You Between the Lines

Chapter One

PRESENT DAY

W HEN I RECEIVED THE ACCEPTANCE letter to the Perrin MFA program four months ago, my first thought was I am an unbelievable scam artist. I am the Anna Delvey of poetry. The Tinder Swindler of graduate programs. I am that guy from the NXIVM documentary. Equally good hair, significantly less dangerous.

But the letter is still here—shiny and shocking and addressed to me, Leigh Simon, no typos. It’s not a mistake. I’m sitting in my new apartment in Perrin, a suburb near Asheville, filled with IKEA furniture and some remnants of undergrad, driven down by my dad all the way from Ohio. And in an hour, I’m going to the Welcome Barbecue.

Mom couldn’t come to Perrin. She was scheduled for some urgent surgeries she couldn’t get covered. I’m not sure how pleasant it would’ve been in the car with her and Dad, anyway, or if they would’ve even taken the same car.

I applied to Perrin on a whim. When my parents’ fighting escalated last year, I picked up the proverbial pen for the first time since college, processed my emotions through words, and submitted a poem to Goldfinch Review , which (shockingly) published it a few months later. That bit of external validation led me to consolidate my old college poetry and submit applications to a handful of MFA programs. Maybe someone took pity on me or the competition was particularly low this year, but the Perrin English department took a chance.

But even after getting the acceptance letter, I didn’t think I’d actually enroll . Up until two days ago, I was living in Boston, (over)working as a copywriter for the ad agency Coleman + Derry, writing manifestos for a diaper company while clients questioned whether I was an intern instead of a twenty-seven-year-old mid-level copywriter. It took one bathroom breakdown and an impromptu panic attack for my manager to recommend, nay, insist on therapy. And I’m the kind of girl who aims to please.

Bridget, my therapist, has an Anna Wintour bob and a collection of chic sweater-vests. During our session, she suggested that my parents’ separation a month ago might have played a role in my burnout, but that’s clearly not the case. I told her it had to do with taking something I loved—writing—and turning it into something I hate—also writing.

“I hate the clients and half my co-workers,” I said. “I thought going into advertising meant I’d get to be super creative, but there are always parameters. Restraints. Budgets.”

“That’s got to be really frustrating as a creative person.” Bridget’s chin teetered on her knuckles, absorbing every word like I was the most important person in her life. I desperately wanted her to invite me to brunch.

“It makes me hate writing. There’s so much pressure around it now. I can hardly look at words without self-editing them through a client’s eyes. It’s a creativity-killer. But what choice do I have? I’m not good at anything else.”

Bridget looked at me, bemused. “How do you know when you’re good at something?”

“When someone else tells me I’m good at it. Is that bad?”

She scribbled in her notes and offered a feline smile. “I don’t know. Is it?”

Damn you, Bridget.

She then asked what I’d do if I wasn’t copywriting. The only thing I could think of was still writing. But not for clients. Just for myself. I studied creative writing in college because I liked making words breathe—and because I couldn’t imagine studying anything else. But then I pivoted my attention to copywriting instead of attempting the scarier kind of writing, the kind where you spit yourself out on a page and lay yourself bare for strangers to dissect.

“Copywriting’s an art, for sure. But I’ve never been attached to it in the same way,” I told Bridget.

For a billboard or a digital ad, you have to sculpt a sentence until it’s crisp. Strong. Weight bearing. Until it’s sailor-knot-tight, black-and-white, with no underbelly of feelings that could be misinterpreted.

“Maybe you’re ready for the underbelly now,” Bridget said.

I told her I’d gotten into an MFA program but wasn’t sure I should go. She politely informed me she couldn’t tell me what to do (I, obviously, had asked) but that I could pretend to make a decision and then do a body scan to determine what choice felt better “in my body.”

Obediently, I sat in front of her, eyes closed, envisioning one life stuck at Coleman + Derry, constrained by pencil skirts and too-high expectations, and another at the MFA program—an easy excuse to quit my job without looking weak; a chance to fall in love with writing again. Bridget hypothesized that maybe I was going through life making decisions using my head over my gut; that maybe my gut should have a bit more say.

As I stand in front of my mirror in Perrin, North Carolina, applying makeup to look as hot as possible in front of my new classmates, you know which option won out.

