No Time (part 2)

 Author’s Note:

I’ve decided to place her and him (or She and He, which are their real names) from “No Time” - my previous story - in an abandoned school. Don’t ask me why. I guess I’m hoping they might learn something there, even though the building is quite strange and even though there’s no learning going on there anymore. No teachers, no chalk (chalk? ), no posters on the walls, not even cast-off notebooks. There is only a large collection of dusty desks for both students and teachers, plus a few water fountains that are now encrusted with something that resembles rust. Other than these lost objects, this all looks like a scene out of a Stephen King or a Joe Hill novel, which suggests nothing good can happen.

I’m beginning to regret my decision to relocate my characters to this place. Maybe I should rethink my impulsive action. Nothing good ever comes out of an abandoned building, whether it’s a school or a warehouse. The problem is, She and He (I like there names better with capital letters. Could I call them S/He?

 Would the verbs need to be singular or plural? Eg, S/He are talking or is talking. Quite the conundrum.

Anyway, they are now locked in an intense conversation, probably discussing their surroundings. I see them pointing to a variety of things, laughing, crying, taking deep breaths, looking around and down at the grimy floor. Perhaps I should let them be, allow them to figure out what might be learned from this old school. I should note that both She and He attended this school, although I’m not certain whether they were in the same class or not, if they knew each other back then.

She: I remember those windows. They’re so tall, and they used to be clean. Now they’re all fly-specked and some are cracked. How quickly a building grows old when the lives that occupied it have left. I remember how I used to sit in class and look out; of those windows, watching the trees display the seasons. I always wanted to be out there with them, shimmying up the trunks and crawling along the strongest branches. School was a prison.

He: A prison? How could you ever think that? It was always so comfortable for me. I liked it the most when the sun shone into the classroom and it was easier for us to read. I felt protected, warm, comfortable, like a chick under the mother hen’s wing. I didn’t have a care in the world, other than math classes, and the days we had tests. 

She: I really wanted to pay more attention, but there was something that made me shiver, even on sunny days. Something made me afraid to sit in the desk for too long. Now, looking back, I think there was an evil being wandering the halls and slipping into classrooms. It always seemed like it was going to sneak up behind me and grab my shoulder with its bony fingers, yank me out of the seat, drag me into a dark corner where the light didn’t reach, and beat me. Like at home.

He: What?! What are you saying?

She: yes, I never told you about any of that, but escaping to a court or a track or a field where I could play my heart out was all I could think of. Moving hard and fast was my way of drowning out the rest. Thinking about races and teams and kilometers was what I used to erase the dark, at least until classes were over and I had to go home.

He: I’m so sorry I never thought to askyou about your family. I was to busy burying my head in a book while you were being buried alive by your family, from what you’re saying. 

She: It wasn’t family. It was something else. At least that’s all in the past.

He (still looking very guilty): I was lucky. My mother always came home from VFW meetings with a book. That was her way of saying she was sorry for being away from me so long. Maybe three hours. The gifts were intended to console me, but I didn’t need consoling because most of the time I preferred being by myself. I had quite a nice little library by the time I was ten. Already two or three years before that, I used to go to places where books were sold, like the local thrift shop or a rummage or yard sale and bought books myself with my tiny allowance. Sometimes I asked my parents for money to do that, and despite our financial limitations (which were huge), there was always a dollar to put in my pocket.

Also, my elementary school had a thing where we could order books every month and pay for them with cash. The books cost very little, and I always ordered more than anybody else. I felt rich when the orders came (my stack was bigger than the rest of the kids’). I always read every one of those purchases.

She: When I got tired of being black and blue, sometimes bleeding, I ran away from home. My legs were strong from sports and took me far away for a long time. Nobody bothered to come after me, even though at first I was able to stay at a friend’s house. Then school was over and I could breathe because I knew they were to wash their hands of me. Their responsibility ended, they thought, when I walked across the stage at graduation. Still, even though they no longer bothered with me, I kept running from the memories, some worse than others.

As they stood there in the empty building full of echoes and the agony of anticipation, she badly wanted to rub out the smudges in her thoughts, to escape the four walls that had kept her until it was time to return to the other four walls where bad things happened. School had made her think, made her learn to solve problems. However, she didn’t want to think, and she felt she needed protection. The school had sent her home anyway. Resentment.

He: I am so ashamed. It was always so easy to push the world away and immerse myself in a book. Still, my world when I was little was a good one. Maybe I grew up poor, but I was loved. It makes no sense that I liked to hide away among mountains of words…

She was remembering still. When running or skiing or hiking, her mind was always a sweet, saving blank. She wanted it that way.

After the visit to their old school, he resolved to pay more attention to her. He went with her several times when she had planned a hike along the river, and she thoroughly enjoyed hearing him bring his readings. They were mostly all in his head, but occasionally he carried a few pages of things he’d printed out. They had even chosen a theme for their outings, one that fit the season.

This was how She heard about Robert Frost and other poets. He read them aloud to her, then asked what she thought about the poems one was Emily Brontë’s “Spellbound”:

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

She shivered and wondered what the speaker was saying with the phrase I cannot go. It was an open poem, it fit what she often felt: always running somewhere, always unable to go there. She knew that feeling of not being able to go certain places, or not wanting to.

Another poem he offered her was “A Winter Bluejay” by Sara Teasdale. This one was very different, and the “we” were happy as they walked along. She thought about how the walking was all the better when there were two people and they looked at things around them rather than racing past it all:

Crisply the bright snow whispered,

Crunching beneath our feet;

Behind us as we walked along the parkway,

Our shadows danced,

Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.

Across the lake the skaters

Flew to and fro,

With sharp turns weaving

A frail invisible net.

In ecstasy the earth

Drank the silver sunlight;

In ecstasy the skaters

Drank the wine of speed;

In ecstasy we laughed

Drinking the wine of love.

Had not the music of our joy

Sounded its highest note?

But no,

For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,

“Oh look!”

 Then He took out another poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti. 

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter…

But just when they thought their differences and drifting apart were being resolved, Rosetti’s poem hit her like a block of ice when it slides off a roof ir a tree branch. She broke into tears. He apologized fiercely, and they sat in silence, afraid that the twains were not, in fact, ever going to meet. 

Author’s Note:

And this is where this part of the story stops. I do not understand her response, but suspect it is due to something She has yet to reveal. I also do not know if he is capable of helping her find an answer. I suspect that will require a third part. I am also aware that winter can be quite cruel, more cruel even than Eliot’s April.