The poster and the jacket
After that bright day of bravely holding hands in front of everyone, the neighborhood and the school accepted that Eric and Estelle were somehow together, in some unexpected, unexplained way. It was left at that and nobody contested it again.
Rick continued to listen to Stella’s music day after day as she continued to sing. Occasionally, they went for ice cream together and glanced at the world through colorful pieces of glass – because he kept collecting them and giving them to her. He was also collecting her songs on tapes.
Sometimes they took long walks along the riverbank where he found many mysterious objects like metal badges and pieces of shiny glass. On one of those walks she let him kiss her – they actually kissed for the first time.
He had just found a new piece of colorful glass. He looked through it.
“I see ice cream in the other world”, he laughed. “Let’s see how it tastes”.
He stuck his lips to the glass.
“Oh it’s good”, he said.
She was amused by his idea.
“Wanna try?” he invited her.
Yet he didn’t offer her the glass. Instead, he waited with it stuck to his mouth. She smiled and came closer, touching the other side of the glass with her lips. He felt his eyes lost in her direct glance.
Her deep bright eyes were shining intensely and there was a glow in her cheeks that he hadn’t seen before. She was so close he felt her warm breath on his face, sweet and overwhelming, in a direct rhythm of energy. She was smiling gracefully, as they stood with their lips separated by the colorful glass. And then he slowly and softly moved the glass away, extracting it from the space between them, until the touch became the warmth of a kiss. He closed his eyes for a second that felt like an eternity. She tasted like sunlight and new spring, sending a blissful intense shiver in his soul. In that moment he felt their hearts beating together and their souls embracing in a light so intense, it made them shiver.
It felt indescribably good that she didn’t retreat immediately.
When he opened his eyes, standing back, she was smiling in acceptance.
“You kissed me”, she said.
“You let me… and you kissed me back!”
“I did.”
“I love you so much”, he said.
He couldn’t be silent about it anymore. It was overwhelming; it was burning in his heart; it was miraculous infinite love he felt he needed to share with her.
“I love you too”, she answered suddenly.
He stared in her eyes, afraid to believe it; afraid she would take it back.
“You really mean it?”
“I do.”
He breathed deeply.
“Uhh”.
He sat on the grass of the riverbank. It was summer holiday and he felt free and overwhelmed by happiness. He felt he had waited his entire life for those words. It was absolute happiness to just stay there, enjoying the ecstatic truth of love like eternal light. She sat next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. He wanted so much to hold her, so he placed an arm around her, keeping her close.
“Should I not tell anybody about it?” he whispered dreamily.
“It doesn’t matter if you do… I don’t care what they say about it.”
They watched the river reflecting the sun in the flowing water, moving slowly with time.
In two years they grew up fast. She turned into an amazingly agile, shiny girl and he became a confident and impulsive teenager.
They were preoccupied with exams and plans for the future, but they were still meeting by the riverbank on the weekends. He still listened to her songs, even though they changed. She still recorded tapes.
And then there was a singing contest in town.
She became the singing sensation and got a deal from a producer.
In just two weeks she moved out of town, to a bigger city.
Rick remained to walk alone by the riverbank. He only had her music and an occasional letter, telling him about her new life and enthusiastic plans. And then the letters stopped. They had both finished high school and he felt she was lost to him.
He met a girl Simone and the first thing he did was play the tapes to show her how magical Stella’s music was.
And then Jerry came to him with a newspaper showing an article about her.
“Turn on the radio, man! She’s everywhere now!”
The article described her as a new sensation. It also said her manager named Andy was her boyfriend.
“I don’t believe it”, Rick frowned.
“I’m sorry, man” Jerry said. “Did you really think she was alone?
Of course not…”
Rick didn’t want to think about it. He was glad for her – he could still be happy with hearing her voice. He heard her on the radio. He heard her in every disco in town. He understood why the world was at her feet: they felt the bright sunlight of her voice. They were thrilled by her magical music. They were charmed, just as he had been. But she was still his miracle. They couldn’t deprive him of that.
Only she could.
And she didn’t: one day, she came back.
Jerry brought him the news that she was coming for a concert in town. He showed him the poster: Stella with her hypnotizing eyes and her electrifying hair, wearing a black leather jacket with metal spikes. It was galactic. It was majestic. It was overwhelming. Rick felt his heart drop. The poster was on the glass window of the concert hall, which was a guarded building.
He stared at the poster.
“Jerry”, he said, “I must have this poster. I’ve got to have it in my room. If she’s not with me, I’m taking this poster. I’ll come tonight and take it.”
“You’re crazy! You’ll get in trouble because of it. Besides, it’s stuck to the window with glue.”
“I’ll bring scissors. Come with me.”
“No, we’ll get in trouble.”
Still, Jerry came. And they got in trouble. Just as Rick was folding the poster inside his jacket, a policeman grabbed his arm in the dark.
“What are you doing here?”
He had to go inside the guardian’s booth to explain. He had to pay for the damage to the building’s property. But the policeman didn’t inquire where the poster was, so Rick got away with keeping it, close to his beating heart.
And later, it was on his wall, in his room. He could see her every day. Her blue-sky eyes looked at him endlessly… as if from another universe.
“You’re chasing a dream”, Simone told him. “But if you enjoy her music that much, keep dreaming...”
She shrugged and left.
Rick went to Stella’s concert the next night. She hadn’t made any attempt to contact him. He was certain he wouldn’t get past the bodyguards and her boyfriend manager.
“I really want to get her back with me again”, he told Jerry. “I love her and she means a lot to me.”
