Marriage

“Aw, dude! Give me back my notebook. It’s mine.”      

The teenager with the multicolored beanie hat and a tie-dye shirt lunged out of his seat, him running towards the back of the bus, where two other guys were playing ball with it and, in between turns, ripping the poor pages apart.

“Ripley, sit down.”

Ripley stared sadly at the shredded pages of the notebook paper that had all these words on it that now lay on the cold metal floor of the school bus. He turned away, responding politely to the school bus driver. Plopping down, he fell sideways against the school bus.

“Sit down, please.”

Ripley just sat there, listening to the bullies’ taunts against the school bus driver. He just ignored them, and told them to stop being five-year-olds. Ripley slowly peeled his cheek away from the window.

“No, we’re not!”

“Just stop acting like it.”

The bus driver chuckled as the rest of the school bus full of middle school and high schoolers oohed the bullies, who in turn glowered all around. But they all had turned back to the iPhones and headphones they were using, singing along or trading cards. Some sat by themselves, possibly staring out their windows. They were the recluses. The teens who sat there, eating their salad like it was their last meal, like they were going to get executed. Like they had no soul.

Their black hoodie over their face.

Ripley studied one of them. This girl never even moved her head. Was she still alive? He sneaked over, sneaking past the bus driver. His eyes hadn’t looked up. Good—now to sit down next to her.

“Ripley, get back to your seat now. I saw you move.”

Ripley froze, sighed internally and then told the bus driver he’d love to sit here on this seat. The bus driver sighed. “It’s only two more minutes. Can you wait?”

“Yeah.”

The teen returned to his seat. Slumping against the seat, he looked vaguely at the rain that started splattering against the window.

“Hey guys, sorry—”

They went under a tunnel.

“—but we’re going to have a tour inside. No more garden planting.”

A girl protested, but the bus driver shook his head. She was pulled down by one of the other students. She turned to her, and they whispered furiously. Ripley told them to be quiet, but luckily, their obnoxiousness was drowned out by the rain pounding now against the bus.

“You got your lunch, right?”

“Yeah.” Ripley unzipped his backpack, opening it for the person beside him to—

He blinked. That girl! She was alive after all. She—Ripley looked in the bus driver’s direction—had come over here as stealthily as a CIA spy sneaking around a mansion. Maybe even quieter. Anyway, she was here, and it was the perfect moment for Ripley to talk to her and ask her whether she’d be taking summer school classes next summer. It was only five months away.

“Haven’t really thought about it. I have an 8.8 GPA.”

“How in the world do you have that?”

“Graduating next year.”

“How are you graduating—”

“Look,” the girl said, pushing her pin-straight, black hair out of the way. “I’ve been working hard.”

“At what?”

Ripley got cocky. He straightened his shoulders, sat up and looked like he hadn’t even mentioned anything remotely stupid to her. But she pursed her lips, looked down and looked away like she wished she was sitting anywhere but here. Besides an annoying wierdo who asks stupid questions.

“You know what, I know. School. Duh.”

“What’s yours?” She looked for a split-second at him before turning away.

Ripley smirked inwardly. She was just messing with him. She didn’t even have the confidence to admit she was too shy to look at him, much less talk to him. Or maybe she didn’t want to talk to him. But then why did she come all the way over here? Oh—wait—to gloat.

“So you came—”

“I guess we’re here, folks..." He grabbed a map. "Doesn't say anything on the field trip information about this mansion. But--"

The bus driver looked into the rearview mirror. The teacher, curled up and barely noticing anything but her ripped seat, jerked a nervous nod.

"It's too rainy somewhere else." Someone called out, and there was laughter.

"Okay, folks. Let's bite the bullet and just turn here."

The teacher squeaked something like Okay out from under her breath. Some students looked at each other like Didn't know she was here. She's just so...invisible.

The bus driver sighed. "Get ready.”

The bus turned into this black iron gate, having slowed down, and then once the bus driver got out, handed his ID and list of students to the man in the little ticket booth, got back inside, cranked the door closed with the bus’s door handle and announced their destination was here. As a cheer went up, Ripley and his new seemingly enemy whatever-her-name-was just...

