Children at Thoreau Middle School who hated reading were parked in Study Hall to “concentrate.” Marcus was there on time-out again, and so was Elle, a cute redhead with a paper crown from art class glued to her head that she refused, on principle, to take off.
Marcus held up his pocket Shakespeare like a half-empty glass of red wine. “Here’s to good reading, Elle.”
“I hear you,” she said. “Mine’s Midsummer. Fairies. Glue on everything.”
“Tragedy,” Marcus said. “People keel over in Act Five for no good reason.”
“Sounds like Monday,” Elle said.
Mr. Henderson, three desks up, was asleep on a stack of quizzes, so nobody saw them drop their heads and go under.
(***)
They always woke in Verona. Gym mats rose into battlements, eraser dust turned to moonlight, the empty bookcase became a balcony — and on it stood the girl with the ridiculous crown, now dressed as Juliet, while a stray fairy from Elle’s own assigned play kept winking in and out of the moonlight. The Playwright, the children realized, had mashed their two books into one. The rules surfaced in Marcus’s skull, learned across forty ejections:
One: yearn all you like, but skin must never meet skin — touch, and the dream spits you both back into fluorescent Study Hall, drooling on boring Shakespeare, long before the bell. Two: staying is the win. Three: leave early and you wake with nada — no memory of the lines, the moon, or her. Only the rules stay, like a dream you can’t quite hold.
On the balcony Elle pressed a hand to her chest. “We mustn’t touch, Marcus. I hold my hand back to spare us both.”
“Why not?” He moved closer. She reached down; he reached up; their fingertips hovered one screaming inch apart and could not close, the dream’s physics refusing like a high-five through glass.
“Shall I come down?” Elle asked.
“You know that’s against the rules,” Marcus countered.
“Marcus, come up, then!”
He eyed the crooked paper staircase. “I have a terrible foreboding about doing that.”
“If I climb over the rail, will you catch me?”
“We can’t break the rules. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m a gymnast. Just stand near, so I know I’ll be safe.”
“You might stumble into me, Elle! Or me into you, out of yearning!”
“We’ll never touch,” she cooed. “But it occurred to me — what then? We stand here breathing loudly until the bell?”
“Exactly,” Marcus said. “Loud breathing is the whole point. It’s the one thing the rules can’t punish us for.”
So they stayed exactly where the script parked them, three feet of impossible air between two people who could have memorized each other’s silences. He worried she’d tip over the rail — the balcony was cardboard and bad intentions; she worried he’d leap up, grab her sweating feet, and hurl them both back to Mr. Henderson’s glare. They guarded each other from their own wanting, which Marcus decided was the most romantic thing anyone had done for him: being protected from himself. In the waking world he could never have said any of it; Verona was the only stage that let him want her out loud.
They blew kisses across the gap — old-timey, theatrical, absurd — and were sated for a minute. Then the minute ran out.
“Elle, these air kisses are not enough!”
“Marcus, I feel you. I have an idea!”
Elle jumped — down off the balcony this time. Before she landed, the stray fairy darted between them, whipping up a gust of dream-wind that shoved them together; her sneakers made a loud Thud. Both braced a foot apart and leaned away, grinning like people defusing a bomb.
“Nice jump,” Marcus said in a macho voice.
“Nice reflexes,” Elle said, demure and breathless.
They held their hands up, palms facing, paired off like mimes in an old vaudeville show, pressing against invisible glass for the longest time. The most beautiful, intense, dramatic longest time! A choir of violins auditioning for a spaghetti western played while Marcus and Elle felt like their souls were merging in blissful, delicious delight.
The Dream Playwright—who looked surprisingly like Mr. Henderson, complete with a phantom red grading pen—was offended by their defiance. He aggressively scribbled they embrace in the margin. The children realized with horror that the Playwright wasn’t trying to romance them; he was trying to force a touch so the dream would collapse and spit them right back to their Study Hall desks.
Marcus and Elle mentally stomped on the word and yelled at the sky, “You know that’s against THE VERONA RULES!”
At last the bell rang like a cacophony of chaos and terror. Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Verona bowed and released them, untouched, victorious.
(***)
They jolted upright in Study Hall, cheeks dry, boring Shakespeare pristine, two desks apart. And because the rule had only ever governed the stage, Elle slid her hand under the desk and found his.
