the parenthesis

8/2/2019 The Parenthesis

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The Parenthesis

a play in one act

by Tyler Prendergast

Scene One

A dorm. On one side, a boy wearing a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers t-shirt, sits at a

desk in front of his laptop, with a pile of books stacked up to the side of the computer ; the boy’s

homework. Beside the books is the boy’s cell phone. There are clothes strewn about the floor. A

bed on each side; the boy’s is covered in papers.

The door opens; his roommate walks in, throws his bag onto the bed on the opposite side

of the room, starts pulling out books and tossing them to the side.

ROOMMATE. Hey, you going to dinner?

BOY. No, I don’t think so. Homework.

ROOMMATE. You wanna do mine too, while you’re at it?

BOY. Oh, sure.

There is a moment of silence as the roommate throws different books into his backpack,

then puts the backpack on again and moves toward the door.

ROOMMATE. Well, I’m gonna head down to dinner. You sure you don’t wanna come?

BOY. Yeah.



The boy hasn’t looked up through any of this conversation, staring at his laptop and

clicking occasionally. The roommate grabs his bag and is about to leave, but looks at him for a

moment, unsure.

ROOMMATE. You eat today?

BOY. Yeah.

The roommate pauses. We hear the sound of an instant message.

ROOMMATE. That her?

The boy doesn’t answer.

ROOMMATE.OK, OK, I’ll see you later.

BOY. Bye.

The roommate leaves. The boy types, clicks, waits. Another instant message noise. The

boy picks up one of the books, flips through it futilely. Another instant message noise; the boy

returns to the keys.

We hear the sound of a text message. The boy picks the cell phone from its place beside

the computer, flips it open, reads.

As the boy is about to put the phone back on the desk, we hear the ring of a telephone, but

it is not a digital noise, it does not sound like a cell phone — instead, it is an old fashioned ring,

completely out of place. The boy is perturbed. He checks the cell phone.

BOY. Hello?

The ring again. The boy puts the phone back down, realizes that the thing which is

ringing is actually his right shoe, as in the television series Get Smart. He takes the shoe off of

his foot, lifts it to his ear, feeling like a crazy person.

BOY. Hello?



VOICE. Hello.

The boy is startled beyond belief, throws the shoe across the room. Lands on roommate’s

bed. It rings again. The boy, confused, pauses and then eventually navigates his way through the

veritable ocean of clothes that are covering the floor toward his roommate’s bed. He retrieves

the shoe, holds it up to his ear again.

VOICE. Really, now? Who throws a shoe, honestly?

BOY. Who talks to a shoe, honestly?

VOICE. What is a shoe?

BOY.What?

VOICE. What is a shoe?

BOY. A shoe is a shoe.

VOICE. A shoe is an object . And who do you speak to?

BOY. You.

VOICE. No, you speak to an object. Take now, for instance: I am the subject and you are

the object. Do you object?

BOY. Who talks to an object?

VOICE. You. Or rather, you talk through an object, do you not?

BOY. My shoe?

VOICE. Do you knot your shoe?

The voice finds this terrifically funny.

VOICE. But getting down to business: you talk through an object every day, don’t you?

What are those bits of plastic there on the desk?

BOY. My computer?



VOICE. Your competer. You see, you speak through objects all the time. Although

occasionally, it is the object which speaks to you.

BOY. What are you talking about? Who — who are you?

VOICE. I am the Object and you are the Subject and I am sentencing you to a

Parenthesis.

BOY. What?

VOICE. A Parenthesis. A break in the routine. A chance to examine what has come

before, to clarify, to enlighten, to introspect. You rarely have an opportunity to look inside, these

days, and so I will pull the inside out and force your life’s sentence into a pause, however brief,

so that you may understand everything, great and small, as you did once — before these modern

gods of technology snatched your understanding away.1

The boy pulls the shoe away from his ear, stares at it for a moment, and places it back to

his ear.

BOY. A parenthesis?

VOICE. A parenthesis. Shall we begin, or would you prefer to return to your homework?

