She smiled wider. “All the more effective, then, right?”
The cards flew everywhere as Elliot lost control of the deck. Red-faced, he bent to pick them up as Lucy rolled her eyes. I took the opportunity to check out the crowd and possibly throw up or faint, if need be. The sun was huge and low in the sky, having begun the process of setting, reflecting its oranges and reds onto the lake. I looked at the clock and saw that it was getting close to eight thirty, the start time that Fred had scheduled for tonight’s show.
“Taylor!” I turned at the sound of this distraught voice to see my brother, wearing his usual uniform of khakis and a polo shirt, holding a bouquet of flowers with a death grip, and looking like he might be close to fainting himself.
“Hey,” I said. I scanned the towels and blankets—I hadn’t seen my family arrive. “Where are Mom and Dad?”
“There,” Warren pointed, and sure enough, I saw our blanket spread out on the sand. My father had his arm around my mother’s shoulders, and she was laughing. For some reason, there was a beach chair just to the side of our blanket, but it was sitting empty. Next to our blanket, I saw that the Gardner family had set up theirs, with Nora and Gelsey leaning over the space between them, talking. “But listen,” he said, and I turned back to my brother, who looked even more anxious than he had before taking the SATs for the third time, in pursuit of the elusive perfect score (he’d achieved it). “Do I look okay? Or do I look stupid? Gelsey said I looked fine. What is that supposed to mean?”
Somehow, in my own panic about public speaking, my brother and his romantic travails had slipped my mind. Which wasn’t good, because this was pretty much my doing, and if things went horribly wrong, I had a feeling I would be blamed in perpetuity. “You look great,” I assured him. “Just… um… breathe. And if you can help it, maybe don’t tell her how anything was invented. Just on the first date.”
“Right,” Warren said, nodding for much longer than people usually nodded. “Okay.” I looked up toward the entrance, where I saw Wendy, her hair out of her normal braids and hanging long over the white sundress she was wearing.
“Your date’s here,” I said, pointing. Wendy saw me and waved, and I waved back. Warren, on the other hand, just stared, his mouth opening and closing a few times.
“Go,” I said, poking him in the back. “Breathe.”
“Right,” Warren said in a voice that indicated he wasn’t doing much of that, but he did start walking toward the entrance. Wanting to give him a little bit of privacy, I scanned the beach again.
It wasn’t like I was looking for Henry specifically. However, he’d come to the last one, and I’d given him the poster, so I knew he knew about this one, so it wouldn’t have been unexpected to see him there or anything. But my eyes moved from blanket to blanket with no sign of him.
I looked back to the snack bar to see Elliot tapping his watch and Lucy giving me a thumbs-up. I knew that the moment had arrived. I signaled to Leland, who gave me a nod, and then walked in front of the screen and took a deep breath. “Good evening,” I started, and must have been loud enough, because most people looked up at me. I could feel how damp my palms were, and I twisted my hands together behind my back, hoping nobody else would pick up on this. “Welcome to Movies Under the Stars, and tonight’s screening of Casablanca.” For some reason, this caused some people to burst into applause, which gave me a second to collect myself. What did I normally do with my hands? I had no idea, and I was going to keep them behind my back until I remembered.
“The, um, concession stand will be open for the first twenty minutes. So… that’s how long.” I could feel that I was babbling, but at least it was better than the never-ending silences of the last time. I looked up, and my eyes traveled right across to my family’s blanket. My mother was wearing a rather fixed smile, and Gelsey was frowning as if she wasn’t sure what I was doing. But when I met my father’s eye, and saw his steady, encouraging expression, I felt myself let out a long breath. Suddenly, I knew exactly what to say. “Casablanca has been called, by some film scholars, a perfect movie, from first frame to last,” I said, seeing an expression of happy surprise come over my dad’s face as I said this. “I hope you agree. Enjoy the show!” There was another smattering of applause as I scurried away from the projector and toward the safety of the snack bar just as the movie started, the old-fashioned Warner Brothers logo, in black and white, taking over the screen.
Twenty minutes later, we closed down the snack bar as quietly as possible. I’d been watching what I could of the movie in between serving up sodas, ice cream, and popcorn, and I thought I’d gotten the general gist of it.
“You staying?” Lucy asked me after we’d locked up the snack bar.