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  “I’m trying to feel good about this,” she said, “but I just feel like I failed you, Ethan.”

  I watched a man take a bite of taco-chicken.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “That was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen. Those cops didn’t know what to do with you.”

  She looked around the juvie home.

  “Obviously they did,” she said.

  Then she looked back at me.

  “A year ago, I could have just paid off the debt.”

  She chewed on a fingernail

  “I wasn’t about to ask you for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” I said.

  “What else am I supposed to do with the money?”

  I had to think about this for a minute. It never occurred to me what I would do with a bunch of money other than help the Green Street.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What did you do with it?”

  She bit a nail.

  “Bought my mom a house we can’t really afford.”

  “The one in LA?”

  “It has gardeners,” she said, “And a pool boy. Well, he’s older than me, but you get the idea. It has this crazy studio for my mom with huge skylights.”

  I looked back at the guy doing our paperwork to see if he was listening. Hard to tell.

  “I thought it would make her happier,” she said. “But I don’t think it did. She likes to show it off to people, but she hardly ever makes art anymore. Most days, she just sits by the pool eating seaweed salad. I think she was happier when she was unhappy. What kind of sense does that make?”

  “Maybe you should just sell it,” I said.

  “It’s not in my name.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  I looked back at the TV and did a double take.

  “No way,” I said.

  Raina looked, too.

  “Oh my God. It’s official,” she said. “We’re in hell.”

  She was on the screen, her face splashed across the Detention Center TV. The shot was in close-up from the hallway of a dark compound. Lights flickered as Raina crept toward a mysterious blue glow.

  “What are the fucking odds?” I said.

  “Well,” she said, staring at herself, “they sold the rights to a channel that shows it like fifteen times a month, so . . .”

  She sat up in her chair, and then yelled over her shoulder.

  “Can we change the channel, please?!”

  The mustachioed man looked up from his work for a second.

  “No,” he said.

  On the screen, Raina walked into the blue room and up to a time machine with a pulsing light. Then, right when she was about to touch it, a tiger sprang out from behind the machine and glared down at her.

  “Whoa,” I said. “That had to be CGI, right?”

  She nodded and then looked over at me. I kept watching the screen, waiting to see if she’d get caught, even though I knew she wouldn’t until later.

  “I never asked you if you saw it,” she said.

  She looked genuinely curious.

  “Time Zap? You think there’s a chance I didn’t see it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You were mad at me.”

  I sighed.

  “Not only did I see it,” I said, “I broke a solemn vow.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I swore I would never go to one of those big multiplexes in the suburbs unless it was to burn it down. I broke that rule only once.”

  “For me?”

  “For you.”

  “Did you see it in 3-D?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “On opening night. I drove out there all alone and waited in line with your new fans. It took like two hours just to get in. Then I found a seat in the back with a bunch of parents whose kids were in the front row. I was paranoid somebody from the Green Street might see me, but of course nobody was there. Just in case, I slumped down in my seat and put on my 3-D glasses. I held my breath all through the previews, and then when it started and you first showed up on the screen . . .”

  My voice trailed off. I looked down at the gray carpet beneath me.

  “What?” she said.

  I could still see her entrance in my mind. She had dyed purple hair and black glasses, and she was lit from a porch light above her. She looked like a real movie star. Whatever it is they have, she had it, and because I saw the movie in 3-D, she looked like she was right in front of me. It was the closest we had been in years.

  “What?!” she repeated.

  “I cried,” I said.

  Raina started to laugh, but then she saw I wasn’t joking.

  “Oh my God. Why?” she said.

  “Because it was amazing to see you like that,” I said.

  I took a breath.

  “It was also kind of hard. . . .”

  “Why was it hard?”

  “Well part of the reason I watch movies is to escape, you know? I mean, they make me think, but sometimes I just want to get away from reality and live in a different one. I was trying to forget about you after you left, but there you were, in the one place I thought I could go to get away from you.”

  Finally, the man at the desk got up and came over to where we were sitting. He walked briskly with a sheaf of papers tucked against his side. His shoes made a slight squeaking sound, audible in the now silent room.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve called your parents, and they’re on their way, but until then we’re going to have to hold you in a cell.”

  He took a step toward us when there was a sudden pounding against the glass window of the lobby. We all turned to see a man with a camera taking shape behind the window. He put his hand on the shutter and the camera took about a thousand pictures in two seconds.

  “What the hell was that?” said mustache guy.

  The door opened and a security guard stepped in.

  “There’s a whole bunch of them out there,” he said. “I can’t get them to leave.”

