with rage. "Go to the principal's office at once! No – I'll take you myself. Nathan Wuornos, you have the class."
Nathan took the desk while Duke followed Mrs. Manning out the door, a certain smug satisfaction over his posture, but with a blank face until he passed Nathan and gave him a wink.
The class remained in gravelike silence as the two left, and then erupted in discussion about what, exactly, had been written on those papers.
"It must have been something dirty," Joe said. "Did you see that look on her face?"
"Maybe he was insulting her," Nicole suggested.
"Nah, she wouldn't get that worked up just over an insult."
"Maybe it was a dirty insult." Nicole laughed.
Jeff and Jack, as Duke's closest confidantes, got quizzed, but neither of them had been told anything beforehand. Neither had Jeannine, who was highly peeved about this fact.
Technically, it was Nathan's job to keep the class quiet, but he realized the futility of attempting, and in any case, he wanted to know too.
Hannah Driscoll came up to him, gave him a sweet smile, and asked, "Hey, Nathan, do you want to find out what Duke wrote?"
"Of course," Nathan said. "Why, do you know?" He and Hannah often worked together on group assignments, not just because they were friends, but because, like him, she was serious-minded and disciplined. She wasn't very likely to be in league with Duke, although more likely than her father would have thought.
"No, but I've got a plan. Do you want to help?"
"Sure."
"Good," she said, and punched him in the nose.
Her punch wasn't very strong, but he was caught by surprise and she got him hard enough to make his eyes water.
"What the hell, Hannah?" he asked as the rest of the class cheered her on, the reverend's daughter punching the police officer's son.
"Do you think it's enough?" she asked him, head cocked. "Or should we add something else?"
She raised her hand, and he caught it around the wrist.
"I don't think so," he said.
"Oh, come on, Nathan!" she complained. "It's got to look convincing for Mrs. Manning."
So he let her scratch him in the face, with way too sharp nails, and when Mrs. Manning returned Hannah burst into tears.
"He's such an asshole!" she cried, and both of them were sent to the principal's office as well.
Duke wasn't there any longer, but they still had to wait for a while before Principal Rasmussen sent them in. Nathan had feared that Hannah would claim sexual harassment or something else that might get him in real trouble. Instead she just complained again about what a horrible mean asshole he was, and then segued into a rant about her controlling father, with details that might be lies but probably weren't.
Nathan had just started to wonder if those tears were real, when she waved behind Principal Rasmussen's back at the pile of paper on the desk. As the principal handed Hannah a tissue, Nathan salvaged Duke's homework from the edge of the desk and snuck it under his T-shirt.
In the end, Principal Rasmussen gave Hannah a detention slip and told her she mustn't fight, warned Nathan to be more considerate of his classmates, and sent them both back to class.
The papers burned under Nathan's shirt, but he wasn't called back, and during lunch break he and Hannah met by the stairs to read them.
It really was sonnets. Duke's didn't have the easiest handwriting, but he had taken special care with these, and they were legible enough. Nathan's jaw slowly dropped as he read the first one:
"This shit is only good to fill the can.
To give the bard some credit, he was randy.
He'd fuck in dirt and let his ass get sandy.
Yet any four-eyed prude here is a fan.
"Who else? Bimbos named Tiffany or Brandy,
some dickhead boyfriend with a spray-on tan,
who blows himself, like that makes him a man.
And pimply morons, hungering for candy.
"Well, let them all jerk off into a sock.
Give me a quiet beauty, shy but willing,
a pouty mouth wrapped firmly round my cock.
"And while my seed into that throat is spilling,
the line for next in turn goes round the block.
If sex is a small death, I've made a killing."
Hannah gleefully uttered a word that would have had her father reach for the nearest Bible.
"Can you believe it?" she asked, eyes glittering. "Are they all like that?"
They were. Fourteen sonnets, each filthier than the next, each in iambic pentameter with intricate rhymes, the last line of each poem starting the next one.
The truth was, Nathan could believe it. It was both brilliant and incredibly stupid, and very much Duke Crocker.
"We've got to get them photocopied," Hannah said. "Or, no, my dad has a computer. I'll type them up and print duplicates."
Nathan almost choked. "You want to print that on your dad's computer?"
"I so very much do," she said, grinning. "Not while he's home, obviously!"
