**Right! I’m going to try to wrap this up now.  Thank you’s and explanations at the bottom.  Emer, this better be long enough for you. I wrote it in the History of the Pilgrim Church instead of expounding on the early Church. Yay for me. **

            Bundled up against the cold, Julia and Dom sat in the covered bus stop.  The bench was marked with graffiti: sprayed, carved, written, or scratched into the wood and Plexiglas.  Ryan was meeting them at the next transfer, as he lived halfway across town from them.

            Julia pulled out a Sharpie idly as Dom picked at the flaking paint.  Neither spoke, trying to conserve as much heat as they could.  Dom looked up as Julia languidly sketched harsh bubble letters on the bench.

            WHaT’S tHE caTCh?

            They both stared at the accusing black letters.

            “That’s Destruction of Public Property, you know,” Dom said quietly, taking her Sharpie.  She shrugged and let him take her toy.

            “Yeah, but it’s better than a gang symbol, isn’t it?  It’s semi-political and literary, if nothing else.”  She pulled her mitten tighter.

            “I think in some people’s minds, that’s worse than a gang sign,” smiled Dom wryly.  He scrawled underneath her ragged words, in bold strokes,

            YOSSARIAN LIVES.

            They both smiled and got on the bus.

*

            The shopping trip was interesting, to say the least.  In the middle of K B Toys, while Dom shopped for a stuffed cat for his five year old sister, Ryan and Julia argued the pros and cons of reading.  While Ryan yelled about the brainwashing instilled by the ‘classics’ (administered by your friendly jailers, the teacher), Julia argued for moderation in everything, even reality.

            “Oh so now all of a sudden the real world isn’t good enough for you?” Ryan’s nostrils flared as he defended the world he thought was being attacked.  Dom wandered by, shaking a toy to hear a fake purr, humming ‘The Christmas Song’ slightly off key.

            “No, but I do find it relaxing to tune everybody else out for a bit.  I never got the hang of meditation and that self-nagging impulse gets turned off for awhile.”  Julia stroked a turquoise teddy bear.  Ryan snorted and turned towards the shelf of Barbies; away from Julia.

            “I’ve never found a book relaxing.”  He turned his nose up in the air with this final comment.  Julia smiled softly.  “That’s because you’ve only ever read books assigned to you.  No one ever wants to be forced to read.  Also, there are shelves of books that would never be in your English classes because they have no ‘real literary merit’.  Those are the books you pick up to turn off your mind.  You don’t pick up the Brothers Karamazov for a bit of light bedtime reading.” 

            Ryan couldn’t help but concede the point, smiling a bit as Dom strolled by, three stuffed cats piled in his arms as he muttered to himself.  Ryan looked at Julia out of the corner of his eye. “Any good?” he asked hesitantly.

            “Hmm?”

            “That book you mentioned, the Brothers Whatsit.”

            “Karamazov?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Couldn’t tell you.” She walked slowly down the next aisle, picking out a package of Silly Putty.  Ryan’s eyebrows just about shot off his face.  “You haven’t read a book?”  His incredulous expression made her laugh.  “Yeah.  I haven’t read a lot of books.  I’ve never read Don Quixote, though I have seen the Pinky and the Brain episode spoofing it.”

            Their argument lapsed into a friendly conversation rife with cartoon quotes as Ryan took five cats from Dom and made him go to the cash register before Dom got distracted again.

*

            Back on the bus, Dom and Julia were on their way to her house, to wait for Dom’s mother to pick him up.  She had refused to let either of them stay at the main bus terminal for fear of abduction.  Dom’s house wasn’t on any convenient connecting bus line.  They planned to wrap gifts and make fun of each other’s present choices.

            “So what’d you get for Ryan?” Julia sipped at a hot cup of tea, leaning up against her countertop while Dom tried to coat the stuffed cat with holly wrapping paper.  He grimaced at the tape tangled around his fingers, shaking them madly and getting more stuck.

