Or Something
By Mondie
Written/Started: Dec. 22, 2004
Prologue: 15 ½
Disclaimer: Newsies Disney's. Plot Mondie's. Pirates are discouraged.
The taxi driver clucked impatiently. "Hurry up, kid. You were already late when I came to pick you up this morning. I got other people to drive too, ya know."
"I know," came a desolate response from the backseat. "I just need a minute to… collect myself."
The cabbie was wearing a checkered bowler hat, green and black, and it was perhaps the most hideous hat ever created. The young boy stared at it, unable to focus on anything else. Then the black and green blocks swirled together for a moment, as the cab driver turned his head quickly. "You have to say goodbye to a girl or something?" he asked, suddenly sympathetic. The passenger noted that his hard New York accent was affected, and probably false.
He ducked his head. "Or something," he agreed. His fingers pulled at each other, knotting themselves and sorting themselves out again. "I just… what if the door is slammed in my face?" He didn't look back up at the cabbie, and the man thought this was a good thing, because he couldn't keep the look of amusement off his face. He had the idea that this kid was no older than fifteen, and the fact that he was torturing himself so much over some ridiculous love that would go nowhere was laugh-worthy. Fifteen-year olds always thought they were in love. He knew; he had a fifteen-year old daughter who was convinced she was in love with a boy in her class. Their love, however, was shown by ten-minute phone calls twice a week and sitting on opposite ends of the sofa whenever he came over. Fifteen-year olds didn't know how to love. They hardly knew how to live.
"How old are you?" the cabbie asked, hoping that some conversation would jump-start the kid into going to say goodbye to his little girlfriend.
Two large, dark-chocolate eyes were lifted to his face, immediately reminding the driver of his cocker spaniel, Rufus. "Fifteen and a half," the boy answered. The driver internally congratulated himself on his shrewd age-guessing skills.
"I got a daughter who's fifteen," he said. The boy nodded, looking slightly less than interested. "She'd be crushed if the boy that she … is in love with … didn't come and say goodbye to her before leaving." After choosing his words carefully, he nodded to the three bags squished in the backseat with the boy. "And you appear to be leaving for a while."
The boy stared down at his hands again. "Yeah," he said softly. "I just… I don't know, we had a fight. And… I mean, who wants to get woken up to say goodbye to someone you just fought with?"
Two cars lumbered past, a few minutes apart. The cabbie was struggling with what to do. Finally, he chose a new route of venturing forward. He remembered when his daughter had had a little spat – hardly more than a disagreement – with her boyfriend. She had cried for an entire night, sure that her life was over. Quite convinced that this was the case for this young man, he turned and looked in the backseat again. "What'd you fight over?" he asked calmly.
The boy began tearing at the hem of his pants, fraying them beyond repair. "Our parents don't want us together," he said finally. "We tried to convince them, but… they said some stuff… I thought they were wrong and just didn't understand, but…" He trailed off, ripping the jeans apart more fiercely.
"But your little lover thought that they might have a point or two?" the cab driver suggested. "That's rough. A rough break, kid." He thought for a moment, and applauded himself on at least never being such a horrible father to his daughter as to forbid her to date the boy that she was convinced she was in love with. "What, your parents racist or something?"
The boy snorted, but it was hard to discern whether it was in laughter or disgust. "No," he said flatly. He met the driver's eyes again, and shook his head, as if in disbelief. "Did you look at the color of my skin when I got in? I'm a mulatto, in case you missed that. My parents are anything but racist."
The cabbie nodded. It was his job not to notice, not to discriminate, but he had done it anyway, of course. "So why were your parents against it, then? One of you into drugs or something?" When the boy didn't answer, the driver was sure he had hit the point. It would explain all the bags – the young boy could be flying away in an effort to escape his parents and sell drugs. "Listen, it's okay if you do drugs," he continued. "I mean, we've all experimented with them, haven't we?" He let out a laugh, which usually sounded jovial and filled the car. With the boy's continued silence, however, it sounded hollow and he let it die off quickly.
Searching for something, anything to get the kid moving, he tried a new route. "So, your lover has good looks?"
At this, the boy grinned, and the cabbie was relieved to see that the boy could smile – and noted that he wasn't a bad-looking kid, at that, at least not when he smiled. He thought to himself that he wouldn't mind his own daughter dating a kid so good-looking as this. "Gorgeous," the boy answered. "Blond hair, blue-green eyes that change with the light. Amazing body. So nice, too – my best friend since we were four. We've always been real close. I guess that's how it began," he said, shrugging.
