I mumbled something about needing to get back to work and scuttled behind the counter.
A couple hours later, after Mike’s parents had gone home to pack, and the matinees were all underway, and Rochelle had left to have a look around downtown Hillville, Mike stalked back to the snack counter. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed between his teeth, slamming his palms on the glass.
I backed up against the popcorn popper. “I needed a summer job,” I answered in a small voice.
“Here?”
“I wanted to see you.” I could hear how pathetic the words sounded even as they fell out of my mouth. “I missed you.”
“Not cool, Cody. My girlfriend’s here. Things are different now. We need to forget Christmas break ever happened.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Didn’t you tell me yourself you can’t have your parents finding out about you? You said you knew for a fact they’d kick you out if they knew you were gay. You said they pretty much told you so point-blank. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, yeah.” I felt dizzy. The smell of melted butter filled my nose and made me want to throw up. Behind me, the heat of the popper burned into my back. I could feel the thing shake with each tiny explosion of a popping kernel.
“So you have just as much to lose as I do,” he said. “More probably. I mean, I’m not even gay, really. I just like messing around with guys sometimes. So let’s just bury it, okay?”
My chin started to shake. “But I . . . I love you.” The words landed in my ears with a pitiful thud.
Mike gave me a look of pure bafflement. “What are you talking about?” He glanced around, like he feared someone might see my little breakdown and draw conclusions. “Look, pull yourself together, okay? Let’s talk later.” He disappeared into the manager’s office muttering, “Jesus, I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved with the neighbors’ kid.”
I tried to do what he said. As I stood there with my back still to the popper, though, I didn’t get calmer. I got angrier. It seemed the mystery had been solved: Mike hadn’t lost my number. He hadn’t gotten scared. He’d just been an asshole. Behind me, the tiny explosions started coming faster. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
I barreled through the office door, ready to let Mike have it, but I found the room empty. Behind the door to the manager’s little private bathroom, I heard him moving around.
On the desk, though, lay Mike’s phone. Not the one he used with his parents. The secret one he’d used with me. He wasn’t texting me anymore. So who was he texting now? The screen still glowed. He must’ve set it down seconds ago without locking it.
Careful not to make a sound, I grabbed it. He had his photos app pulled up, and it only took me a couple taps to get to his most recent image. A selfie taken by some boy about my age, maybe even younger, naked, in a bedroom. I swiped through the previous photos and found more of the same. A parade of naked boys, all of them in sharp focus and bright color, unlike the Hollywood starlets that decorated my wall. Many were tubby like me. Maybe that was his type. Had he gotten together with all these guys in real life? Or just chatted with them online? Or gotten the photos off the Internet?
I swiped again, and my image appeared, right there among all the others.
“Cody?”
I jumped about a foot in the air. The voice calling my name hadn’t come from the bathroom, though, but from the open office door. A kid I knew from church stood there. Ernest Kimball.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” he said.
A second ago I’d had my back to the door. Had Ernest spotted the image of me on the phone’s screen? I didn’t think so. I’d probably see it on his face right now if he had. I hoped Mike couldn’t hear him talking from the bathroom.
“Hey, have you seen that movie Samson yet?” Ernest asked. “I’ve watched it three times now, and—”
Locking the phone and dropping it back on Mike’s desk, I hurried past Ernest, past the snack counter, past the popcorn popper still going pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
* * *
A few minutes later I’d run out to the little parking lot behind the theater and pitched to my hands and knees on the rough asphalt. Whenever a lady in a noir movie had her heart broken, she’d throw herself diagonally across her bed, and the tears would slide down her cheeks like shiny pearls, and she’d still look gorgeous. In my case, I couldn’t even bring myself to cry. I just wanted to puke.
I grabbed the paper hat off my head and crumpled it. Below me little shards of broken green and clear glass gleamed in the sunlight, like diamonds and emeralds. A little farther away, at the base of the theater’s rear brick wall, among the weeds pushing up through cracks in the asphalt, lay a little pile of rusty, sharp-looking nails.