But Bridget offered some departing advice before billing me an ungodly fee and scheduling another session:

“Leigh, I think you need to be careful not to fall into the old patterns you’ve created for yourself over the last twenty-seven years. The chasing validation, the people pleasing. If you decide to go, hunker down and enjoy it. It can’t be a competition. It can’t be for other people. Just for you.”

It’s her words now that strum over my body, jostling my fingers as I apply mascara in the mirror. I’ve taken the leap to pursue the writing career I’ve always wanted, and I’m pushing everything that happened in high school and college behind. This is my blank slate.

And there’s something important at stake: What to wear on the first day of grad school?

I’ve thought a lot about this. Made the Pinterest boards, devoured the university Instagram for clues on how students dress. Mapped out three distinct options—three different moods to evoke as I begin a new chapter of life where no one knows me.

I considered going full poet. All-black, eyeliner, definitely no bra, thrift store top, some sort of satchel. Or I could dress incredibly casually, as if this MFA First-Year Welcome Barbecue is nothing to me. A blip on a full social calendar, a common occurrence out of a schedule of readings, informal workshops, art gallery openings, et cetera. That would call for wide-leg jeans, a black tank top, Birkenstocks, maybe lipstick. Model off duty, French girl, New York girl—something like that.

But I go with option three, which hinges on a never-before-explored concept in my twenty-seven years of life: being, with no agenda, myself. A Taylor Swift–enthusiast sorority-girl Ohioan entering a Master of Fine Arts program. In poetry.

In other words—a seersucker dress and sandals. I’d texted my best friend Gen a photo of the outfit an hour earlier and received enough flame emojis to fill up the screen.

Armpit-sweat-stained in mid-August, I stand outside the one-story brick house calculating the appropriate amount of cleavage to wear to a party of overeager, neurotic writers who are about to name-drop all over me. After pushing up the off-the-shoulder neckline of my dress, I ring the doorbell. Within seconds, it opens.

“Why, hello!” booms a red-cheeked bald man with translucent acetate glasses and a polo shirt, looking more like a rich golfer than the longtime director of the Perrin MFA program.

I haven’t seen Professor Daniel Kitchener in months. Not since the video call where he went over my funding options after I accepted the offer of admission. But he remembers me, no doubt, because—

“Leigh? The Leigh Simon? Poet of Cleveland?” His voice carries all the gravitas of a sixty-four-year-old novelist and National Book Award winner—deep, rich, buttery. The croissant of voices.

“That’s me,” I confirm, ignoring a deep-seated urge to curtsy.

“We’re just delighted to have you.” Daniel steps aside to leave room for his wife—Sharon, a professor of art history at Perrin—who materializes next to him holding a glass of something bubbly.

“I’m delighted to be here!” I chirp. I walk into the house after the Kitcheners and check myself out in the mirror above a tasteful side table. I am positively dripping. Maybe I should have worn black.

“We’re still waiting on some more, but we’ve got a handful of each genre so far. A few poets, a few prosers.” Daniel leads me down a hallway and into the living room, which has one focal wall of shelves, filled to the brim with the tattered spines of books I’ve probably never heard of, family photos, antique clocks. And in front of it are five first-years, mingling.

This is the moment of truth. I majored in English but never found much in common with the other students. On-campus readings and student literary clubs seemed to attract a certain type—the tattooed, the pot smoking, the ones who brought books to parties, the ones with ill-cut bangs and nose rings and an aversion to neon. They didn’t seem much impressed with me, either. So I didn’t try to make friends with my Intro to Fiction & Poetry classmates. Instead, I rushed a sorority and tasted beer for the first time, liking how something so bitter could be so easy to swallow. With the Greek system, I got a built-in family—the perfect antidote to my only-child existence. Back then, an arbitrarily assigned “big sis” was more appealing than a book.

“Everyone, everyone, allow me to introduce you to another fine poet.” Daniel extends his arms as if he’s a celebrity talk-show host. “Leigh Simon of Cleveland, Ohio!”

I’m reminded of the time at sophomore-year summer writing camp when we sat in a circle in the grass, introducing ourselves with epithets that started with the same letter as our first names. I said, “Legendary Leigh,” like the first word I thought of hadn’t been lonely .

The group smiles politely and I shake hands with everyone as Sharon Kitchener presses a flute of sparkling wine into my left hand.

