Thin Space

by Jody Casella

  “Marsh,” Maddie says, “let me hold that.”

  “They filled it over the top,” I say. “I don’t know why they always do that.”

  She slips the bucket out of my hands as we walk into the dark theater. I’m surprised how crowded the place is. Sunday afternoon and it looks like half of Andover High is here. I do a quick scan of the rows and spot Chuck and my old football buddies sprawled out in the back. The lacrosse guys are up there too, apparently recreating the high school cafeteria placement. So there’s Brad, of course, his legs kicked out over the seat in front of him, his arm around some girl.

  Big shocker: it’s Logan. They’re leaned toward each other, knee-deep in conversation, so for the moment, neither one of them seems to notice Maddie and me.

  I grab Maddie’s elbow and guide her down front, on the side, and hope that we can stay unnoticed.

  Lindsay and Heather skip past. “Why’re you sitting so close to the screen?” Lindsay squeals. “We want to sit in the back.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “What the hell? Do what you want.” Both girls back away like I’m a crazy person.

  “We’re going to stay here,” Maddie says quietly. “I’ll catch up with y’all later.” Then she turns to me and lets out her breath. “Are you okay?”

  I don’t even know. I have to take stock of myself. I’m sitting in the theater that I vowed never to step foot in again. Half the school is sitting behind me, including a guy who wants to kick my ass and a girl who’d probably like to help him. I’m spilling my guts to Maddie, who, when I’m finished, in all likelihood will never want to look at me again. What am I leaving out? I crane my neck around, half expecting to see Kate hunched over somewhere. Instead, I see a familiar square jaw up in the lacrosse row, and I sink lower in my seat.

  What the hell is so special about this movie? Pulse Resolution? Revolution?

  “Sam’s here,” Maddie says matter-of-factly, but she scrunches down too.

  “Should we try to make a break for it?” I’m getting that hysterical hurtling-toward-a-breakdown feeling, and it’s pretty clear that this isn’t the right time or place for it.

  The theater lights dim. The previews flash. The surround sound blares on and the walls thump with noise. Around us people are still talking. Maddie whispers in my ear, “Tell me the rest of your story.”

  My stomach tightens up, but I open my mouth and somehow words come out. “After what happened on the football field, I told my brother we should switch places. We did that sometimes—switched places—when we were younger, at school, to play a joke on our friends, to fool the teachers. But we hadn’t done it in a long time.”

  “Y’all really looked that much alike?” Maddie asks. I can feel her eyes roaming over my face in the flickering dark.

  I sigh. “Yeah. Pretty much. We couldn’t see it. I mean when I looked at him, I thought we looked different. Most of the time he did look different from me. He kept his hair longer.” I tug at the hair curled over the top of my ear, fight the urge to yank harder. But I’m going off track. I sigh again. “Good friends could tell us apart. And our parents, of course. During football, though, when we both had short hair, people had to look closer, had to pay attention.”

  Okay, that’s it, I think. I’m done. I’ve hit my limit. Even just talking about this is pissing me off all over again, like I’m back at football practice and the guys are going Marsh, I mean Austin, until I wanted to tattoo my freaking name on my forehead.

  “So you switched places,” Maddie whispers, “and tricked your girlfriends?”

  It sounds crappy the way she says it. I suck in my breath, heave it back out. “Because I told my brother the girls didn’t really know us. He didn’t think it was a big deal. He said sometimes people make mistakes and that was all it was. But I said I could prove it.” I swallow the knot in my throat, try to keep my voice steady. “And I did.”

  I don’t know what I expect to happen here now that I’ve said it, now that the words are out of my mouth. Did I think that my head would split open? That my heart would crack apart in my chest?

  Maddie’s leaned against me, her ear hovering near my mouth, her ponytail brushing my nose. She turns and I can feel her breath on my cheek.

  “Marsh,” she says, “it was after you switched, right? That your brother kissed your girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” I say louder than a person should speak in a movie theater. The guy in front of us flips around, frowns, and I wave at him, lower my voice. “He kissed her. She kissed him. They kissed each other.” I can’t say anything else. All I see is his smirking face. And I’m shaking. My boots shudder against the grimy theater floor. My hands tremble on the armrests.

