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  “Anyway, this theater, no matter who is running it, is a blight on the neighborhood and the campus. You have to know this! Look at it! No one uses it. And it’s already falling apart. I’m sorry that this situation will no longer allow you to make minimum wage while you crack smug jokes with your friends. But that’s the way it goes.”

  “A dollar more,” I said.

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “I make a dollar more than minimum wage,” I said. “Because I make the schedule. And order the films. And restock the snacks. And I make sure the seats aren’t sticky. I clean them myself. So that when someone comes here to leave the world of capital markets behind, they can watch something strange in a clean seat.”

  Ron Marsh was staring at me. The suits were staring at me.

  “If you’ll excuse me . . .” he said.

  Ron was turning his back on me when the door opened and I heard a familiar smoker’s rasp:

  “So, you boys are good with the Historic Preservation Commission, then?”

  Sweet Lou stood in the doorway, a cigarette already burning in her thin lips.

  “I’m sorry. Who are you?” Ron asked.

  Lou waved away his question.

  “Before you all get too excited about making your shiny new building, you should know that a nomination has been filed in favor of putting this building on the National Registry. It was built by Liebenberger and Katz.”

  There were blank looks all around.

  “Liebenberger?” Ron said eventually.

  “And Katz,” said Sweet Lou. “Don’t forget about Katz. Real famous. They built theaters all around the country. Most people think Liebenberger was the genius since he was the more famous of the two. But Katz was amazing with acoustics. A real visionary.”

  Ron, for the first time, seemed at a total loss for words.

  “One thing you boys will have to realize,” said Lou, “is that sometimes there are bigger forces in the world than what you want.”

  She coughed and sent her cigarette rocketing over their heads. They watched it whizzing past, and I saw a few men flinch when it hit the ground in an eruption of sparks. Then, Lou held the door open for me and waved me inside. I looked at Ron, desperately trying to think of a stinging parting phrase.

  “Yeah, Ron!” I said.

  It was the best I could come up with.

  Then I walked inside the Green Street and watched all the fancy men stand there another moment before Ron turned and led them down the street. Behind me, Lou was leaning against the concessions counter, chuckling to herself. She pulled a wad of napkins out of the dispenser and wiped her perspiring forehead.

  “Whoa, Lou,” I said. “That was kind of amazing. I had no idea about the preservation commission. How did you know all that stuff about the architects?”

  She leaned on her cane and watched the lights of the marquee come to life outside. Her brow folded over her narrow eyes.

  “Are you kidding me?” she said. “I have no idea who built this place.”

  I could feel my smile freezing.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “What about Liebenberger and . . .”

  “Katz. Those were my boyfriends from Hebrew camp.”

  She grimaced and cleared some phlegm from her throat. I knew it was time to stop asking questions, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “So, you haven’t really filed a . . . nomination?”

  “God no,” she said. “This place is about to collapse. But they don’t know that, do they? Just because an old lady says it, it must be true! It should buy us a little more time, at least.”

  Lou released a cough then that sounded like a small pipe bomb going off. And it occurred to me that maybe “a little more time” was all she cared about. She was getting up there, and if she put off the demise of this place a little longer, that might be enough. Me on the other hand: I was hoping for something a little longer term. Lou stepped over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Sorry I don’t have the answer, kid. But, you know, maybe you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in this basket anyway.”

  I looked at Lou’s callused hand.

  “I don’t have any other baskets,” I said.

  She stifled another cough and looked me in the eye.

  “You’re young. You seem healthy. You’re less of an idiot than most. Tell me: There really isn’t anything else you care about?”

  ETHAN’S GLOSSARY OF FILM TERMS

  ENTRY #119

  SUBJECTIVE SOUND

  A sound used to show the interior state of the character.

  Example: In The Godfather, when Michael goes into the bathroom to grab the gun that’s behind the toilet, he hears trains that are so loud they block out the other sounds. But the restaurant isn’t near train tracks. He’s hearing them in his head because he’s about to kill someone.

  I wish I heard trains. There’s something almost romantic about that. Instead, when I’m really nervous (say about seeing someone I haven’t seen in a long time) I just hear this low-level buzz, like a chorus of cicadas singing in my brain.

  I have to listen for it, but it’s always there. It’s my subjective sound.

  11

  When I got to her house, I didn’t recognize her.

  I walked up the chipped brick sidewalk, all the way to the front porch, and I didn’t know it was Raina. She wasn’t facing me, so at least I’m not that oblivious. She was standing on top of an old blue cooler, holding a large plastic bag of some kind. Her blond hair was mostly gone; that was part of the problem. From the back, she looked like a ten-year-old boy. And she was even skinnier than I remembered. But when she turned around, spilling birdseed on my shoes in the process, her familiar half smile brought her lovely face back to life.

  “I read online that if you feed the birds,” she said, “you have to do it consistently.”

  She stepped down from the cooler, letting the bag of seed thump to the ground.

