A Dustland Fairytale

“I don’t care what nobody says, no, I’m gonna be her lover.” – Kings of Leon

That evening, while I was eating dinner – alone, watching tv – I thought about what had happened at Juliet’s that afternoon. For a second I felt bad for slamming doors and leaving the way I did, but I realized Juliet really did need to think for herself. I considered calling my sister and asking for her advice on what I should do, but decided I could figure this out on my own. Probably.

While I sat in solitude and stared blankly at the screen, my phone buzzed loudly. I picked it up to see a message from my new friend Kyle, asking to borrow my bike. Not even wondering if he could drive a motorcycle, I replied, “Sure, as long as I can borrow your car.” I didn’t know why I needed Kyle’s car, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to stay at home all night. Part of me wanted to see Juliet again, but my rational mind told that part of me that it was crazy.

I was watching a movie on VH1, and I knew I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t remember the name of it. The hero and general nobody was trying to date way out of his league – he was after the valedictorian – and suddenly I had an idea, almost like a message from God. The kid was holding a boom box over his head and singing to the pretty girl. For some reason, I decided that looked like a good idea. Whenever I get ideas like this, I don’t think things through all the way, but I thought I’d go over Juliet’s and sing to her. I had to get her attention somehow, and at the time, this seemed like the best way.

Ten minutes later, Kyle knocked on my door, smiling broadly. In my driveway sat an ancient, beat-up blue VW Rabbit, parked right next to my bike. “I hope you can drive stick,” he said as a greeting. “She’s pretty finicky, but she’s all I’ve got.”

“Why do you need my bike?” I asked, though my mind wasn’t truly in the conversation. At this point, I was wondering where in my house I would be able to find a boom box.

“I’ve got a date,” he said happily. “And as you can see, Lulu isn’t too impressive. Plus I kind of told her I can drive a motorcycle – which I can – I just don’t own one.”

I ran a hand through my messy dark hair, my other hand wrapped around the keys to my precious Ducati. My dad had bought it for me shortly after I’d turned sixteen, after he’d met Stacy but before we moved across the country. “If you damage my bike at all, I will hunt you down.”

“Trust me, I know,” he said. His green eyes were wide with sincerity, half-hidden by long, dark blond hair. “I’d feel terrible if I did anything to a bike that perfect, especially since it’s not mine.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “Just bring it back by tomorrow morning.” I held the keys out for him to take.

“No problem. Thanks so much!” He took the keys, handed me the keys to his car, and left a minute later. I trusted him, but I still worried about the condition my bike would be in when he brought it back.

As soon as he left, I searched my entire house, quickly finding a boom box I could use. I dug through my dad’s collection of cassette tapes until I found the one I’d been looking for. Grinning, I popped it in the player and fast-forwarded until I found the song I wanted. I put the enormous stereo in the passenger seat of the car and drove off to Juliet’s before I could reconsider my decision.

I parked the car in the street and walked around the house, carefully keeping to the shadows until I found Juliet’s window. The neighborhood was dark and silent, and no one was watching through the window of the family room downstairs. Juliet’s window, however, was brightly lit. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could see her sitting in the window. I let the music play, wondering how long it would take her to notice. After a minute, she looked curiously around her neighborhood, trying to find the source of the music.

“Hey, baby!” I called, singing the lyrics to the song. “I need a love reaction, come on now, baby give me just one look. You can’t start a fire worryin about your little world fallin apart. This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark.”

She leaned out over the window ledge, her blond curls falling over her shoulder. “What are you doing?!” she asked, in the loudest whisper she could manage.

“I’m singing to you,” I called, not caring who heard me. The nearest house wasn’t possibly close enough to hear what I was saying, even if they were outside sitting on the deck of their in-ground pool. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

“Shut up!” she said, still not daring to raise her voice. She was so worried about her parents, causing me to wonder how one person could care so much about the opinions of others. “Shut up and go back to whatever eighties movie you crawled out of. And take your Bruce Springsteen with you!”

“Even if we’re just dancing in the dark,” I sang, a smile on my face. The song was ending; the tape was reaching its end.

“Shut up, Lloyd Dobler!” she hissed. I grinned. Lloyd Dobler – that was that kid’s name. The movie was called Say Anything. That’s where this crazy idea came from.

“Can I come up?” I asked boldly. I knew she’d say no, that she’d tell me to go away, but I wanted her to say yes. I wanted to know why she cared so much about what other people thought. I wanted to know the girl behind the blond hair and bright blue eyes and beautiful face, but she just shut me out.

“No!” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

“If you don’t let me come up, I’m going to start singing even louder,” I threatened, exploiting her fear. “I’ve got ‘Baby, One More Time’ on here.” This, of course, was a lie. The cassette in the player was my dad’s copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. and had no Britney Spears at all, but Juliet didn’t know that.

“Fine,” she said, resting her elbows on the bottom of the window. “But stash the stereo in the bushes and don’t break the trellis.” Juliet moved away from the window so that I could no longer see her. I assumed she was still in her room, waiting to climb up.