  “Who?” asked the bearded guy.

  “Paparazzi, I think,” the guy said.

  I felt my phone go off in my pocket. I pulled it out and just managed to read a message from Lucas before it was promptly confiscated by my captor.

  It read: You’re all over the Internet!!!!

  Then our guard happened to glance at the television in front of us. Raina was fighting a tiger on top of a time machine. Lightning was flashing outside the window. It was pretty cool.

  “Hold on,” he said, staring at her wide-eyed. “Is that you?”

  “It used to be,” she said.

  He looked at me.

  “We’re all over the Internet,” I said.

  Then the paparazzi burst inside and started taking pictures.

  20

  Mom was not amused by my story of the protest. Nor was she particularly inspired by my act of civil disobedience. I tried to explain to her exactly the way everything had happened, but that just seemed to make her angrier. And so, as we coasted down the highway, the wind blowing her blond hair around in wild circles, I came to the conclusion that no matter how noble the cause, your mother will never be happy about picking you up from juvie.

  “That Scooter was a thousand dollars,” she said. “If it had been worth a dollar more, you’d be charged with a felony right now. Did you know that?”

  “But I didn’t steal it! It was a misunderstanding. I’m sure it will get cleared up.”

  “By who? Raina? Your delinquent employee? Sweet Lou?”

  “Well, probably not her,” I said.

  Mom was silent for a moment. Then she turned on the radio.

  “I’m sure you can explain all this in your college essay,” she said. “At least it will stand out from the pack. The summer I ruined my life and went
to jail. I can’t imagine anybody rejecting that application.”

  “It wasn’t technically jail,” I said, which was met with silence.

  Mom favored the local eighties station, and so for the next few minutes I was treated to the easy listening sounds of the song, “True” by Spandau Ballet, the musical equivalent of a strong laxative. It basically repeats the same phrase a thousand times to the background sound of melodic heavy breathing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me they were closing the theater down?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Yes you do.”

  She turned away from the road a moment to look me in the eye.

  “Fine,” I said. “I didn’t tell you the theater was shutting down because I thought you’d be happy about it.”

  She was about to respond, but I spoke again.

  “Even if you didn’t come out and say it, I thought I would see a look in your eye or a half smile. And I would have hated you in that moment, but I didn’t want to feel that way about you. Because I don’t hate you.”

  “I see,” she said. “Thank you for clearing that up.”

  I thought maybe she was going to cry, or pull the car over or something. But she didn’t. She just kept driving. And Spandau Ballet kept on sucking.

  “I don’t want the Green Street to close down,” she said eventually.

  “C’mon,” I said.

  “Really.”

  “But if it closed, your wildest dreams would come true. I would have to find something else to do with my life. Like go to business school and major in laying people off. Or become a Boy Scout troop leader and teach kids how to save their virginity for nature.”

  “I’m not sure business school is an option now,” she said. “And criminals can’t be Scout leaders.”

  “Admit it,” I said, “if the Green Street spontaneously combusted tomorrow, and I was unharmed, you would probably do a dance.”

  “Not true,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  We exited the highway and found ourselves immediately stuck in construction traffic. I was pretty sure neither of us wanted to be in the car with the other anymore, but we were boxed in. There was nowhere else to go.

  “We had our first date there,” Mom said. “Did you know that?”

  I was expecting something different, and it took me a moment to process this.

  “What do you mean, with . . .”

  “Your father.”

  We inched forward and then came to a stop again.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You went to that bar with the clown paintings and played pinball, and Dad got the extra game and gave it to you and you guys fell in love.”

  “No,” she said. “Your dad loved to tell that story, but I don’t count that as a date. I didn’t know if I liked him yet. It was more of a platonic pinball tournament. And I was the one who got the extra game. Your dad was hopeless.”

  “My whole life has been a lie,” I said.

  “I knew he liked movies, so I actually suggested that he take me to one. He officially asked me out and I decided it was a date, so that was our first date. It’s only a date if both parties say it is.”

  “Believe me, I know that,” I said.

  The traffic freed up a little bit, and we made it another block before we came to a halt again. The radio was playing another easy listening song, this one about a smooth operator.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “Rosemary’s Baby,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “On your first date you saw a movie about giving birth to the spawn of Satan?”

  “Yes we did,” she said. “A few years ago I saw it on the list of worst date movies of all time.”

  “Wow,” I said. “How was I ever born?”

  “That’s a good question,” she said. “I actually thought the movie was hilarious. I think I freaked out your dad ’cause I was laughing so hard. But those old people as Satanists: it was all so silly.”

  She snorted a laugh.