Well, Ripley didn’t want to know. She wasn’t even that interesting. He just sat there, watching the rain pour down, and then zipping his backpack closed, he announced he’d be in Paris. He was going to some weddings and then a funeral. Turning to her, he said he was busy. She didn’t even nod.

Annoyed, he shook his head.

What would she care anyway?

Ripley ignored this mystery that was a student all the time the teacher folded up in the back of the school bus timidly lead them to a tour guide’s waving hand. As twenty-five chattering middle school and high schoolers slowly started quieting down at the authoritative voice of the tour guide (while the teacher told her that they had to turn here since it was raining too hard to get to their real destination, to which an embarrassed tour guide nodded frantically and the teacher wrote a check for hundreds of dollars), Ripley shoved his hands in his usual grey hoodie jacket and shuffled along.

A tap on the shoulder told him to turn around. It was the weird goth girl.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t like tour guides. Let’s go somewhere else where I can show you how to get your grades up.”

Ripley stared at her, mouth open. He shook himself a minute later. “How’d—” Then he realized. “Our school’s website.”

“Well, it wasn’t really something I wanted to do; I just—”

“Don’t have time on my hands enough to avoid that kind of stuff. What are you doing in my business anyway?”

Ripley whispered as they walked away from the tour guide, other students (and, thankfully, the bullies), and eventually over to a painting. It didn’t have much to it. The only great thing, like this trip, was…

Really nothing. Ripley leaned over, since he was really tall, and bent down, saying that they should’ve hired his grandfather to come do this painting. It’s basically a ceiling of blue and grey, he spoke out of the side of his mouth to the girl. She laughed.

But it wasn’t real.

Ripley reflected on those torn pieces of paper back on the school bus floor. He blinked, and tore into his backpack after taking it off and opening. Grabbing his other journal, he started writing what he thought should go into the painting. Suddenly, he looked all around him. There were trees, huge ones with gorgeous brown trunks, all around him. I mean, he was looking at the painting, but he read what he wrote.

“Um…” He swallowed, nudging the girl. “Do you see that?”

The girl looked up at him. “Did you just draw that?”

“No!” He shook his head furiously. “I just started writing, and then I looked up, and then—”

The girl tore the paper from him, reading. Trees with gorgeous brown trunks surround me. I’m in a forest, all beauty embracing me like a mother’s arms around her newborn child once it’s handed to her by the doctor. Then she looked up and widened her eyes before the many, many trees. They looked at each other.

“Write more, write more!”

He did, scribbling as fast as he could, the pencil going very fast. “And then foxes of fire and squirrels of smoke jumped out of their hiding places, running around, hiding in the trees’ holes and then emerging again, the foxes leaping up and barking, the squirrels chittering at them and watching them dodge the hurtling nuts and acorns thrown in their direction. Once he was done with the forest adventures, he started writing about—

“Hey—you’re going to Paris. How about you put Paris here?”

“Why?”

“Just...” She wrung her black nail-polished hands, her cheeks flush pink. “Thinking.”

“About how you’re so much smarter than I.”

Ripley stepped away from her. No wonder she always ate lunch alone. Sat alone on the bus. Walked home alone from school. The bus was only when they went on field trips. She didn’t have summer school. She didn’t do that. She’d be a spy tomorrow, working for the government, getting six figures.

Or whatever they do as secret service people.

She had no friends because she didn’t even talk to anyone. Was too smart for that.

He distracted himself with the writing. He decided to write himself into it. He turned around. He saw her on the other side, but he was surrounded by trees, the foxes sniffling boldly at his too-big sneakers and the squirrels chatting to each other on a nearby branch. Ripley looked down. She looks sad, like she wants a friend. I mean, what’s the harm in making new friends? I have none. Every day, I eat my cream cheese bagel I make myself in the morning by myself in my locker. I can squeeze in I’m so skinny.