He looked down on the scribbled words on the page and swallowed. "Give me a quiet beauty, shy but willing, a pouty mouth wrapped firmly round my cock."
"Okay," he said. "Save me a copy."
Hannah made copies not just for Nathan but for the whole school. Neither Principal Rasmussen nor Mrs. Manning seemed to make the connection between them and the abhorred poems now making the rounds in every single class. They probably thought Duke had leaked them himself, despite still being suspended, or that his friends had.
There were threats of severe punishment for anyone found with the poems in their possession, but that didn't deter anyone. On the contrary, they became the number one topic of conversation, with the most burning question being: was the person mentioned in most of the poems an imaginary muse or someone real, and if so, who?
"It's got to be Katie Hughes," Jeff McShaw declared to his little brother Bill, as they sat on a bench outside between classes, Nathan on another one nearby enough to overhear them.
"How do you figure?" Bill asked.
"Because if you look at the fifth sonnet, here, it says:
"My lust is more than just a passing fling,
though you might wish to scorn me and berate
me, when I want to crown myself your king
"and order you to kneel down and fellate
me. Oh, the joy our union could bring!
Your mouth was made for me, you sexy... thing."
""Yeah, so?"
"So it can't be 'thing'. That doesn't fit the rhyming scheme at all.
"It rhymes with 'bring'."
"Yeah, but that's not the way he's written it," Jeff declared. "It's CDC DCD."
"Huh?"
"The last word has to rhyme with 'berate' and 'fellate'. Same with the next section, he uses both of those rhyming syllables again, and it should logically be an '-ate' word in the first line. It's been replaced. Why would he do that, unless the word would give it away? It's got to be a name. Kate."
"You're such a nerd," Bill scoffed, and then, "Give me that. Okay, let's say it's meant to be Kate. Why Katie Hughes?"
"Oh, come on, of course it's Katie Hughes," said Jeff, with a finality that encompassed Katie Hughes' entire personality and reputation.
Nathan's heart started to pound, and he sat dazed as the other guys debated the likelihood of various other Kates:
"Kate Johnson."
"Too prim!"
"Maybe he likes them prim! All right, Kate Ashton."
"A freshman, seriously?"
"But have you seen her?"
All the while, Nathan couldn't help thinking that Kate wasn't the only name that rhymed.
His copy of the sonnets was hidden under his mattress. He'd taken his own laundry down to the washing machine ever since Mom died, so there was no real risk of Dad finding them there. Every now and then, he'd take them out and read them through, even though he'd already learned many of the lines by heart. He stared at the words, willing them to reveal the identity of the muse, if she – or he, there was nothing to indicate it had to be a girl, whatever the others thought – really existed. Maybe Duke was just screwing with all their heads.
Considering everything else Duke had pulled, most of the students expected him to get expelled this time, but after a week's suspension he was back. Despite having derided most of them in his poems, he was lauded as a hero by the students, thought the teachers' attitude were much frostier.
Mrs. Manning's initial reaction was to call on Duke to answer questions whenever he seemed the most distant, but she tired of it when he turned out to actually know most of the answers, and they reached a silent agreement to pretend that the other didn't exist.
Duke's attendance improved for a little while, which meant that Nathan saw him with uncomfortable regularity, though usually around too many other people to talk. It was a couple of weeks later still, when Duke had already started skipping classes again, that Nathan bumped into him outside the photocopier room and asked: "So, those poems..."
"What about them?" Duke asked, with the face of someone who'd been asked a thousand times but wouldn't really mind being asked a thousand more.
"Are they about anyone in particular?"
"That's the million dollar question, isn't it?" Duke drawled. "What do you think?"
"I think they are." Nathan swallowed. "I'm just not so sure they're about a girl."
Duke watched him in silence, a smile hinting along his lips.
"Because Kate isn't the only thing that rhymes."
"I know a lot of rhymes," Duke said.
"Was it...?" Nathan started, but found he couldn't ask the question.
A teacher passed them by, and Nathan held up his hallway pass. She threw Duke a glance, but didn't say anything.
"Get your duties done like a good boy, Nate," Duke said, and Nathan wasn't sure if the tinge of disappointment in his voice was just wishful thinking. "And when you think of a way to finish that sentence, you let me know, all right?"