Almost Midnight

by Rainbow Rowell

  ‘Why didn’t your friends wait in line with you?’ Gabe said. ‘Then you could have had your party line.’

  ‘None of my friends likes Star Wars.’

  ‘Everybody likes Star Wars,’ he said. ‘Everybody likes everything these days. The whole world is a nerd.’

  ‘Are you mad because other people like Star Wars? Are you mad because people like me like Star Wars?’

  Gabe glowered at her. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well,‘ she said, ‘my friends do like Star Wars. They’re going to see it this weekend. But they don’t like it like I do. They don’t get a stomach ache about it.’

  ‘Why does Star Wars give you a stomach ache?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just care about it so much.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to call you a fake geek girl,’ Gabe said.

  ‘I didn’t say that you were.’

  ‘I mean, you obviously know the original trilogy inside out. And that’s not even important, but you obviously do.’

  ‘I’ve yet to determine whether you’re a fake geek boy,’ she said, pulling her sleeves down over her hands.

  He laughed, and she was ninety per cent sure it wasn’t sarcastic.

  ‘Here’s what bothers me,’ he said, glowering slightly less, but still looking frustrated. ‘I’m a nerd, right? Like obviously. Classic nerd. I hate sports. I know every Weird Al song by heart. I don’t know how to talk to most people. I’m probably going to get a job in computer science. Like, I know those are all stereotypes, but they’re also true of me. That’s who I am. And the thing about nerd culture being mainstream culture now means that there’s no place to just be a nerd among other nerds—without being reminded that you’re the nerd. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Only sort of,’ Elena said.

  ‘OK. So. If I go to a football party at my brother’s house, I don’t know anything about football, and I’m the nerd. And if I go dancing with my friend who likes to dance, well, I don’t dance, and I don’t like loud music, so I’m the nerd. But now, even if I go see a comic-book movie, the whole world is there—so I’m still the nerd. I would have thought that a Star Wars line would be safe,’ he said, waving his arm around the way Elena had. ‘No way am I going to feel like a social outcast in a Star Wars line. No way am I going to have to sit next to one of the cool girls for four days.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Elena said. ‘I’m not a cool girl.’

  ‘Give me a break.’

  She held up her index finger. ‘I feel like I need to say that everyone should be welcome in a Star Wars line, socially successful or not, but also, whoa. I am a nerd,’ she said. ‘That’s what this was supposed to be, a chance to talk to people who wouldn’t care that I’m awkward in literally every other situation.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You have friends. You have a clique. You walk down the hall like you own the place.’

  ‘You seem to have mistaken me for the movie Mean Girls,’ Elena said. ‘Also, are you saying you don’t have friends at your school? Have you considered that maybe it’s your silent pouting that drives people away?’

  ‘I have friends,’ Gabe said. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘So you have friends, but you think I have a clique.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure of it.’

  ‘I feel like you’re projecting your clearly problematic girl issues on me,’ she said.

  Gabe rolled his eyes again. ‘I thought you said you couldn’t talk to people,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem to have any problems talking to me.’

  ‘I’m having a lot of problems talking to you.’

  ‘OK, then, let’s stop.’

  Was Gabe really mad? She couldn’t tell.

  Was Elena mad? She also couldn’t tell . . .

  Yes. Yes, Elena was mad. Who was Gabe to take her inventory like this? He didn’t know her. And he was giving her zero benefit of the doubt; she’d been giving him nothing but benefit of the doubt for thirty-six hours.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, without looking at him, ‘I haven’t thought, Whoa, Gabe sure is a nerd, even once since I sat down.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  Elena squirmed. She wrapped her sleeping bag as tightly as she could and rearranged her legs. ‘Uggggggggch.’

  ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You think I’m a jerk.’

  ‘No. Yes, but no—I have to pee again.’

  ‘You just went.‘

  ‘I know, I can’t help it. Sometimes it happens in waves.’

  ‘Can you wait?’

  ‘No.’

  Gabe sighed and stood up. ’Come on. Let’s go back to the dumpster.’

  ‘I threw away the cup!’ Elena said.

  ‘You still have your hot-water bottle—’

  ‘No.’

