Page 15 of The Second Chance Cinema
“I just don’t love Ellie’s plan,” Drake told them. From across the way, Ellie could see the warped skyline reflected in his eyes. Sometimes, at night, she watched herself there, two tiny, confused specks on fixed television screens. “I don’t want to do Ellie’s thing,” he insisted.
Jen turned toward Marc. “The kids are fighting.”
“Must be all that wedding planning,” Marc added. “It gets to you, doesn’t it? The spreadsheets, the phone calls, those glass jars—”
“Mason jars,” Jen clarified. “They’re called mason jars.”
“We’re not fighting,” Drake and Ellie spat out at the same time.
Then, Drake alone, too scared to look at her, said, “I just think that Ellie’s idea is dangerous.”
“Dangerous!” Jen said. “Well, we like danger.”
Marc grunted in the driver’s seat.
“But it’s like, a safe danger, I assume?” Jen clarified.
Drake sighed. “It’s more, like, mind danger.”
“It’s safe,” Ellie told them. “It’s just hard to explain.”
As they parked near the bottom of the alley and piled out, Ellie’s sense of wonder took over. Drake left Ellie to open her own door. Jen mentioned how she’d been wanting to come to this part of town; she’d heard there was a shop that sold caramel apples with complicated flavors.
Ellie headed the pack. They started up the hill, passing the leftover café chairs and trekking beyond Mae’s Famous Scoops, which was still lit up for late-night stragglers. Drake made attempts to veer their group off course, but Ellie had her eye on the target. When she neared the cinema, though, her throat hollowed out. She couldn’t move.
Something had changed. Something was wrong.
Maybe, she told herself, the cinema was just closed for the night. Old theaters closed all the time for special events or screenings. But when she landed there, square in front of the building, it was much more closed than she’d anticipated. Nothing was as it had been a week earlier. Horror settled in.
The marquee that spelled outThe Story of Youwas now empty. The ticket boy was nowhere in sight, his booth covered in weathered graffiti. Years of rain had pelted the plywood covering the entry doors. Through the slats, Ellie could see the lobby was a universe of decay. Thick industrial plastic coated the floors, and a big black ceiling opening where the chandelier used to be now housed a galaxy of dust. There was so much dust that looking at it made her sneeze.
The footfalls of the other three landed behind her.
“Wow,” Marc said. “Cobweb central, huh?”
“It’s like a prom for spiders in there,” Jen joked.
Ellie turned to face them. She met Drake’s eyes first, and his expression wasn’t what she expected. Drake was placid as a lake. He must have been telling himself that none of it was real. To him, what they’d encountered was a bad dream.
“Uh, this isn’t the actual stop,” Drake said quickly. “We found this place the other night.” Ellie joined the row of her friends and the four of them gazed upon the decayed marvel. An open wound. “Ice cream,” Drake said. “Mae’s Famous Scoops is the best.” They had never been to Mae’s, but the shop would be open quite late. Ellie remembered the lights had just turned off as they’d climbed up the alley the week before. “Their scoops are so good, you could almost call them dangerous,” he quipped.
Inside the ice cream shop, coins rattled in the miniature jukebox at their bright pink booth. Like Jen’s house, Mae’s was the type of place Ellie would have loved on any other night. Jen and Marc ordered a banana split to share, and Drake went with his trusty mint chocolate chip. Ellie watched the door waiting for a sign—the ticket boy or someone who came in claiming to be the cinema’s manager, but they were the last customers. The night had spun in Drake’s favor. He was in the middle of telling a story she’d already heard about a plumber acquaintance who didn’t know how to fix sinks. When his eyes caught hers across the table, Ellie swore they said, “I told you so.”
“You were right, Drake,” Jen said later as they climbed back into the car. “That wasn’t just ice cream. That was amazing,” which made Ellie feel impossibly sad. Her friend didn’t know what could’ve been, what she’d missed, the life-altering experience they might have shared. They were all strapped in the car again with the headlights on, ready to pull off the curb, when Ellie was struck by a thought.
“I forgot something in Mae’s,” she said. “A scarf.”
“You weren’t wearing a scarf,” Jen reminded her.
“It was minimal. You wouldn’t have even noticed it. I’ll be back in a second.” She flung the door open and hopped out of the car without permission. Drake didn’t follow, so Ellie opened his door and made a demand. “You’re coming with me.”
Once they were on their own, he repeated what Jen had said.
Ellie hadn’t worn a scarf.
“A car full of scarf police.”
“What are we doing?” Drake’s hands were in his pockets. She sensed his mind was already back in the suburbs. “We just proved that it wasn’t real,” he said. “The theater was never real, Ellie. We imagined it that night. Okay?”