  “If they get used to a neighborhood feeder and then you take it away, they might just all die off. They come to rely on it, you know?”

  She looked up at the feeder suctioned to the window. It was overflowing with seed now, but, so far, there were no takers.

  “I’ve been gone awhile, though,” she said, “and the renters never filled it up. Which means I probably single-handedly killed off every bird in this place.”

  She scanned the neighborhood, as if she might still be able to see their corpses littering the streets and yards around us. She looked genuinely concerned.

  “I haven’t heard about any bird pandemics around here,” I said. “I think you’re in the clear.”

  If she heard me, she didn’t respond.

  “Besides,” I said. “Have you ever seen Hitchcock’s The Birds? Those little bastards are just waiting to turn on us.”

  She opened the screen door. I hesitated a moment, but then I stepped inside. I noticed a difference in the place immediately. All their furniture was the same, but it had been rearranged, and whoever the renters were, they hadn’t exactly been kind to the place. There were little holes in the walls from poorly hung pictures. The carpet was worn, and the couch by the TV was missing a cushion. Raina watched me take the place in.

  “Mom’s not happy to be back. The place in California has a pool.”

  The classical music was there again, booming through the ceiling.

  “What about you?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “I never learned to swim,” she said.

  We kept walking into the kitchen, and then, as if we’d never skipped a beat, we headed down the stairs to the basement where we used to rehearse after school. I was relieved to see that this space was largely unchanged. The ugly orange couch was still ugly and orange, and the room still smelled like fresh laundry. Raina took a seat on the couch,
and I stayed standing nearby.

  Suddenly, the room felt a whole lot smaller to me, like it had shrunk in the time Raina was away. Obviously, we were just bigger, but anything seemed possible in that moment. Maybe the walls were slowly closing in. Raina looked me over, and as if she’d read my mind, she said:

  “You got tall.”

  It was true, I guess. I had grown a lot in the last few years, and most of it vertically. I had to duck my head to get under the low doorframe in our upstairs bathroom. And Mom always asked me to get her food processor down from the high cabinets when she was making pesto.

  “It’s all an illusion,” I said. “These are five-inch heels.”

  “Ah,” she said. “That must be it.”

  In the brief, awkward silence that followed, I heard the dehumidifier switch on and fill the gap with its watery drone.

  “You got skinny,” I said.

  Her smile disappeared. I closed my mouth. I hadn’t meant it to come out so bluntly. I hadn’t meant to say anything at all. I opened my mouth again:

  “I mean, it’s not—”

  “You don’t have to backpedal,” she said. “I get it. I am skinny. I was seeing this nutritionist my manager recommended, and she put me on a macrobiotic diet.”

  “A what?”

  Raina looked down.

  “No. Seriously,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means no wheat. No eggs. No meat or dairy.”

  “Holy shit. What’s left?”

  “I was encouraged to eat sea vegetables.”

  “Sea vegetables?”

  “You know, brown kelp, sea lettuce. My mom got really into algae. She ate that shit like it was pudding.”

  I had to concentrate to keep from gagging.

  “I don’t know what to say. I always thought algae was just like pond scum.”

  “You’re not far off. I wasn’t supposed to lose so much weight; I was just supposed to be detoxing. But I guess I went a little overboard.”

  “Is that why you were crying in Dairy Queen?”

  “Part of it,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands, just standing there. I clasped them behind my back, but that felt weird, too. I hunched a little, making myself smaller.

  “Will you sit down?” she said. “You’re making me super nervous.”

  I kept standing. I thought about moving toward the couch, but my feet weren’t really into that plan. I noticed I was bouncing a little in place, but I couldn’t seem to make that stop, either.

  “I should probably go,” I said suddenly.

  Raina looked shocked.

  “You just got here.”

  I pulled out my phone and checked the time.

  “I have to get to work.”

  “It’s been literally five minutes. That’s not a real visit, Ethan.”

  The truth was I had another hour at least until I had to work. Lucas was opening and there wasn’t a film until three o’clock. But now that I had said I had to go, I couldn’t take it back. Raina looked deflated, like all of her suspicions had been confirmed. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for someplace to land.

  I wanted to take it back, but Raina spoke before I could:

  “Your mom said you’re basically managing the place now.”

  “It just kind of happened,” I said.

  “She told my mom that you’re there all the time. Like you barely even come home anymore.”

  “I come home,” I said. “But I am there a lot. I don’t know. I guess it’s just where I want to be.”

  It took all of my meager reserves of restraint not to tell her the whole sob story about the eviction. Or the real reasons I stayed there so much. How I actually didn’t feel good anywhere else, including my own house, which felt like it had been remodeled while I wasn’t there. But I couldn’t get into it for some reason. Maybe I thought I would cry. Or maybe it was because I was angry that she had never made her absence right. In short: I was feeling too many things. And my ears were buzzing.