I grabbed a handful, hauled myself to my feet, and walked over to Mike’s piece of junk car. Inside my body I imagined I could still feel little explosions going off, little hot kernels of rage bursting. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. I positioned a few of the nails under one of the tires. Then I went around to the other tires and did the same thing. I’d never tried this trick before, but my brother had gotten busted for it years ago. It was childish and stupid of me, and Mike would know exactly who’d done it and probably figure out a way to get back at me, but I didn’t care.
I’d just finished when a shadow fell over me. I whirled around, sure it must be Mike.
Instead I found Ernest Kimball standing there, watching me, his hands on his hips. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said, his gaze so sharp I swear I felt his eyes poke me in the chest.
“Um.”
I’d known Ernest since kindergarten. We were friends back then, because we were both girly and liked to play with Barbies, although whereas I was chunky, he was so thin I bet his clothes weighed more than he did. When we got older and the fag comments started to come, we drifted apart. We never talked about it, but both of us must’ve realized we’d be safer if we kept our distance. Over time Ernest got more and more into church, just like I got more and more into noir. These days we went to different high schools, but I saw him at service every Sunday, sitting in the third row with his back very straight and a yellow notepad in his lap so he could take notes on the sermon.
Ernest had the same pad with him now. It stuck out of a canvas bag he had slung over his shoulder. I wondered if he took notes on Samson, too. You might’ve heard of that movie. It was really big last year with the Christian nutjob demographic. It tells the Samson and Delilah story, which makes it sort of like Gladiator for Bible-thumpers. I snuck in to watch it once during my first week at the theater, and I thought it sucked, but on the plus side, the guy who played Samson was hot as hell and spent half the film shirtless.
“Never mind,” Ernest said. “I know what you were doing. Pulling a prank. Trying to ruin some poor person’s day. Shame on you, Cody.” He actually wagged his finger at me as he said it. “This isn’t very Christian of you. I could report you, you know. It just so happens I’m on my way to the police station right now. As president of the Teen Council for Moral Decency, I have a meeting there every Tuesday afternoon to discuss worrying issues in our community. I bet if I mentioned this incident to Officer Crane, she’d have a few choice words for you. For your parents, too.”
The mention of my parents jarred me into finding my voice again. “I wasn’t just playing some random prank, Ernest. I’m having a really bad day, okay? Someone treated me like dirt, and I’m having a really bad day.”
His expression softened. He turned his poky eyes on the car. “Who does this thing belong to?”
“A guy named Mike Moretti,” I admitted.
“And what did he do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” With my free hand I tugged off the clip-on bow tie and undid the top button of my shirt. “He manages the movie theater,” I added. “He’s my boss.” I hoped Ernest might assume I’d gotten mad at Mike for something work related.
It seemed like he did.
“Have some self-respect, Cody,” he said, but in a gentler tone. “Aren’t you better than this? You need to follow a higher example.”
That stopped me. I opened my fingers to reveal the leftover rusty nails nestled in my dirty palm. I glanced at the clip-on bow tie in my other hand and the crumpled paper hat lying on the ground where I’d dropped it. “You’re right,” I said. “I am. I do.”
Ernest looked pleased. He didn’t smile—I didn’t think I’d ever seen him smile—but he gave an eager nod. “I understand you’re mad, Cody, but you need to ask yourself what Jesus would do in this situation.”
But Jesus wasn’t the example I was thinking of. My head had filled with images of my film noir heroines. Rita Hayworth. Ann Savage. All of them. They wouldn’t have done something so trashy and unimaginative and shortsighted as pop the tires of the guy who’d wronged them. They would’ve gotten back at him, but they would’ve thought about it first. They would’ve come up with a plan.
I needed to do the same thing. The only question was: Could I be ruthless? Did I have the guts?
I turned around and gathered up the nails from behind the tire next to me. “I’m sorry, Ernest. I was just being stupid.”