They held hands. It felt incredibly real. They looked at each other, suddenly panicked by the actual, waking-world intimacy of it. They awkwardly pulled their hands back to their own sides, staring straight ahead at the chalkboard, hearts pounding. Neither of them was dream-shifted anywhere at all.
“I’ve got enough discipline, Elle,” Marcus blurted, staring rigidly at the wall.
“Me too! I’m too young for romance, Marcus,” Elle squeaked.
They both exhaled and said, “But it sure was fun in Verona!”
They started walking out of Study Hall, leaving the bare fluorescent lights behind. Mr. Henderson blinked awake at his desk, eyeing them suspiciously as they passed. He rubbed his head, a red grading pen still clutched in his hand, looking as if he’d just missed something.
Elle and Marcus paused, hesitating awkwardly under the doorway ceiling, then clashed their books together in a toast.
Rule number one of Third-Period Verona: Yearn all you like, but skin must never meet skin. When Marcus and Elle fall asleep in Study Hall, they wake up in a magical, mashed-up version of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Here, gym mats become battlements, eraser dust turns to moonlight, and they are free to declare their middle-school…
Yes, GIRLS CAN LOOK LIKE SLUTS AND BOYS CAN LOOK LIKE BAD BOYD. It’s LIFE. GET OVER IT. LIFE IS ABOUT NOT SUFFERING–BUT LEARNING TO GROW UP! SEE THE LARGER PICTURE BELOW BEFORE YOU PRESS THE ARROW BOX!
Yes, ABYSSARIANISM HEROES AND HEROINES, it is THE TRUTH THAT DEPENDS ON THE TRUTH. ANYONE CAN WORK A 9 TO 5, BUT ONLY A WOMAN CAN BRING A SOUL INTO THIS WORLD AND KEEP THE 4TH GOVERNMENT GOING! THIS IS ONE OF THE MAIN GOALS OF THE ABYSSARIANISM SISTERHOOD!!
Yes, ABYSSARIANISM HEROINES, it is THE TRUTH THAT DEPENDS ON THE TRUTH. ANYONE CAN WORK A 9 TO 5, BUT ONLY A WOMAN CAN BRING A SOUL INTO THIS WORLD AND KEEP THE 4TH GOVERNMENT GOING! THIS IS ONE OF THE MAIN GOALS OF THE ABYSSARIANISM SISTERHOOD!!
YOUNG WOMEN AND GIRLS STOP LETTING THOSE OLDER FEMINIST LESBIANS OR POLITICAL LESBIANS LIE TO YOU. THIS IS THE TRUTH THAT DEPENDS ON THE TRUTH IN THIS COMIC!
SOFTWARE GIRL SONG ABYSSARIANISM COMMENTARY Any one wanting to understand the confusion HETEROSEXUAL MEN AND WOMEN are going through should read this spiritual song! P.S. Men, when you see a woman putting on MAKEUP, CRYING, OR ACTING IN A HYSTERIA FASHION in a video and talking about anything—you are looking at a HARDWARE GIRL!
This The Girl-Snatcher Monster Sorytime is not just about violence against girls. It is also representative of the theme that monster must at some point be confronted! Fascist Monsters. Communist Monsters. Feminist Monsters trying to free women from marriage by destroying marriage are just a few that must be confronted. SMASH THE MARXIST IDEOLOGY!
FEMINISM’S MY BODY, MY CHOICE IS DESTROYING THE WORLD, DEPOPULATING THE WORLD, AND DEPLETING WOMEN’S MARRIAGE PROSPECTS. THIS IS JUST ANOTHER WAY TO DESTROY MARRIAGE AND MAKE WOMEN AND MEN HATE ONE ANOTHER!
MGTOW MOUNTAIN IS ABOUT HOW MEN CAN ACCEPT THE MAN-PILL, STRIVE FOR THEIR WORTHY GOALS OF UPLIFT OF SOCIETY, MARRIAGE STABILITY, AND MATURE WOMAN CHOICES IN THIS CULTURE OF CONSTANT-COMPLAINING FEMINIST-MARXIST ERA. FEMINIST ORIGINAL GOALS WAS TO FREE WOMEN FROM MARRIAGE BY DESTROYING MARRIAGE. YOU CANNOT DESTROY MARRIAGE UNLESS MEN AND WOMEN HATE EACH OTHER…
