• 3.
    A week had passed since then and I still haven’t told my parents. I am afraid of what they might say or not say. They could take it like those parents in the movies and actually do something about it, but that would just weird me out. Or they could say nothing and leave me alone like they had basically done to me for my whole life, which is what I was afraid of.

    I saw Trevor and Alex at school, trying to look absorbed in their schoolwork. It could have been what they were doing, as a distraction from the previous week’s events, but I didn’t ask them. I didn’t talk to them and I avoided them as much as I could. I looked as mad or uninterested as I could so no one would bother me. My teachers didn’t call on me but one pulled me aside after class to ask if anything was wrong. I told them nothing.

    I didn’t want to think about it. I started to come home before the mail came so I could check it before my parents, avoiding being seen through the windows of the other houses just in case my mom was cleaning them. I didn’t touch my Email. And when I came home early today to check the mail, there it was.

    It was a manila envelope with my name printed on it. “Stephen Thains” as clear as a bell. I had never gotten mail before and I never really imagined the experience but if I had, it wouldn’t have felt like it did.

    In the corner of the envelope was the label for the sender. The Priest. I felt like my heart stopped, the wind was knocked out of me, and my stomach was being tenderized all at once by just looking at the name.

    “The Priest.”

    Saying it made my throat dry and made it harder to breathe and I have no idea why I had done it when I knew it would make me feel worse. Wait, scratch that. I said it because I wanted to make it real instead of talking myself into thinking it was imagination, like most people would.

    My hands trembled as I opened it. Thankfully it wasn’t glued shut or I would have torn it to shreds because that’s what I did with envelopes. I was almost to afraid to look at the insides, fearing it was a paper for my arrest for false registration (because Trevor and Alex filled the online form out, not me, so naturally there would be mistakes) or information telling me I was married to a woman twice my age or didn’t speak the same language as me (I didn’t know which would be worse).

    I pulled the first paper out. It was an introduction like what was on my computer. I didn’t read the Email so I sat in the nearest chair to mull it over.

    It said:
    Thains, Stephen

    Thank you for registering yourself for marriage. It is a great decision and responsibility that most young people don’t consider. We are pleased to report that you matched up to someone(s) who is also willing to be a spouse. Your results are:
    Dais, Cerise

    You will be married to Dais, Cerise as of (next week) on your new property:
    2732 Top Peak road
    (In the middle of a farming area in the middle of the country)

    Inside this package, you will find: tickets from your current location to the station closest to your new home scheduled for (six days from today) on the Travel Coyote train number 3870B, rules to memorize and follow during the period of your marriage which has yet to be decided*, some information on your spouse should you have any concerns, and a house key in case you get to your new home early.

    Again we thank you for your mature decision in signing up for marriage and we look forward to binding you in holy matrimony.

    The Priest
    *Subject to change or addition at any time


    I almost laughed as I read it even though I still felt like my soul was crushed. One: I didn’t sign myself up for marriage, my “friends” did, and I’m not going to try and fix it because I’m too much of a coward to face the consequences. Two: what kind of a name is Dais? It sounds like a rip-off of Davis or the word “days”. Three: they expect me to be married in a week. They could give me a lifetime I still wouldn’t be ready, much less willing. Four: I can already tell that one of the rules concern farming, which I know nothing about and I’m sure Miss. Dais knows nothing about it either. Five: I love the “Subject to change”. It basically says to me: “If we feel like it, we could just go ahead and put you in prison.”

    I had to go or face jail, which is what they do to those who break the rules or, as my friends put it, consider it a “joke”. I tried to look at the bright side, where I was going no one knew me, or was that a bad thing? I gave up trying to comfort myself and decided to start packing.

    My thoughts went to this Cerise Dais. Who was she? Was she going to ignore me until all of this was over? Was she going to hang all over me and flaunt me like a piece of jewelry (which I have read in some magazines as another reason for marriage)? What made her sign herself up in the first place? Was she even sane?