“Not stupid.” I could tell from the pink blush coloring his cheeks he hadn’t expected his intervention to go this well. “Just human. We’re all fallen creatures.”
After we’d finished circling the car together and gathering up the rest of the nails, I said, “Can we keep this a secret, though? I just lost my head for a second. I don’t usually do stuff like this, I swear.”
Ernest bit his lip. “I suppose.” He looked up from the nails in his hand, and his eyes poked me again, but more kindly this time. “Listen, if you ever need to talk about it—about why you were so angry, I mean—I just want you to know you can come to me.” He gave my shoulder an awkward pat. “We can pray together.”
“Thanks.” I dropped the nails in the trash. “That’s very nice of you. Maybe I will. But right now I’d better get back to work.” I picked up my paper hat, smoothed it out, and stuck it back on my head. As I headed toward the movie theater’s back exit, I could feel a little swing work itself into my hips, like the spirit of one of my heroines had once again slipped inside my body. I threw a glance over my shoulder and said, “You’re a lifesaver, Ernie. I owe you one.”
* * *
Two days later Mike’s parents left for Italy. Mom watched from the living room window, shaking her head as they got into their taxi. “Leaving your son and his girlfriend in your own house for a whole summer to do Lord knows what,” she said. “It’s something I’d never do, that’s for sure.”
I told her I was running out to the Sheetz a couple blocks away to get a snack. Once I got there, though, instead of going inside, I stopped at the old pay phone next to the door and slid a few coins in.
I dialed the police.
“Hello,” I said, “I was just walking by 4537 Forest Street and saw someone suspicious entering the house. I really think you should send someone to check it out.”
“Who is this?” the lady taking the information wanted to know. I wondered if by some coincidence she might be Officer Crane.
“I’m ever so sorry,” I said with a breathy Rita Hayworth laugh, “but I don’t want to get involved. I prefer to remain anonymous.”
I hung up the phone and ran home in plenty of time to see, through my bedroom window, a police car pull up in front of the Morettis’ house and a cop walk up to the front door.
At the theater the next day, during a lull when all three movies were running and Rochelle had run out to get a Burger Bucket at the Burger Barn, I sidled over to the manager’s office door and stuck my head in. Mike and I hadn’t talked over the past couple days. When he noticed me there, his face went dark. He pushed some papers around on his desk, like he actually had something important to be doing, and said, “What is it, Cody?”
“Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say I hope things aren’t going to be weird between us. I thought about it, and you’re right. I was being silly. What happened between us last Christmas . . . It was just a casual thing, and I’m letting it go. I’m ready for us to have a purely professional relationship.”
He squinted at me like he thought I was a lunatic. “Are you sure? Because it might be easier for both of us if you just stop working here. We can make up an excuse. No one would have to suspect a thing.”
“No, Mike, please,” I begged. “I need this job. My parents are so stingy with money, and this is the only way I can have some of my own. Plus, it gets me out of the house. I think I’m going to die if I have to spend another Saturday afternoon playing Christian Scrabble with them.”
He blew out through his mouth and shook his head. It killed me to talk to him like that, like everything was just okay, and to beg him for my job, but I had to do it.
“Fine,” he said. “Just keep your distance, all right?”
I nodded. “All right. I will. Thank you, Mike.” I started to turn away. Then, exactly the way I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror in my bedroom, I stopped in his office doorway, like I’d just thought of something. “Hey, can I ask you a random question?”
He rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Rochelle’s going to be back any second.”
“But we’re just talking. She won’t think that’s weird. Anyway, the question’s a quick one. Did the police come by your house yesterday?”
He tensed. All of a sudden his hands got antsy and started shuffling papers around again. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that a cop rang our doorbell yesterday afternoon. He told my dad someone had called in saying there was a suspicious-looking prowler in the neighborhood, and he asked if he could take a look around the house. So the guy came in and searched all over. He even went in my bedroom, which I thought was weird.”