In front of me, leading conveniently up to Juliet’s window was a white trellis covered in thorny vines. “There’s no way that thing’ll hold my weight,” I said. I wasn’t a heavy guy, but I didn’t want to confront the vines or to fall off halfway to her window. I glanced over my shoulder to where a tree grew, rather close to the house. It had obviously been planted long before the house was built, and it looked like it would be perfect for me to climb. “But this tree will.”

I hid the boom box near the base of the trellis and climbed the tree quickly, carefully jumping from a thin branch through Juliet’s open window. “How did you do that?” she asked. Clearly, I’d managed to impress her.

“Well, I climbed the tree, then I climbed that branch that’s conveniently about two feet from your window (which I would suggest cutting off if it weren’t so useful), and then I put one foot on the trellis you told me to climb and hopped through the window,” I explained, unable to keep the smirk off my face.

She shook her head, her expression distant. “What do you want?”

There were many ways I could have answered this question. The truth was that I wanted to change her way of thinking, to make her forget about her parents and disregard other people’s opinions. I wanted to take her off on my bike to some remote part of California, or back to New York. I wanted to kiss her until she forgot everything she'd ever thought was important. Instead, I just said, “To talk to you.”

“No,” she said, sitting on her pink quilt. “You want to harass me and have my parents kill me. That’s it. You hate me so much you want my parents to forbid me from leaving my own house until I graduate.” From outside her bedroom door came the sound of approaching footsteps, causing her to look at me with wide, scared eyes. “Get in the closet,” she said, jumping off her bed and opening the door to her walk-in closet.

“What?” I asked, but she was already pushing me into the small room filled with clothes and shoes.

“Get in there right now,” she said, closing the door behind me. I stifled a laugh, taking her command in a very inappropriate way. A second later, I realized I was trapped in a dark closet, and I heard voices coming through the door.

“Are you talking to anyone? I thought I heard voices coming from your room.” I frowned, recognizing the cold voice of Juliet’s mother.

“Who would I be talking to?” Juliet asked, her voice completely innocent. She lied with perfect sincerity.

“I don’t know,” her mother said. “That’s what I came up here to find out.”

“I haven’t been talking to anyone, Mother,” Juliet responded. “I’ve been doing my Spanish homework.”

“Alright,” her mother said, though I could hear the doubt in her voice. I wondered who Juliet’s mother thought she would be talking to. “Just so you know, on Saturday morning we’re going to get you a dress. You can’t wear anything people have already seen you wear, especially if it doesn’t fit anymore.”

“Okay,” Juliet said.

“Don’t stay up too late,” her mother warned. “It doesn’t improve your looks at all.” My eyebrows rose at the harshness of that statement. I didn’t like Stacy, but I never would have talked to her that way, and I know she wouldn’t say anything that rude to me, either. Juliet’s fear of her mother was, at that moment, logical – but to me that wasn’t a good enough excuse for her to not be true to herself.

“I won’t,” Juliet said. I heard the bedroom door close and tried to open the closet door, but it wouldn’t budge. I realized Juliet was leaning against the door and stood, silent in the darkness. Finally, she turned the handle and let the door swing open.

“Why do you need a dress?” I asked. I sat on her bed and picked up the papers there, noticing they were covered in Spanish sentences, red A’s marking the top of most.

“For a ball at this country club my parents belong to,” she said, sitting down on the floor. “Why did you come here?”

“I told you,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you.” I left her papers in a neat pile on her bed and stood up, taking a few steps to sit across from her on the floor. “Do you ever take risks?”

“What?” she asked, temporarily surprised. “Of course I do. I let you drive me around on that death machine you call a bike.”

“Not that,” I said. “That was nothing. I mean something like running away in the middle of the night.” I grinned, thinking of the place where my sister’s band would be playing tonight. I imagined taking Juliet there, letting her forget everyone else in her life except me and the music. To me it was perfect, but I knew Juliet would see its flaws. She saw everything and everyone’s flaws, especially her own. “There’s this awesome town a few miles south of here, I don’t know if you’ve been there or not, but there’s this awesome band that’s playing there –”

“Get out,” she said suddenly. For a brief second, her eyes had glittered with the possibility – it was as though she was actually considering going with me, but she had to remind herself who I was and what her parents would think. “Get out or I’m screaming and saying you broke into my window and tried to assault me. You’d be stupid to think there wouldn’t be a lawsuit.” She stood up and pointed to the window.

I frowned, slowly standing. I could tell that I was getting through to her. Eventually, she would let her guard down. I didn’t know why I wanted so badly for Juliet to be true to herself, but I wouldn’t let go of the idea. Before I climbed out the window, I said, “Some day, princess, you’re going to regret not taking risks. You’ll regret being your parents’ little angel and ignoring the life you could have had.”

For the second time that day, I left Juliet’s room feeling as though I’d lost the battle. No one had ever affected me the way Juliet Hanson did. I was determined to give her the same feeling, no matter what it took.