Kindred Spirits (2 page)

Gabe didn’t move. So Elena got up and walked into the theater. The manager kept an eye on her the whole time, like she might sneak in to see a movie. She should. It was so
warm
inside the theater.

When she got back outside, Gabe took his turn.

“We have to save his spot,” Troy said, “and look out for his things as if they were our own. Code of the Line.” He held his bag of popcorn out over Gabe’s sleeping
bag.

Elena took some. “What invalidates the code?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, are there any circumstances where someone loses their spot?”

“That is a fine question,” he said. “I mean, some things are obvious. If someone takes off, without telling anyone or leaving any collateral—they’re out. I think
there’s a time limit, too. Like, you can’t just go home and take a nap and expect to come back to your spot. Everybody else is here, earning it, you know? You don’t get a free
pass for that. Though there are always exceptions . . .”

“There are?”

“We’re human. We had a guy in the
Phantom Menace
line who had to leave for therapy. We saved his place. But another guy tried to go to work, he said he was going to lose his
job . . . We pushed his tent out of line.”

“You did?” Popcorn fell out of Elena’s mouth. She picked it up. “That’s
brutal
.”

“No—” Troy was grave—“that’s life. We were all going to lose our jobs. I camped out for three weeks. You think I got three weeks’ vacation? At the
zoo?”

“You worked at the zoo?”

“You’ve got to sacrifice something for this experience,” Troy said, refusing to be sidetracked. “That’s why we’re here. You’ve got to leave some blood
on the altar. I mean, you heard Mark. If you just want to see the new Star Wars movie, you can buy your ticket online and then forget about it until show time. But if you want to wait in line, you
wait in line
, you know?”

Elena was nodding. Gabe was standing on the sidewalk. “Did you just vote me out of the line?” he asked.

Troy laughed. “No, dude, you’re good—you want some popcorn?”

Gabe took some and sat down.

Elena had been imagining this day for months. She’d been planning it for weeks.

This wasn’t what she was expecting from the line experience.

This was more like being in an elevator with two random people. Like being
stuck
in an elevator.

Elena had been expecting . . . Well, more people, obviously. And more of a party. A celebration!

She’d thought it would be like all those photos she’d seen when she was a kid and the last Star Wars movies came out. All those fans out on the street, in communion with each
other.

Elena had been too young to camp out then. Her dad wouldn’t even let her
see
the prequels. He said she was too young. And then, when she grew up, he said they were too terrible.
“
They’ll just corrupt your love of Star Wars
,” he said. “
I wish I could unsee them
.”

So even though Star Wars was Elena’s whole life at ten, she didn’t get to go to the party.

She was eighteen now. She could do whatever she wanted.
So where was the party?

The afternoon was even more mind-numbing than the morning.

Her mom drove by three or four more times. Elena pretended not to notice. She read a few chapters of a Star Wars book. Troy pointed out that all the expanded-universe books weren’t canon
any more—“Disney erased them from the timeline.” Elena said she didn’t care, that she liked them anyway.

At nightfall, people started showing up for the evening movies, and Troy got into a fight with Mark about refilling his popcorn. “It says, ‘
Endless refills same day
only
,’” Troy said.

“You’re perverting the intent,” Mark said.

Elena kept hoping that some of the people walking towards the theater were there to join the line—there were two thirty-something guys in Star Wars shirts who looked like good candidates,
and a few college girls who looked nerdy enough—but they all walked right by.

Elena had stripped down to her Princess Leia T-shirt, but now that the sun was gone, she started reapplying her layers.

Maybe her mom was right. Maybe Elena should leave and come back when the line really got going . . .

What would Troy say? “
There was an Asian girl who hung out with us for a few hours; then her mom made her leave.
”

No, this was it. If Elena bailed, she couldn’t come back.

She wrapped herself in her sleeping bag and pulled on a woolen hat with a big red pompom, taking a few more years off her appearance.

