Hope’s already setting up the lawn chairs when I get home. It started out as a Halloween tradition. Her dad would get out his old projector and hang a sheet on a line between two trees, and we’d come home from trick-or-treating and stuff ourselves with Skittles and candy corn and, if we were really lucky, mini-Butterfingers, while we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. Something about sitting on a blanket with fall leaves rustling underneath it and stars overhead while we watched a movie felt like a slice of magic. Our parents seemed happier, too, although that might have had more to do with the special apple cider they were drinking.
And this year, Hope and I were thinking, why have the magic on only one night? Why not make outdoor movie night an October-long thing? So, yeah, pretty much any night that we’re free, we do it. And tonight we’re doing it as a Jayla-Spencer, Hope-Mikey double date. Just as soon as Jayla and Mikey get here.
I pick up the sheet and help Hope attach it to the clothesline. “Hey, sorry I ran out on you guys this morning,” I say.
“No worries.” She sweeps her white-blonde hair out of her face and behind her ear. “Was that guy okay?”
“Traven? Yeah, he’s good. It was pretty amazing how he almost took those guys, right? I told Coach all about him. I think he’s gonna kill it this season.”
Hope smiles. “You have a way of seeing good things in people that other people can’t.”
I shrug, but I’m so ridiculously pleased. “I know he seems kind of weird, but . . . I like him.” I think about what Paul said this morning. “I think he doesn’t fit the same way I don’t fit.”
And really, if fitting in means messing with people who are different, I don’t know that it’s something I ever want. Having Tourette’s, it’s like I can never go through life unnoticed. I can’t even walk into a room unnoticed most of the time. I’ve learned a lot about the ways people react when other people are different. Sometimes they react badly out of surprise or because they’re so nervous they say the worst thing that pops into their head. But they’re not bad people. Most people, anyway. There’s a few who will go after someone who’s different for the sport of it. Those are the ones you have to watch out for.
“Paul won’t stop talking about him, either,” Hope says. “It sounds like you guys are going to have a pretty great season.” She stares out into the trees wistfully when she says this. Maybe because we’re smack in the middle of cross-country season?
Hope doesn’t run anymore. I used to see her leave her house in a T-shirt and running shoes almost every morning in the off-season, and then, after Janie died, all hours of the day and night. She’d be gone for so long, I’d worry she wasn’t coming back. But she always did, sweat slathered and weak legged like an overworked horse. But after she ripped down the maps and stuff, nothing. Not as far as I could tell. I guess whatever she was running from finally caught her.
Hope’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out and whatever she’s seeing sucks the wind out of her sails. She flops down on the blue-and-yellow quilt, and I flop beside her.
“It’s an e-mail from my mom,” she says as she scrolls. “Sounds like our mid-semester grades are up.”
We both wince. I whip out my phone, too, because I need to know how I’m doing for wrestling eligibility. English, Chemistry, Spanish—all B’s. All okay. I got a C in History. An A in Weightlifting and one in Art, too. But a D in Trig. Shit, I knew I wasn’t doing so hot in that class. It’s the one right after lunch, which means it’s the one right after my second dose of meds, but I had no idea it was that bad. I’m a failed test away from one of Coach’s responsibility lectures.
I wonder how Hope is doing. She’s in Mrs. Ramey’s class, too, even though she skips half the time. She has her phone out, still peering at her grades. And I don’t mean to look, but then I’m looking, and, “An A? You’re getting an A in Trig? Holy crap, you’re getting an A in everything.”
Hope scowls. “I’m getting a B minus in English. Mrs. Campbell hates me.”
“I thought you were doing badly at school. You’re never there.” It slips out before I can help it, but it doesn’t seem to bug her. She just shrugs.
“It’s a Georgia public high school. It’s not like it’s—” She catches herself, kind of stutters over her words for a second, and then blurts, “My mom’s been on me. Like about school and stuff. And it sucks. So, sometimes, I have to get away for a little while. Blow off some steam.”
“Right.” I jab a button on my phone with an unnecessary amount of force. It’s not like I want her to be doing bad at school—she’s my friend. But it makes me feel like such a loser that she skips every chance she gets and still does great while I’m busting my butt and barely making it. If it’s so easy for her and so easy for Dean, what does that say about me? That I’m stupid?
I don’t know why, but this confession starts pouring out of her. “I feel like I have to be two people. Before I was just Hope. And now it’s like I have to be Hope-plus-Janie. Go to the same school. Do all the same stuff. Live the same life. I have to be everything for my parents and do everything, and sometimes I can’t, and I lose it, and I call Mikey. He’s good about helping me forget.”
I don’t want to push. I don’t want to, but: “What would you want to do if you weren’t being Hope-plus-Janie? If you were just being Hope?”
“I don’t know.” She says it like a reflex, and then she doesn’t say anything for so long, I worry I’ve messed up. “We had so many plans. When Janie got married, she was going to pick me to be her maid of honor—even though she’s got a million best friends—because she said there’s no one in the world as important as me. But she never got to get married. And she never got to have kids, and it kills me, because she’d be the best mom in the world. She was always talking about how we’d take our kids and go on beach vacations together, and how even if we had to live in different cities, they’d be pen pals. And honestly, it used to kind of freak me out because I am SO not ready to start thinking about stuff like kids, but now? Now it’s like someone took a sledgehammer to my future and plucked out all the pieces that involved Janie. And without those pieces, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put the future together again.” She stares at the white sheet draped between the trees like she’ll find the answers there. “I want those beach vacations,” she says softly. “Do you know how hard it is to have someone that important not be around?”
