A Dustland Fairytale

"You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain, burn crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain..." - Bruce Springsteen

That afternoon, I was restless. I couldn’t go home and do my homework. I couldn’t hang out with Kyle or any of my other friends. If I rode my bike around, I would only be able to think of that Tyler kid who constantly asked about it. Somehow, I ended up on the beach, just like I had a few weeks ago when I’d first met Juliet. I turned off my bike once I’d reached the wide strip of sand between the road and the Pacific, which rolled today with tall waves.

I stood in the parking lot, my gaze fixed out on the volatile waves. I didn’t even make it to the sand before another thought had entered my mind – one that was more tempting than any of the others in my mind. This idea inspired action, and I did not intend to simply let it pass away. So I jumped back on my bike, started the engine again, and turned around, hoping I hadn’t forgotten the way.

Her house was exactly the way I remember it: pristine. The lawn was perfectly lush, green, and trimmed; from the outside, it looked entirely perfect. Through an open window, I heard the end of a song I would never have expected to hear in the Hanson household. It was the perfect blend of saxophone and electric guitar – blues and rock – not to mention from one of the greatest albums of all time.

“Bruce Springsteen,” I muttered to myself as I killed the engine and walked to her front door. “Bruce fucking Springsteen. She really is amazing.” My backpack hung loosely from my shoulder as I pressed the doorbell and stood on the front step, waiting for an answer.

As Juliet opened the front door, a frown passed across her face. I smiled and said, “I thought you’d want to get that English project out of the way.”

“No,” she said while attempting to shut the door in my face. I put my hand against the door, stopping her. “Go away,” she insisted.

“We can’t finish this project if you refuse to talk to me,” I argued. “And besides, it’s not like we picked partners. This was forced on us. You can’t be blamed for this.” It would be ridiculous that anyone would blame her for being assigned to work on a project with me, but I thought it seemed like a possibility.

She pressed her lips together and stared at me with fiery blue eyes. “No, I probably can be blamed for this,” she said. She was still attempting to push the door closed. Unfortunately, I was much stronger than she was. I’d also managed to wedge my foot between the door so she really couldn’t close it.

“Come on, Juliet,” I said. I did not plan on losing this argument – I really did want to work on that project. “I want to get this started. It’s due in a week.” She sighed and let her arm fall to her side, giving up her attempt to shut me out.

“Fine,” she said, allowing me to push the door open. “Fine, but don’t touch anything and don’t say anything until we get upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” I asked. I figured we would’ve worked on the project in the kitchen or maybe an office – in an open part of the house, not hidden away in an upstairs room. “What, you’re taking me up to your room?”

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t seem happy about the decision; it seemed as though she thought she didn’t have any other options. She was treating me like an annoyance, but she couldn’t have disliked me that much or she really would not have let me in her house. “It’ll be easiest to work up there. It’ll also give us about forty seconds warning until my mom gets home, and there’s a nice trellis you can climb down so she doesn’t see you here.”

I laughed. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I mean, I know your mom doesn’t like me, but I don’t think she’d be very pleased if you failed English, either.” We stood in the foyer, silence filling the space. “Do you have any food?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

She stared at me for a second, as though unable to believe I could be so rude as to demand food in someone else’s house. I could have told her she was being a poor host for not offering me anything, but I don’t think that comment would have pleased her. She turned and walked down the hall to the kitchen, lowering her voice as she spoke. “Yeah, just don’t go down that hall to your left. My dad’s office is that way and if you go down there, I will kill you.”

I gave her a thumbs up and started to peruse her kitchen cabinets, searching for anything that didn’t have the words “whole grain” or “reduced fat” anywhere on the label. In one of the cabinets, I discovered a bag of Doritos. Grinning, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Juliet pushed me towards the stairs rather unkindly, and I followed her up to her bedroom.

Her room was absolutely enormous. The walls were pale yellow and had absolutely no posters, unlike my own room, which was covered in pictures of dozens of rock bands. There were lacy white curtains on the windows and pink sheets on her huge canopy bed. Two doors led to what I guessed were an attached bathroom and a walk-in closet. I was afraid to touch anything and smear dirt across it, even though I knew my hands were clean.

