Get Real (15 page)

“
Play
your piano?” I jokingly shove her arm so hard that it pops away from supporting her head. “Yesterday, you said I could
have
your piano!”

“Oh, yeah,” she grins. “I did, didn't I? Well, you can come get it. Maybe Mom won't notice.”

I picture Mrs. Lewis not detecting that there's a grand piano missing from her living room. I picture trying to put a grand piano in my den where it wouldn't fit, even if I removed all the trash and most of the furniture. Jil must have pictured the same thing, because we look up at each other and say, in perfect unison, “Parent issues.”

*   *   *

After one more hour, even I am tired of the mall. How did Jil and Penny manage to spend whole days doing this? Did Penny swipe a necklace out of boredom? Who knows? But I can't wait for my whole night of movies.

I try not to think about what we'll do tomorrow. I especially try not to think what will happen to me if I get caught lying and living on the street like a homeless person. Well, not exactly a street—a movie theater.

The gang of kids in my library book
The Thief Lord
lived in a movie theater. An abandoned one—in Venice. That sounded incredibly cool when I read it, but now that I'm doing it, it's different. Nervous-and-scary different.

And my theater's not even deserted and cobwebby. No. It serves hot popcorn and thirty kinds of candy, but when tomorrow morning comes, then what?

At first, Mom freaked out wondering how I'd manage without a toothbrush, but I assured her that Greensboro does have drugstores. “Mom,” I'd said. “Come on. I can buy one.” So, she agreed to let me spend a few nights with Jil.

If you ask me, it's a trade-off for her guilt—for selling me out with Denver duty. But then Jil reminded me that Mom thinks I came to Greensboro to goof off and to go to piano camp. She has no clue that I came to save my best friend.

Whatever. It's exactly like Mom not to wonder what I'll do about clean clothes.

What
will
I do?

Chapter Twenty-one

About twenty minutes before five, we take a taxi to the movie theater. Our cab driver gives us the same curious look that the last one did. In Greensboro, North Carolina, thirteen-year-old girls ride around in cabs almost as often as they leap tall buildings with a single bound. It's just not normal.

We pay the special all-night price and rush inside—out of the heat. Immediately, I wish I had more clothes. Not clean ones. Warm ones. It's freezing in here!

I eye Jil's backpack. “Have you got a blanket in there?”

“Nope.”

“A sweater?”

She shakes her head.

“What
do
you have?”

“I don't know … a toothbrush. Some makeup. Noxzema.”

“Peachy,”
I say, with all the sarcasm I can muster. “We can keep warm with eyeliner and globular chunks of zit cream.”

Jil drops her bag to the floor, unzips it, and rummages around inside. Finally her hand touches something that makes her smile. Triumphantly, she pulls out a pair of thick white tennis socks. “We can share,” she announces proudly.

I will take her up on that.

We stroll over to a padded bench and plop down with the movie schedule—so we can decide which movies we want to see and in what order. Meanwhile, the place is filling up with kids—mostly hyper nine- and ten-year-olds with their parents. I figure older kids will show up later. We would've done that, too, but our current life situation gave us nothing better to choose from.

We thought about splurging on a fancy dinner somewhere, using Jil's credit card, but we've already eaten so many times today, we're just not up to it. Besides, I'm looking forward to a jumbo tub of buttered popcorn, a giant box of Junior Mints, an extra-extra-large Dr. Pepper, and some Sour Patch Kids for dessert.

The first movie that jumps off the page at me is
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
I'm pretty sure Jil notices it, too, because she's looking at me as if she's trying to pretend she doesn't see it, while trying, at the same time, to figure out whether I noticed it.

That's the great part about being best friends. You know what the other one is thinking.

For instance, I know she's wondering if that particular movie will make us happy or sad. Happy, because it's supposed to be a fun movie. Or sad, because every second of it will remind us of our Sisterhood of the Traveling Shirt—the one that never even saw its first swap because Penny still has the shirt.

