Page 16 of The Second Chance Cinema
Ellie ignored him. She was on a mission, moving past the café tables and beyond the now-locked doors at Mae’s. Nearing the cinema, she discovered that the theory she’d pieced together was correct.
When they saw the resplendent building again, Ellie’s world turned Technicolor. Everything was restored, all the glittering lights, the marquee, and even the chandelier inside, to exactly what it had been the week before. No plywood. No dust. “The Story of Youis only for you,” Ellie marveled, breathless and alive.
“What in the world—”
Ellie ran up to the ticket booth and knocked on the glass window. The ticket boy popped up like a doll inside a wooden crank box.
“I didn’t think you were coming.” He sighed.
Ellie stole a glance at Drake’s watch. It was two minutes past midnight.
“This was just …” Drake stepped back and took in the restored theater. Ellie sensed a shift. His need for concrete answers about how a place could simply undo decades of wear in a matter of minutes had grown bigger, perhaps insurmountable. One unexplainable event was mind-blowing. But a second unexplainableevent had tipped him over the edge. He would not, Ellie sensed, be able to let it go this time. “I thought,” he gasped. “I thought we made this up. But this place was, like, shuttered,” he said. “This can’t be … What is happening?”
“The Story of Youis only for you,” the ticket boy told him.
“Why does everybody keep saying that?” Drake asked.
“It was in the cartoon the first night,” Ellie reminded him with a hand on his shoulder. “Meaning, this place only opens for us.” They had tested the other two instructions the first night. The third rule explained in the video was also true.
Drake darted up to the brass doors and started to touch them like a toddler, only believing things to be real if he could feel them. With Drake occupied, Ellie used the opportunity to sneak a question to the ticket boy in a low whisper.
“Hey, if we skip the movie tonight, do we lose a ticket?”
“No,” he said, staring at her like she’d uttered the dumbest thing on earth.
Drake muttered the wordhowas he continued to sniff around the entrance. Then, he strode over in giant steps and pulled Ellie aside. “We’re going to go in there,” he swallowed. “I need to know what’s happening right now.”
“We’ll come back next week,” Ellie said casually.
“What … no. Why?”
Ellie waved goodbye to the ticket boy and began to pull Drake down the alley. “We need to get back to our friends. They’ve been waiting too long anyway.”
“But—”
“We don’t want to be the jerks keeping a pregnant person out past bedtime, do we?” Ellie asked, yanking his arm forward harder. “Also, Nancy needs us. She’s been home alone a long time. And this theater isn’t going anywhere.”
On this note, Drake stopped to turn around. “I mean, it literally just did.”
Ellie sighed. “Look, we know that it opens every week on Saturday night for us. So, we’ll take the next few days, write down all our questions, and come up with a plan. You don’t want to forget to ask the manager something important, do you?”
“No,” Drake agreed. His shoulders relaxed in response to Ellie’s rational suggestion. The way he was hypnotized by the new development worked in her favor. He didn’t realize she was playing a card. If they spoke to the manager while Jen and Marc waited for them at the bottom of the alley, there wouldn’t be time to watch the movie. If Drake got his answers, she would have no reason to bring him back there.
And after everything they’d just seen, Ellie realized, Drake needed answers more than ever.
9
Drake suggested tacos on the drive back from Jen and Marc’s house. Ellie was hungry, too. Her defeat had kept her from ordering a scoop at Mae’s, and the sight of a glowing taco sign made her stomach growl.
“Fantastic Taco,” Ellie read as the car dove under a spinning hard shell and fell into line. Drake’s fingers drummed on the wheel. “Clearly, it’s not afantastictaco. Although Questionable Taco doesn’t have the same ring to it—”
“Ellie,” Drake said, dragging her name out. “Focus. We just saw a place undo decades of damage within, like, minutes.”
She had been there for it. She didn’t need a reminder. What Ellie needed was a way to crawl inside Drake’s brain and have a look around. She sensed that his thirst for answers about the cinema would be enough to get him back there, but she wanted one more tool in her arsenal: a way to convince him to stay and watch the movies. “Tell me what you’re feeling, Drake,” she said as the car inched forward. “Whatreallymakes you so nervous about of all this?”
He tsked. “Well, for one, this place seems to magically disappear and reappear.” The cinema hadn’t technically disappeared. Ellie wasn’t going to point that out. “But, it’s more than that.” She gave him the space to carry out the thought without interrupting. “If I’m being honest, I’m also afraid thatwe’ll see something bad in our past.” Drake glanced her way. “I mean, what if I see you having sex?”
“You see that all the time—”
