23

  Brad

  We approached the tower, a massive well-built structure. A fitting base for any lord as we would find out. Apparently, this was the tower made famous in the story of Rapunzel. No entrance at the bottom, no staircase to climb. It was a bunker impossible for someone to invade, sturdily built to protect from any interloper. An impregnable, isolated fortress that had all the hallmarks of a tower built for a woman to be completely defended from any danger or joy. It was also the tower of a man who was able to win a princess, a tower a man was able to break and win his lady love. A tower where a man fulfilled every dream we would come to find Christian was so desperate to attain for himself.

  Enough talk of princesses and the desperate longings certain people had for them. We were here for a purpose. We were here to try and, somehow, convince Christian that he needed to leave this fantasy world where every dream a man could have could come true, and bring him back to our world, the real world. The world that scorned and mocked him, the world he had no place in, we had to somehow convince him that that world, that awful cruel world, was the world he belonged in.

  When we came to the tower, a group of guards were surrounding it. As it was Rapunzel’s tower, it had no entrance or exit. One who was in its highest quarters could be safe from any reality that threated to impede their time in it.

  “How did he even get up there?” Susie asked, looking bewildered that Christian had found himself in one of the most impregnable fortresses of all time and story.

  I thought for a second how Christian must have felt when he first found this tower. No doubt he would have recognized what a tower with no door meant in this fantasy world. I wonder if, before he knew this place was empty, he called up to the tower, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” I wonder what he felt when he was met with silence. I don’t know how much time had passed in this world before we got here, I don’t even know if any time passed in this world before we got here. But when we got here Rapunzel’s Prince Charming had already found the girl whose home this once was, Rapunzel had been rescued, Snow white most likely was saved by her woodsman, and another Prince Charming had already found Cinderella. Princesses were being claimed left and right, to Christian I thought, seeing that the women he desired could be as unobtainable in this world as they were in his own reality. I think he thought he was running out of time. He thought that’s why he had to take the little time he had here to win as much glory as possible. There’s only so many stories in that well-worn copy of Grimm’s fairytales he had been obsessed with since his youth. He knew he had to find his princess, before all the princesses were taken.

  “We use ropes,” one of the guards said, “It was quite a task after the great lady Rapunzel was rescued by her prince,” he smiled, “Under the orders of Lord Christian, three men armed with hook shots and determination made their way to the tallest room, climbed to that great window and from there provided a rope only to be climbed by his lordship, he said that he wanted this tower for himself. What with Rapunzel being rescued by her prince, this tower still stood, and provides one of the safest places for a man of his statue and grace to rule from,” he said, “The Lord drops the rope and we raise to him the finest food we can bring to our hero,” the guard smiled, “In return he drops the rope back, with a basket of orders and commands to make our lands safer and even more prosperous then we could imagine,” he said. “Lord Christian has already mobilized us towards the Ocean, says he heard of a princess in danger by the sea, word is he’s going to marry her once the war is won, we’ll crush any force in his name, our great rulers name,” he said.

  Susie shot a look towards Cody, “He’s starting a war, fantastic,” she said with bite in her voice.

  Cody shook his head, closed his eyes for a second and tried to think, “If you could, we need to speak with the Lord,” Cody said, “If there’s a way to get up there, we’ll go up there, but if you could get him down here, for parlay, we would like to speak to him,” Cody said.

  “I don’t know, the Lord is quite busy, I don’t think he can take visitors from,” he looked us over, “Where are you from, your dress is quite odd, and you’ve come to this tower, the tower of Lord Christian armed, would you be a threat?” he straightened his back and stood tall and ready to defend the ruler of his land.

  “We are travelers,” Susie said, “We are travelers from Nebraska, his homeland, we mean the lord no harm,” she said, I could tell she was fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the idea of calling Christian a Lord.

  “You are the other warriors of Nebraska, oh,” the guard smiled, “The Lord Christian of Nebraska speaks so highly of all of you, of course of course,” he came around the tower and found a bell, newly hung on the smooth side of the fortress, and rung it hard and loud.

  We looked up and saw Christian stick his head out of the window and look down on us. “Friends, so great to see you,” he said, his smile beaming like a man totally lost in an addictions smile would beam just before he was told the party needed to end. He threw down a rope from the top of the tower and scaled down it with a skill that none of us would think he would have had.

  “Sorry for all the formalities you’ve had to deal with,” he said as he came to the bottom of the rope, “Things have been crazy here, I took care of this troll under a bridge, they offered me a job, I was able to take a party and dispatch another monster, I found the tower, no one was using it, Rapunzel already has her prince,” he shrugged, and for a moment I think I saw a look of regret in his eyes, that look of regret that comes when one was too late to do something that they know they could have done.

  “Christian, we need to talk,” Susie said, all business.

  “It’s been a while back home,” Cody said.

  “I know, listen, I got a little carried away, I’m sorry, what is it? Tuesday? Wednesday over there? I can come up with an excuse, it hasn’t been that long, at least it hasn’t felt that long, so much has been happening so fast, I just got a little carried away,” he said, his smile still beaming. He felt so at home here, he would let weeks, months go by and think nothing of the world he was leaving behind.

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  “It’s Friday, Friday evening,” Susie said, “Christian, you need to come home,” she said.

  “Friday, no, no I can’t be Friday, I did the math, I’ve been here,” we watched as Christian counted on his fingers, tried to do that impossible math problem in his head, the allegedly quadratic equation that showed how different time worked in the real world as compared to Somewhere Else. Christian raised his eyebrows, “I’m sorry,” he said, “You have to understand, they use different amounts of time for a month here, I got lost, I thought that few months here wouldn’t be that much longer in the other world,” he said.