“What the heck,” says Jil, proving me right about reading her mind. “Let's go see it.”

I borrow Jil's pen and carefully write #
1
beside the 5:00 showing of
Sisterhood.
Then we agree on
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
the Johnny Depp version, at 7:10. Movie #3, at 9:10, will be
Titanic.
Jil loves Leonardo DiCaprio, and I love blockbuster movies that make me cry.
So.
There you go.

I tap my head with the pen, and study the schedule.
Titanic
is over three hours long. “That takes us to 12:30. We need at least three more.”

“Planet of the Apes?”

“Nah.” I shake my head. “I've seen that a jillion times on TV.”

“Clueless?”

“What's that about?”

“Some ultrapopular girls at a Beverly Hills high school.” Jil flips back her hair dramatically and thrusts out her chest.

Which reminds me—we should probably check our tantoos again.

“One girl gets this brilliant idea to make over a nerd,” Jil adds.

I glance up, seriously doubtful I want to spend two hours watching that.

“It's supposed to be good,” Jil claims. “Honest. The plot got swiped right out of a Jane Austen novel.”

“Jane Austen? The author? As in,
Pride and Prejudice
—the book I loved?
That
Jane Austen?”

“Yeah.”

Neatly, I write #4 next to
Clueless.

Jil reaches across me and points to
March of the Penguins.
“What's that about?”

“I think it's a documentary. In Antarctica. Rated G.”

“Sounds boring,” says Jil.

“Sounds cold.” I shiver.

“Pirates of the Caribbean?”

I picture two more hours of Johnny Depp, plus Orlando Bloom. Perfect. I ink #5 beside it. “Okay. We need one more.”

“Jaws? Jurassic Park?”

I tap the pen back and forth.
“Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo…”

Jil leans on me. “Let's decide later.”

“Good idea.” I grab Jil's wrist and squeeze it. “Jil! Can you believe it? We're going to six movies! And stay up all night!”

Jil pumps her other fist. “Bring 'em on!”

*   *   *

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
does make us sad. And happy. We each pull on one of Jil's socks and joyfully declare ourselves the Overly Air-Conditioned Sisterhood of the Traveling Sock.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
has dazzling candy-making scenes and is funny, but it keeps making us want to go back to the concession counter for more sugar.

“Dez,” Jil asks as the final credits roll. “Was all that stuff about Willy Wonka's childhood in the book?”

“No.” I think about the dog-eared paperback I read at least five times. “Definitely not.”

“So, why do you think they added the part about him never being allowed to eat candy because his father was a dentist?”

I shrug. “Maybe they think you need a reason to be a candy inventor when you grow up.”

“That's stupid.”

“Yeah.”

*   *   *

Titanic
is one of those movies that makes me cry, even though I've already seen it twice. By the time it's over, I'm beat—as if I spent three hours treading water, all by myself, trying to keep that amazing ship from sinking.

When we straggle out, it's after midnight, and the crowd scene has totally changed. Parents are dragging their nine-year-olds to the exits. The kids are rubbing their red eyes, yawning, and arguing, “I did not fall asleep.” High school kids fill the lobby, buying caffeine and candy, and killing time between movies.

I feel so grown up.

Then we realize we have to wait twenty-five minutes for
Clueless
to begin, so we slip straight into
Pirates of the Caribbean
because it's just starting. I leave the numbers on our list the way they are, though, because if I try to change #4 to #5, it'll just make the whole thing messy.

I know. I'm a freak. I can't help it.

Two real loser guys follow us into
Pirates of the Caribbean,
then scrunch down in the seats directly behind us. They make gross kissing noises, laugh obnoxiously, and share with us every dirty word they know. If Mom were here, she'd tell them to wash their mouths out with soap.

The movie's great. Action-packed and funny. The only bad thing is that, while cannons boom on the screen in front of us, gross and stupid sound effects blast from the two creeps behind us. I think Jil or I should find an usher and complain, but when I turn to suggest it, she's sound asleep. Totally zonked from being up all night last night. No way I'm leaving her alone with Creep One and Creep Two.

