romeo remeemed

chapter 18

The magnitude of the near future hums between us as we swing by Ariel’s house to say hi to her mother and make a quick picnic, and gets louder and more distracting as we drive to the other side of town for blankets and towels. Dylan’s dad will still be at work—or at the bar down the street—and even if he catches me walking out with a few towels and a comforter, he probably won’t ask any questions. Unlike Ariel’s mom, who was quite curious about our picnic plans, and even stole a peek into our basket when she thought we weren’t looking. Luckily that was before Ariel slipped into the bottom the protection we purchased at the gas station. Protection. If only it were so easy to protect her from all the dangers in her life. “You okay?” she asks. “Fine,” I say, pushing my fears to the back of my mind, doing my best to keep up my end of the conversation. We talk a bit about the dance and about Gemma and Mike and what Ariel has promised to do for them tomorrow, but soon silence falls again. Our preparations are almost complete. The moment is nearly at hand, and the moment is too momentous for small talk. Seven hundred years of thinking and longing and remembering is about to come to an end. It’s been seven hundred years since I’ve been with a girl. There’s been no one since Juliet. I tried once or twice early in my Mercenary afterlife, but the inability to feel made it impossible. Pressing my skin against another’s and feeling nothing was far, far worse than feeling nothing on my own. It only made the loneliness worse. Even the seductions I performed as a Mercenary stopped well before reaching the bedroom door. Not that Ariel wants a bed. Or a door. She wants skinny-dipping in the moonlight, all of her bare to all of me, naked and covered in little water droplets and—“You’re sure you’re okay?” The lightest touch of her fingertips on my arm makes my breath rush out with a strangled sound. “I don’t know.” I park the car on the street a few houses down from Dylan’s and cut the engine, but make no move to get out. “I’m … It’s been a long time since …” “Since … Oh. Really?” I nod, but can’t bring myself to look at her. “A really long time. I’m not sure I’ll …” “Are you joking?” I shake my head, wishing I were, wishing I didn’t feel like a kid on his wedding night. Worse, on my actual wedding night, I’d been too stupid to be nervous. She kisses my cheek. “You’ll be perfect.” “Aren’t I supposed to be the one reassuring you?” “I don’t need any reassuring, but if you do … We can just go swimming. If that’s what you want.” “It’s not what I want. I want you.” I do. I want her. “But I—” “No buts.” “But—” “No. Buts.” “Oh there will be. Have you ever seen a man’s butt in real life? Hideous. Especially Dylan’s. Pale, fish-belly-colored skin with hair like patchy grass and—” She laughs, that high, pure laugh of hers that sets things sailing inside me. “I’m serious,” I say. “You’re funny,” she says, laughter warming her eyes. “And I’m not afraid of any part of you.” I want to tell her I am. I want to tell her that I’m afraid of the dark and the past and the lies and the evil in the world. I’m afraid of her beauty and kindness and the way she holds my hand like I’m worthy of her touch. But most of all I’m afraid of leaving her defenseless. I’m afraid of the fingers that twine through mine being bent and broken as some Mercenary tortures her while I can do nothing to protect her. Nothing. It’s what I’m known for. I’ve been nothing for so long. How can I change that now, when the course of my destiny was determined so long ago? All I know is that I have a hard time denying her, especially when I want her so badly I can hardly remember what I’m supposed to fetch from Dylan’s room. So I don’t say a word. I just kiss her, and promise to “Be right back.” I step out into the rapidly cooling air and cut through the neighbor’s yard, heading around the back of Dylan’s small, run-down house, where the door is always unlocked. Why bother locking up? It’s not as if the Strouds have anything worth stealing. Their television has seen better days, and the rest of the furniture is too shabby for the Goodwill to take on donation. Even their computer is an ancient thing that takes forever to start up and even longer to connect to the Web. But still … there might be enough time … I haven’t been able to get to a computer all day, and I’m still troubled by the disappearance of Romeo and Juliet. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe Shakespeare simply decided against dramatizing the story a troubled young man told him in a pub late one night. Juliet and I lived and died hundreds of years before Shakespeare was born. It wouldn’t have been strange for our story to fade into obscurity without the Bard’s influence keeping it alive. But our tale was a popular one among the traveling minstrels of our day. There might still be some mention of the story of Romeo and Juliet in history if a person went looking for it. And then there’s the boy who thinks he’s Benjamin Luna. I should discover what I can about Ben/Benvolio. That mystery is too strange to be ignored. As I make my way through the living room, I see that the computer is already on. My decision is made. I set it to connect, and by the time I fetch two mostly clean towels and grab the comforter off the bed, the search engine has launched. I slide into the chair, type in Benjamin Luna, and wait the endless thirty seconds it takes for the search results to load. When they do, there isn’t much to see. No Facebook page. No juicy gossip or confessional blog. Just an honorable mention in a soccer tournament and a brief cameo in his mother’s obituary. I shift the results to show images only, and am rewarded with crappy school pictures provided for newspaper articles about his athletic endeavors. He still looks like the Benvolio I remember so well. “Lame,” I tell the boy. The old Benvolio was much more interesting. I type in Romeo and Juliet and hit enter. There doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about where Benjamin is concerned. The real issue is, why does Ben look like Benvolio? And more important—“No.” My voice is loud in the otherwise silent room. I scroll down the first page of search results and then the second and the third. There is nothing. Nothing. I try adding Verona into the search, and then the year 1304, but still nothing. Heart beating in my throat, fingers stiff, I type in Juliet Capulet, and am rewarded with a single mention on a genealogy website: Juliet Capulet, 1290–1304, buried in Verona, Italy. No mention of why she died at the tender age of fourteen, no drama surrounding her death. I try Romeo Montague, and Verona, Italy and wait and wait, forcing myself not to panic as I scroll through the search results. At the bottom of the fifth page, I am finally rewarded for my patience. “There,” I whisper, clicking the link. But the relief I feel at finding mention of myself fades quickly. The website is in Italian—not medieval Italian, the modern version that isn’t as familiar—but I can decipher it well enough to know that what I’m reading isn’t good. It’s a walking tour of some of the more obscure Verona historical sites, including the church and burial ground where Juliet was interred. My name is mentioned only once, in a paragraph beside a picture of the church: