“It’s going to be weird, Ari,” said Kendall. “I mean, really weird. We’re going to see people from school there. They might laugh or give you a hard time.”
“I’ve thought about that.” I had. In my mind, all I had to do was grab Camden’s hand and then everything at the fair would be okay. “But the less I worry about what they’re going to think, the happier I am.”
Also, the more I’d learned about Camden’s friends, the more everyone else faded into the background. Lukas, Brady, the girls at the school newspaper. They were like movie extras who didn’t need names or even identities. They had no bearing on me.
“If I go with you, what will I do?” asked Kendall. “I don’t want to be some tagalong who’s just there for you, and for Jamie.” She paused, then seemed to brighten with a brainstorm. “Can I bring my camera?”
“Oh, good idea! You can be the second photographer. I’m sure Eliza would be okay with that.”
Kendall gave me the raised-eyebrows look. “You sure? Don’t we have to submit some kind of proposal to her first?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I know. She’s bossy. But a cool bossy, don’t you think? And she does have mad costuming skills.”
“If you say so,” said Kendall. “Okay, count me in.”
Richard never asked who I was talking to on the phone each night. He knew he should. He also knew he shouldn’t.
This little problem got solved one day at the store.
I was ringing up a woman and her kids buying coloring books. It had been a slow morning. They stepped away and I looked down for a moment, then up again, and there was Camden. He planted his hands on the counter and leaned forward with a smile. Like he was glad to see me. Like that could be a thing. (When would I stop thinking this way?) “Hey, Ari,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, glancing at Richard, who was now coming down an aisle to see who’d said my name.
“Hi,” said Richard to Camden. “Are you the guy?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” I picked up a paper bag and held it in front of my face.
“Yup, I’m him,” I heard Camden say. “Are you the awesome stepdad?”
“I hope so,” said Richard. He pulled the paper bag out of my hand. “It’s okay, Ari. I don’t think I’m required to ask you any embarrassing questions. At least, not here.”
The door chimed and we all looked up to see Eliza and Max come in.
“We have some work to do,” said Eliza, holding up a laptop computer case, “but you said you couldn’t get away today. So we came to you.”
She pulled out her laptop and Richard looked at me quizzically.
“It’s sort of an art project we’re doing together,” I told him.
“And this will all make sense in the end?”
“Absolutely.”
He jerked his head toward the office. “Go in there. If it gets busy and I need you, I’ll holler.”
I kissed him on the cheek and led Camden, Eliza, and Max into the back room, where there was a cracked leather sofa and a desk before you got to the shelves of boxes.
“Oooh,” sighed Eliza when she saw some of the supplies in storage.
“So what do we need to do?” I asked.
“We need to watch the episode,” she said.
In all of our talk about Silver Arrow, we’d never actually watched the damn thing together. It was like we were retracing the separate paths of our fandom, and now we’d finally reached a point where they all started. The actual, you know, show itself.
Max put the laptop on the desk and fed it a DVD. It caught the light from the anemic overhead bulb and I thought of my mom. How she was the only other person I’d ever watched it with.
Mom was always very serious about the viewing experience. If I was confused about the plot, I could ask her questions (after we paused the episode), but otherwise she asked for silence until it was over. Then we could talk about it.
Mom, why does Captain Marr do things he knows are wrong? This was my introduction to ethics and morals, and also how people can be assholes sometimes but still mostly good.
Mom, Bram drives me crazy. He just doesn’t get it! That was how I first learned about being tolerant of those who were different from myself.
I grew to love the silence of our watching. I knew she was beaten up from her day and this was her downtime. I knew it doubled as our time, too, that I never felt closer to her than when we were sitting next to each other on our Salvation Army couch, sharing this thing.
So it unmoored me now, to watch it with Camden, Eliza, and Max. To hear them make jokes and snarky comments. For Eliza to say, “I love this part. Notice how Satina moves around the room while the men stay still? It’s her way of checking her power over them.”
It wasn’t better or worse than watching it with Mom; it was simply a different Silver Arrow. A joyful thing, worth celebrating. Worth having your fandom out loud.