When we file out of the movie, they stick to us like Band-Aids. In the hallway, we get our first good look at them. One guy has major zits and a slouch so curved I don't know why he doesn't slither to the floor. “Hey, babe!” he says with a goofball leer, tossing his car keys into the air and catching them. “How tall are you, anyway?”

Babe?
Oh, please.

I'd love to pull out Jil's Noxzema and loan it to him, but memories of all those years of parent lectures about not talking to strangers—especially strangers with cars—make me shut up and ignore him.

In an artificial voice that reminds me of boots scraping on gravel, his creepy friend asks, “Who's your hottie friend?” Is he trying to sound sexy? He's dressed in an oversized football jersey and baggy shorts that droop almost to his ankles.

Jil and I make eye contact that confirms total agreement: Skip
Clueless.
Go directly to
March of the Penguins.

They follow us anyway, but slouch-zit boy balks just inside the double doors and whines, “Ain't no chick worth this,” and peels off to another movie.

Baggie-shorts boy groans, but decides to follow his buddy.

“Are we really going to watch this?” I ask Jil as we slip into our seats.

“You got a better idea?” Jil yawns. “I'm taking a nap.”

She passes me a sock. I pull it over my right foot, then tuck my left foot up so that I'm sitting on it. Sleep sounds like a great idea. Can I sleep like this?

Jil's already curled up like a cat and looking as if she may snore any second, when the movie starts. A long line of tiny black somethings inches across an endless expanse of snow and ice.

I wish I had two socks.

But suddenly this movie is fascinating. Even Jil sits up. We watch the most amazing footage of penguins walking, penguins sliding, penguins falling in love. The photography blows me away.

But don't kid yourself. You do
not
want to be a penguin. Penguins walk seventy miles in insanely subzero temperatures, taking awkward, ice-clutching baby steps across slippery, frozen terrain. Sometimes they fall down.

Finally, they find this place where they mate. Eventually, each mom lays an egg, which she painstakingly passes to the father so he can hatch it while the moms walk seventy miles back to where they started. More baby steps. More falls. Just to get food to feed the soon-to-be-hatched chicks.

Which means—you guessed it—after they load up on a fish feast, they tiptoe another seventy miles back to the baby-hatching ground. Meanwhile, all the dads huddle up to survive the wild, blowing-like-crazy snowstorms. They practically freeze their feathers off trying to keep all those life-holding eggs from icing up and cracking.

And not a single one of them has eaten so much as a minnow for months.

Suddenly, I feel super guilty about the piles of food I've devoured in the last twelve hours. If I had any popcorn left at all, I'd give it to a penguin.

Jil and I leave the movie almost speechless.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

We wander into the ladies room for the fifth time. Maybe the sixth. I've lost count, but I know I've drunk a lot of Dr. Pepper. I go in and out of four stalls before I find one that hasn't run out of toilet paper. Used paper towels are spilling out of the trash cans. The air smells like you-know-what. But my tantoo is looking great.

Back in the lobby, we sit on a bench, trying to decide what to see next. I never thought I could see too many movies, but I'm getting a surround-sound headache in my eyeballs.

Jil elbows me in my ribs. I glance up and spot baggy-shorts boy and his zit-faced buddy purposefully slouch-walking in our direction, still showing off their cool and their car keys. Why would boys that old want to mess with thirteen-year-old girls?

“I can't deal with them,” I whisper.

“Me, either.”

“Bathroom,” we echo each other, then split for the ladies room before Creep One and Creep Two ever know what happened.

Safely inside the restroom, we look at each other. “Now what?”

Jil answers me by hoisting her small self up onto the sink counter and leaning against the mirror, her size-5 feet dangling.

I moan. Then I grab a paper towel, wipe the counter clean of soap crud, and join her.

“Jil?”

“Yeah.”

“How long do you think we'll have to sit in here?”

She shrugs. “I don't know.”