  “It was nicer back then, the theater. There was a balcony row, which is where we sat. And if you paid for the one o’clock, you could stay for the three if you wanted. So, sometimes we would go and watch the same movie two times in a row. Once for the story. The second time for the little stuff. Occasionally we went for the air-conditioning. It actually worked back then.”

  “So, you were a regular?” I asked.

  She smiled.

  “I guess so.”

  “Why’d you stop going?”

  Her smile disappeared. We rolled by the construction site, yet another new building going up by the freeway. There were three men digging in a hole, their yellow hardhats skimming the surface.

  “It was your thing. You and your dad’s. I was happy you had it. That bond.”

  “But you could go now. We could go.”

  I watched her think this over.

  “I don’t need so many stories anymore, I guess,” she said eventually. “I have my own. Why should I take on other people’s problems, even if they’re beautiful?”

  She turned off the radio.

  “That’s sad, Mom,” I said. “You’re missing out.”

  “Maybe so, but don’t tell me I don’t care about the Green Street. I fell in love there. I don’t want to see it torn down. If you want to save it, though, Ethan, I don’t think stealing a motorized scooter and getting arrested is going to make it happen.”

  “You took me to my first protest,” I said.

  “I’m in favor of resistance. I just don’t know if it’s the right strategy here. I’m not sure you’ve got enough people on your side.”

  “What else am I supposed to do? Just sit down and let them take it from me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have the answer for you. I wish I did. But maybe you need to stop thinking about yourself for a while.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The theater isn’t yours. It has given you a lot, and you love it, but it doesn’t belong to you. Think about what it can give to other people. Isn’t that what it’s there for?”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself. She was basically calling me selfish. But when I thought about why I really wanted to save the place, I could only really think about myself, and everyone else who worked there. Sure there was Dad, too, but he wasn’t here anymore to see what happened. It was my memories I wanted to preserve. My job. My life. Nothing else had even entered my mind.

  ETHAN’S GLOSSARY OF FILM TERMS

  ENTRY #286

  AUTEUR

  A director with so much style, they call them the author of the film.

  Think: David Lynch. Ava Duvernay. Hayao Miyazaki.

  We all want to be auteurs in life.

  Most of us are just directors.

  21

  In Cinema of Revolt, my dad’s first book, he talks about two main reasons why movies were so good in the sixties and seventies. The first big reason, he said, was youth. Just like the rest of culture at the time, everything was changing and it was the young people who were tapped into the new movement. “Hollywood gave the keys to the castle to a gang of young directors,” he wrote, “and they didn’t care a whit about the conventions of the forties and fifties. In turn, they made rule-breaking movies for people like themselves.”

  At the same time, and maybe because of this, young people fell in love with seeing movies again. College kids talked about them constantly. You could study them in classes. They felt revolutionary. If you were an artist at that time, it was hard to ignore the revival of this dynamic form. Many of the most original voices were finding their way into the cinema.

  But there was also accessibility to moviemaking that hadn�
�t really happened before. There was new, lightweight equipment, and directors from all over the world were making movies outside of the Hollywood system. It wasn’t quite a time when anyone with an idea and a camera could do it, but it was getting close. It felt like a medium for the people, a more democratic art form in which a greater number of people could take part.

  I was deep in my reading, wearing only my boxers, when I heard a tap on the window of my room. I looked up, but didn’t see anything. I returned to my book, but soon after I heard another, louder tap. I walked to the window and when I opened it, a person in a black hooded sweatshirt jumped in front of the window. I screamed and threw the book five feet in the air. It came crashing down on a stack of DVDs behind me.

  “Shut up!” said Raina, “Do you want them to find me?”

  She pulled open the unlocked window and ducked through in one fluid movement. Once she was inside, she pulled off the hood and fell on my bed, laughing.

  “Your scream was so loud!” she said between giggles. “And very high-pitched.”

  Then she stopped and looked me up and down.

  “Nice underwear,” she said.

  My face went white-hot. I grabbed for the nearest pair of pants.

  “I thought you were the grim reaper,” I said, trying to nonchalantly put them on. I stumbled forward.

  “The only thing I’ve killed recently is my career,” she said.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and watched me as I searched the floor of my room for a T-shirt. I tried not to show how nervous I was to be parading around in front of her shirtless, but I doubt I was very successful.

  “You actually kind of have muscles now,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m super jacked.”

  I spotted a shirt right near the bed, my vintage Ghostbusters iron-on.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I mean you still look kind of like a scarecrow. But a scarecrow with muscles.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll put that on my Tinder profile.”