1Popol Vuh



First Interlude

The boy stands in the dark, a light shining down upon him. He is holding a red notebook,

with a black spiral binding, precisely the sort of notebook the main character used to paste

newspaper clippings into in the television series The Pretender. The boy pages through, picks a

page, and reads:

BOY. So I throw my hand into the air and it swims in the beams of light, shining from

the window —open, open like it’s summer, like it’s warm like last year, warm enough for t-shirts

and summer walks at twilight, the sounds of summer silence surrounding us, never truly empty

but filled with the littlest sounds, the sounds of the day fading away and oh — the sounds of the

night fading close, close as you and I could be, but never would again. You would never let us.

“Never say never,” you had said, saying “never” two times right there, right there out on the side

walk that only half-managed to exist —like the rest of us could, could, couldn’t exist on our own,

or I couldn’t—see it, could’nt see it, my big mistake, my misplaced apostrophe, my words

broken up in the wrong way so that nothing else could make sense and you thought I was

crazy — crazy to be hurt by you when you were busy being hurt by me, hurt like a mosquito bite

on a summer evening in the playground, the night before the Fourth of July as the band played

loud and we couldn’t hear them over the buzz of the bug light and the buzz of our hearts, before

they were bitten, before the glow had faded and the bugs could come near — near us — the bugs

could bit us and we could scratch it till it bled on that hut summer night, that twilit walk home

swinging the light between us I miss so much in winter.



Scene Two

As the boy read his interlude, the scene has changed behind him: in place of the beds and

the desks there are now swings, a swingset stolen straight from any old playground, blissfully

unaware that they are so far from their home, that they are so out of place on the otherwise

blank stage. The boy holds the shoe phone up to his ear again.

BOY. Where are we? Or — where am I?

VOICE. The playground. For this is a play, by the way, I should say. The parenthesis can

be anything for anyone, but yours is a play because you are a player, a performer, an actor, an

actor!

BOY. I’m not an actor. I just like being in plays, I want to be an English teacher.

VOICE. Like I said, an actor! Even now, you’re acting like you want to be an English

teacher!

BOY. But I do!

VOICE. You don’t do. When do you ever do? All you do is homework, and homework

isn’t anything at all. What do you do, besides homework?

BOY. I... I’m usually at rehearsal.

VOICE. Rehearsal for what?

BOY. For plays.

VOICE. Then you should find yourself at home in a playground.

BOY. Well what are we doing here?

VOICE. We’re not there, you’re there. I’m here.

BOY. Well where am I, then?

VOICE. You were here, then.



BOY. When?

VOICE. On the Third of July.

The boy is startled by the words. He turns around to see a girl sitting down in one of the

swings. She looks down at her feet and begins to swing.

BOY. What is she doing here?

VOICE. She is swinging, can’t you see?

BOY. Why have you brought me back to this night?

VOICE. This isn’t that night. This is tonight. I haven’t brought you anywhere, only given

you a pause, a moment to think back on days like this one, days like the Third of July.

BOY. But you haven’t told me why she is here.

VOICE. She isn’t here. She couldn’t be here, not really, because this is your

parenthesis —only your words can live within it, not anyone else’s. She is not her, she is entirely

you. The part of you that is still with her, though you try so hard not to listen to it.

The boy stares at the girl, mesmerized by the graceful arc of the swing.

VOICE. Go on. Go to her. See what she has to say.

The boy walks hesitantly up to the other swing and sits down. As soon as he touches the

seat, the girl holds out her hand to him. He takes it, the angle awkward.

GIRL. You remember this as a perfect night, don’t you? The Third of July, right?

BOY. I don’t know if I can think of a better one.

GIRL. It’s not about whether there’s a better one. It’s about whether it was perfect.

BOY. I sure think so.



GIRL. Tell me something about that night. Something real and vivid you remember.

Some detail so small that it could only have been from this night, this perfect night, this night

you always think about.

BOY. Um. We sat here, on these swings, watching the band play.

GIRL. What did they play?

BOY. A bunch of songs.

GIRL. Name one. Remember like your life depended on it.

The girl is impatient, wants an an swer now; the boy doesn’t know what to do at first, he

only wants to please her. He starts to remember.

BOY. That one where the lead singer’s wife took over the vocals, that old song, you

know, um, “freedom’s just another word...” Me and Bobby Magee.

GIRL. Me and Bobby Magee.

BOY. Why did you ask me that?

GIRL. Because looking back on things, truly remembering them is important. What do

you do, these days, my friend?