    I remembered that there was a sheet in the envelope that would tell me the information she entered into the computer. It would at least give me the basics: DOB, hair, eyes, height, weight, blood type, kind of like a police report.

    I went up to my room before I emptied the contents of the envelope on my bed. Sure enough, a one way ticket to my new kind of hell, a key to the house I would be living in for who knows how long, the introduction letter, a bulleted sheet of paper, and a sheet of paper that reminded me of an adoption form they used in those movies. I picked up that sheet and read:

    Dais, Cerise
    DOB- 09-07-(the year after mine) Hair- brown
    Eyes- brown Blood type- O+
    Height- 5’5” Weight- 160 lb.
    Schooling-

    I stopped reading after that. I didn’t really care if she had a criminal record or a serious medical history, that would speed things along a little but I didn’t really need to know. All I cared about was that she sounded like a normal person. If she could kill me, cool, she could succeed when I had failed all those times before. I wonder if she could let me go in a way I thought was poetic, something like a wire at my neck, threatening to cut my head off, or just go ahead and do so, and then once I’m dead she could chop me up into pieces and feed me to any of the animals on the farm (because I don’t think I could convince her to eat me when she could easily lump the way I taste with how disgusting she would think I am). I have thought of (and tried to follow through with) this before but in many different ways and not all of them including wire, but I like the thought of it the best.

    Tossing the paper back onto my bed, I reach over and start reading the rules on the bulleted list.

    Must live at address given

    No affairs of any sort (I’ve heard of people having them but not getting caught is the key)

    Must work the farm and care for all its livestock

    Call whenever livestock is pronounced to be dying

    Every six months an inspection and questioning period will be conducted

    No physical violence against spouse

    Must go to secondary school until graduation

    Call whenever spouse or self is in ill health

    Any violation will result in legal confinement (jail) and possibility of a sentence of legal solitude (prison)

    It seemed simpler than I imagined. If my “spouse” received the same set of rules, I hope they were laughing at this as much as I wish I could. Here I was, expecting a long sermon on how I was supposed to be a gentleman to my lady and instead, I got the condensed version like you got with tuna fish. I put everything back in the envelope and dragged my suitcase out for packing. Sure, six days is about a week away but I really had nothing better to do.
    ***

    The next few days seemed calm and ordinary to everyone else but I was confused inside. Despite everything, I looked upon this as an opportunity to start over, only with another person attached to my hip. The thought brought neither joy nor loathing, but curiosity. I felt like I was reading a book, desperately wanting to turn the page in the middle of an epic battle scene to see if the hero dies (wishful thinking) but finding myself willing to wait. Then my mom calls me to have me dust and once I return to the book, it no longer matters if the hero dies or not on the next page, I don’t care anymore but force myself to keep reading just to say I finished the book and Trevor could stop bugging me to read it.

    These feelings go back and forth so fast that it turns into a half-dazed, dreamy feeling that I don’t want to wake from but at the same time know that I have to. No one seems to notice my feelings, since I could remember, so it goes unchecked by my parents.

    I hid the envelope in my half-packed suitcase shoved under my bed; the rest of it would have to be packed when I was about to leave. Just a bunch of clothes that were in the piles were shoved in there with my extra deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo (I think conditioner is over rated).

    I decided not to tell my parents or my friends. My parents because of my fear, and my friends because they would either get a kick out of it or suddenly become sympathetic, which would be frightening. I told no one but my school, who I had to get transfer paperwork from. I requested that my friends wouldn’t be told where I was going and they assured me that they couldn’t do so anyway. I used the excuse that my family was being relocated so it would be impossible to ask if they wouldn’t tell my parents and it would be pointless any other way because it wasn’t their call to withhold information from the parents of a student.

    I sat in my room every night until I left, thinking what to do about my parents. It was their responsibility to make sure I was safe and within reach until I was no longer a dependent. Now that I was getting married, I was no longer a dependent and my parent’s marriage would be terminated soon after I was gone, ten years tops.

    I really couldn’t think of anything good enough.