  Gabe clicked his tongue like he was thinking. Elena started rooting through her backpack. Everything she’d brought was in plastic bags.

  ‘Aha!’ Gabe said. He reached behind her sleeping bag and pulled out her Starbucks cup. ‘This is perfect,’ he said. ‘It’s already got your name on it.’

  They left their sleeping bags and shuffled to the back of the theater again. It was no less humiliating the second time around.

  ‘You’re definitely getting a nickname,’ Gabe said when she sat down again.

  Elena crawled into her sleeping bag, feeling more unbelievably tired than unbelievably uncomfortable, like maybe she’d be able to get some sleep for real now.

  ‘I was born at the wrong time,’ she said. ‘And in the wrong climate. It should be 1983, and I should be sitting outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.’

  ‘They’re camping outside the Chinese Theatre tonight,’ Gabe said. ‘Troy says we’re all one line.’

  ‘I’m probably last in that one, too,’ Elena said.

  She rolled away from Gabe and fell asleep.

  Wednesday 16 December 2015

  ‘The Force awakens!’ Troy shouted.

  Elena pulled her hat down over her eyes.

  ‘Come on, Elena,’ Troy said. ‘We’re hoping you’ll get coffee again.’

  ‘Because I’m a woman?’

  ‘No. Because you probably have to pee,’ Gabe said.

  Elena did. ‘Fine, tell me what you want.’

  Twenty minutes later she was staring at herself in the Starbucks mirror. She was starting to look like someone who slept on the street and washed up in Starbucks bathrooms.

  There’d been an actual homeless person sitting outside the Starbucks when Elena walked in, and it made her feel like a big creep to think she was doing this for fun. (It wasn’t even fun!)

  She told the barista their names were ‘Tarkin’, ‘Veers’ and ‘Ozzel’.

  ‘Feeling your dark side today, huh?’ Troy said when she handed him his cup.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Elena said, dropping to the ground. ‘Fear, anger, hate, suffering . . .’

  ‘T-minus one!’ Troy said. ‘One more day. One more day! I can’t believe we’ve waited ten years for this, though honestly I never thought it would come. Real sequels . . .’

  ‘What’s your favorite Star Wars movie?’ Gabe asked. Uncharacteristically. Elena looked over at him.

  ‘You might as well ask me who my favorite child is,’ Troy said.

  ‘Do you have children?’ Elena asked him.

  ‘I meant hypothetically,’ Troy said. He exhaled hard. ‘This is tough, this is really tough. I’m going to have to go with The Empire Strikes Back.’

  The next half-hour was taken up by Troy justifying his choice. At several points he considered changing his answer, but he kept landing back on Hoth.

  ‘What about you, Elena?’ Gabe finally asked.

  She frowned at him. Suspicious. ‘Empire,’ she said. ‘For all the reasons Troy just said. Plus the kissing. What’s yours?’

  ‘Episode Six,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Jedi?’ she asked.

  He n
odded.

  ‘Solid choice,’ Troy said. ‘Very solid.’

  Gabe didn’t expound; instead he turned back to Elena. ‘So, what’s your least favorite?’

  ‘Why do I have to go first?’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he said.

  She held her coffee cup in both hands. ‘No, it’s fine. Jedi. I still love it. But yeah.’

  Troy acted like he’d been shot. ‘Jedi?’

  Gabe was shocked, too. ‘You think Episode Six is worse than Episode Two? Worse than Anakin and Padmé frolicking among the shaaks?’

  ‘The shaaks!’ Troy said. ‘Geonosis!’

  Those sounded like nonsense words to Elena. She didn’t want to be found out. She bit her lip. ‘I wasn’t really considering the prequels. You said least favorite, not worst.’

  ‘Ahhhh,’ Troy said, ‘you did say that.’

  ‘True,’ Gabe said.

  They moved on to Troy’s least favorite (III—’the violence just struck me as mindless’) and then to Gabe’s (II—’love on the fields of Naboo’).

  And then Troy had to take a call from his girlfriend.

  ‘So,’ Gabe said to Elena, ‘who’s your favorite character?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Elena said.