From the corner, I heard the scratch of a needle being removed from a record. I stared in shock as she restarted the album, the opening notes of “Thunder Road” filling the room. “The Boss? On vinyl?” I asked, unable to comprehend the fact that of all the people in my school, Juliet Hanson was the one who listened to amazing music – on actual records. “And here I thought you’d listen to Kanye MP3s. Maybe the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift, too.”

“I’ve developed a love for the classics,” she said, blushing. “It’s kind of my dirty little secret.”

I grinned. “You never cease to amaze me. I hope you know that.” In that moment, I realized she was so much more than the perfect sun-tanned, rich blond princess. She had a hidden record collection that I was quite sure no one else in school knew about. She smiled and sat down. Sitting down next to her, I pulled my copy of Great Gatsby out of my backpack. “Did you like the book?” I asked. “I don’t think you answered me when I asked in class.”

“I don’t like to read,” she replied. It shouldn’t have really seemed all that surprising; I knew more kids that hated reading than I knew kids who liked it, but I had expected Juliet to like it. “It just seems like a waste of time. I’ve got better things to do than read about someone else’s life.”

I shook my head and stared at the book in my hands. It wasn’t my beloved Salinger, but I didn’t think it should be subjected to cruel people’s dislike. To me, Gatsby felt like a friend. I know it made me sound crazy, but I really liked the book. “So that means you didn’t like it?”

She shrugged, rolling her slim shoulders back. “I guess it wasn’t that bad. There are worse books that I’ve been forced to read. The worst so far are Grapes of Wrath and Lord of the Flies. I could hardly read either book.”

As I opened the bag of Doritos, I nodded slowly, eating several chips at once. I licked the orangey powder off my fingers before opening my book, not wanting to stain it. “So we’ve got to do a character analysis of Jay Gatsby,” I said. “This is going to be the best project ever.”

She walked to a desk that stood along the wall and picked up a silver MacBook Pro. She turned on the computer and walked back to her bed, sitting down next to me. “You tell me what to type and I’ll type it,” she said.

She hummed quietly while I flipped through the short novel, thinking about the best way to start the project. “I really don’t know where to begin,” I said.

“How about ‘Jay Gatsby is an idiot who could have avoided being killed if he didn’t trade cars’?” she suggested, standing up to flip the record over. She sang quietly now, the familiar lyrics of “Born to Run” running through my mind.

“Gatsby is not an idiot,” I said, slightly irritated. I understand people’s feelings of dislike towards some literary characters – Cecily Cardew was an idiotic character, but Oscar Wilde intended her to be that way. “Gatsby was a victim of passion.”

“He was living in the past,” Juliet said. “He loved the woman he knew five years ago; she’d obviously changed a lot since then.”

“Not really,” I said. I should have been glad she’d read it at all, since Juliet didn’t like to read. The thought briefly crossed my mind that I cared too much about fictional people, but I didn’t really have time to consider that.

“Get out,” Juliet said suddenly, her voice harsh. “Now. Hurry up!”

I looked up at her curiously, still thinking about the project. “What?” The bag of Doritos was open in my lap and my notebook was next to me, on Juliet’s bed.

“If my mom catches you up here, she is going to murder me,” she said in a hushed voice.

“Have you ever told your parents the truth?” I asked, pushing my books back into my backpack as she took the record off the player and slid it carefully back into its sleeve.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, turning to face me. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

At that moment, her bedroom door swung open. Juliet’s mother stood in the doorway, her cold blue eyes sweeping across the room. “Juliet, I thought I heard you talking to someone.” Her gaze fell on me, causing the smallest of frowns to flicker across her face. “What is he doing here?”

“School project,” she answered. “He won’t be long.” I sat motionless on the bed, staring out the window. They talked about me as though I wasn’t there; I wouldn’t make Juliet’s mother angry by arguing with her.

“Alright,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t get crumbs on the bed.” She closed the door with a snap and Juliet handed me her laptop.

“Write whatever you want. I don’t care. Just don’t talk to me.”

I looked at her and put the laptop on her bed. “I’m trying to be nice to you, but you’re just being rude,” he said. “I have a feeling if you did what you wanted instead of what your parents want you to do, you’d be a much happier person.” She stared at me, silent moments passing in the tense room. “I’ll see you later,” I said, grabbing my backpack and walking out of her room. My shoes clunked on the stairs and I walked quickly out of the front door, hoping Juliet would start thinking for herself.