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 in a slinky red prom dress 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!”
“What is with this dolled-up fairy with the strawberry blonde pompadour hair?” He waved his black hand at the fairy. “Shoo! Get! Go to your prom!”
Elle giggled. “Baffles me too! But I know some older mean girls who would love to wear her red slinky dress at prom.
“Where were we? Yes.” He eyed the crooked paper staircase again. “I have a terrible foreboding about coming up—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 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 Elle aloud.
They blew kisses across the gap—old-timey, theatrical, and 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. Before she landed, the strawberry blonde pompadour hair-dolled-up fairy, in her slinky red prom dress, darted between them, whipping up a gust of dream-wind that shoved them together; Elle’s sneakers made a loud THUD. Marcus and Elle 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, and dramatic moment occurred! The wall clock disappeared. A choir of violins auditioning for a spaghetti western played while Marcus and Elle felt a 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 words and yelled at the sky, “You know that’s against THE VERONA RULES!”
Marcus and Elle’s bodies, minds, and souls returned to their shared experience of exquisite oneness, transcending time and space as they descended back into the Abyss of mutual awareness. Time stood still—twenty-seven minutes disappeared in a flash!
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 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.
“Elle, now that we remember we like one another—”
“I like you a lot, Marcus—”
“Let’s meet in the school library at lunch time. We can read together, Elle!”
“No more Study Hall and Verona, Marcus?”
“Yearning in real time, in real life, Elle, is going to be so much better!
Marcus and Elle then clashed their books together in a toast.
“To staying awake reading and yearning in the school library, Elle!”
“To staying awake reading and yearning in the school library, Marcus!”
