The Jesters Fool- Chapter 13

High school senior Brooke Taylor navigates an unexpectedly tumultuous year filled with death, secrecy, and decaying friendships.

Just friends don’t bring you flowers. Marcus brought me flowers. He broke the rules, went off campus, found a cute shop that was still selling iris’ at this time of year, and gifted them to me. They were wrapped in brown paper with a white bow around the stems. The gift, although it made my heart flutter, also made me feel hesitant. 

He stands at the door of my dorm. I’m awestruck and too afraid to reach out and accept the gift. “Thank you,” I mutter, snatching the bouquet from him quickly before I yell at him to leave.

“It’s an apology,” He sighs, “For how I was at the funeral. I know this doesn’t make up for everything, but I thought it would be a start.”

“At some point, you’re going to have to plant me a garden.” I hold the purple flowers protectively to my breast. 

“I’ll do better. I promise.” 

I hold eye contact with Marcus for a moment, “Don’t make me promises you can’t keep.”

“Brooke?”

“I led you on. I hurt you, it’s only fair for you to hurt me back. I don’t know if things between us can ever be good again.”

“Brooke you are my best friend, please don’t say that,” There is a level of desperation in his voice. My heart breaks a bit as his tone wavers and I can tell he is fighting back tears.

I had made up my mind to put distance between the two of us, to extinguish any misguided feelings that my wrongfully stolen kiss might have alighted in me. But I am a woman of very weak resolve and seeing my best friend, who usually puts on the persona of only good feelings about to cry makes me change my mind on everything. I wrap my arms around him in a tight embrace, the flowers crushing between our bodies. “I’m sorry too,” I mutter, “What can I do to make up for it?”  My breath catches in my throat as his hands grasp my arms and push me a step back from him.

“Kiss me again,” He says, staring me right in the eyes, “And mean it.”

“I can’t do that,” I can’t lie to him. I can’t let him think that I love him when I don’t�" or at least I don’t think I do.

“Then pretend to,” He cups my chin tenderly, bringing my lips to his. At this point, I have perfected my feigned passion. But it frightens me at how difficult it is to tell the difference between my falsification and how I truly feel. I seem to be melting into his hands. His beautiful apology has long since been discarded to the ground. By kissing him, I grant him my forgiveness.

His body is strong, his lean frame exerting its weight against me, trying to guide me toward the bed. Even through the clouded judgment of a forced fake kiss, I know in my heart I must stop. Physically, the tension between Marcus and me is real, but I highly doubt that I by any means love him. It would hurt us both if I let him take anything further. I fight back against his body, keeping us where we are, and I break away from him to catch my breath. “We should stop.”

I can tell by the look in his eye that he is far from satisfied, I can tell by the expression on his face that he craves more from me. But we are just friends, and that title looms between us awkwardly. With Trent, I knew�" I know?- that I had- have?- feelings for him because I never saw him in a platonic way. From the beginning, I had wanted to be with him. Marcus and I, opposingly, knew each other on a level that two lovers may never understand. I knew Marcus intellectually and emotionally�" in a way that you must dissect a person in the nastiest way to find. It would be almost wrong of me to love him, it would be macabre of me to love him. 

From every novel I had ever read, I knew well the fact that relationships like ours almost always ended in tragedy. I also desperately wanted to kiss him again. Only seconds since I had last had him, I already miss the subtle bitter flavor of weed. 

My back is pressed up against my lofted bed, and Marcus’ hands are placed on my hips about to boost me up. We stand frozen like this, just staring at each other. My chest heaves as anxiety begins to overtake my body. I want to curl up on the floor and feel his arms embrace me. I want to feel him in a way that will not force me to face any repercussions. I want to have him as mine, I want to kiss him passionately�" I want him to comfort me, but I don’t want to have to love him.

Slowly I take his hand from my hips and clasp his fingers in a tight grip. I fall to my knees on the ground, as if I am blacking out, but my vision is far from blurred as my knees bruise on the hard linoleum. I sink back, resting my weight against my heels. I tug at Marcus’ arm urging him to sit down next to me. 

He obliges, laying his head on my folded lap. His lean body just sprawled out on the floor. I stroke my fingers through his hair. The comfort that I had craved was now being given to him. In the dynamic between us, I was always the one to sacrifice and care for him. In a way, it made me feel good, but I couldn’t explain why. The nurturing that I so badly desired, I obtained vicariously through my actions to him.

