prompt: create tension or even contradiction between physical behaviour and dialogue.
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The flock disperses, and you’re wresting free a notebook from your backpack when she’s suddenly glowing in front of you, dropping her book on your desk.
“Hi!” Her eyes are bright, her smile is downright luminescent, and she’s doing that tapping thing with her neon varnished nails like she’s nervous. Instead of responding, you cleverly gape at her, but you don’t seem to lose face; she’s not paying attention.
“So, you’re real good with this literary s…theory…stuff, right? Since I made sure to beat out the competition for your services, think you’d be willing to partner with me - help a buddy out?” her expression is cute, that head tilt furthering the effect of her lopsided smile, and you are a dirty disgusting sap.
“Oh, uh-yeah, uh…I’m all about enriching other people…and…Shakespeare.” You have no idea what you’re saying, but maybe if you smile the whole time, she’ll just go along with it.
“Fantastic,” she declares, and when an unsuspecting fellow classmate gets up to sharpen his pencil, she drags his desk over beside yours and plops herself down. Chin on hand and wide-eyed, she turns her ‘I am a fascinated pupil’ look on you.
“All right: Romeo and Juliet. Tell me about it…what’s the tragedy?” You are aiming for an authoritative-yet-friendly tone, and you think you mostly succeed, because she’s rolling her eyes but still smiling at you.
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” She leans sideways, not breaking eye contact as her face gets closer, and then bats her eyelashes. You think you understand the joke.
Cautiously – because God, how embarrassing would being wrong be – you incline your head like you plan to impart something profound. Constructing something witty instead, you let your mouth hang open and try to remember to breathe through your nose; “What, have you never learnt by doing?”
She snorts, “Often.” Her chin takes flight from its perch on her palm, and she turns to squint at the potentially legible scribbles on the chalkboard.
You suspect there has been some miscalculation, on your part.
“So, why didn’t they just run away?” she randomly bursts, before enough awkward silence has passed for you to come up with something to break it.
As you have spent the last few moments silently self-berating for reasons you don’t quite understand, you have completely lost the thread. “…Who?”
This time, her smile slow burns like acid. “Romeo? Juliet? The people in the play? ”
You have long suspected that you live in a Woody Allen film. Therefore, you are privy to the reason why he only makes movies, and never TV shows; the sheer amount of social incompetence involved in such a concept is too exhausting for any actor to maintain on a weekly basis. “Uh…why should they have to?”
She fixes her ‘see me unimpressed’ look on you, but you warm to your subject; this terrain is well-traveled. “Well, I mean…if you had gotten a boyfriend – a husband – would you expect to need to flee the country and your family just to live? No, you would not. And that’s the point; the feud between families was so bad that they couldn’t even associate with the same people. It was ridiculous and pointless.”
She snorts again, but Shakespeare seems to warrant less derision than you apparently did. “Worst. Breakup. Ever.”
“Well Romeo and Juliet died at the end, yeah, but they technically didn’t break up –”
“No not them. Although they weren’t technically really together, so I guess they never broke up either.” Her eyes have closed, and the heel of her palm is now supporting her cheekbone.
Your eyes shift to the bulletin board on the right of their own accord. “Uh, did you read the book? Because they got married.”
“Did you?” She shot back, eyes still closed. “Because their entire relationship was shorter than Kevin Federline and Britney Spears’ marriage.”
You are proud to not really know who she’s talking about, but her tone – and the fact that the professor will think she’s sleeping and mark the both of you down for it – has begun to grate. “Well since you know so much about it, why did you need my help?”
“I was sleeping during the lecture; I have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. You’re the one who answers like, every question.” With each sentence, she looks and sounds progressively more like she’s falling back asleep. Her hair is a bit knotty where she’d tangled her fingers near the beginning of class, and she seems strangely duller than you remember her being just five minutes ago.
You still kind of want to help her out. “We’re supposed to analyze the varying…ah… opinions, I guess, of the characters on marriage and love.”
She lifts her head to stare at you with bleary eyes. “What opinions? Juliet tricks Romeo into marrying her because he wants to do her.” She does that snorting thing again. “He would have been better off staying with that Rose Lee chick, even if she didn’t put out, or whatever.”
That’s…an unusual interpretation. “Well no, he…I mean he liked Rosaline, but Juliet caught his eye because…um,” you have no idea what drew him to Juliet. Something about how she’d been shining bright – which is a weird way to say she was beautiful; it’s not like she would have been glowing neon or anything. “Ok, marriage is a long way to go for sex.”
“Well, you know; the things guys’ll do to get laid,” she says, flippant. At least she looks awake again. “Wait, is that why it’s a tragedy? Because everyone in those families was an idiot?”
You stare at her. She, finger-combing those snarls out of her hair, raises her brows, waiting. “...Yes! See, there you go! Impulsiveness with infatuation or with quarreling is much frowned upon by Shakespeare. Well done.”
She looks you up and down; only the one eyebrow still arched now, but doesn’t say anything. She just picks up her book and her bag, yawns, and meanders off. Around you, the classroom is a flurry of movement; the other students are packing away their books and laughing their way out the door. The class had ended at an unusually convenient time, allowing you to wrap up – sort of – your long, strange trip of a conversation before coming to a close.
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