T. Goeglein - Cold Fury

“You had glasses,” I said, realizing that I was examining his face as if it were a fascinating work of art. “And braces. .”

“Contacts,” he said, overblinking, and then tapped an index finger on his teeth. “My braces came off last year, finally. It feels like my teeth got out of prison.”

“I’m so jealous,” I said, squeezing my lips over my mouth, hiding my supposedly-but-not-really-invisible braces. “I feel like I was born with these things.”

“It sucks but it’s worth it,” he said, and then I felt him inspecting my face, traveling from my mouth to my nose (how could he miss it?) to my eyes, where he paused and smiled, nodding at the sign-up sheet. “So are you in this thing?”

“The Classic Movie Club? Yeah, well. . I guess so.”

“It’s a cool idea,” he said.

“It was my idea!” I said, hearing my words fly out too fast and too loud. I cleared my throat and held back a blush. “I’m, uh. . I’m the president.”

“You are?” he said, looking at me in a way that gave me good goose bumps. “Hey, have you watched any gangster flicks? I’m into film noir. . the old black-and-white stuff. The dialogue is fast and smart, and there’s always a wiseguy who you know is dead from the first time you see him. He either likes being a criminal too much and wants to be the boss or can’t outrun his criminal past no matter how hard he tries.”

I told him that the club (i.e., Doug and I) had seen several gangster movies, the most recent being The Public Enemy , and how I’d felt that the main character was doomed from the first scene. Max was surprised I even knew about the movie. He told me it was one of his favorites and that it was based on an actual guy, a bad-to-the-bone thug who ran a big criminal operation in Chicago during Prohibition.

I said, “That was the no-alcohol law, right?”

Max nodded, saying how criminal gangs raked in enormous amounts of cash by making and selling illegal alcohol, and then paused, grinning. “You can tell me to shut up anytime you want.”

“What?” I said, staring into his eyes, and then realized I was staring. “No, no! It’s really interesting. How do you know so much about it?”

He shrugged. “I like history. My mom always says, if you don’t understand what happened in the past, how can you understand what’s happening now?” Max was right, and it reminded me of what Willy said about my dad and Uncle Buddy, about their history and making it my business. Before I could reply, his phone buzzed. “My mom,” he said, glancing at the screen. “Since we moved back to the city, she thinks I’m going to be randomly shot or kidnapped.”

“What does your dad think?”

“Hard to tell. I haven’t spoken to him in a while. My parents got divorced a couple of months ago and he took off for California with his girlfriend.”

“Geez. . that. . sucks,” I said, and blushed. The lameness of my reply made me feel like one of the world-class knuckleheads he’d referred to so long ago.

“It does, worse than braces. My mom was determined to move back to the city, even if it meant me transferring to another school with what, only two months left until summer break? But hey, at least I got to escape the suburbs,” he said cheerfully, but fake cheerfully, like he was trying too hard. He put on a half smile and said, “So, when are we getting together?”

“Together?” I tried and failed to get a wild strand of hair behind my ear, and asked, “For what?”

Max’s half smile became a real one. “A classic movie?”

“Oh, right, of course! Uh. . soon,” I said. “Tomorrow?”

“Awesome. What are we watching?”

“Oh, um, well, we’re watching. . we’re watching. .” I scanned my brain for the title of any movie I’d ever seen, and came up blank until Doug’s chubby grin filled my mind. “We’re watching About Face ,” I said. “It’s genius. You’ll love it.”

Max nodded and said, “I trust you,” and walked down the hallway. At the exit, he turned and waved.

I waved back casually, like I was the coolest chick in the world.

I waited until he disappeared.

When I was absolutely sure he was gone, I did an excited little Muhammad Ali shuffle move and threw a one-two left hook combination in the air.

Talking to my mom and dad about boys I liked (who usually had no idea I even existed) always made me feel weird. I couldn’t help bringing up the subject, but then felt shy or silly as soon as I had. My parents seemed to sense my anxiety, and would tiptoe to the edge of a question, asking something decidedly neutral like, “What color is his hair?” I wanted to confess my deepest feelings, to discuss my crush like an adult, but then I’d chicken out and become a kid again, settling for something meaningless like, “Brown. He’s got brown hair.”

All of that changed with Max.

I found him endlessly fascinating and had an overwhelming need for the people in my life to know all about him. It was impossible to stop talking about him to my parents, or Lou, or Doug, or, frankly, anyone who would listen.

In fact, talking itself was the best thing about Max.

Besides his smile, and how tall he was, and that he liked all of the old movies I did, he and I talked for hours about everything.

We talked at school before Classic Movie Club, then afterward about the movie we’d just seen, and then later, on the phone, about school and our families, about politics and baseball (he’s a White Sox fan, ugh!), and about the world in general. There were no uncomfortable pauses or goofy utterances or trying to sound cool-the conversation just flowed. I noticed that we both naturally avoided slang, and we agreed that every kid in the world saying exactly the same thing over and over again sounded idiotic. But the best part of talking to Max was the simplest-he made me feel interesting. As someone who had never opened up to many people outside of her family, it was a wonderful, weird sensation to have such close attention paid to my thoughts and opinions. It was as if, in my years of mental and emotional solitude, I’d warehoused a vast array of exotic information, and I’d finally found someone to share it with. Whether it was sports or movies or yeah, even slang (Max informed me that “hipster” was actually from the 1940s; I countered with “geek,” enlightening him on its early-1900s German origins), we usually ended up talking about how something began. In the three weeks leading up to my birthday, if Max didn’t think of me as a girlfriend, then I was definitely a friend who was a girl. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I had to admit that our constant chatter was a good way, maybe the best way, to get to know each other.

And then, when he asked me to the spring dance-something I had wanted so badly-I couldn’t have cared less.

That’s because, a few seconds earlier, he said something even better.

He told me I was gorgeous.

Actually, he didn’t use the word gorgeous and maybe he didn’t realize he was paying me a compliment, but he’d said it, and then he asked me to the dance.

Let me clarify-he kind of asked me.

We were staring at a flickering screen in the theater room at Fep Prep, just me, Max, and Doug, with Doug grazing from a family-size bag of Munchitos, his junk food of choice. He’d recently been on a “great Italian directors” kick-we watched films by Fellini, Antonioni, and Rossellini-and had developed a minor obsession (he was easily obsessed) with the director Vittorio De Sica. First we watched The Bicycle Thief , which was the saddest movie I’d ever seen, and then Marriage Italian Style , which was about a guy cheating on one girlfriend with another girlfriend. It starred Sophia Loren, with whom Doug developed another minor obsession, and we moved on to an old Hollywood film she starred in called Houseboat .