BOY. I’m at school. I take classes and I’m in plays and stuff.

GIRL. You’re busy. You’re busy just like you always were in high school. You always

hated being busy. You so looked forward to college. You thought you’d have so much time to

read, to spend with friends, to write. You’re busy.

BOY. You say busy like a swear word.

GIRL. It should be. You shouldn’t be. Busy, I mean.

BOY. What am I supposed to do about it?

GIRL. Breathe! Think back on nights like this!



BOY. I do! I think about you all the time —

GIRL. That’s not what I said. And you only think of me in the vaguest of ways, as a

feeling or an ache in your heart when you’re busy doing something else. You have never truly

devoted any of your precious time to recalling the past. You’re a prisoner of your homework,

that’s what you are.

BOY. A prisoner?

GIRL. Yeah, a prisoner. Just like you were in high school. Nothing’s changed, except

you’re even more busy now, and your memories are vague, your most specific memories are the

bookmarks in your web browsers and you never have time to click on them any more. You are a

prisoner of your present, a prisoner of the classes you took because you were supposed to love

them but you go to because you have to, you do the homework because you have to. You should

spend more time thinking about the past, about being you and figuring out what that means.

Don’t you remember the prisoner in that book you read? Thinking back on those things can help

you! Can help you like they helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and

spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his

imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling

things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character. Their world

and their existence seemed very distant and the spirit reached out for them longingly: In his mind

he took bus rides, unlocked the front door of his apartment, answered his telephone, switched on

the electric lights. His thoughts often centered on such details, and these memories could move

one to tears.2

BOY. I do think about the past.

2 Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 39



GIRL. Only vaguely. You never sit down and think. When was the last time you wrote a

poem?

BOY. I... I don’t know. I used to write them all the time.

GIRL. You used to write them all the time.

BOY. I wrote something not too long ago; I don’t know if it’s a poem or what, but I

woke up from a dream and I wrote it, and it’s something...and, well, it rhymed and stuff.

GIRL. I know you did. It’s something, it’s something, and it’s in your pocket right now.

BOY. What? No it isn’t...

But even as he speaks, the boy reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a slip of

paper.

BOY. What are you, the Mirror of Erised3?

GIRL. I suppose you could say that.

The boy lets this sink in for a moment, then unfolds the paper in his hands.

GIRL. Read it.

BOY. We were alone in my dream: alone and alive, alive and awake, awake and alone

with our hearts beating or not beating, our brains thinking or not thinking, our noses smelling

some scent we could never name, could never be bothered to name; our eyes were open but we

could not see details, only shapes — I could not see your body, only your face — I could see your

eyes but did not know your name.

I think we were young, but you never can tell —I’d think we were old but I wanted to yell

and to scream and to feel and I could not have died — I was so far from death I felt no need to

3From Harry Potter , a mirror which shows not your reflection but whatever it is that you desire most in

the world. It also presents Harry with the Sorcerer’s Stone at the end of the first book by showing his reflection

dropping the stone into his pocket, at which point the non-reflected Harry, the real one, actually had the Stone in

his pocket.



hide. Do old people feel something other than pain — smell things other than shit? Do old people

swing with their souls for a hit in a ballgame out back with the love of their life — or play catch

with some beauty who might be their wife? I don’t think they do. I think they just complain and

sit still in the kitchen, watch TV-fied games of the sports they remember the wonder of playing.

No, I was not old, I was young in my dream. I was young and I wanted to live and to scream.

You were there, in my Oz —though I didn’t know you. You sat to my left in a classroom

of two — oh there might have been others, but really, just two. Just me over here and to my left,

just you. Then we lay on the bed of a truck — and this once, on this bed, there was no urge to

fuck — a bed just for us that was somehow outside — and you said: “This always happens, I’m

sorry. I always ruin your life.”

GIRL. Now that’s more like it. More like you. That’s the side of you I miss more than

anything. That’s the side of you I fell in love with, all those times.

BOY. All those times? What do you mean?

GIRL. You k now what I mean. I’m your Mirror of Erised, only I show not my face but

your heart’s desire.

BOY. I don’t understand.

