In honor of the Burnal Equinox - that moment in the calendar halfway between the Man becoming ash one year and being set ablaze the next - here is one of the Burning Man-themed stories from my book, "A Rose by any Other Name" entitled "Gabby & the New Boy"
Gabby and the New Boy
Gabby heard the whispering in the
halls of her high school; some of it was intended to be overheard, especially
by the new boy. Teenagers tend to be cruel – and not cruel to be kind. She had
heard he had a few tufts of hot pink in his hair. “Gay” was what they were
saying, but Gabby hadn’t seen him.
Gabby
was pretty, but nobody at her school ever noticed. “Freak” was all she ever
heard, sometimes whispered, sometimes out of the sides of their mouths,
sometimes fully aloud for all to hear, for all to laugh at. She wished she
didn’t care, but she was seventeen after all.
It
was all going to change in about a year’s time. College was going to be
different. She knew this. She only wanted to go to one school in particular.
Her parents had strongly suggested she apply to a backup school. Unbeknownst to
Gabby, her older sister, Brooklyn (named for where she was conceived) had made
a deal with their parents. If Brooklyn could get Gabby to apply to a backup
school, then they would permit Brooklyn to take her to Burning Man that summer.
Gabby had been simply dying to go to Burning Man ever since her older sister
started going a few years back. Gabby could actually taste the dust the way her
sister described it.
The acceptance letter from the backup school,
NYU, had arrived two days ago. Gabby hadn’t slept for those two days,
envisioning cold, wet, gray days, necessitating the wearing of shoes. Maybe if
her head weren’t in the clouds, she might have noticed the new boy, but it was
and she didn’t.
Gabby was
staring down at her black-and-white striped Hello KittyÔ pirate
socks, praying to her personal goddesses that today might be the day that
Berkeley deemed her worthy.
Her high
school’s dress code demanded that socks be worn at all times. She conformed to
that regulation, but Gabby found a loophole: It said nothing about shoes. She
hadn’t worn any for the entire school year. Her parents came to the principal’s
office when called in and backed up their younger daughter’s stand.
You
know how time seems to slow to a crawl when you’re waiting for something? Well,
Gabby was waiting for two separate, but linked, amazing events on her distant
horizon. Time stopped. She’d stare at the clock sometimes wishing there were
someone she could point it out to. But that would have been just something else
for her classmates to mock her about so she remained mum.
Gabby
was still praying and she was still staring down at her socks when the new boy
passed her in the hallway. Neither noticed the other. That’s the way things go
sometimes.…
Trevor moved to Los Angeles with
his mom when she came south from Oakland to take care of his grandma. He could
have stayed in the Bay Area and finished up his last year of high school, but
he knew in a few months he’d be off to college. This was precious time and he
wanted to savor it. He wasn’t a mama’s boy, but he recognized his mother for
the amazing human being she was and a little inconvenience wasn’t going to
deter him.
His
girlfriend had been devastated, but Trevor knew that the same break was
inevitable. Soon, she would be off to the Sorbonne
and that would have been that.
Trevor
wasn’t deaf. He heard what his new classmates thought of him. He sort of
expected it. Part of his reasoning to move to Southern California was to get out
of his comfort zone. If this doesn’t sound like the ordinary thought process of
an average seventeen-year-old boy, there was a very good reason for that.
Trevor was not your average seventeen-year-old boy. Both his parents at first,
but now just his mom for the last seven years, had seen clear to that.
Trevor’s
annual “What I did on my summer vacation” theme paper at the beginning of each
school year had begun pretty much the exact same way since he was five: “This
year at Burning Man...” It was something his mom had negotiated with his
school’s principal to explain why Trevor always missed the first couple of days
of the new term. He always arrived tanned yet amenable to the restrictions of
public school, but Trevor had a faraway look in his deep, brown eyes that
nothing in the Default World could quell for weeks.
When his
parents divorced and his mom changed her name back to her maiden one, Trevor
made a decision. He didn’t want to offend either parent by choosing one name
over the other. The thing is, had he kept either of their surnames, he would
have been in Gabby’s homeroom. His chosen last name made it so that he was
stationed clear across campus.
Gabby
and Trevor had Trig’ (which neither of them could grasp) in the same classroom
in subsequent periods. But, much like those proverbial vessels of the sea,
Gabby dawdled in her art class and just beat the bell for math class by the
skin of her teeth. They remained star-crossed….
The acceptance letter from Berkeley
arrived on a Friday. Gabby celebrated by dyeing her hair that weekend the same
exact shocking shade of pink as Trevor’s. Their school handbook had not yet
been updated to restrict this particular fashion trend. But they never got to
compare hues.
Graduation
day came and graduation day went.
There’s a long-standing institution
at Burning Man, a theme camp that provides soul-mate matching. As Playadipity
(the word used to describe the serendipitous little moments that seem to occur
with miraculous regularity on the Playa)
will have it, Gabby and Trevor arrived there within moments of one another. As
they were filling out their paperwork on opposite sides of the tent, an
“employee” of the camp named Legend looked up.
Legend
spied Trevor in his left eye; he spied Gabby in his right. Without uttering a
single word, he slipped out from behind his desk and walked over to Trevor.
With one hand, Legend took Trevor’s paperwork away from him. He took Trevor by
the other hand, still silently.
Legend walked
Trevor over to where Gabby was squatting and then he took her paperwork away.
She looked up, startled for a split second, and was about to ask what she had
done wrong. Legend silenced her with a finger on her dry, questioning lips. He
took Gabby’s hand and placed it in Trevor’s trembling one.
It was then
and only then, that Legend spoke and all he said was “Go.” And they did.
(c) Brian Mazo, 2012 All Rights Reserved
Want to hear and see me read that story and some more? You can help may that happen: check out IndieGoGo for my campaign for the Rock 'n Rose Tour 2013 by clicking
here.
Thanks, Brian