I do, a little. But really, I just want to say something to make her feel better right now. I think about putting my hand on hers. Instead, I put my hand on the blanket next to hers. “You know if she could be here with you, she would. She’d never leave you on purpose.”
“Oh, gosh, Spencer, I’m so selfish. Of course you know what it’s like.”
Hope has this terrified, I-just-gutted-my-friend look on her face, and I rush to fix it. “It’s different, though. I get to know she’s out there. That makes it a lot easier.”
We’re quiet for a bit, debating the universe’s cruel game of Would You Rather.
“I’m fine with it now. I really am,” I say.
Hope puts her hand on top of mine. “Spencer, do you—”
“Movie time!!!” yells a loud, unwanted, and most definitely male voice behind us.
Hope and I jump apart on the blanket. Mikey doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy pushing buttons on the projector like he’s early man trying to make fire. I almost don’t realize Jayla is with him until the leaves crunch under the weight of her leather boots. Her eyes are on the spot on the blanket where Hope’s hand touched mine. Uh-oh.
“Is there any food?” asks Mikey. “I had the longest day ever at the shop, and I’m starving.”
He’s been working at Ethan’s dad’s body shop since he squeaked by with a diploma last May.
“Do you want to help me carry the snacks?” Jayla’s voice is fast and pinched. “I went inside, and Pam said you were out here, and she made us snacks.” Oh yeah, I’m definitely in trouble.
I don’t even look at Hope as we leave, just to be safe.
As soon as we’re out of earshot, Jayla asks, “What were you guys talking about?”
“Nothing. Just—” Her shoulders hunch. I decide to tell her the truth. “My mom.”
This piece of information seems to completely change her mind. From what to what, I have no idea, but of the fact that it is changed, I am certain.
“Oh. I’ve never heard you talk about her before.”
“I don’t, usually.”
I stop talking abruptly as we enter the kitchen and pick up a plate of veggie sticks and ranch and another of cake pops (guess which one we’re going to eat first).
“The ones with the dark-chocolate coating are low sugar, low carb,” calls Pam over the hum of the blender.
“Thanks, Pam,” I say. When we’re back on the porch, I sit down with the snacks. “I try not to bring her up in front of Pam. Or, well, my dad.”
Jayla nods seriously.
“My mom’s a singer, mostly country, but with a sultry, bluegrass kind of feel. Well, that’s what Dad says, anyway. She left when I was five.”
Jayla squeezes my shoulder. “That must have been really hard.”
I shrug.
“That’s so cool that she’s a singer, though. Is she, like, a big deal? Would I have heard of her?” Her hands fly around in kind of a giddy way.
“I don’t know.”
“Can we go see one of her concerts? You should take me backstage and let me meet her. I have so many questions for her, as a fellow performer.”
“Um.” I suddenly don’t feel like explaining that I haven’t seen her since she left. That I don’t even know where she is. “If I go to one of her shows, I’ll definitely take you.”
Jayla claps her hands together. “Cool! Wow, a singer. I can’t believe you never told me this before.”
I stand up and head to the outdoor movie theater. “Yeah. Me neither.”
Hope gives me a sympathy smile as I approach. I get the impression she heard all of that.
“We desperately need your help picking a movie,” she says.
“We desperately need your help convincing Hope that Phantom of the Opera doesn’t qualify as a Halloween movie,” Mikey says. “I’m thinking House of 1000 Corpses.”
“Yeah, no.”
“I thought we were watching The Nightmare Before Christmas,” says Jayla.
“We only watch that on Halloween night,” Hope and I say simultaneously.
“Oh.” Jayla crosses her arms.
“Hostel? The Evil Dead?” Mikey chimes in.
“We could watch Rent,” says Hope.
“You made me watch Rent the last time I played World of Warcraft all night and forgot we had a date the next day,” says Mikey. “And, again, not a Halloween movie.”
“Okay, Little Shop of Horrors, then.”
“I will die if I have to watch another musical. What about Paranormal Activity? Oh! Or how about Saw IV?”
“They made a fourth one of those?” Hope’s lip curls in disgust.
“You’re right,” says Mikey. “We should go with the original.”
I remember that I’m supposed to be contributing instead of making A Taxonomy of All the Best Halloween Movies in my head. “We could watch Hocus Pocus,” I say.
“Well, sure,” says Mikey. “And since we’re five years old, we could watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown after and make it a double feature.”
Jayla, who has been watching this whole exchange like some kind of stone-cold Queen of the Vampires, uncrosses her arms and smiles.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I have the solution,” she says smugly. “Four words. Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
She throws the movie title like a gauntlet.
Hope’s eyes light up. “YES.”
“I’ve never seen it before,” I say.
“So, that’s a DOUBLE YES,” says Hope.
Mikey throws his hands up. “I am not watching a movie about a—”
Hope puts a finger to his lips. “Oh, yes you are, and if you ever want to see the Halloween underwear I’m wearing, you’re going to keep any and all hateful comments to yourself.”
“But—”
She hands him a cake pop, and he stuffs it in his mouth.
“Fine,” he grumbles.
Jayla tucks her legs underneath her and snuggles up to me, while Hope queues up the movie. Mikey looks like he wants to say something else, but instead eats another cake pop. Probably a good move.
The opening frames of the movie appear on the sheet in front of us. The onscreen trees seem to ripple because there’s a light breeze. I bite into a cake pop, and it explodes in my mouth with caramel-cinnamon magic.
And the stars wink at us from overhead.
And my arm is around my girlfriend.
And my best friend watches movies with me again.
And today is the best of all days.