GIRL. I’m not just the girl you see when you look at my face. I’m every girl, I’m the

ones you lost and don’t even think about anymore, I’m every girl you’ve kissed since you’ve

started kissing girls and I’m every girl you’ll fuck in your lifetime, every girl you’ll make love to

in your lifetime. We’re all just a timeline, to you, after all. One of us leaves and the next comes

along, and yes, we each mean something different to you but at the same time, we fill that same

place in your life, that same place in your heart. Remember the night I kissed you for the first

time, in the hallway, by the lockers? Valentine’s Day?



BOY. I remember. But that wasn’t you, that was—

GIRL. That was me. I am all of them. I look like this because right now, you want me to

look like this, because you’re not over this girl. But you will be, one day, and I will look like

someone new. Do you remember the time we walked from the house you grew up in all the way

to the house you live today?

BOY. The longest walk of my life.

GIRL. The walk of your life. A walk along your life. Sort of like this. Sort of like the

Parenthesis. Only in the Parenthesis, your life walks to you.

With this, the girl stands, and walks off stage left. The moment her foot disappears behind

the curtain, the lights go down.



Second Interlude

The boy stands alone again with his red notebook, reading:

BOY. I played outside today

like I used to, when I was little, when I was a kid —

when I could breathe without a cell phone in my pocket,

and somehow, I survived.

He pulls a tennis ball out from his pocket, holds it up.

BOY. I threw a ball against the stairs out back

with no music in my ears, just the rhythm of the bounce —

from the stairs to the ground to the glove on my hand,


Throws the ball against the proscenium arch; it bounces back to him.

BOY. I hopped a fence for the first time in my life

like I always wanted to, but never could —

the ball bounced over and I just followed it,


Throws the ball again, harder this time; it bounces back to him.

BOY. I got my hands dirty, so perfectly filthy

brown from the ball bouncing into a puddle —

I didn't stop, didn't go wash my hands,


Throws the ball harder than ever and it bounces straight over his head. He lets it go,

turns back to the audience.



BOY. I played outside today

like I used to, when I wasn't so stupid, when I wasn't so smart —

when I could breathe without telling my facebook friends,


The sound of a text message. He pulls a cell phone from his pocket, hesitates for a

moment, and then throws it even harder than the tennis ball. It smashes. The lights go down.



Scene Three

We are back in the playground, but beside the boy there is a woman, the boy’s mother,

holding an small child’s hand with one of her own pulling a hand sanitizer bottle from her

oversized handbag with the other. She squeezes the bottle to wash her own hands, then passes it

to the child. The Boy watches in silence.

MOTHER. Come on honey, wash your hands.

CHILD. I’m fine. I’m still playing, I’ll wash them before I eat.

MOTHER. I just saw you rub your eye with that filthy hand of yours, I’m telling you to

wash your hands now, is that clear?

The child ignores her, jumps off the swing and runs around the swingset, laughing.

MOTHER. You get back here this instant, young man!

BOY. Let him play, Mom.

The mother wheels her body around to face the Boy, her eyebrows raised with a hurt

expression on her face.

MOTHER. I’m just trying to protect him from germs!

BOY. Yeah, but —

MOTHER. Do you know how often you were sick when you were his age? How many

times I had to drag you into the doctor’s office for an ear infection or for strep throat?

BOY. Yes, but —

MOTHER. I’m not taking any chances. And it hurts me that you would judge my

mothering ability like that. Whatever happened to honor thy father and mother?4

BOY. I’m not dishonoring you—

4Old Testament



MOTHER. No, you’re just talking back to me, over and over again. You are the most

disrespectful person I know. You have no idea how hard it is to raise three children while your

dad is always working!

BOY. No, of course I don’t know what that’s like, but—

MOTHER. Let me speak! You never let me speak —

BOY. You never let me breathe —

MOTHER. Let you breathe? If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be breathing at all, would

you? Or how about that time I saved you from the tubes at Chuck E Cheese, when you were too

afraid to come down? You always seem to forget about all the things I’ve done for you—

BOY. I don’t forget about them! All I said was that he doesn’t need to wash his hands

every two minutes.

MOTHER. Well of course not every two minutes. Just when he’s touching the dirt.

She pauses, and then tries a different tactic.