"And you're going to leave that pretty little thing waiting?" the man asked, his eyebrows raised so high that they disappeared beneath the brim of his bowler hat. "I wouldn't wait an instant, if I were you."
The boy stared at him for a long minute, as if still testing his resolve. Then, finally, he unbuckled his seatbelt. "You're right," he agreed. Clambering over his bags, he climbed out and walked hesitantly up the front walk.
"For Christ's sake," the driver grumbled to himself, then unrolled the passenger side window and yelled out to the boy, "You aren't going to impress anyone slouching like that! Confidence, walk like a man!" The boy immediately straightened up at his words, as if chastised by his mother. The cabbie nodded to himself in self-lauding.
He rang the doorbell and stood there, wiping his palms on his jeans, for a few minutes. His left leg was shaking, and it was visible even from the cab. The driver was starting to feel quite uncomfortable for the boy. There appeared to be quite a few distinguishable differences between the boy and his daughter.
The front door opened, and a boy came out. He didn't mask his surprise at seeing the other boy on his doorstep. The cabbie, feeling as though he was watching the latest soap opera, leaned halfway out the passenger-side window to catch the dialogue. He wondered if this boy – obviously the brother of the boy's girlfriend – would let them see each other.
"I'm leaving," he heard the darker boy say to the new blond one. "My parents want me to go live with my aunt in California. They just… they just don't see how we can be together." He put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I just couldn't leave without saying goodbye." The cabbie waited for the blond boy to turn and call his sister out. To his surprise, the boy he was driving reached a tentative hand forward and grabbed one of the blond's hands. "I love you, Blink," he said, so low that the cabbie wouldn't have known what he had said, if he weren't been so adept at reading lips.
The blond boy's face melted into a little smile. "I love you too, Mush." His fingers clasped the darker boy's harder. "I'm sorry we fought. And… God, I'm gonna miss you." His smile was gone as soon as it had come. "You… really, Mush, can't you convince them to let you stay? We could sneak around them, they wouldn't have to know we were together…"
The boy called Mush looked away, and the driver saw a flash of tears on his face. "I have to go, Blink," he said. "They're making me." Looking back into the other boy's face, he said, hopefully, "Will you wait for me?"
"Until the end of time," Blink promised.
At this, the boys fell into each other's arms, both crying, and the cab driver felt it best to discontinue his snooping. He looked back in time to see them exchange a small, chaste kiss – so pure that it hardly qualified – and then could see a blonde woman stirring in the living room, standing up. Not wanting them to be caught, he leaned – hard – on his horn. The boys were surprised out of their embrace, and just in time: the blond boy's mother came to the doorway a moment later.
"…Thanks for coming to return the ring you borrowed from me, Mush," Blink said hurriedly. "Have fun in California."
Mush stared at him for a minute, then caught on and shimmied a ring off of his finger. "No problem," he answered, dropping it into the waiting palm. "I knew that you'd be mad at me if I took it with me." He offered one last, sad smile, obviously disappointed that the presence of Blink's mom meant a less-than-fitting farewell. "Take care, Mrs. Fields, Blink."
"You too," Blink said, barely more than a whisper. He put the ring on his finger and shoved his hands in his pockets. Mush copied the gesture and then, dejected, walked back down the walk. Blink and his mother disappeared into their house, and Mush climbed in the waiting cab.
He cried all the way to the airport, and then gave a hefty tip to the driver. "Thanks," was all he said.
"Any time," the cabbie answered, tipping his green-black bowler hat.
As he drove his next passenger around, he grew quite content that his fifteen-year old daughter knew nothing of real love. He would have hated to come home and find the haunting darkness, the utter age and depth of that boy's eyes in her young face.
A few months later, he got a call to pick up a lady at her residence. Upon arrival, he realized that it was the house that the blond boy lived at, the one he had sat in front of for a good twenty minutes while a fifteen-year old boy sputtered excuses in the backseat. Upon picking up the blonde woman, he inquired casually as to the health of her family – didn't she have a son?
"I have no son," she answered with a sniff.
Pressing the matter no further, he could only hope that the blond boy had picked up and joined the boy with the sad eyes and beautiful smile.
He adjusted his black-green bowler hat. Maybe, just maybe – they were happy.
All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standing here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But now the dawn is breaking, it's early morn
The taxi's waiting, he's blowing his horn
Already, I'm so lonely, I could cry
So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
Cuz I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go
-"Leavin' On a Jet Plane," John Denver