Ripley jerked his head, and the girl found herself able to step inside. Gazing all around her, she noted he could write up a scene. He nodded but not arrogantly, and said that he was sick of school. It reminded him of the mornings, and the evenings.

“You know, I’m pretty bright—”

“That’s why I was looking at your grades, Rip. I saw that you have a higher GPA than me. I…I brood because I’m jealous of you.” She tried hiding in her hair, its long pointedness making for a curtain in front of her profile, but Ripley told her to brush it out of the way.

“I guess grades aren’t all that important.”

She turned right to him. “Yes, they are! They’re deathly important. I need them. I need them. I have to have them, or my parents will shut me up in an animal cage. They’re neglectful, whipping my butt until I can’t sit or stand for long, and I have to lie down. I have to keep my grades up. I’m basically out of college. High school is elementary school compared to me. I didn’t even go to elementary school.” Her voice cracked. “I…I almost ran away. But they’d find me.”

Ripley looked at his writing, “I’m sorry to ask, but are they spies, too?”

“No.” She said.

“I don’t have parents. They abandoned me as a kid. I grew myself up. I’m raising myself. I don’t have anyone. No one would take me in. so you’re not alone. I don’t have anyone to love, or anyone who loves me.”

The girl didn’t speak. Then she said, “I’m always alone to avoid the pain of the laughter. No one understands my bruises.”

He said softly, “That’s why you hide.”

She turned towards him, and looked at him. “Yeah. I also read minds. That’s why I was so quiet on the bus.”

He blinked, scrunched his face and said, “You weren’t reading mine, right?”

She laughed, playing with her hair. “No.” then she laughed for real, and both of them started falling to the floor, Ripley on his back and she on her knees and then pounding the ground. Oh, how it felt to be free from the torment of screaming and glass-shattering, alcohol flowing in and out of the home and the divorce papers flying around like leaves on a windy day. Her parents weren’t her parents; they were monsters. But he didn’t have any parents. Maybe saw them once a year. Or even less. She tried asking.

“Well,” he looked at her while they lay on the grass, his hands under his soft brown-sugar hair. “I waved hello to them, but they ignored me. Then I saw them again at the grocery store, but they both said hey in the most distant manner.” He shrugged. “They’re just the most aloof, ignorant, cold people I’ve known.”

The girl took a deep breath. “They’re the most horrible people I know.”

“Is…” He tread carefully. “That why you’re Goth?”

“That’s why I don’t talk to anyone. It’s torturous. No one understands.”

“Same here.”

They looked at each other. He grabbed his pen, and started writing. He heard the grass crunch, and saw out of his peripheral vision, that she sat up. He did, too, and they both continued walking down the grassy path, ignoring the yelling squirrels and sarcastic foxes.

“Shut up!”

All went quiet. Then she turned back to the path. Ripley told her he’d never know her name. That she should say her name. She said it. His heart grew a little warm. He also told her maybe she could yell at her parents. Shout. Scream. Let it all out.

“Already have. My mother just puts her fifth glass of wine to her lips, and turns away towards the TV, her ex-husband slamming the door behind him. They’re so in their own little worlds. Can’t even look at me.”

“Doesn’t mean you need to hide yourself—”

She spun around. “Look, just because I’m your friend or whatever, doesn’t mean you need to go digging in my personal—”

“Look, you have no business looking up my grades! I’m not the only one without parents.”

She looked at him. “Yeah—I know. Can we just enjoy the scene?”

“The squirrels chittering, and the foxes slapping their tongues against their chops, staring greedily at the squirrels while they just shook their fists at them?”

He bobbed his head. “I wrote it.”

“Are you just attending the weddings?”

“No—I’m the best man in all of them.”

“I thought…you had no friends.”

“I don’t. But my cousins were all honoring me.”

“Oh.”

“Have you ever been Maid of Honor?”

“Yes—at my aunt’s.”

“Anyone else?”

Some scribbling, and the girl turned to gasp and exclaim with gladness that wild buck and soft does were approaching them. And bunnies, and hares and turtles. Frogs croaked in the stream nearby, and beavers got to work, patching up their dams. Forest came alive. The girl’s eyes, Ripley saw with swelling pride, were full of light and joy.