MOTHER. Well, besides the hand sanitizer, he’s not going to get sick anyway. He’s

covered by the Blood of Jesus after all, from the top of his head to the souls of his feet, and

everywhere in between.5

The boy turns away from his mother, takes the shoe once again and holds it up to his ear.

MOTHER. What on earth are you doing with that shoe so close to your face? That thing

is covered in germs —

BOY. Please get me out of here. I can’t deal with this again.

5New Testament, although mightily twisted by the preaching of the televangelists which my mom used to

watch on a regular basis, who would claim that by “pleading the blood of Jesus” over your house, your family, and

your finances, God would lend you more protection against attacks by evil. For more information on this sort of

thing, there’s a Christian’s guide to it here: http://www.bible-knowledge.com/blood-of-jesus-how-to-plead-for-

protection-and-deliverance/

http://www.bible-knowledge.com/blood-of-jesus-how-to-plead-for-protection-and-deliverance/







VOICE. It is always valuable to remember where you came from, even if the memories

are unpleasant. If you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t

be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios, after all.

BOY. That sounds familiar — where have I heard that before?

The lights go down.











Third Interlude

The stage is black again except for the illusion of a campfire in the center of it, with a

group of people sitting around it, marshmallows aglow on sticks dangling over the fire. The boy

is there, the girl is there, but there are others we do not know. One of them is holding a copy of

the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, with a lantern in one hand to better illuminate the

page.

MAN. Can we make requests?

OTHERS. Sure, sure.

The man points to the boy.

MAN. I want to see you do Hamlet’s act two scene two speech. “What a piece of work is

man...” I remember you auditioned with it. I want to hear it again.

BOY. I don’t know... I don’t really know the speech, it’ll be bad.

MAN. I want to hear it. You’re never bad.

OTHERS. Speech, speech.

They pass the Complete Works to the Boy. He takes it, flips through to the tragedies, to

Hamlet, to the second scene of the second act. He reads:

BOY. “I have of late — but

wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all

custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily

with my disposition that this goodly frame, the

earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most

excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave

o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
















































with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to

me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!

how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how

express and admirable! in action how like an angel!

in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the

world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,

what is this quintessence of dust?”6

OTHERS. Bravo! Bravo!

BOY. I’m glad you liked it.

GIRL. Now it’s my turn for a request, OK?

OTHERS. Sure, sure.

She points to the man.

GIRL. I want to hear you read Proust’s story about the Madeleine. I have the book in my

backpack...

She hurriedly grabs the book from his backpack, a big anthology of world literature. She

flips through to the page, which is bookmarked.

MAN. Proust, huh? I haven’t read much Proust.

GIRL. Read it for me, though? We’ve been talking about it in class, and it sort of has

stuck with me. It’s about looking back on your childhood, being sent back all of a sudden to a

time in your life you haven’t thought of in ages. I’d love to hear it read aloud.

The man takes the book, looks over the passage for a minute or two, and then begins to

read.

6Hamlet.
















































MAN. “And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of

madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out

before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom , my aunt Léonie used to

give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had

recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in

the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had

dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent... But

when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are

broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial,

more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting,

hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable

drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”7

There is applause again, but the man does not close the page of the book.

MAN. I like that. I like that a lot.

GIRL. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

MAN. I’ve always felt like that, I’ve always felt like smells and tastes are so strongly

connected with memories —

MAN. And on a night like tonight, such a beautiful evening here on this mountain,

looking out over the city we live in as the sun goes down, I think that was a really beautiful thing

to add. Thank you for sharing it with us.

GIRL. Thank you for reading it.

BOY. Who’s next?

7 Swann’s Way Overture. (p. 2713)
















































No one responds. The man throws his hand up gracelessly, tossing his voluntariness into

the air in case no one else wanted to go.

MAN. I’ll go again if no one wants to. I know a speech I like a lot. It’s not Shakespeare,

so I guess we’re straying outside our comfort zone, but I like it, I like it, I love this night. The

speech is from Candide. Almost the very end.

BOY. Go ahead.

OTHERS. Yes, we’re waiting, come on!

MAN. “All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you

had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for the love of Miss

Cunegonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t travelled across America

on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep

from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and

pistachios.”8

OTHERS. Bravo! Bravo!