Mike gave a noncommittal shrug. “Okay.”
“So after that,” I said, “my dad was talking to Mr. O’Farrell on our other side, and he asked him if the cop had come to visit him too, and Mr. O’Farrell said he hadn’t talked to any cop. That seemed odd, though, since the officer had said he was visiting all the houses in the area. My dad got suspicious, thinking maybe the guy had targeted us for some reason, so he went by a few other houses near us and asked the same question. The cop hadn’t visited any of them either. And we just couldn’t figure it out. Why would he only come to our house?”
Staring at a stack of papers gripped in his hands, Mike said in a low voice, “He came to my house too.”
“Oh!” I opened my eyes wide in surprise. “So it wasn’t just us. That makes me feel better.” Once again I started to leave but then stopped. I grabbed the doorframe with one hand and peered back at him over my shoulder. “Although I still don’t understand why he would visit your house and mine and no one else’s.”
* * *
Now I needed to talk to Ernest again. I knew I’d see him that Sunday at church, and sure enough, there he was in the third row, boring into Paster Pete with his eyes and scribbling away on his pad each time he heard something he thought was important. After the service everybody went downstairs for something called fellowship, which was basically a time for the congregation to mill around in the multipurpose room drinking bad coffee and eating stale pastries and gossiping. As soon as Mom and Dad and my brother and sister split off to yammer with their friends, I scanned the room until I spotted Ernest’s round head of neatly combed hair. I closed in.
Ernest was deep in conversation with some old lady—it didn’t seem like he had many friends his own age—but when I edged into his field of vision and gave a little wave, he made an excuse and came right over.
“Hello, Cody,” he said, friendly but with a dash of sternness, like he wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten the circumstances of our last encounter.
“Sorry for bothering you, but you said if I ever needed to talk . . .”
His eye went big and hungry. “Of course! And I meant it!” He wav
ed me over to a quiet corner, grabbing a couple pastries on the way. After motioning for me to sit down in a metal folding chair, he slid a Danish at me across the table and said, “Go ahead.”
“You were wondering why I was so mad at Mike Moretti?”
He nodded.
“I think I’m ready to tell you. I think as president of the Teen Council on Moral Decency you should be aware.”
“Cody, I promise, you’ll feel so much better once you let it all out.” His eyes drilled into me as he absently unwound his cinnamon roll.
I folded my hands on the table, leaving the Danish untouched. It would only get in the way of my delivery. “Well, I know you’ve been going to the theater a lot lately, so you’ve probably noticed that sign next to the popcorn that says ‘Real Butter,’ right?”
“Sure. I get a carton every time I go.”
“And a small lemonade. I remember. But you see, Ernest, that sign, it’s a lie. A dark, dirty lie.”
His hand went to his mouth. The way he stared at me with his huge eyes, I felt like I was a movie screen. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Last week I discovered the theater isn’t using real butter at all, at least not anymore. It’s using soybean oil with artificial butter flavoring.”
“No!”
“Yes. Apparently, Mike switched from real butter to fake as soon as he took over, and he’s pocketing the savings. When I found out I confronted him about it. I told him I couldn’t in good conscience keep a secret like that. He flew into a rage and said he’d fire me if I told anyone. I didn’t want to lose my job. It’s the first I’ve ever had, and I don’t want my parents to be disappointed in me. So when he said that, I just felt so powerless and angry. That’s why I wanted to do something to hurt him.”
Ernest grabbed the edge of the table with both hands. “Your parents won’t be disappointed! Not if it’s a matter of conscience! Not if you’re standing up for your beliefs!”
“You’re probably right. But after I got that talking-to from you the other day, I finally calmed down enough to really think, and I realized maybe I shouldn’t be so mad at Mike. Maybe I should feel sorry for him instead. Maybe the Lord called me to this job for a purpose. So I talked to Mike some more, and he’s not really a bad guy. Just misguided. Have you seen him at the theater? Do you know who I’m talking about?”