  “The real world, you mean,” Susie said, trying to correct a man who meant exactly what he said. To Christian, the real world had been relegated to just being the other world. This was a man of two worlds who held them both as equally real, and maybe, as we would come to see, held one above the other.

  “Yeah, the real world,” Christin said as he turned to the tower, a look of longing in his eyes, “Look, I know what’s real and what’s not,” he said, snapping back to Susie.

  “Do you? Because you’ve spent a week here, you spent a week here without even thinking about it,” she said.

  “I just got caught up in counting the months, if a month here was a month there, I would have known-”

  “But you do know,” Susie interrupted him, “You do know that a month here is not a month home, you know a month here is at least three days there, and you’ve stayed here even longer than a month,” she said, standing tall, her hips cocked in the same way as an accusing mother who caught her son with a hand in the cookie jar.

  “I’m sorry, shit is so fucked for me in that world, I needed to get away from that world for a while,” Christian said.

  “The real world,” Susie corrected him again.

  Christian shook his head, “Shit is so fucked for me in the real world, I’m sorry, I went native for one moment, for one moment when I thought things could be as good for me over there as they are here, and I made a mistake, a mistake that is going to fuck me forever,” he said, “You heard what she said, what people thought about me, how judgmental they were, I was just trying to do the right thing, had I done that over here I would have been rewarded, I would have been praised, but over there I’m just mocked and derided,” he said.

  “Christian, listen to me,” Susie said, “That world, as you call it, the real world that we all know it to be,” she looked to Cody and I, “The world we all know is the real one,” she laid her voice thick, accusing, “People can be cruel, but it’s just high school, that’s how things are for some people. We graduate in like, two months, after two months no one is going to care about this or that mistake you may have made, and you have gold, you have money. We’ve all tried to tell you that that world, the real world, is not as judgmental as you think. Highschool sucks, we all know it, but you can escape it, you’re so close to escaping it, and with the gold you’ve earned here you can escape to something so much greater than being a guy who says the wrong thing at a party,” Susie was really trying to appeal to him. This was probably the most humanity Susie had ever shown Christian before he did what he did. Susie was the first of us who knew that Christian was the biggest risk of any of us to go native. She could see the lust he had to abandon what, the three of us at least, had called the real world.

  “I don’t think there’s a place for me there, look what I have here,” Christian turned to the tower and looked over it with a dual feeling of pride and reservation, “Look what I have here,” he said again.

  “It’s a fantasy,” Susie said, “I understand the pain that our world gives you,” she said.

  “Do you?” Christian asked, looking over the three of us, “Do you really understand what that world has done to me?” He asked. He turned to Cody, a surprise to me as Cody was his biggest defender, “You’re a football player, you can hook up with a cheerleader, could I ever hook up with a cheerleader?”

  Cody was taken aback by that, “Christian, hooking up with a cheerleader is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things,” he said, his eyes darting to Susie.

  “And you,” Christian looked to me, “You have seen that world judge you, throw you aside, I know you’ve seen how awful this world can be to people they find so different,” he wasn’t wrong, I’m not saying he was right, but he wasn’t wrong. A man of my skin tone had gotten his share of dirty looks from prom date’s fathers and first date’s mothers. In our wishful progressive world, the racism I faced had been of a more subtle variety, but even in that I could understand what a man who felt out of place in the land he was born in could feel.

  “And you,” Christian looked to Susie, “You’re a beautiful woman, you are,” Christian said, “I never had any feelings for you, I could have, but I didn’t,” he said, “A beautiful woman can have anything she wants in her life over there, you’ll never have to fight or strive for anything, you can find someone who loves you no problem,” he said, “Who is going to love me there, after what I did, after the mocking and ridicule I faced, things don’t work for me over there, here though, I can be a hero,” Christian said, a confidence was in his voice, he was standing in front of the three of us strong, shoulders straight, and determined.

  “We’re not saying you can’t keep coming here,” Cody said, “We just don’t want you to give up the happiness you can find in the real world. Think of the gold you’ve earned, I know a gold coin is akin to a five-dollar bill here and you spend them like they are, but in the real world that coin is over two thousand dollars, you can take that gold, take that money and have a life you couldn’t even dream of before in the real world,” Cody said.

  “I know,” Christian looked down, and in him I saw a man deep in conflict, “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I know this world isn’t real,” he said, looking at us with the eyes of a man who knew he was lying, but also the eyes of a man who knew he needed to say what he had to make sure he got his next hit. “I’ll go back,” he said, “I’ll spend the weekend at home,” he shook his head again, “I’ll go back home,” he said, “We can come back next weekend, right?” he asked, “That’s what this world is, a place we come on weekends, a place we come on weekends and earn gold, that’s all this is about, right?” he asked. He didn’t care about gold, and part of me thought he didn’t even care about the glory he had earned in this world. Part of men knew there was only one thing he lusted for in this world, one goal he was focused on.

  “Yeah, we can come back next weekend,” Cody said, “Finals are coming up, we need to study, you can tutor us, and we can do that over here,” Cody smiled, “We are your friends, Christian,” he said, “We can help each other, that’s what friends do. With the time we can find here, we can make sure we get the highest grades we can get, and we’ll thank you for helping us, we’ll thank you for being out friend,” he said, “And if anyone gives you shit for what happened I’ll give them the same once over you gave Gary,” Cody smiled.

  Had it been Susie alone, Christian would have never agreed to the idea of trying to stay in the real world. But Cody was his first friend, he trusted Cody. If Cody could promise him relief from further tortures, Christian would trust him.

  “Okay, I’ll come back,” Christian said, “I’ll come back.”