“Brooke.” His voice comes out breathy, and I am surprised that he has not fallen asleep. We have sat here for a very long stretch of silence. 

“Yes, Marcus?” I choke out because I can tell from his tone that he is about to say something that I will wish he didn’t.

“I’m in love with you.” My fingers are still in his hair, tangling in the loose curls. He continues to lie motionless.

“I don’t know if that’s true-” I try to redirect him, but he cuts me off.

“Do you know how many girls I’ve liked? How many stupid crushes I’ve had?”

“I know of some,” I tell him. He’s been my best friend, of course he’s rambled on about particular girls.

“They were all a distraction from you. From the second I saw you, I was in love.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” My chest tightens. At least for me�" I fall slowly. One day it’s nothing, then a small crush the next day, and then after weeks or months of confusion, I become almost obsessive. Not creepy-stalker-obsessive, but on-the-floor-sobbing-because-I-took-too- long-to-feel-anything-and-now-he-doesn’t-like-me-anymore-and-it-makes-me-feel-ill-obsessive.

I feel his relaxed muscles stiffen against my legs. “Don’t tell me how to feel.” He grumbles, slowly sitting up. I quickly untwine my fingers from his hair. Somehow I always find a way to upset him. When  it comes to Marcus, I constantly feel intense guilt. I can never do right in his eyes.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” But he’s right, it is. I have always felt the need to tell him who he is. Grossly, I have always tried to hold a level of control over him. Wanting to perfect the boy who was already perfect in my eyes. 

Marcus pushes to his feet and ambles over to my door. He pushes the iris’ out of his path with the toe of his shoe. “I’m incredibly high right now.” He tells me, before shutting my door behind him. I knew from his kiss, but I had chosen to deny it and call it a long-lasting aftertaste. 

With Marcus gone, I force myself to put my racing thoughts about him on hold. Stealing a breath I grab the book that we are studying in English. I crack the cover, and for the first time, I begin to read the assigned text. I allow the epistolary text of Werther to pull me away from my reality and into his. I let his sorrows overrun my own, and mourn at the prospect of unrequited love. I am dragged into a storyline that is such an inverse of mine. 

And just like that my thoughts are back on Marcus. Does he feel the desperation of Werther? Of course not. He has the comfort of drugs to distract him from the desire for death. Marcus may mourn not being with me, but he would never be so bold as to request that his death be delivered by my hand. And I would never provide him the ammunition necessary to finish himself off. He has a stupid crush, and it will pass. 

I continue to read, annotating as I go, leaving pink highlighter stains on my hands, as I fiercely mark up the copy of my book. My small, sloppy handwriting crowds the margins as I near the final passages. I stare intently at the page, thinking about the aftermath of Werther's death for Charlotte. In the end, she suffered more than he did.

It is wrong of Marcus to love me, I decide. When I kissed him, it didn’t need to mean anything. And when I kissed him a second time, it was only prompted by my grief. The third time we kissed, I only did it because he asked. 

I do not have feelings for Marcus.

My best friend just died, and boys are still the only thing I can think about. Boys and books, those two categories overwhelmingly dominate my life. My hands shake as I feel remorse for my very narrow level of interest. I wish I could be like every other girl here, in a committed relationship with a long-term boyfriend, or happy being single.

For the first time since Lexi's death, 8th-period English is silent. No half-whispered speculations fly across the room, and no sympathetic murmurs are directed towards me. The weight of this romantic novel has overcast the reality of death within our school. Werther now feels more fresh and recent and deserving of respect than Lexi does. 

“Class,” Miss. Donley starts, “This is a heavy topic, especially now that you have all seen how the death of a loved one affects you firsthand.” I shudder, disgusted that she is using Lex as part of her lesson plan. But then I remember my sister, and how her loss pained Ms. Donley. It was weird to realize how I related to her�" how the whole school now did, or at least Lexi's closer friends. “I want you all to discuss the novel as a whole. Find a theme�" a motif�" something, and discuss it with your tables.”

I turn to look at Marcus. Our last interaction was awkward, and I’ve avoided him since. Now we are confronted with a tale of romantic tragedy. Just the two of us, no Lexi to mediate. “So what did you think?” I asked, my voice a broken whisper. I clear my throat, face turning slightly warm and red. It’s hard to hold eye contact with someone who unrequitedly loves you, but his gaze is fierce and I know that I’m going to come off as weak if I cannot meet his look.

