Megan Crewe – another world, not quite ours

September 1, 1997 (Megan is 16)

Princess Diana died in a car crash Saturday night in Paris. It was all over the front page, and everyone’s talking about it. The paparazzi were chasing the car. That’s the only part I find very sad. That they don’t even care; their souls are sucked out of them… Everyone’s saying how horribly sad it is Diana died. I think it’s sad someone died, but I never knew her so it doesn’t affect me so much. Funny how no one mentions the chauffer or the man she was with, both of whom also died. It’s like her life was more important. This is what you get when you’re famous, your life is worth more than everyone else’s. It’s sad to think some people would, given the choice, save Diana over a member of their own family, or a friend.

[My cousin] told us about a rafting trip she and a bunch of friends went on in Quebec. When they first got there, they went swimming in this spot by the river where they’d gone swimming before, in the several other times they came down with their school. One of the girls got caught in the current and swept downstream. The others tried to get the owners of the place to help, but they said it was none of their business. The kids tried to use the phone to call the police; the Quebec police wouldn’t do anything, and then the owners kicked them off the phone. The pay phones were out. The police didn’t come for five hours and only then because the owners called about one of the kids, who was really upset and being disruptive.

They found the girl’s body three days later. She didn’t even make it to the Star.* That is sad.

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*a major newspaper

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May 27, 1996 (Megan is 15)

I can’t believe I did this. I guess I didn’t really do something but in a way I set it up…

I wrote this poem, with P in mind, over the weekend. As I was writing it and reading it and thinking about it, I kept thinking that it would be neat if P read it. So I figured I’d show it to L at lunch and hope he’d come by at the same time. I didn’t really figure it would work but I kept playing it out in my head all weekend.

So lunch came and I showed the poem to L and asked her what was wrong with it (based on the fact that nothing is perfect, therefore there had to be something) and she said there was nothing. Another girl wanted to read it and it ended up that everyone at the table read it and when they’d gone (I was still eating my apple) it was sitting on the table next to me. I left it there. It was kind of strange because usually I would have thrown the partially eaten apple away and left with L but I didn’t. It was like I knew or something. Anyway, about a minute or two after C (the last person) left, P got up from his seat two tables away and came over.

He does this pause when he gets near the table, like he’s waiting for me to look at him so he can say hello. I don’t know if he’d heard us talking about the poem (he was close enough to if he listened) but his eyes went straight to it. It was upside down to him and across the table so he couldn’t have read it. He asked if it was a poem of mine and then if I’d mind if he read it (“yes”, “no”).

He must have read it about 3 or 4 times before he said anything at all, because it was a few minutes (I’d asked him to tell me what was wrong with it “’cause no one else would”) and he mentioned what parts he especially liked and said he couldn’t write anything like that and other basic comments more on the content than anything. I figure he read it a total of about 10 times. Once he even turned it on its side and read it sideways. It was ten or twelve minutes before he had to go (to talk to a teacher) and after he left I was so light-headed. I felt like I was going to fall down I was so dizzy. Geez! I can’t believe he actually read it. I wonder what he thought.

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