There’s Wiebke—a thirty-year-old German fiction writer who’s spent the last ten years in New York: loose handshake, light accent, smells amazing. Then Hazel, a twenty-seven-year-old poet from Portland, dressed in all-black with chunky loafers and an eyebrow piercing. I meet Morris, a scruffy-cheeked and blazer-clad fiction writer from Brooklyn with a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. I’m pulled into a hug by Southern-drawling Athena, another fiction writer, fresh out of college judging by her UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA T-shirt. Lastly there’s Kacey, a Texan poet in ripped jeans with a warm, toothy smile. This year’s cohort is five poets and five fiction writers—and we’re waiting on more to arrive.

Hazel speaks first, and I see she’s gone the full-poet-outfit route, no bra included.

“So, Ohio—cool! I’ve never been,” she says, as if Ohio is Luxembourg—someplace random and far away that you know exists but will never have a reason to visit. But less rich.

“You’re hardly missing out,” I quip, my standard boilerplate response, which reliably gets a chortle from our New Yorker, Morris.

“You’re the second Ohioan in the cohort, actually,” Hazel says. “Daniel said there’s one more. Maybe you’ll know each other.”

I stave off a snort. It’s a big state. “Maybe!”

The small talk continues, and more students appear. Houston, a handsome six-foot-four fiction writer from Chicago—you can already tell he’ll be trouble. Christine, a North Carolinian fiction writer in a periwinkle maxi dress with a bulging satchel. Jerry, a twenty-four-year-old poet who appears to be suffering immensely at the intense back-and-forth of names, ages, locations.

But it’s nice. Despite the mental work it’s taking to smile, to nod emphatically at other people’s introductions, to find the exact time to look away and grab a potato chip, it’s nice to be with a group of writers. People who actively want to be here and aren’t just fulfilling a college requirement.

Ideally, though, it would be an environment free from pretension. Maybe that was too much to ask for.

“I actually didn’t even apply to Iowa,” Hazel says, gulping wine, to the small group around us. The fiction writers self-segmented and are standing by the unlit fireplace, leaving me alone with the poets. “I just feel like it’s overhyped.”

Kacey shrugs. “I have a close friend there in fiction now, and she absolutely loves it.”

“Oh, sure. But it’s still in Iowa ,” Hazel says.

“Yeah, location’s important, but I was drawn to Perrin for the opportunities outside of class,” Kacey continues, while I have absolutely nothing to add to this conversation. “I really want to teach Intro to Fiction and Poetry to freshmen next year. Not sure if I want to be an editor of the lit journal.”

Our MFA is fully funded, thank god, due to every student getting an assistantship or editorship, which they complete alongside their studies. In the second year of the MFA, we can apply to be an editor for the university’s literary journal or teach undergraduates. In addition to that, two writers are offered a prestigious fellowship with a famous visiting professor, which could be very interesting depending on who the visiting professor is.

“Oh, Perrin’s got a great lit journal,” Hazel says. “Personally, I’ve been published in Ploughshares —”

“So is this everyone?” I interject. The poets slowly reintegrate with the larger group.

“We’re missing the final poet,” Athena says, twirling her black hair around her finger.

“The Ohioan.” Hazel nudges my shoulder. “Maybe this is him?”

I see him in the hallway first, shaking hands with Daniel and Sharon, handing them a bottle of wine. I can’t make out his face from where I’m standing, but his silhouette is striking. And there’s something familiar about him. He’s tall and broad-shouldered and is wearing a loose button-down shirt with rolled-up chinos, loafers with no socks. His hair is wavy and light brown, a lock hanging in front of his forehead. He looks put together enough to be a professor. Did Daniel invite professors, too?

Within seconds, he’s in the living room with the rest of us, and something in my stomach drops low, then lower.

“Finally, we are complete!” Daniel announces as the walls close in on me. “Friends, I am pleased to introduce our final poet—William Langford of Cleveland!”

Will starts making the rounds, introducing himself and shaking hands. The air’s been sucked out of the room, the scene playing out in slow motion, my ears clogged like I’m underwater. As if from far away, I hear his voice—deep, like honey, trickling over my skin.

He’s in front of me now, and because for the last minute I have been stick-figure-still, I can sense the entire room watching us, trying to decipher what’s going on behind my eyes. He extends a hand, then suddenly, as if someone poured ice water over his head, jerks it back to his side and stares at me in disbelief.

“Oh! Hi!” he says, and I cannot begin to imagine the flush my face is betraying me with.

“Will?” I hear my voice, pitched higher with the cadence of a question. But it’s not a question. Not really.