  ‘Talking about Star Wars.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’

  ‘So now you’re trying to give me what I want?’

  Gabe sighed. ’Not exactly. Just . . . maybe you were right.’

  ‘When?’ she asked.

  ‘When you said that the point of being in this line was to be excited about Star Wars with other people who love Star Wars.’

  ‘Of course I was right,’ Elena said. ‘That’s obviously why people camp out like this. Nobody leaves their house to sit outside a theater for a week just so they can ignore other fans.’

  ‘So I was getting in my own way,’ Gabe admitted. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Elena said carefully.

  ‘So, who’s your favorite character?’ he asked again.

  ‘You’ll probably think it’s basic.’

  ‘I’m not a jerk,’ he said.

  ‘People who are jerks don’t get to decide whether they’re jerks. It’s left up to a jury of their peers.’

  ‘I disagree. I do not identify as a jerk, so I’m not going to act like one.’

  ‘Fine,’ Elena said. ‘Princess Leia.’

  ‘Great choice,’ he said.

  She was still suspicious. ‘What about you?’

  The thing about Gabe being nice to Elena for unknown, suspicious reasons was . . . he was still being nice to her. And interesting. And funny. And good company.

  She kept forgetting that it was all an act and possibly a ruse—and just enjoyed herself.

  They were all enjoying themselves.

  ‘Excuse me,’ someone said, interrupting a lively discussion about whom they’d each buy a drink for in the cantina.

  The whole line looked up. There were two women standing on the sidewalk with bakery boxes. One of them cleared her throat. ‘We heard that people were camping out for Star Wars . . .’

  ‘That’s us!’ Troy said, only slightly less enthusiastically than he’d said it yesterday.

  ‘Where’s everybody else?’ she asked. ‘Are they around the back? Do you do this in shifts?’

  ‘It’s just us,’ Elena said.

  ‘We’re the Cupcake Gals,’ the other woman said. ‘We thought we’d bring Star Wars cupcakes? For the line?’

  ‘Great!’ Troy said.

  The Cupcake Gals held on tight to their boxes.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ the first woman said, ‘we were going to take a photo of the whole line, and post it on Instagram . . .’

  ‘I can help you there!’ Elena said. Those cupcakes were not going to just walk away. Not on Elena’s watch.

  Elena took a selfie of their line, the Cupcake Gals and a theater employee all holding Star Wars cupcakes—it looked like a snapshot from a crowd—and promised to post it across all her channels. The lighting was perfect. Magic hour, no filter necessary. #CupcakeGals #TheForceACAKEns #SalaciousCrumbs

  The Gals were completely satisfied and left both boxes of cupcakes.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve been happy that there were only three of us,’ Elena said, helping herself to a second cupcake. It was frosted to look like Chewbacca.

  ‘You saved these cupcakes,’ Gabe said. ‘Those women were going to walk away with them.’

  ‘I know,’ Elena said. ‘I could see it in their eyes. I would’ve stopped at nothing to change their minds.’

  ‘Thank God they were satisfied by a selfie then,’ Gabe said. His cupcake looked like Darth Vader, and his tongue was black.

  ‘I’m really good at selfies,’ Elena said. ‘Especially for someone with short arms.’

  ‘Great job,’ Troy said. ‘You’ll make someone a great provider someday.’

  ‘That day is today,’ Elena said, leaning back against the theater wall. ‘You’re both welcome.’

  ‘Errrggh,’ Troy said, kicking his feet out. ‘Cupcake coma.’

  ‘How many did you eat?’ Gabe asked.

  ‘Four,’ Troy said. ‘I took down the Jedi Council. Time for a little midday siesta—the Force asleepens.’

  It was the warmest day yet. Elena wondered if she could take a nap too. Maybe not. It seemed even weirder to be asleep on the street in the middle of the day than at night.

  ‘You hate the prequels more than anyone I’ve met,’ Gabe said, licking his thumb. ‘These cupcakes are really good. You should tweet about them again.’

  ‘I don’t hate the prequels,’ she said.

  ‘We ranked our top thirty characters, and the only prequel character you listed was Queen Amidala.’

