‘You worked at the zoo?’
‘You’ve got to sacrifice something for this experience,’ Troy said, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘That’s why we’re here. You’ve got to leave some blood on the altar. I mean, you heard Mark. If you just want to see the new Star Wars movie, you can buy your ticket online and then forget about it until show time. But if you want to wait in line, you wait in line, you know?’
Elena was nodding. Gabe was standing on the sidewalk. ‘Did you just vote me out of the line?’ he asked.
Troy laughed. ‘No, dude, you’re good—you want some popcorn?’
Gabe took some and sat down.
Elena had been imagining this day for months. She’d been planning it for weeks.
This wasn’t what she was expecting from the line experience.
This was more like being in an elevator with two random people. Like being stuck in an elevator.
Elena had been expecting . . . Well, more people, obviously. And more of a party. A celebration!
She’d thought it would be like all those photos she’d seen when she was a kid and the last Star Wars movies came out. All those fans out on the street, in communion with each other.
Elena had been too young to camp out then. Her dad wouldn’t even let her see the prequels. He said she was too young. And then, when she grew up, he said they were too terrible. ‘They’ll just corrupt your love of Star Wars,’ he said. ‘I wish I could unsee them.’
So even though Star Wars was Elena’s whole life at ten, she didn’t get to go to the party.
She was eighteen now. She could do whatever she wanted. So where was the party?
The afternoon was even more mind-numbing than the morning.
Her mom drove by three or four more times. Elena pretended not to notice. She read a few chapters of a Star Wars book. Troy pointed out that all the expanded-universe books weren’t canon any more—’Disney erased them from the timeline.’ Elena said she didn’t care, that she liked them anyway.
At nightfall, people started showing up for the evening movies, and Troy got into a fight with Mark about refilling his popcorn. ‘It says, “Endless refills same day only,”’ Troy said.
‘You’re perverting the intent,’ Mark said.
Elena kept hoping that some of the people walking towards the theater were there to join the line—there were two thirty-something guys in Star Wars shirts who looked like good candidates, and a few college girls who looked nerdy enough—but they all walked right by.
Elena had stripped down to her Princess Leia T-shirt, but now that the sun was gone, she started reapplying her layers.
Maybe her mom was right. Maybe Elena should leave and come back when the line really got going . . .
What would Troy say? ‘There was an Asian girl who hung out with us for a few hours; then her mom made her leave.’
No, this was it. If Elena bailed, she couldn’t come back.
She wrapped herself in her sleeping bag and pulled on a woolen hat with a big red pompom, taking a few more years off her appearance.
The fight with Mark seemed to leave Troy in a funk. He put in earplugs and watched Netflix on his phone. Elena watched him hungrily—she was dying to use her phone. Her whole world was in there. Sitting outside in the cold and dark would be so much more bearable if she could read fanfiction or text her friends. But she only had one back-up battery pack to last four days . . . At least it was still bright enough to read. She was sitting just below a lit up Star Wars poster.
Her mom pulled up in front of the theater again at ten. Elena got up and walked to the car.
‘I don’t like this,’ her mom said. ‘People are going to think you’re homeless.’
‘No one will think that.’
‘Homeless people are going to bother you.’
‘Probably not.’
‘I talked to Dì Janet and she says you can buy your movie ticket online.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘It’s just that—’ Her mom rubbed her temple. ‘Elena, I think this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your life.’
‘That’s a good thing, Mom. Think about how much worse it could be.’
Her mom frowned and handed her a warm covered dish. ‘You answer your texts tonight.’
‘I will.’
Elena stepped away from the car.
‘Don’t worry about her!’ Troy shouted from behind her. ‘She’s in good hands!’
Elena’s mom looked aghast. But she still drove away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Troy said. ‘Did I make that worse? I meant the hands of the line.’
‘It’s OK,’ Elena said, finding her spot against the wall.
Mark the theater manager came out one more time to give them a last call for the bathroom and concessions, which was pretty decent of him.
Troy was asleep by eleven, stretched out on his chair with an inflatable pillow wedged between him and the wall. He’d wrapped himself in fleece blankets, tipped his head back, and that was it.
Elena had planned to roll out her sleeping bag and sleep lying down. But that was back when she’d imagined a few dozen campers. It was different with just three people, and she felt too exposed at the end of the line. If she fell asleep lying down, someone could just drag her away in the night, and Troy and Gabe would never notice.
She didn’t think she was afraid of Troy and Gabe themselves. Troy hadn’t said anything pervy yet. Not even about Princess Leia. And Gabe seemed painstakingly uninterested in Elena.
Her mom didn’t trust them, but her mom didn’t trust any guys. She used to just have it in for white guys. (‘White guys are the worst. They rap 2 Live Crew lyrics at you and expect you to laugh.’) But ever since she and Elena’s dad had separated four years ago, her mom had taken a stand against any and every man, especially where Elena was concerned. ‘Learn from my mistakes,’ she said.
Learn what? Elena wondered. Avoid men? Avoid love? Avoid radiologists who buy movie-replica lightsabers?
Usually when her mom gave her warnings like this, Elena would just give her a thumbs up. Like, No prob, Bob.
Because it really wasn’t a problem. Avoid men? Done! This had literally never been an issue for her. When other girls complained about how to deal with unwanted male attention, Elena wouldn’t feel jealous exactly, but she would feel curious—how does one go about attracting such attention? And is it impossible to attract just some of it? Just a small, manageable amount? Or was attention from boys all or nothing, like a tap that, once you’d found it, you could never turn off?
Elena’s teeth were starting to chatter, and it wasn’t even that cold out. But the cold of the ground had crept through her sleeping bag, through her jeans, through her long underwear and tights, and settled into her bones.
‘You’ve gotta put something under your sleeping bag,’ Gabe said. ‘Or get off the ground.’
She looked where his butt must be. He lifted the side of his sleeping bag up. He was sitting on cardboard, two or three pieces.
‘Does that work?’ she asked.
‘It helps,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t have a spare box on me . . .’