  “I’m sorry,” Maddie whispers, as the words Pulse Referendum blaze up on the screen. A few people actually hoot and clap. “Are you going to be all right?”

  I don’t know.

  “Shh,” she says. She claps her hand over mine, steadies it. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

  “No,” I say. “Yes.” I take a breath, feel my boots settle against the floor and my hand under hers, still now, warm, against the armrest. Miraculously, my stomach stops heaving. So maybe it was enough. What I told her. Maybe I don’t have to keep going with it.

  Maddie’s got the popcorn bucket on her lap, and here’s another miracle: I think I might be able to handle some. I grab a handful and wait for the memories that are lurking to rear up and hit me, but they don’t come. Instead, I stay anchored to my seat, here with Maddie, watching Pulse Referendum. The few flickers I get of that other night—I push those away like puffs of popcorn.

  Somehow I stay present in the darkness. Light flashes on Maddie’s face. Her ponytail nudges my shoulder. Once she lets out a laugh and I look over at her surprised. Later, she gasps, and that catches me off guard too. The movie makes no sense, but I don’t want it to end.

  When the credits start rolling, I squint at the screen for a few seconds before I’m back to reality. The audience is talking, laughing, so I know we’ve got to get up too, get out of here before we’re stuck in the crowd.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Maddie. She presses her head against my shoulder, turns it slowly, and I get a wave of hair against my chin. It hits me that I’ve crossed some kind of line with Maddie. Messed up person that I am, I’m not sure how that happened or even what happened exactly.

  “That was good,” she says.

  My heart thunks before I realize she’s talking about the movie. “It was great,” I tell her. I realize I’m definitely not talking about the movie, and I’m confused again, but there’s no time to think about this. We’re in the aisle, the mob surging around us. I grab Maddie’s hand and weave us toward the door. My legs are stiff, but I pick up the pace as we push into the light. Reality’s bearing down on me, and it’s saying: Get the hell out of here.

  Ahead is the exit sign and I tow Maddie toward it. Too late, I see it’s a dead end, one of those emergency exit only doors, and when I turn back around, we’re stuck in the middle of half the people I know.

  Chuck reaches us first, thrusts an arm out, whacks me on the shoulder. “Marsh,” he says, grinning. “I thought that was you. What are you doing here, man?”

  “Some movie, huh?” I hear myself saying.

  “I know. This was my third time. That one part when the guy ran into that—” He takes in Maddie next to me, and his mouth curves into a goofy smile.

  Circumstances demand some kind of introduction, so I clear my throat. “This is Maddie Rogers.”

  “Hey,” Chuck says, his goofy smile widening. “That new guy, Sam, you’re his little sister?”

  There’s another unspoken question buried in there, something along the lines of: Are you two together? “Yeah,” I say, and I can feel Maddie’s warm hand pressing into mine.

  “It’s good to see you,” Chuck says. “Been a while since you’ve been . . . out and about.”

  I shift back and forth, eyeing the faces spilling out of the
theater, expecting Sam to come barreling toward us any minute. I crane my neck around, searching for another way out of here.

  “That fight with Brad,” Chuck says. “Man, that guy’s such an ass. You were robbed, Marsh. Four days of suspension for what? Defending yourself?”

  “Yeah.” I sigh.

  “But, hey, your nose is better. Brad still looks like shit. Teach him to mess around with a football player.” He laughs. “Hey, some of the guys are talking about getting together, heading over to my house. You want to come?” He smacks my shoulder again.

  I’ve forgotten how physical Chuck is. On the football field, we used to go up against each other during scrimmages. Chuck was always my one-on-one partner. We got so we could read each other, really know what the other one was thinking. Like Chuck would do this thing where he’d lean to one side, and I’d know he was faking, that he was going to shoot out the other way. And he knew my little quirks too, things I was doing that would give me away. We’d slam into each other and then laugh about it, how well we knew each other.

  Funny thing though, beginning of every season when my brother cut his hair, Chuck was just like everyone else—Marsh, I mean Austin, ha ha, whatever—until we tackled each other on the field. Then he’d always know for sure it was me.