  I was quiet for a few seconds. Then I realized I was waiting for her to tell me what to do the way she always had. Despite everything that had happened, if she had told me to stay, just given me a simple command—“Sit down and stay here, Ethan”—I would have done it. But it was like her macrobiotic diet had taken away both her dairy and her fire. I turned toward the door.

  “Do you still remember the dance?” she asked suddenly.

  I looked at her on the couch. She didn’t move.

  “You mean . . .”

  “Our dance. From the play.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s been too long. I’m not sure I ever knew it.”

  She looked at me for a long time before she finally blinked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Stupid question.”

  I was sweating now, despite the cool of the basement.

  “You never told me how it went,” she said.

  “How what went?”

  “Your scene. With that girl who took my place.”

  Again, I thought about telling her the truth. The dehumidifier switched off, leaving us in humidified silence.

  “Oh, it went great,” I said. “We brought down the house.”

  12

  This, of course, was a lie.

  Zero houses were brought down. Zero greatness achieved.

  It wasn’t my proudest moment. I’d told myself I would stick with theater even if Raina never came back from New York. I had actually tried something new, and it felt cowardly to give it up just because she was gone. I had to suck it up. Stay strong. Etcetera. So, I resolved to dance with another Nancy. To bow and turn and do the fox-trot while singing in an absurd cockney falsetto. And when I went back to the Playhouse that Saturday, Mrs. Salazar took me aside and introduced me to my new scene partner.

  Her name was Vanessa Drake and she was what my grandmother would call “a nice young lady.” She was freckled and fair-skinned, and when we shook hands her palm was sweaty. She had a retainer and when she was nervous she launched it out of her mouth and chewed on it for a second before clicking it back into place with the tip of her tongue. I could tell she was amped to play Nancy. She’d been plucked from the chorus and given a lead, and she wasn’t even pretending to be sad that Raina was gone.

  “My mom says it’s irresponsible parenting,” she said, while we waited for our instructions. “Letting her do all that movie stuff. She’s not even eighteen.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, trying not to think too much about Raina.

  Vanessa Drake, I’m sure, had her doubts about me as a partner. As she should have. I didn’t exactly carry myself like a leading man. And I was a newbie through and through. But when Mrs. Salazar had us try out the scene, I was shocked to find that I had actually made some progress. Every dorky pirouette, every little doff of my cap was on point. That damn routine was imprinted in my brain. The only difference was the level of passion. With Raina, I had been singing with every fiber of my soul. This time the words rang hollow.

  “I’d do anything. For you, dear, anything. For you mean everything to me.”

  I was on key, but, alas, there was no song in my heart. I led Vanessa Drake across the dusty theater stage and then stopped to jump and click my heels.

  “I know that I’d go anywhere. For your smile, anywhere, for your smile, everywhere, I’d see.”

  Raina had been gone for two weeks, and I already knew she wouldn’t be coming back to Minnesota. Why would she? It was only a matter of time until someone else figured out what I had known for years: Raina Allen was supposed to be famous. And now that she’d been noticed, she was going to ascend to her rightful throne, and those of us who were lucky to know her way back when would become the charming hometown friends she thought fondly of from time to time. In other w
ords, I was no longer a lead in her life. I was an extra.

  I tried to shove all this out of my mind as I danced with Vanessa. I tried to imagine that I was back in Raina’s basement. That I’d be sipping a juice box any minute, laughing about the guys at my school who were trying to grow mustaches in the eighth grade. I tried to pretend that my heart was not slowly dissolving into a toxic puddle that would never quite reconstitute. In other words, I tried acting.

  But as Vanessa started in on her part of the song, it wasn’t quite taking.

  “Would you lace my shoe?”

  She thrust her immaculate white sneaker into the air.

  “Anything,” I said in a monotone.

  “Paint your face bright blue?”

  “Anything.”

  This one barely above a whisper.

  Mrs. Salazar who had mostly been watching me in a stupefied state of wonder so far, now yelled from the foot of the stage.

  “A little more enthusiasm on those anythings, Ethan!”

  “Catch a kangeroo?”

  “No,” I said.

  Vanessa’s retainer smile dimmed. But she took my improvisation in stride.

  “Go to Timbuktu?”

  I stopped dancing altogether.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t go to goddamn Timbuktu. Why would I do that?”

  Gradually Vanessa came to a stop. She looked at Mrs. Salazar, and then back at me.

  “Ethan,” said Mrs. Salazar, “that was going so well. Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said again. “I’m not okay.”

  She was about to ask a follow-up question, but I wasn’t done.

  “I’m just telling the truth. I wouldn’t do those things. What’s the point?”

  “What are you even talking about?” asked poor Vanessa, chewing the wire of her retainer. “It’s just a song.”

  I barely heard her.

  “I think I’m just going to lie down here if nobody minds.”

  They stared at me as I lay down, and rested my heavy head on the stage.

  “Uh, Ethan,” said Mrs. Salazar, “this is very odd. Do I need to phone your mother?”