I sighed. “Don’t do this.”
“C’mon, dude. We should record this moment.”
“Can’t the moment just be a moment?”
“Sh-h-h. Try to look pretty.” Dave pursed his lips coyly. I wore my usual expression, something between resignation and disdain—resigdain. The camera blinked, and Dave released me so he could type. “Hashtag: LastNightAtTheCinegore.”
“Yeah,” I said, checking the pressure in the soda jets. “Going out with a bang.”
“Exactly. Last night,” Dave said meaningfully. He jerked his head in the direction of the lobby’s far end, where the object of my unrequited affections, Dani García, had positioned the yellow DO NOT FALL ON YOUR ASS AND SUE US cone in front of the ladies’ lounge while she mopped. Her aqua-dyed hair had been cut into a Bettie Page do, then shaved on one side, above an ear that sported an array of earrings stacked like tiny silver vertebrae. For months, I’d been making a movie in my head starring the two of us. In that movie, we fought off a variety of monsters and saved the free world. Then we had celebratory sex. Which meant that there was a narrative in which we had also had a date. Which we hadn’t. Not even close.
“You do the deed yet?” Dave asked around a mouthful of half-chewed gummi bears. Rainbow spit dribbled down his chin.
I grimaced and handed him a napkin.
Dave moaned, “Aw, you pussied out, didn’t you?”
“‘Pussied out’ is sexist. I prefer ‘made a strong choice for cowardice.’”
“Keva-a-a-an—”
“Dude. Shut up.” I glanced over at the bathroom. Dani had moved inside with her mop. The door was closed. “I’m gonna do it,” I said quietly, pushing my glasses up on my nose. “Just … not tonight.”
Dave tossed two gummi bears at me in rapid succession. “Why? Not?”
“Ow?”
Dave threatened a third attack-gummi. I put up my hand. “It’s … just not the right moment.”
“Dude. Did Lincoln wait for the right moment to make the Gettysburg Address?”
“Yeah, Dave. He waited for Gettysburg to happen.”
“Whatever.” The third gummi bear bounced off my cheek and landed in the Sartresque territory beneath the ice bin. “The point is, you make it the right moment. Tonight’s the last night you’re gonna see her up close and personal. You’ve got two months of summer left, and then she’s off to college, and then you’ll be kicking yourself at our high school reunion because she’ll be married to some heavily tattooed, Bentley-driving rock star and she won’t even remember your name. She’ll be all, ‘Oh, hey, Kyle, right? Didn’t we work together or something? Wait, you’re that lame ginger dude who didn’t have the stones to ask me out!’”
I yanked my skinny, freckled arms through the sleeves of my regulation red Cinegore usher’s jacket, the one that made me look like a deranged Michael Jackson tribute band member. “Thanks for the encouragement, Dave. You always know just the right thing to say.”
Dave ignored my sarcasm. “I’m here to save you from yourself. And from a life of perpetual masturbation.”
“Dave.”
“Yes, Pookie Bear?”
“Die in a fire.”
“You’re so pretty when you’re angry,” Dave said, and kissed me on the cheek. “Ask her.”
“Ask her what?” Dani had emerged from the bathrooms. She wiped her hands on a paper towel, wadded it into a tight ball, and arced it toward the trash can, pumping her fist when it landed inside, a perfect two-pointer.
“Oh, um. We were talking about I Walk This Earth,” I said quickly, pouring the artificial butter mixture—the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Going to Kill Me—into the popcorn hopper.
Dani snorted. I found it devastatingly attractive. In the movie in my head, she did that a lot. It was an audience pleaser. She grabbed the tongs and poked with disinterest at the overcooked hot dogs sweating under the heat lamps. “Ri-i-ight. The movie that’s supposed to be cursed. Ooh!”
“Have you never seen Showgirls? Movies can be cursed.” Dave raised his right hand. “Truth.”
Dani rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say bad. I said cursed. As in, not supposed to be seen by human eyes. Ever. How did Scratsche get his hands on a copy of it, anyway? I thought it was in some lead-lined safe deposit box somewhere.”
I broke open a carton of straws and started shoving handfuls of them into the pop-up dispenser on the counter. “Beats me. As for the curse: according to that paragon of journalistic integrity, the Deadwood Daily Herald—circulation eight hundred and two, unless somebody died this afternoon—I Walk This Earth allegedly opens a gateway to hell as it’s played. Kinda like when you sync up The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon, but minus the drugs and plus demons.”
Dani smiled big, and it kick-started my own movie montage.
SCENE 12: Dani and Kevin run through a meadow of bluebonnets while a sensitive rock-folk band on a nearby hill plays an acerbic but heartfelt love song. Dani wears a white sundress that exposes the cool Japanese cherry tree tattoo with her little brother’s name under it that decorates her upper arm.
“Take this mug I made for you in Ironic Ceramics class,” she says, and hands me a cup that’s completely solid, no hole.
“Thanks. I love ironic coffee most of all,” I answer, and the camera catches the sexy stubble that lines my action-hero jaw.
Our faces move in for a kiss. We never notice the zombie horde advancing toward the emo folk singers.
I snapped out of my reverie to see Dani looking at me, eyebrows raised.
“Anyway,” I said, blushing. “What with this being the end of the Cinegore, you’d think Scratsche would show up tonight.”
Dani grabbed two straws and shoved them over her incisors like fangs. “He’s probably home roasting children in his oven.”
Dave shrugged and double dipped in the nacho cheese sauce. “Just more grist for the Scratsche rumor mill.”
For several decades, Mr. Scratsche had been Deadwood, Texas’s, favorite urban legend. He’d moved to town in 1963, when the nation was still mourning its beautiful promise of a president, and promptly bought Deadwood’s run-down 1920s movie palace, the Cinemore Theater. Within a year, he’d turned it into a horror movie palace nicknamed “the Cinegore,” due to its bloody slate of films. The Cinegore featured state-of-the-art details like Smell-O-Vision, Tingler shocker seats, skeletons that zoomed above the audience’s heads on an invisible wire, and the only screen outfitted for 3-D in a forty-mile radius. People used to come from as far away as Abilene to see a first run. Personally, I can’t imagine why anybody would want to build anything in Deadwood, Texas, which is true to its name. Leaving Deadwood is pretty much the best option out there. If you’re somebody who has options.
Anyway.
No one had seen old Scratsche in years, not even us. When the Cinegore staff was hired, we’d each had to fill out a short, weird questionnaire about our hopes, dreams, and fears. Afterward, I’d gotten a brief note in the mail, written in very formal script, that said, Congratulations. You are a good fit for the Cinegore, Mr. Grant. Sincerely, Mr. Nicholas Scratsche.
His reclusiveness fed the appetite for speculation: He was from Transylvania. He was from a circus town in Florida. He was tall. He was short. He was a defrocked priest specializing in off-book exorcisms. He’d killed the son of a nobleman back in the old country and was hiding out here. There were dozens of rumors but only three pieces of tangible evidence that Mr. Scratsche had ever existed at all. One was the Cinegore. Two was his signature on our paychecks. And three was a framed black-and-white photo that hung on the badly lit wall of the staircase leading up to the projection room, a photo of Scratsche cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Cinegore, October 31, 1964.