Page 23 of The Second Chance Cinema
The knock at the door couldn’t have come at a better time. Whispers darted across the room as five neat rows of girls turned to see who was responsible. When Ellie joined them, she spotted the daring green eyes she knew so well.
“My mom wants me to pick up my sister,” Ben said with the charisma of a movie star trapped in a much younger body.
“I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Marshall,” Ben offered. “Ellie’s brother.”
The teacher surrendered the measuring cups to her wood cutting board. Flour puffed out around her face in a cloud. “We need a parent’s note to dismiss summer students.”
Ben gave her a slight nod. “I hear that. The thing is, Ellie won an award.”
The teacher raised her neatly plucked eyebrows. “What is the award?”
“Little Miss … She’s won the Little Miss Manners Contest.” Ellie coughed to cover up her laugh. Using a believable excuse would’ve been too easy. Ben delighted in finding complicated ways out of family obligations—fake Cub Scout troops that needed a leader for the weekend or school projects turned into cutting-edge business ventures. “It’s part beauty pageant, part manners contest,” he elaborated. “Anyway, we have to hurry so Ellie can get into her dress.”
Amazingly, the plan worked.
“Part beauty pageant, part manners contest?” Ellie recapped outside of the school. “Mom is going to ground us into the next century.”
“Well, lucky for us, Mom is not going to find out. You’re looking at a seasoned escape artist.” Ben led her away from the schoolbuilding. As they walked, the rules bent and lost their shape. Youth made lines more nebulous. Ellie followed him without asking where they were going. “Besides, nobody should rot in summer school on their tenth birthday.”
“I guess so,” Ellie agreed. “I think I was about to bake my own cake.”
“Pie, Ellie. I saw the recipe on the blackboard. It was a pie.” Ellie straggled behind him. The shoes she’d been forced to wear were to blame; they were a pair of white kitten heels all wrong for hijinks. Ben stopped and waited for her to catch up, with his hands on his waist. “Despite your current getup, you’d make a terrible housewife.”
A short walk past the parking lot and a long stretch of Tudor homes led them to a small downtown area. Ben pushed open the doors of a shop that exploded with bold colors and patterns strung from circular racks. Their hands grazed an ocean of textures, and Ben called out the type of person who would wear each garment. “Motorcycle lady!” he shouted as he flung a leather jacket off the hanger and slid it over Ellie’s arms. A slight spin in front of a long mirror revealed a pair of white angel wings and script font on the back.
“Property of Bobby,” Ellie read. “How did you know about this place?”
“I found it last week.” It was only the second week of summer school for them, which meant Ben hadn’t made it through a single sitting of his beginner’s Latin class. He set his hands on her shoulders. “You want the jacket?” Ellie shook her head no. What she did want was a pair of shorts, she said. Not expensive khaki shorts made for private boat charters like her mom picked out. She wanted the denim ones in her hand, which were embellished with highlighter-pink stitching along the pockets.
After Ben paid for the shorts, he bought her an ice cream, too. “I loved that place,” Ellie told him, lowering herself onto the hot curb. She spooned a runny bite of Rocky Road into her mouth.
“Cool, huh?” Rainbow sprinkles dotted Ben’s nose. “It’s not like the new expensive stuff Mom buys,” he said. “It’s all old. Vintage.”
Ellie had never heard that word before. Vintage.
“Did you use your allowance for the shorts?” Ellie asked. “I can pay you back.”
Ben shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” He broke into his Marlon Brando impression. “Happy birthday, Little Miss Manners.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Ben rubbed the top of Ellie’s head, which messed up her hair. She left it that way.
By the time Ellie and Ben made it back to the school, Sandra’s car was waiting by the parent pickup. Their mom was hard to read. She barely looked up from the women’s magazine she had fanned over the front wheel, using the spare minutes to find her perfect summer lip shade. They gave each other a look as they buckled into the backseat. Had their mom seen them walking from the opposite direction from where their classes let out? Were they busted?
Maybe Sandra had missed the shopping bag in Ellie’s hand. Or maybe, based on her little smirk that Ellie hadn’t noticed back then, Sandra Marshall loosened the grip on her otherwise strict rules because it was Ellie’s birthday. Maybe, just maybe, she had actually let their big escape slide.
11
As the movie ended and the tasseled curtain glided shut, Ellie wished she and Drake were at a diner. Under the light of a Googie-style sign, with a bottomless cup of black coffee in hand, they could talk about what they saw all night.
“That was incredible,” Drake would tell her, smacking a sugar packet with his thumb before emptying it into his mug. “The vintage store … It sparked your love of everything old and forgotten, didn’t it?” He’d stop his thought to question her grin. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she’d say, on the edge of her seat. “I was just thinking about how you are a lifetime romantic.”
“And you, Ellie, have always been a rule breaker at heart.”