But for this moment.

His spirit fell. He gave a serious smile after putting his pen in his baggy trousers’ pocket.

“What?”

“You don’t lighten up unless it’s out of the forest. I mean.”

He let it out, ordering her to be a bright star in the night sky. “I hate that you’re all Goth and everything. Have a little cappuccino. Order a Latte. Something! Dairy Queen, perhaps?” Then he wrote a beach scene, and the forest melted into a sandy shore, the ocean crashing down. A boardwalk reigned above the sand, Ripley throwing his eyebrows up at her as she watched him write. “Have a little dominance in your life, right?”

I do at home, she retorted. “You just don’t see it.”

She told him all about how she told her parents she could read minds, and how she’d sneak out of the house to go get a coconut shake or buy some groceries at two in the morning. How she had a whole world. How she could talk to animals, and shapeshift.

Then she started laughing. Cracking up, she pointed. “You’re…your jaw…is,” she bent in half, clutching her stomach. “Is on the floor…”

While she tried catching her breath, Ripley continued writing.

“Besides,” she took a stab, “how’d you acquire a diary?”

Ripley wanted to throw his day away. How dare she ask such a stupid question! “Like me, you’re headed to—”

“Stupid town!”

They both shook their heads, saying, “Oh, parents. Would you ever come out, too?”

“Here, I’ll write something.”

Decked in a dark blue suit, and putting them in a dance room with a glowing disco spinning around, he asked her what she’d like to wear. She stole his pen and journal, writing. Then, they were hand in hand, her white gloves in his hands, them stepping slowly to the beat of the saxophone. Then they started dancing, them both wildly entertaining. They won the contest, being congratulated by so many people. But these people were strangers. And no amount of strangers could replace the parents’ clapping.

Ripley and his friend joined hands and danced together, as the man behind the microphone sang a slow song.

“Everything’s so slow.”

“Everything’s so bad.”

“Everything’s so…”

The girl looked into Ripley’s eyes. He into hers. Then they bowed. His brown ones and her green ones never left each other.

“Do you dance often?”

She shook her head.

“We do now.”

A warm smile crossed her face. He responded in kind.

Everyone started swing dancing again. He wrote them in a warm cabin. A couch sat behind them, and a roaring fire was behind them, crackling like it was mad it couldn’t do anything but emit warmth to two people who wouldn’t free it.

“Hey, Lilac, I just want to say,” Ripley fell into the couch, sinking down into it a little. “Lighten up. Look. It’s not like we’re going to get married. We’ve only been talking for twenty—”

“The past two hours, we’ve been together. I thought we could trust each other.”

“Well, maybe not trust. But eventually become good friends.”

“Yeah…right. Could you…?” She gestured for the pen, and he reluctantly tossed her it. She clicked it open and started writing on the couch. He leapt up, scolding her. She laughed, and wrote some more. Forcing him to read it, she stood there, impatient.

“Here.”

He held out a piece of paper, but told her he just did it. He didn’t write it into existence.

“So, you can do that.”

“Didn’t know I could!”

It was years before Ripley and Lilac joined hands.

“Till death do we part!”

“Like our parents.”

“Come on, magician, let’s go—”

“Write you another journal.”

She penned such beautiful poetry. He published it one day after her death. Writing their parents into his worlds as squirrels and foxes, he smiled as they chased each other. Stares of stone and glares of iciness delivered at each other.

He died, a goth man.

Quiet, goth and smart.

Having shut the world out like her.

They were each other's teachers, since their real teacher didn't do anything but cower in the corner.

So they taught each other.

And themselves.

Ripley, over the years, had sat with the teacher, asking why she hadn't stood up for him or Lilac. The teacher said she was scared to death she was protecting Ripley and Lilac from their parents, while the parents would defend their parental ways, saying they were the parents, and the teacher had no business in saying what Ripley or Lilac would do.

Ripley didn't buy it. He left that school for good.

He just curled up, shutting life out.

Just like Lilac had.

Dying soon.

Alone.