Balcony Physics

She wasn't on the balcony for him.

She was on the balcony because the house was hot and her mother was crying again and the garden smelled like jasmine and the jasmine had always been the one reliable thing.

So when he spoke from the dark — that ridiculous line, the one about the sun — she almost laughed. Not because it was funny. Because he was trying so hard.

"You know you're standing in my mother's rose bed," she said.

"Oh."

He stepped back. Something crunched.

"That was also a rose."

"Sorry."

She leaned on the rail. He stood there, looking up at her, the way men stand when they think they're in a story.

"What do you want," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I don't know."

That surprised her.

"I thought you'd have something prepared," she said. "Most of you do."

"I had things prepared. I forgot them when you came outside."

"That's inconvenient."

"Yes."

A long silence. The jasmine did its work. Somewhere a dog barked and stopped.

"My family hates your family," she said.

"I know."

"Do you know why?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

They both thought about this.

"That's a long time," she said, "to hate someone for a reason nobody remembers."

"Maybe that's the only kind of hating that lasts."

She looked at him differently then. Not the way a girl looks at a boy in a garden. The way a person looks at another person who has just said something true.

"What's your name again," she said.

"Romeo."

"That's a terrible name."

"I know."

"Mine's worse."

"Juliet is a beautiful name."

"It's the name of a girl in a play. I hate being in a play."

He smiled for the first time. "We could just leave."

"Leave the balcony?"

"Leave the play."

She thought about it. Really thought. The house was hot. Her mother was still crying. The jasmine would bloom next year whether she was there or not.

"Where would we go?"

"I don't know. Somewhere nobody has a reason to hate anyone."

"That place doesn't exist."

"No. But we could walk anyway."

She looked at him for a long time.

Then she climbed down.

Not the way she was supposed to — not dramatically, not in a nightgown, not reciting anything. She walked to the trellis, found a foothold, stepped carefully, dropped the last three feet, and landed in the rose bed next to him.

"Now we're both in trouble," she said.

"Yes."

And they walked out of the garden and into the part of the night the play had never written.

— Whet