  That was the only prequel character Elena knew . . .

  ‘I mean you must really hate them,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I feel like I owe you a debt, after you helped me last night—’

  ‘You do,’ Gabe said. ‘Not quite a life debt. But I did save you from peeing your pants twice.‘

  ‘So I’m going to tell you a secret,’ she said. ‘But you have to promise not to use it against me.’

  Gabe reached over Elena’s legs to get another cupcake. ‘How could you possibly have a dark secret involving the Star Wars sequels? Are you responsible for Jar Jar Binks?’

  ‘Do you promise?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure, I promise.’

  ‘I’ve never seen the prequels.’

  ‘What?’ Gabe spit crumbs all over both of them. Elena shook them out of her ponytail. ‘How could that happen?’

  ‘It didn’t happen,’ she said. ‘I never saw them.’

  ‘Was it against your religion? Are you some sort of Star Wars purist?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Elena said. ‘My dad was. He wouldn’t let me see them.’

  ‘Did he lock you in a tower?’

  ‘No. He just told me they were terrible. He said they’d . . . corrupt my love of Star Wars.’

  ‘And you never thought of watching them anyway?’

  ‘Not really. It’s my dad.’

  ‘How does he feel about the sequels? Are you here undercover?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elena said. ‘I haven’t heard from him.’

  Gabe looked confused.

  ‘He’s sort of in Florida.’

  ‘“Sort of in Florida” is our band name,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Don’t tell Troy,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t. He’d probably make us watch them all on his phone.’

  Elena looked down. ‘Now you’re probably thinking that I really am a fake geek girl.’

  ‘I try not to think that about anybody,’ he said. ‘If anything, this makes you an uber Star Wars nerd. A Star Wars hipster. You’re like one of those people who only listens to music on vinyl.’

  ‘Do you think I should watch the prequels?’ she asked.

  ‘How w
ould I know? I mean, I’d watch them. I couldn’t know there was more Star Wars out there that I hadn’t tapped. You could have double the Star Wars in your life.’

  ‘Did the prequels corrupt your love of Star Wars?’

  Gabe gave her a very Han Solo-like grin. ‘It was already corrupt, babe.’

  They both laughed. This was not the Gabe she’d been sitting next to for two days.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, more seriously. ‘I saw the prequels before the original trilogy.’

  ‘What?’ It was Elena’s turn to be shocked. ‘That’s all wrong. That’s a perversion.’

  ‘It is not!’ Gabe said. ‘I think it’s how George Lucas intended it. It’s the higher order.’

  ‘George Lucas doesn’t even know what he intended,’ Elena said. ‘He can’t even decide who shot first.’

  ‘I saw the prequels in the theater,’ Gabe said. ‘When I was a kid. I thought they were awesome.’

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re my first love,’ he said. ‘I can’t be objective.’

  Elena hugged herself. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see them. I feel like I’d be letting my dad down. Like he’s going to show up some day, and ask whether I’ve seen Attack of the Clones, and if I say yes, he’ll take off again.’

  Gabe looked like he was thinking. ‘So . . .’ he said, ‘you won’t mind if I spoil them for you.’

  ‘I guess not,’ she said. ‘I mean, I already know what happens.’

  Gabe sat up straight and held both hands up between them. ‘Turmoil has engulfed the Great Republic . . .’

  When Troy woke up from his nap, he didn’t even ask what they were doing. He just joined in. His Yoda impression was uncanny.

  ‘I knew you hadn’t seen the prequels,’ Troy confided in Elena. ‘There were some pretty obvious gaps in your understanding of the Galactic Senate.’

  Troy’s girlfriend, Sandra, brought them all pizza that night, and when she got there she joined the dramatic re-enactment. She said they had to rewind so she could elaborate for Elena on how dashing Obi-Wan was. ‘Ewan McGregor,’ she groaned. ‘I made Troy grow a beard after the second movie.’

  ‘I also grew a Padawan braid,’ Troy said.

  Troy and Sandra and Gabe acted out a lightsaber battle that brought tears to Elena’s eyes, probably because they were all three singing the John Williams music. (Elena knew the prequel music; she’d listened to all the scores.)