Adam Silvera - More Happy Than Not

“That makes sense.”

“I figure if I keep taking odd jobs I’ll get some material for my own scripts. I just haven’t figured out a story to tell yet.”

When we get to the theater, Thomas pulls me by my elbow toward the parking lot. We pass a couple of emergency exits before continuing down an alleyway I know we have no business walking through. He pulls out a savings card for a drugstore and slides it down the crack of a door until there’s a click. He turns and smiles when he opens the door.

I only feel slightly guilty, and it’s such a rush that I’m not scared of getting caught. It’s also a good trick to know for when Genevieve gets back, even if seeing a movie is the last thing I’ll want to do after she’s been gone for three weeks. The door leads us out by the bathrooms. We head for the concession stand, buy some popcorn — See? We’re not total criminals — and go to the condiment bar where he drowns his popcorn in butter.

“I always come to this theater for midnight showings,” Thomas says. “The energy always surprises me. No one on my block would ever dress up on a day that’s not Halloween because they’re not comfortable in their own skin. But for the midnight showing of Scorpius Hawthorne, so many people who I wish I’d made friends with were dressed up as demonic wizards and specters.”

“I didn’t know you read that series!”

“Hell yeah,” Thomas says. “I brought my copy to the midnight showing and readers signed their names and underlined their favorite passages.”

I wish I’d gone. “Did you dress up?”

“I was the only brown Scorpius Hawthorne,” Thomas says. He tells me about other midnight showings too, where he had people sign the video game cases and comic book anthologies that inspired them all. These are all cool mementos. But I’m just happy to have another friend who’s read and seen the Scorpius Hawthorne series.

We look at the movie posters to decide what we’re going to see. Thomas wishes a new Spielberg movie was out but is ready to settle on a black-and-white film about a boy dancing on a bus. “No thanks,” I say.

“What about that new movie, The Final Chase?” Thomas stands in front of a poster of a pretty blue-eyed girl sitting at the edge of a dock like it’s a park bench, and a guy in a sweater vest reaching out for her. “I didn’t realize this was out yet. You down?”

I’m pretty sure the commercial for this movie leans toward the romance side of things. “I don’t think I can.”

“It’s PG-13. You are of age, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, smart-ass. Looks like something Genevieve might like. There’s nothing else you want to see?”

Thomas looks around and turns his back on movies promising explosions and gunfights. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that French movie again. It starts in an hour, though.”

It’s obvious he doesn’t want to see the French movie again because who in the hell would want to see a French movie twice? “Let’s go see The Final Chase. I can always see it again when she gets back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. If it sucks, she’s on her own.”

We go inside and there are plenty of seats available. “Preference?”

“The back row but don’t ask why,” I say.

“Why?”

“I have this pretty irrational fear of having my throat sliced inside a movie theater, so I figure that can’t happen if no one sits behind me.”

Thomas stops chewing on his popcorn. His eyes are grilling me on whether I’m being serious or not before he busts out laughing so hard he almost chokes. I sit down in the back row, and he collapses into the seat next to mine as his laugh winds down.

I flip him off. “Don’t act like you’ve never been freaked out by something ridiculous.”

“No, I definitely have. I used to bother my mother when I was a kid, maybe nine or ten, to let me watch horror movies, especially slasher flicks.”

“Probably not the best thing to say to someone afraid of having his throat sliced.”

“Shut up. So my mother finally gave in one evening and let me watch Scream. I was scared shitless and was up until five in the morning. Ma always encouraged me to count sheep when I couldn’t sleep but it only made things worse. I was counting sheep that night and every time they hopped over the fence…” Dramatic pause. “The Scream guy would stab each of them and they would fall down, bloody and dead.”

I laugh so loudly other people shush me, even though previews haven’t started yet, and it’s hard to stop. “You are so disturbed! How long did this go on for?”

“Never stopped.” Thomas screeches and mimes someone getting stabbed. The previews come on and we shut up.

There’s a rom-com, Next Stop: Love, which is about a train conductor crushing on this new attendant; a typical horror movie where creepy little girls appear after someone turns a corner; a miniseries called Don’t You Forget About Me about a husband trying to convince his wife not to forget him with a Leteo procedure; and, finally, a comedy about four postgrad guys on a cruise ship that doesn’t look funny at all.

“Those all looked terrible,” I say.

Thomas leans over and says, “I will slice your throat if you talk during the movie.”

This movie is total bullshit.

It’s supposed to be funny and the only thing I’m laughing at is how the studio managed to disguise an uncomfortably dark movie as a summer comedy.

It’s about a guy named Chase who strikes up a conversation with some cute girl on the train about where she’s going. She tells him, “Somewhere good.” He digs deeper but she doesn’t respond. She leaves her phone on the train, and Chase chases (sigh) after her to return it, but it’s too late, so he goes through her phone and discovers a bucket list of things she wants to do before ending her life.

By this point, Thomas has fallen asleep. I should probably do the same thing, but I hope it gets better… and it never does. Near the end, Chase pieces together she’s going to kill herself at the pier and when he finally gets there he’s greeted by the blinding red-and-blue siren lights of police cars. He smashes the phone.

I want to smash something, too.

My recap to Thomas when he wakes up: “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

He stretches and yawns. “Your throat looks fine, though,” he says.

I sort of, kind of, definitely like summer in my neighborhood: girls chalking hopscotch; guys playing card games under whatever shade they can find; friends blasting their stereos; shooting shit on the stoops. And while my apartment is small, it’s moments like these that make those walls feel bigger than they are.

I point to the red hospital across the street. “My mother works over there and manages to be twenty minutes late every morning.” Down the block is the post office. “And my father used to be a security guard there.” Maybe all that time alone with his thoughts was where he went wrong.

The fire hydrant on the corner has been wrenched open. The screaming kids remind me of all the times we filled up buckets and spilled water all over the playground, throwing ourselves down the wet slides since we couldn’t afford to go to an actual water park.

“I don’t know what my dad does,” Thomas replies. “The last time I saw him was on my ninth birthday. I was watching him from my window go to his car to get my Buzz Lightyear, but instead he got in and drove away.”

I don’t know when we stopped walking or who stopped first, but we’re both still.

“Asshole.”

“Let’s not go taking dark turns, okay?” Thomas eyes the sprinkler and mischievously raises his huge eyebrows before pulling off his shirt, his arms flexing. He’s got some God of War — like abs coming in and all I have is serious rib cage. “Come on.”