  “Well?” he says. It’s amazing that he’s still talking to me, still acting like nothing happened. Like we’re still friends.

  “Uh, thanks for asking,” I say. “But I’m going to pass on that tonight.”

  He nods. I get the feeling he wasn’t expecting me to say yes anyway. I have this weird thought, to bend down, to lock eyes with him, say, Hell yeah, I’ll get together with you guys, and hey, Chuck, watch this, as I stoop down and charge at him.

  Lucky for him, I don’t have time to mess around. Anyway, my football career’s long over. I give him a little wave, then squeeze Maddie’s hand so we can make a break for it.

  We’re almost at the door when I hear someone calling.

  “Marsh.” The voice is high and grating. It only takes me a second to place it. Logan, of course. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

  20

  Confrontations

  I pretend I don’t hear her. Maddie and I are only a few feet away from the exit. We can make it, I think. We can make it.

  But Logan’s calling again, closer now. Against my better judgment, I turn, and there she is, elbowing her way through the mob. I almost groan out loud. Nothing good can come from this.

  “Marsh,” she says.

  “Uh. Hey,” I say.

  Logan flashes her perfect teeth, glances at Maddie, and then shifts her eyes like it’s just the two of us talking. “I didn’t see you here,” she says. “What’s up?”

  “Pulse Referendum,” I say.

  “Yeah, I know. It was awesome.” She sneaks another look at Maddie. “So, what are you doing here? Wow, when’s the last time you were at a movie?”

  My jaw drops. Is she freaking kidding?

  More flashing of teeth. More breathy high voice. “Everyone’s going over to Cup o’cino’s now. Are you coming?”

  The top of my throat starts burning just thinking about it. “Not today,” I say, “but, hey, thanks for asking.”

  Logan smiles a pursed-lip smile. I’m thinking, Whew, that’s over, but the next thing I know she’s in my face. “So this is it? We’re really over?”

  “Uh . . . uh,” I say, because the crowd’s pushing at us from every angle. Strands of conversations flick at me—people reliving the great moments of the movie or calling out who’s driving whoever to Cup o’cino’s. When I catch Brad charging out of the restroom, I squeeze Maddie’s hand without thinking about it.

  “I can’t believe this,” Logan cries. “You’re with her?” Her voice shrills out above the surrounding chatter. “Are you with her?”

  Jeez. Are we going to do this now? I start to formulate possible answers—yes, no, I don’t freaking know, and anyway, who are you to talk, Logan? Aren’t you here with Brad?—but I can’t settle on one; so instead, I just stutter like an idiot for a minute until Maddie drops my hand. She edges away from me, crosses her arms in front of her chest.

  “We’re just friends,” she drawls, which somehow enrages Logan more.

  “What do you know?” she screeches. “You just moved here. What, like, two weeks ago? You don’t know Marsh. So just shut the hell up. Okay? Y’ALL.”

  I don’t think it’s the correct usage of the term, and I feel like pointing it out to Logan and while I’m at it, telling her to quit mocking Maddie about her accent too. “Look,” I start to say, but damn it all to hell if the crowd’s not parting so Brad can plow through.

  “What’s going on?” he demands. His bulbous lips flop out, all blotched gray and blue. And I notice one of his eyes is still marked up in matching gruesome colors.

  I figure Brad’s primed to defend Logan—his movie date, apparently—but he surprises me by pointing a stubby finger at Maddie. “Oh, man, Marsh,” he says. “You must have a death wish.” He jerks his head around. “Sam,” he bellows. “Get over here.”

  I feel like I’m acting a part in a demented drama when Sam makes his entrance, stage left, his face throbbing tomato-red.

  I curl my hands into fists. Here we go again, I think, but for some reason I’m not too freaked out about it. Maybe because I’ve acted in this play before. I know the script, my lines, and the stage directions. Scene Three: They fight. I can handle that role.

  Sam pushes into our little circle, wedges himself between Maddie and me. She and Logan both shrink back, their faces frozen with the same expression. Fear, it looks like—for me and for whatever Sam’s about to do, with Brad as his willing accomplice, no doubt.