Jerry warned him against getting his hopes too high: “It might not mean as much to her as it does to you. She doesn’t know who you are anymore: you’ve grown up, both of you. You were children years ago. You’re a stranger to her now. She’ll think you’re crazy…”
But Rick was convinced otherwise.
“She knows who I am. I’m not a stranger, not to her… she knows me. I’m sure it’s still us… she just needs to remember how she feels… and how I feel.”
“How you feel is clear, but it’s not enough to make things the way you want them to be... And you don’t know what she feels about you.”
It’s true, Rick thought, remaining silent while realizing that she had a life far away from him and they weren’t inseparable anymore.
Jerry saw his sadness and tried to give him a consolation discourse.
“You’re a fan of hers, and you were together when you were children. You were friends, right? Maybe she’ll see you.”
“I’m not a fan”, Rick answered reluctantly. “I don’t want to be one of them. And I don’t want to be just a friend either. She’s my love. I want to be her love too. I can’t have it any other way. It’s either 0 or 100% with me. I can’t live with half measures… it’s not the way I am… and it’s not how I feel. I can’t be just someone in a crowd. I’d rather be no one. Don’t you understand? I want her love.”
“Her love? She’s got someone else now, man. Give it up. Get her off your mind.”
“No way.”
“If she talks to you, her fans will get envious of you when they see you get her attention. Each of them will want the same. They all want her.”
Rick grabbed Jerry’s coat in his fists.
“Whose side are you on anyway? I’m not the same as any of them! It’s not the way it is…”
He didn’t want to accept the idea that she was just an audacious, improbable, unrealistic dream. He didn’t want to live with the thought that he didn’t mean more to her than the countless people who came to her shows. He believed love was a miraculous truth and it could make anything possible. He didn’t want to let it disappear from his life. It meant too much to him. He decided to go to her concert alone and give her a message somehow.
He wrote a few words on a piece of paper: “I’m in the other universe across a colorful glass wall. Meet me tomorrow by the riverbank. I love you. - Rick”. He tied the note on a plush toy and bought a front row ticket to the concert.
As it happened, he really felt stuck beyond a glass wall. She had become distant from that sunny dream when they were together.
Time had changed everything and yet he felt it unfair to let so much love slip away. He wished he could get her back.
He was nervously waiting for her to appear on stage. She came, shiny and impressive, bright and energetic. People were enthusiastic. Rick understood it meant everything to her: to have become the star she had dreamed of being, singing her songs and turning into an ideal for the crowd. He was content she had achieved what she wanted. But he doubted she needed him in her life anymore.
For a few moments he thought her eyes stared directly at him.
As happy as he was to see her so close, after so many years of absence, he felt a subtle shade of sorrow that it was the only time he could be in the same place with her.
She looked at him a few times, but he couldn’t guess how she felt. He was sure she knew him, but was not sure she needed him: she was a successful singer while he was washing cars, hesitating about going to university.
He left the plush toy on the stage and after the concert he didn’t try to find her. He was sure there was no way for him to get closer and talk to her.
He didn’t go to the river the next day.
He had no idea that she came to meet him there.
She had picked up the plush toy and read the message – and the next morning she waited for him, taking a walk along the river.
She basked in the memory of colorful lights from pieces of glass reflecting the sun. She listened to the water and the birds. She remembered blissful moments from years ago. She eventually went to his backyard to ask about him. He was not home. He wasn’t in town anymore. He had left at midnight to join a boxing club in another town that hired volunteers for street shows and paid enough money – more than he was making by washing cars.
His decision had been sudden and an act of rebellion against the glass wall that he felt between him and his dream. If only he could have known that she would come, he would have been there in a blink of an eye. But he didn’t know. And he had not much hope left to believe it could happen.
He couldn’t trust his chances in the new situation to think she would return. He was afraid to believe in something that would be irrevocably unachievable: being with her again. Had he trusted his love instead, he would have believed in that light that used to make life bright. But he didn’t have enough hope – and he didn’t wait anymore. He ran away.
And so when she looked for him, she discovered that he wasn’t there anymore. After that she left, while he was boxing, taking bad hits and throwing decisive punches at strangers in another town.
A few months later, he read in an article that she had married her manager. He was devastated, but didn’t say a word to anyone. It didn’t seem fair, but maybe life wasn’t fair. Maybe I’m not the best for her anyway, he thought and went on boxing matches that tore his face to pieces, breaking his jaws and bones. His blackened eyes were swollen and he couldn’t see too much.
He ended up in hospital. Stella’s music was the only thing that gave him some soothing solace – that kept him closer to that light that made life better. However, the light was backwards. He didn’t see it ahead. He didn’t see a way out for his future.
When he got out of hospital he finally decided to go to college.
It was when he found another piece of colorful glass in the street that he remembered the enthusiasm, the bliss and happiness, the light of love that had made life so bright, on the other side of another universe.
On the same day that he found the colorful glass he read in another article that she had divorced her manager and was free again. He looked at the news and felt something he hadn’t felt for a long time: hope. It seemed that he was waking up to a new daylight, leaving behind a troubled night of pain and darkness. He started to believe in his dream once more: the sunny dream of summer and spring, of happiness and light. He stared at the piece of glass in his hand and realized it sent him a glimmer of brightness. Somehow, he knew that as long as another universe existed, he could still find Stella. He could reach her through the glass. He could bring her back to him. He could be with her again. She was his miracle. Love was his miracle. He wasn’t going to give it up. He was determined to find it and keep it in his life for good.