“That’s two limbs,” JR said, all helpfully.
The legs were a thousand times trickier.
We ended up in Tim’s uncle’s shop in the old part of Rockwall, his uncle using a band saw to slice the legs in half top to bottom and longways, then drilling holes for dowels so they could be pushed back together. Because we’d told him about the joke we were playing on Shanna, he comped us a roll of duct tape to hold the legs back together. When we were leaving he shook his head, said it must be great to be young and endlessly stupid.
He’s a good guy, really. If I were ever going to be his age, I think I’d want to be just like him, mostly.
Anyway, with the legs cut into pieces like that, Tim got both lower parts into his biggest backpack and slung one of his dad’s shirts over it. It looked fake as hell, but would anybody at concessions risk asking the hunchback kid if he was smuggling something in or not?
JR used his old soccer bag for most of the other leg pieces, and we duct-taped it to his middle, for a stomach, because two hunchbacks in one screening might be pushing it. I picked up the last foot, hefted it under my arm, looked ahead to the uncertain future.
“You just going to carry it, Sawyer?” Danielle said like the challenge it most definitely was.
I nodded yeah, and it wasn’t a lie. What I did was wrap it in cardboard and brown packing tape. My story was going to be it was a lamp my mom had wanted me to pick up from the repair place, and the window on my car—I don’t have a car—it wouldn’t roll up, and I couldn’t leave it in the parking lot, could I?
My bet was that, while the theater might have new rules about carrying backpacks and stuff in, it wouldn’t have a repaired lamp policy. And once anybody hefted it once or twice, it would obviously not be some crazy assault weapon. JR couldn’t get away with this, since his dad was a known gun nut and all, so people just assumed he had some of those bullet-shaped genes, but my dad was mostly concerned with figuring out what kind of mileage our new electric car was getting, and how much that was saving us per month, per year, and on into the hybrid future, so I wouldn’t get any second looks, could tap-dance right past the box office with whatever, I was pretty sure.
To prove it, I just dropped the head into a plastic shopping bag, so it was completely seeable to anyone who gave it half a look. But if you saw a human head in the bag of someone in line for a fountain drink, would you say anything? I mean, if I were the one holding that bag, and my record was super spotless, all my emotional meltdowns far in the past?
You wouldn’t give me a second look. Probably not even a first look. Nobody would.
The torso we put in a trash bag we rubbed actual trash all over, then leaned up against the wall in the alley by the emergency exit. It was theater 4; Danielle had coasted by the box office, checked that out for us, her hair all in her face so she was just any girl on another Friday night.
We got in without any hassle, paid this time, were even in the theater early enough to pop the emergency exit door without any problem—Tim did a big fake fall on the stairs on the opposite side up high, his drink going everywhere, JR acting offended and maybe ready to fight about it, nobody looking over to me holding the door open so Danielle could drag a suspicious trash bag in.
We waited until the trailers to assemble Manny, but had to lie down in front of the very front row to do it. It was gross. Our hair and shirts kept sticking to the floor, and we knew the story about the senior football players sitting in the back row and peeing in secret, letting it run all the way down to the screen, where we were.
When it was done, our throats raw from how much we had to cough to cover the duct tape tearing, each of us took an assigned article of extra clothing off, dressed Manny up, topping his outfit off with my dad’s Redskins cap he wore all ironically for working in the garage, that I was sure he’d never miss, and would probably be better without.
On the count of three, then, when the screen seemed darkest, we stood with him, carry-walked him up to the seat we’d bought him, even going so far as to thumb his ticket stub into the front pocket of his shirt like a handkerchief square.
We didn’t know if this was Shanna’s theater or not—she never found her assignments out until she came in, and then it could change for no real reason—so the way we picked it was by what movie we actually wanted to see.
It was part three of a juggernaut of a superhero series, and we’d seen the first two about ten times already, tracking it from this theater to the dollar show to the drive-in to rentals and bootlegs—not necessarily in that order.
It was Manny’s first experience at the theater, of course.
He never blinked.
2
WE SHOULD HAVE GUESSED what was going to happen next. What had to happen.
We were all hopeful and stupid, though. And, yeah, probably feeling kind of bulletproof. One of our friends worked here, didn’t she? What could go wrong? And it wasn’t like we hadn’t paid this time. Sure, we were sort of banned, but did the assistant manager really expect that to hold? Would he rather we pirate everything on his marquee? Wouldn’t that ruin the movie industry and contribute to juvenile delinquency, sir?
Anyway, about halfway through the movie, JR went down to concessions, filled his small fountain drink cup up with blue Icee and volunteered to the junior taking his money that someone had just sneaked into theater 4, was disturbing the peace, saying the lines out loud with the heroes and heroines, I don’t know how he phrased it. It worked, that’s what’s important. A few minutes later the assistant manager and the manager rolled in with Shanna’s mom’s security-guard ex, their grim faces on, flashlights in hand, two or three experience providers ranged out behind them to get some more experience. But then, after some whispering, the ex ducked out, the rest of them waiting there along the curtain-wall so patiently, the assistant manager’s loafer tap-tap-tapping to get this started already. About thirty seconds later the quiet little lights under the stair steps dialed up bright-bright, some people in the audience gasping, and then the footlights sucked back the complete other way, to blackness, and took all the little hidden lights along the walls down with them, stranding the theater in about five seconds of inky black, except for the exit sign, which I guess never goes off. It was weird, kind of made me feel like my whole seat was floating away with me, that all the seats had let go, and we were drifting up wherever now, were going to probably slam down when the lights came on.
Or maybe it was just me and my heart, I don’t know.
My coke wasn’t coming up through its own straw anyway, and popcorn wasn’t drifting around at eye level. It was probably just the weirdness of being in a public place with so many people, and then suddenly being all alone too, if that makes any sense.
Except for that green flickering exit sign.
I used it for my anchor, told myself it wasn’t getting smaller, that it wasn’t sinking away from me, and held on to it as best I could until the security-guy ex at the light switches found the balance, brought the stair lights up a smidge, like he’d probably been told to.
And, in this new glow—yes. Just like we’d each been praying, one of the experience providers who’d been roped into this was Shanna. She was wearing the black slacks she’d borrowed from Danielle, that Danielle said she never wanted back, they were all cinemucked up, and she had the green transparent visor on that everybody from the theater was wearing to promote that new bank teller movie or whatever. It’s not important. And while she didn’t see me—I’ve thought and thought about this—I’m pretty sure she maybe did see Danielle, and kind of tried to look away like uh-oh.