  Sam’s arm is in slow motion when it whirls in an arc through the air. I raise my fists just as his arm hooks around my shoulder, tugging me closer.

  “Let’s talk,” he spits in my ear, and I feel myself drifting away from Maddie and Logan and into the throng of people who press toward us, eager to see probable bloodshed in the middle of the theater lobby.

  He backs me against a wall, his arm weighing me down. He’s got one vein on his forehead that looks like it wants to punch out of his skin. “Maybe I haven’t been clear,” is how he starts off. “I don’t know what you think you know about my sister, what you’ve heard about her,” he says, “but whatever it is, you need to back off.”

  Okay. No idea what the hell the guy’s talking about. I grab his arm, heave it off, and say my line: “No. You need to back off.”

  Sam takes a step backward. “I don’t want to fight you.”

  The truth is I don’t want to fight him either, but somehow I find myself leaning closer. The next thing I know, I’m crouched down like I’m on the football field. What I used to do during those one-on-ones with Chuck is swing my head to the left, so it looked like I was going to spring out that way, but then I’d pull back at the last second and drive forward right.

  Without even thinking about it, I feel my head dipping, and as I do that, I’m flashed back to those football plays, where the field freezes at the whistle. But this time it’s the theater lobby that’s slowing down. I can scan the whole place at once—Sam facing me, tensing for my attack. Brad beside him, his multicolored lips puckered out.

  And now I see Chuck too, shoving himself onto our stage. He’s seen me, and his body bends, mirroring my own.

  I suck in my breath, start my charge in the other direction, but before I can complete the hit, I see Maddie. She’s wide-eyed, squeezing her way through the crowd so she emerges at Sam’s side, right where I’m gearing up to slam into him.

  “Marsh,” she says, and just like that, I’m pulled back to myself, anchored into the moment—a moment, I’m not too happy to inhabit, truth be told. What the hell am I doing? I don’t want to fight her brother.

  I drop my hands, straighten up, try to breathe out some of my adrenaline.

  “Madison,” Sam says, “stay out of this. It has
nothing to do with you.”

  Which strikes me as funny. I can’t help it; I start laughing. They both shoot me a puzzled look before turning back to glare at each other.

  “This is stupid,” Maddie says, her voice shaking. “You can’t keep doing this. It’s not your job.”

  Sam rocks back and forth, his fisted hands digging into his sides like’s he’s fighting with himself too. “Someone has to, Madison, or you’re going to be right back where you started.”

  Maddie flinches like he’s slapped her.

  I have to tense my shoulders, hold myself against the wall to keep from dropping into my attack position again. “Hey,” I say, “why do you keep calling her that?”

  He looks at me like he’s forgotten I’m here. “What?”

  “Madison. She doesn’t like it. She wants people to call her Maddie.”

  Sam’s eyes narrow into slits. “This is none of your business. Madison is none of your business. Get it?”

  “Sam,” Maddie says, “I told you. I can make my own decisions. I can hang around with anyone I want to hang around with.”

  “No. I’m telling you. This guy, this guy—you don’t know what he thinks about you—how he sees—”

  “Sam, please,” Maddie says. She’s crying. Crying. And the sound of it freaking tears at me.

  “Leave her alone.” The words heave out when I lean forward, drop my head to the left, drive toward Sam.

  He grunts and topples backward. He’s got his mouth open as I pound my fist into his jaw. Only one part of me catches Maddie whirling away, escaping into the crowd. But that thought—that Maddie’s hurt, that she’s still crying, that she’s running away alone—that thought flits away when I turn back to beat her brother’s face.

  The scene plays out according to a script I haven’t read, but somehow it all seems familiar. The theater security guys swoop toward us, barking out warnings that we need to exit the building. I feel fingers digging into my arm. It’s Chuck pulling me off Sam, towing me through the lobby. He’s gripping me hard, but I don’t bother to shrug him off. I know he doesn’t know his own strength sometimes. Anyway, I just want to get the hell out of here, and he’s going to make sure that happens.