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I grab Courtney’s shoulder. “That can’t be true. Why would that be true?”
She pulls out of my grip. “Get off of me. There’s something really wrong with you, man. You know that?”
I turn away from her and walk off toward Ramirez’s music room. I get halfway across campus before I see her in the faculty parking lot, shoving a cardboard box into the trunk of her car. Ms. Carter is with her, a milk crate under her arm.
Ramirez looks over at me and then shuts the trunk with a finality that keeps me from walking toward her.
Everyone knows “resigned” is a fancy word for “fired.”
* * *
It feels totally surreal to take Lila to the movies. We both have notes from our parents on file that let us leave on Fridays for the weekend, so we can just get into my car and meet Daneca and Sam at the theater.
She slides into the passenger side. She’s got on long silver earrings that dangle like daggers, and a white dress that rides up her thighs when she sits down. I try not to notice. Okay, I try not to stare, because that would make me crash the car and kill us both.
“So is this what kids at Wallingford do when they’re going out?” Lila asks me.
“Oh, come on,” I say, laughing. “You’ve been gone for three years; you’re not a time traveler. You know what a date is.”
She smacks my arm. It stings, and I smile. “No, I’m serious,” she says. “It’s just all very proper. Like maybe we’re going to go parking later or you’re going to give me your pin.”
“How was it at your old school? Straight-up Roman orgies?”
I wonder if she’s seen any of her friends from that fancy Manhattan school. I remember them from her fourteenth birthday, full of glittering superiority. Rich worker kids, about to rule the world.
“There were a lot of parties. People just hooked up sometimes. No one was exclusive.” She shrugs her shoulders, and then looks up at me through her pale lashes. “But worry not. I am amused by your quaint customs.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I say, touching my heart in mock earnestness.
Sam and Daneca are waiting for us at the concessions stand, having an argument about whether red licorice is or is not more disgusting than black licorice. Sam’s cradling an enormous glistening tub of popcorn.
“So, uh, you want anything?” I ask Lila.
“Are you offering to buy me my movie snacks?” she asks delightedly.
Sam laughs, and I give him the filthiest look I can summon up.
“Cherry slushy,” Lila says quickly, maybe feeling she’s taken teasing me too far, and comes with me to the counter.
We watch as they color the ice red. Lila leans against my shoulder.
“I’m sorry if I’m horrible,” she says, her mouth moving against my sleeve. “I’m really nervous.”
“I thought we already established that I like it when you’re horrible,” I say under my breath, picking up the slushies.
Her smile is as bright as the marquee lights.
Then the four of us get our tickets ripped and go into a room that’s already playing the opening credits. The theater isn’t crowded or anything, so we get to sit in the back.
Through some unspoken decision, none of us mentions the previous day’s events, not the protest or the jail. The cool of the movie theater seems solid and real, making everything else feel very far away.
The Giant Spider Invasion is awesome. Sam talks through the whole thing, explaining which spiders are puppets and what the webbing is constructed from. I have no idea what the plot is except that the giant spider crisis seems to be powered by some kind of outer space energy. Scientists make out. The spiders die.
Even Daneca has a good time.
Afterward we go to a diner and eat club sandwiches and fries, accompanied by endless cups of black coffee. Sam shows us how to use ketchup, sugar, and Worcestershire sauce to make pretty decent-looking fake blood. The waitress is not amused.
Lila tells me I can just drop her off at the train station, but I drive her into Manhattan instead. And as we stop in front of her father’s Park Avenue apartment, surrounded by city lights, she leans over to kiss me good night.
