Mix #4
West Coast
Coconut Records
Heartbreak Yellow
Andy Davis
Our Deal
Best Coast
Dance for You
Dirty Projectors
We Can Work It Out
The Beatles
Crystallized
Young the Giant
Breaking It Up
Lykke Li
Airplanes
Curtis Anderson
Dreaming
Smallpools
Kiss Me Slowly
Parachute
Magic (feat. Rivers Cuomo)
B.o.B
Peggy-O
Among the Oak & Ash
Step Out
José González
City Living
Curtis Anderson
Golden Slumbers
The Beatles
No One Does It Like You
Department of Eagles
Gone, Gone, Gone
Phillip Phillips
Fallen
Imagine Dragons
Spitting Fire
The Boxer Rebellion
Yesterday
The Beatles
Simple Song
The Shins
Passenger Seat
Death Cab For Cutie
Thoughts at Arby’s
Curtis Anderson
Midnight City
M83
About Today
The National
Wake Up
Arcade Fire
I didn’t recognize most the songs, so I pressed Play on the song that had been paused, slipping one of his earphones in. I was confused at first, because I didn’t hear music. There was just the sound of laughter, some people clapping, like I’d heard that first night in his truck. And then a guy with a Boston accent saying, “But seriously . . . in a well-ordered universe, we wouldn’t have doormen, am I right? Like, we open doors for ourselves all day long. But in this one instance we become totally helpless?”
I looked up at Frank, who wasn’t laughing anymore. “Is this that comedian?”
“Curtis Anderson,” Frank said with a nod. “I don’t know, I’ve always thought he was funny. Lissa thought he was really juvenile, but . . .” He shrugged.
“Is that what you’ve been running to?” I asked. Frank nodded, and I shook my head at him. “That’s your problem. You need to make a mix with songs that will pump you up and get you through the run.”
“I see,” Frank said, nodding, his expression serious. “Like songs about fishermen?” I laughed at that without even thinking about it first and looked back down at his playlist.
“These aren’t real bands,” I said, as I scrolled through it. “Like, these have to be made-up names.”
“You mean like the Beatles?” Frank asked, deadpan, as he tried to take his iPod back, and I pretended not to notice.
“Not like the Beatles,” I said, as I finished scrolling through the songs. “But there are a lot of their songs on here.”
“Told you I was obsessed.”
“But ‘Department of Eagles’ is fake, right?” I said as I handed him back his iPod and he gave me mine. “That’s not a real band.”
Frank just looked surprised. “You’ve never heard them? They’re great. I’ll make you a mix.”
He said this so easily, like he was sure we’d be seeing each other again, like these weren’t just isolated incidents. But I suddenly realized I didn’t want them to be. And so when we reached Frank’s house and he said, “Do this again soon?” I nodded, hoping that it would be true.
“Got any big plans for the weekend?” he asked as he stretched out his quads, and I found myself watching, with more interest than I probably should have had, to see if he’d lift up his shirt to wipe his face again.
“Oh,” I said, thinking fast. For a second, I thought about telling him the truth, but then immediately decided against it. “Not that much. You know.”
“Well, hope it’s good,” Frank said, giving me a wave. I waved back and I started to walk toward home, telling myself that I’d done the right thing. Because even if he had offered to help me out with the list, I had a feeling that the student body president would not have been happy to learn that I was planning on crossing off number three on Saturday night. I was going to steal something.
5
SHARE SOME SECRETS IN THE DARK
I sat inside my car at the Hartfield drive-in and looked around, wishing I knew what, exactly, was involved in casing a joint. The heist movies I’d seen hadn’t really been very specific. Luckily, though, it wasn’t like this place was unknown to me. Sloane had introduced me to it after she’d only been in town for a month. I had never been to a drive-in before, but I’d loved it after the first movie—the big screen set up at one end of a field, the cars parked in slightly crooked rows, the speakers you could hang over the window of your car, the way they always played double features.
We went a few times every summer, the first year with my parents dropping us off, sitting on beach towels or blankets in front of the screen. But last summer, I’d driven us, and we’d been able to park with everyone else.
I let out a long breath, hoping that I didn’t seem suspicious, and that I looked like I was just there, like everyone else, to see a Hitchcock double feature of North by Northwest and The Lady Vanishes, and not to commit my first crime.
Number three had been a question mark since I first read the list. It wasn’t so much the stealing itself, but figuring out what to steal. But when, driving home from the gas station, I’d passed a billboard for the drive-in, I’d remembered a promise I’d made to Sloane two years earlier, and just like that, I’d known what it had to be.
JULY
Two Years Earlier
“The usual?” Sloane asked, and I nodded.
“Definitely.” Sloane and I had only seen a handful of movies together so far, but we already worked out our routine, snack-wise. She was the one who had introduced me to the concept of shaking M&M’s into the bag of buttered, salted popcorn and using Twizzlers as straws for Diet Coke. I had, in turn, gotten her hooked on the sour gummy candy that I never liked to see a movie without.
We pooled our cash as we made our way up to the concession stand, a tiny building that looked like it had been there forever, and when Sloane reached the front of the line, I took a step back to let her order. “Large popcorn,” she said as I looked around the stand. There were vintage posters on the walls and framed pictures of the drive-in throughout the years. “M&M’s, Twizzlers, two Diet Cokes.” The guy behind the counter nodded and grabbed a bag for our popcorn, and I was happy to see that it looked like a fresh batch had just been made. I was about to remind Sloane to get extra butter when she grabbed my arm and pointed to a sign resting on one of the concession stand shelves, half tucked behind a display of Hartfield Drive-In T-shirts and mugs. “Look.”