“Werther is a true romantic.”

“He is the blueprint,” I try to joke about the novel's origin, but he shakes his head.

“He loved her so much. He knew she was right for him.”
“And Albert, her fiance, the man she was in love with? Was he just in the way?”

“Yes.”  I narrow my eyes, is this really how he feels? Or is he just trying to spite me, he knows what I want to hear him say, so he is bringing up the opposite point. “I think it’s incredibly noble that he was more willing to toy with death than live without her.”

“Do you think she ever loved him�"” I am about to add on more to my question but he cuts me off.

“Most definitely. She loved him, he was right for her.”

“I  think that it was gross that he asked to die at her hand�" that he would rather manipulate her into killing him than tell her how he felt straight up.”

“I think it is better to kill for love than die for it.” I shudder, his words making my blood run cold.

“So you believe she is more admirable than he is? If you believe that she truly loved him?”
“I think anyone willing to enact death as a means to fulfilling a romance is admirable.” I squint at him, trying to make out his expression. I think he is high, with the way his eyes seem fogged. The way he moves feels hesitant, despite his confident words. 

“Are you sober?” I whisper, but as I lean into him I can smell the weed mixed in with his cologne.

“Yeah,” I know he’s lying but I allow him to. If he is high, then maybe he doesn’t believe what he is saying about the morality of love.

“Okay.” 

Donley calls us to attention, her delicate arm raised into the air. “Who would like to share what their table discussed?”

I raise my hand slowly, and she nods at me, “We-” I speak for Marcus, deciding what he feels- “think Werther is a coward who was so unsure of himself that he couldn’t even take his own life, he had to manipulate the woman that he loved into doing it instead.”

“That is not what we talked about!” Marcus snatches my arm, pushing my hand down. I wince, but he had grabbed me harder before and left the dark marks to prove it. 

“Tell me what you thought then, Marcus,” Donley says. I quickly hide my look of pain so that she doesn’t feel concerned.

“On some level, Catharine understood what Werther was going to use those guns for. And on the one hand, she may not have accepted the reality, but she had to know that there was some chance he was going to kill himself. And assuming that she really did love her fiance more than Werther, that meant she was willing to kill for love. She’s the true romantic in the story.”

He twisted his answer slightly from how he had explained it to me, but his new response was even more unnerving. The way that he cherished death, reveled in it. It appalled me. “I think death is a sort of vengeance, the way it possesses the people around it,” He adds on, closing his statement.

“What a unique perspective,” Donley smiles in an unsure way. The bell rings to dismiss class before anyone else can add to the discussion�" which might be for the best.

“Did you like the book?” Marcus asks me as we leave, his hand settling on my upper arm, against the faint bruise that still remains from his angry grasp.

“It was fine,” I say with a shrug, I don’t want to get into a deep conversation about it with Marcus. Not now that I already know his interpretation of the romance portrayed.

“Come on Brooke,” He gives me his pleading look, “I know you love books�" give me more than that.”

“Why are you so desperate for my answer? You know my stance on it, and we disagree. It’s whatever.” He pouts, like a little boy he gives me a little puppy dog frown. 

 “I’ll give you some time to cool off. I can see that you’re pissed at me right now.” We’re still awkwardly walking in the same direction.

“I have good reason to be upset�"”

“Name one.”

An indignant smile of disbelief plays on my lips, “You’re high again. What possibly could have forced you into smoking today?”

“Lexi wasn’t only your friend.” He snaps, giving me a cold look, his red eyes narrowing, “My best friend died too. My other best friend is being all pissy with me. This is how I’m coping.”

“Grow up,” I mutter under my breath. Of course, I understand that Lexi's death also impacts him, but why is he all twisted with his views of life and romantic morality right now? Lexi's death clearly hurt him worse than I had realized, if this disgusting view on life is what he got out of it. If he gets to be high and confused, I should be allowed to be tense and angry. I pick up my pace so that I make it to the dorm several steps ahead of him. He doesn’t make it to the door until I am already halfway up the stairs. I have won the race, and therefore; momentarily, our argument.

Author's Note

Please leave me any and all comments and critiques, no matter how scathing, so that I can edit this novel!