The fight with Mark seemed to leave Troy in a funk. He put in earplugs and watched Netflix on his phone. Elena watched him hungrily—she was dying to use her phone. Her whole world was in
there. Sitting outside in the cold and dark would be so much more bearable if she could read fanfiction or text her friends. But she only had one back-up battery pack to last four days . . . At
least it was still bright enough to read. She was sitting just below a lit up Star Wars poster.

Her mom pulled up in front of the theater again at ten. Elena got up and walked to the car.

“I don’t like this,” her mom said. “People are going to think you’re homeless.”

“No one will think that.”

“Homeless people are going to bother you.”

“Probably not.”

“I talked to Dì Janet and she says you can buy your movie ticket online.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s just that—” Her mom rubbed her temple. “Elena, I think this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

“That’s a good thing, Mom. Think about how much worse it could be.”

Her mom frowned and handed her a warm covered dish. “You answer your texts tonight.”

“I will.”

Elena stepped away from the car.

“Don’t worry about her!” Troy shouted from behind her. “She’s in good hands!”

Elena’s mom looked aghast. But she still drove away.

“I’m sorry,” Troy said. “Did I make that worse? I meant the hands of the line.”

“It’s OK,” Elena said, finding her spot against the wall.

Mark the theater manager came out one more time to give them a last call for the bathroom and concessions, which was pretty decent of him.

Troy was asleep by eleven, stretched out on his chair with an inflatable pillow wedged between him and the wall. He’d wrapped himself in fleece blankets, tipped his head back, and that was
it.

Elena had planned to roll out her sleeping bag and sleep lying down. But that was back when she’d imagined a few dozen campers. It was different with just three people, and she felt too
exposed at the end of the line. If she fell asleep lying down, someone could just drag her away in the night, and Troy and Gabe would never notice.

She didn’t think she was afraid of Troy and Gabe themselves. Troy hadn’t said anything pervy yet. Not even about Princess Leia. And Gabe seemed painstakingly uninterested in
Elena.

Her mom didn’t trust them, but her mom didn’t trust any guys. She used to just have it in for white guys. (“
White guys are the worst. They rap 2 Live Crew lyrics at you and
expect you to laugh
.”) But ever since she and Elena’s dad had separated four years ago, her mom had taken a stand against any and every man, especially where Elena was concerned.
“
Learn from my mistakes
,” she said.

Learn what?
Elena wondered. Avoid men? Avoid love? Avoid radiologists who buy movie-replica lightsabers?

Usually when her mom gave her warnings like this, Elena would just give her a thumbs up. Like,
No prob, Bob
.

Because it really wasn’t a problem. Avoid men? Done! This had literally never been an issue for her. When other girls complained about how to deal with unwanted male attention, Elena
wouldn’t feel jealous exactly, but she would feel curious—how does one go about attracting such attention? And is it impossible to attract just some of it? Just a small, manageable
amount? Or was attention from boys all or nothing, like a tap that, once you’d found it, you could never turn off?

Elena’s teeth were starting to chatter, and it wasn’t even that cold out. But the cold of the ground had crept through her sleeping bag, through her jeans, through her long underwear
and tights, and settled into her bones.

“You’ve gotta put something under your sleeping bag,” Gabe said. “Or get off the ground.”

She looked where his butt must be. He lifted the side of his sleeping bag up. He was sitting on cardboard, two or three pieces.

“Does that work?” she asked.

“It helps,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have a spare box on me . . .”

Gabe sighed. “Hold my spot.”

He got up and shuffled out of his sleeping bag, walking down the street and disappearing behind the building. When he came back, he was carrying a few cardboard boxes. Raisinets. Sour Patch
Kids.

“You take mine,” he said.

“What?”

“Move up, unless you don’t want to sit between us. Troy’s an excellent windbreak.”

Elena shuffled over to Gabe’s pile of boxes, pulling her things with her. Gabe quickly made himself a new nest and settled down again.

“It does help,” Elena said. “Thanks.”