            “New tape for his shin pads and stick.  Also, a book on defensive plays,” he paused to respond.  Julia smiled and plopped down next to him, unwrapping the foot of tape on his hand.  She was bent over his hand, clipping carefully at the tape with scissors.  “Really, I don’t know how you did this…” She looked up with a smile.  Dom was quite close.  Before she could protest, he kissed her clumsily.

            She pulled back a bit, surprised.  Julia said the first thing that came to her mind, “Um… er…I got Ryan the first book of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.”  She blinked a few times, blushing as she stood suddenly, flustered.   Dom shook his head and laughed, a bit bitterly.  He stood as well, scratching the back of his neck.

            “Sorry.  It won’t happen again.  Silly idea really.  Cliché.”  He threw the wad of tape into the garbage can, avoiding her eyes.  “Friends through a common cause, in our case, bibliomania, suddenly becoming attached through common experience.  Like a fairy tale.  Life isn’t a story.  Sorry, Julia.  Didn’t mean that.”  Dom tidied the stack of presents absentmindedly.  “Ryan’s family and mine are going up to Mt. Bachelor on Saturday for two weeks.  We share a cabin up there.  So I suppose, I should give you this now.”  He thrust a badly wrapped box towards her.  “I got it on E-Bay.”

            Distracting herself from the situation by trying to get the box open she smiled lopsidedly.  “I see how you got yourself tangled up.  Did you use an entire roll of tape on this thing?”  He shrugged, “Only half of one.”

            Inside was a Mariner’s baseball cap, the team logo written in kanji, Japanese characters.  She gasped and shoved it on her head, face aglow.  “Dude! I missed this day! I was all mad that they didn’t sell them as they were a ‘promotion item only’.  Dude!”  Dom smiled, her fetish for baseball smoothing over the awkwardness of the previous moment like a Zamboni.  She handed him a medium sized box as well.

            “Here.  Ryan and I scrounged for you while you were scarfing down at the soft pretzel stand.”  While Julia tugged at her cap and beamed at him, he discovered a new set of blades for his skates and a thin chain wrapped around them.  He untangled it more successfully than he had his tape-covered hands and looked at her questioningly.  Julia looked at her sock-feet, which were trying to hide underneath each other. 

            “Ryan said that you liked silver better than gold.  And I wanted to get you something that would last longer than your blades.  Ryan said that you beat them up.”  She looked out the window at the grubby snow collecting under the eaves.  “But you don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.  Since we’re not dating or anything.”  An awkward silence followed again.

            “Yeah.  It would just be too story-like, yah know?  I don’t want my life to be a story.”  He repacked the blades and chain.

            Julia looked up at him swiftly, angrily, eyes blazing.  “Why not? Are you going to restrict your life for the next thirty years because you think that it’s too cliché?  Is a relationship too cliché for you, Mr. High and Mighty?”  She jabbed a finger in his ribs.  “All your preaching about how people need to go out and get a life instead of relying on story books to tell them what they are missing… Have you ever thought for once, just once, that stories are taken from life?  People look like they are following stories when they are instead following their hearts.  And that’s where books come from.  The heart and soul.”  Julia tore off her hat and threw it on the counter, running her fingers through her hair.  Dom blinked, shocked.

            “Dominic O’Connor, you are afraid of yourself.  And life will never be real enough, books or not, until you face up to what you really want.  Princess or pauper.”  She slammed the teacup down and started to clean furiously, refusing to look him in the eye. 

            Dom crept up behind her, touching calloused fingertips to her cheek, gently forcing her to look at his face instead of his shoes.  “Maybe there can be a story in this.  After all…I like a girl with spirit.”  And the world blanked out for a perfect moment, leaving only Dom and Julia in a universe of their own. 

Fin

**Right. I’m done here.  Mispeled, don’t you dare say anything about the kanji cap. It’s what first popped into my mind for the fan that has everything. 

Emer: This took awhile to wrap up, so I hope it doesn’t come off too badly.  I’m not very good at writing graphic descriptions of romance. 

Mispeled: I fixed that mistake.  Did you even like that other chapter?  **