“Oh,” I murmured. Oh. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was pretty sure about what I wanted it to mean. It suddenly hit me that Henry, single Henry, was sitting next to me in the darkness, as we watched a movie. And just like that, those butterflies I’d first felt at twelve made a reappearance.
“So what’d I miss?” Henry whispered after a few moments. I glanced over at him, fully aware of how close together we were, how close he’d sat next to me, even though there was ample room on the blanket.
“I thought you’d seen this,” I whispered, looking back fixedly at the screen.
“I have,” he said, and I could hear that there was smile in his voice. “I just wanted a refresher.”
“Well,” I said, turning my head to face him a little. “Rick’s really mad because Ilsa just left, without a real explanation.” As soon as I’d said this, I realized that the statement might apply to more than just the movie. I think Henry realized this as well; when he spoke again his voice was a little more serious.
“She probably had a good reason for that, though, right?” He wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but right at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the blanket and both our legs extended, just a hand’s width between them. “I think she was just really scared, and ran away when things got hard.” This was no longer about the movie at all, because we’d just learned that Ilsa did have an actual reason for leaving Rick behind in the rain, whereas I had only my own cowardice to blame.
“And then what happens?” he asked. I looked at him and saw that he was still looking at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling my heart start to pound again, certain that we had stopped talking about the movie entirely now. “You tell me.”
He smiled and then glanced back at the screen. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
I looked back at the screen as well. “I guess we will,” I said. I watched the movie, trying my best to pay attention to what was happening—Nazis, French resistance, everyone trying to find some letters of transit—but after a few minutes, I gave up even trying to follow the plot. The movie was unfolding before me, but all I was really aware of was Henry’s presence next to me, how close to me he was sitting, how I noticed every time he moved or turned his head slightly. I was so aware of his presence that by the time the famous last line was uttered—the one about the beginning of a beautiful friendship—our breath was rising and falling in the same rhythm.
chapter twenty-nine
“AND THEN WHAT?” LUCY DEMANDED, EYES WIDE.
I took a sip of my soda, and shook my head, smiling at her. “And then nothing,” I said. “Seriously.” Lucy groaned and I looked out to the nearly deserted beach, wondering if at some point we could just admit that nobody was coming to the snack bar and go home early.
I was telling her the truth—nothing had happened at the movie. That is, nothing had happened between me and Henry. We had simply watched the rest of the movie in silence, and when it ended, I’d hustled to the front of the now-blank screen, thanked everyone for coming, and told them that the next movie night would be in a month, and I’d managed to do it without babbling or taking too-long pauses, which seemed to me like some kind of progress. When I’d returned to the blanket, Gelsey and Nora were engaged in some kind of complicated hand-clap game, and my mother was folding up our blanket and talking to the Gardners, who were going on about how the movie had one of cinema’s most perfectly structured screenplays. In the midst of this, my father was struggling up out of the beach chair. He had moved to sit in it during the movie’s second half, the sight of which had made me lose track of the plot altogether for a while, as I kept glancing back at my dad, looking somehow diminished in the beach chair that he had always sworn he’d never use.
Henry was already walking toward the parking lot, but he met my eye and raised his hand in a wave. I waved back, and felt myself watching, out of the corner of my eye, until he passed out of sight. Because I was facing the parking lot, I saw Warren and Wendy heading out, not holding hands, but walking awfully close together. I caught Warren’s eye for a moment, and he gave me a wide, happy smile, the kind that I’d never seen on my brother, who before this had seemed to specialize in the sardonic smirk.
I’d locked up the projector and screen and thanked Leland, who was yawning so enormously that I was just grateful he hadn’t fallen asleep during the movie. Gelsey ended up riding home with the Gardners, as my father’s back was hurting again, and he needed to stretch out across the backseat. I’d buckled myself into the passenger seat and turned around to look at him. In the fading light—my mother’s car lights would flare when a door was opened but then slowly dim, as though transitioning you to darkness—I saw how thin my father was, how his skin was stretched over his cheekbones.
“Did you like the movie, kid?” he asked, startling me. His eyes were closed, and I’d assumed he’d fallen asleep.