She tested her instincts, to see if she felt any less safe sitting between these two strangers than on the end. No. She felt about the same. “You just want
me
to have to listen to
Troy’s stories,” she whispered.

“We can switch back in the morning,” he said.

“Do you know him?” she asked. “Troy?”

“I didn’t know him before,” Gabe said, “but I have been sitting next to him for four days . . .”

Gabe picked up his book.

“Thanks,” Elena said again.

Gabe didn’t answer.

It didn’t seem like Elena had slept, but she must have. She woke up slumped over her backpack with a patch of cold saliva on her chin.

“Star Wars!” someone was shouting from a car driving by.

“Star Wars!” Troy shouted back, raising his fist.

Yes
, Elena thought,
Star Wars.
That’s what this experience needed: more Star Wars.

Elena was going to rally.

So this wasn’t the jubilant, communal, public display of affection she’d been expecting—it could still be
something
. It could still be memorable. She’d make it
memorable.

“What does the Code of the Line say about going to Starbucks?” she asked.

Troy answered: “Totally acceptable as long as you bring back some for us.”

Elena walked the six blocks to Starbucks and hung out in the bathroom for a while, painting little Yodas on her cheeks. She had the Starbucks barista write character names on their cups. Troy
was Admiral Ackbar, Gabe was General Dodonna, and Elena was Mon Mothma.

When she got back to the line, she took out her phone and carefully took a selfie of herself with the guys behind her. Gabe wouldn’t look at the camera, but Troy played along.
“
Third in line!
” Elena posted on Instagram. Which sounded much better than “
Last in Line!
”

“I dig your face paint,” Troy said. “I’ve got a costume, but I’m saving it for opening night.”

“Do you always wear a costume on opening night?” Elena asked.

“Oh yeah. Usually I camp in it.”

“I want to hear about your costumes,” Elena said.

“You mean opening-night costumes? Or all my Star Wars costumes, including Halloween and May the Fourth parties?”

“We want to hear about
all
of them,” she said, glancing over at Gabe. “Right?”

Gabe was looking at her like she was out of her mind.

After they got through Troy’s costumes, Elena quizzed him about highs and lows from past lines. Then she suggested they play Star Wars trivia, which she quickly realized wasn’t a
good idea, because she couldn’t answer any questions about the prequels, and she didn’t want Troy and Gabe to guess that she hadn’t actually seen them.

Elena
could
have seen them by now. She could have watched all three prequels after her dad moved to Florida—but it still felt like she’d be betraying him. And even though her
dad had betrayed her by leaving, she didn’t feel like watching Star Wars movies just to spite him. That seemed like it really
would
corrupt her love for Star Wars. “
A Jedi
uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
” (Yoda.)

Elena’s mom drove by a few times that morning. Elena just waved and tried to look like she was having the time of her life.

Nobody new got in line.

The highlight of Tuesday afternoon was when a photographer from the newspaper came by to take their picture.

“I’m looking for the Star Wars line,” he said. He had an oversized camera with a long black lens.

“That’s us!” Troy said.

“Oh.” He squinted at them. “I thought there was supposed to be a real line, like with people in costume.”

“Come back on opening night,” Troy said. “My Poe Dameron will knock your socks off.”

The photographer looked at Elena’s cheeks. “Is that Shrek?”

“It’s Yoda,” Gabe snapped. “For Christ’s sake.”

In the end, the photographer shot a close-up of Troy holding a photo of himself waiting in a much more interesting line fifteen years ago.

It was a humiliating setback for them as individuals and for the line as a whole.

(Ugh. They weren’t a
line
. They were just three cold nerds.) (They were three suckers who showed up for a party that didn’t exist.) (They were statistically
insignificant!)

After the photographer left, Elena didn’t start another cheerful conversation. Gabe excused himself to walk around the block. Troy watched TV on his phone.

Elena took out her phone just long enough to take a photo of her flowered sneakers. “
My legs are permanently asleep
,” she posted. “
#LineProblems
.” Then she
immediately put her phone away, before she could start wandering around online and enjoying herself.