MAN. I thought that was sort of fitting for tonight. Such a beautiful night, but we’ve all

gone through so much hardship this year that I truly feel that this night is special, because it is a

beautiful night made all the more beautiful by the difficulties which came before it. If we hadn’t

lost all our sheep this semester, we wouldn’t be sitting here eating smores together and watching

the stars come out into the beautiful black sky.

BOY. I love you guys.

The words echo into silence as the stage goes black once again.

8Candide.












































Scene Three

The playground is empty now, beside the boy, who is swinging all by himself with his

shoe awkwardly pressed up against his ear.

BOY. What else do you want to show me?

VOICE. It is not what I want to show you, it’s what you need to see.

BOY. Well what do I need to see, then?

VOICE. You’ll see it when you’re ready. For now, enjoy the place you are. Forget about

what you need to do, what the purpose of your being here might be. Just be here. I know it can be

difficult —I know it is not what you’re used to. But you insist on asking me questions about what

you are doing here, while in reality the important thing is that you are here. So while you are

here, be here.

BOY. How am I supposed to do that?

The voice does not answer . The boy stands, looks around the playground, and eventually

settles back down onto the swing, unsure of what to do. Idly, he begins to swing back and forth,

just a little bit at first, and then pumping his legs, faster and faster until suddenly he is swinging

in full arcs, from as far up as possible in the back of the swing to as high as possible in front. He

seems almost in danger of swinging over the top of the swingset in a giant circle. The boy laughs

with joy.

BOY. I’m flying. This swing is a fucking Nimbus Two Thousand, haha!

He closes his eyes, gives himself to the wind.

BOY. I always loved to close my eyes up here, so that everything was just the feeling of

wind moving on my skin, so I couldn’t see anything and my other senses took over for the






































missing information, made themselves all the more acute. I love it. You hear that , voice? I’m

enjoying myself!

With that, the boy opens his eyes and almost falls out of the swing.

BOY. Oh my God, the view! It’s the top of the world— the mountain top, the view of the

city from above, that night with the Shakespeare club around the campfire. I can see it! I can see

the sky, that red moon smiling up above our heads! And there we are! I can see us! There’s

Jesse, shouting out Proust, and there’s Lily, grabbing the book from her bag! There’s Melissa,

toasting her marshmallow, and Mary, passing the lantern to Christine!

The Voice is no longer coming from the shoe, but from the Roommate, from Jason, who is

standing by the side of the swing set, an arm against the metal.

JASON. And there’s Tyler.

The boy, whose name is Tyler, whose name has always been Tyler, blinks for a moment,

taking it in, and the swinging slows down, and he settles to a stop beside Jason.

TYLER. And there’s Tyler. There’s me. I was alive that night, wasn’t I?

JASON. You were. You came back to the dorm in the middle of the night and woke me

up, you were so caught up in it, so caught up in the magic of it, and I didn’t mind at all, couldn’t

mind, because I hadn’t seen you like that in so long.

TYLER. I haven’t felt like that in so long.

Tyler thinks about it for a minute, then laughs.

TYLER. As soon as we got up there, as soon as we got up to the mountain, there was a

rule that all our cell phones had to be turned off, that they couldn’t be turned back on until we

returned to civilization. I liked that.








































JASON. You haven’t been yourself, Tyler. We used to talk. We used to have such good

conversations.

TYLER. But then I was busy. Always busy.

JASON. Always busy.

TYLER. Things will be better from here on out, though. Thanks to you, I guess. Thanks

to your Parenthesis.

JASON. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: this was a parenthesis in your life’s

sentence. This was never my parenthesis, it was yours. This was never me, it was you. This is all

going on inside your head, and soon enough, you will wake up from this Parenthesis with your

nose pressed against your laptop. Don’t forget it, though: don’t let it slip. Don’t be a prisoner of

the present, of your homework, of how busy you are. Don’t be a prisoner of your own life’s

sentence.

Tyler looks at him, stands up atop the swing and spins it around, twisting the two chains

together again and again, around and around each other until finally, when he lets go, the swing

spins around a dozen times, so quickly that he is probably dizzy, but he laughs about it, a joyous

laugh.

As soon as the swing stops spinning, he reaches out and, without showing any signs out

dizziness, grabs firm hold of Jason’s hand and shakes it. The lights go down.






























the parenthesis

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