Lucas didn’t look as certain—his eyes were wary as he led me into the theater lobby—but I figured that was pretty much the standard guy response to parents.
We chose seats beneath the balcony, where Mom and Dad would have no chance of seeing us. Lucas and I sat close to each other, our bodies sort of angled together, and my shoulder and knee brushed against his.
“Never done this,” he said.
“Been to an old-style movie house?” I glanced appreciatively at the gilded scrollwork that decorated the walls and balcony, and the dark red velvet curtain. “They really are beautiful.”
“That’s not what I meant.” For all his aggressiveness, Lucas could seem almost bashful at times; that only happened when he talked to me. “I never got to just—go out with a girl before.”
“This is your first date, too?”
“‘Date’—people still use that word?” I would’ve felt embarrassed if he hadn’t playfully nudged my elbow with his. “I just mean, I never got to be with anybody like this. Hang out without any pressure or knowing that I’d have to move on in another week or two.”
“You make it sound like you never felt at home anywhere.”
“Not until now.”
I shot him a skeptical look. “Evernight feels like home? Give me a break.”
Lucas’s slow grin crept across his face. “I didn’t mean Evernight.”
At that moment, the houselights were dimmed, and thank goodness. Otherwise I probably would’ve said something stupid instead of reveling in the moment.
Suspicion was one of the Cary Grant movies I hadn’t seen before. This woman, Joan Fontaine, married Cary even though he was sort of reckless and spent too much money. She did this because he’s Cary freakin’ Grant, which makes him worth losing a few bucks. Lucas wasn’t convinced by this reasoning. “You don’t think it’s weird that he’s researching poisons?” he whispered. “Who researches poisons as a hobby? At least admit that’s a weird hobby.”
“No man who looks like that can be a murderer,” I insisted.
“Has anybody ever suggested that you might be too quick to trust people?”
“Shut up.” I elbowed Lucas in the side, which jostled a few kernels of popcorn from our bag.
I enjoyed the movie, but I enjoyed being close to Lucas even more. It was amazing how much we could communicate without saying anything—a sidelong glance of amusement or the easy way our hands brushed against each other and he twined his fingers with mine. The pad of his thumb traced small circles in my palm, and that alone was enough to make my heart race. What would it be like to be held by him?
In the end, I was proved right. Cary turned out to have been researching the poisons so he could commit suicide and save poor Joan Fontaine from his many debts. She insisted they would work it out, and they drove off together. Lucas shook his head as the last shot faded. “That ending is fake, you know. Hitchcock meant for him to be guilty. The studio made him redeem Cary Grant in the end so audiences would like it.”
“The ending isn’t fake if it’s the ending.” I insisted. The lights came up for the brief intermission before the late show began. “Let’s go someplace else, okay? We’ve got a while before the bus.”
Lucas glanced upward, and I could tell he wouldn’t mind getting farther from the parental chaperones. “Come on.”
We made our way along Riverton’s small main street, where it seemed like every single open store or restaurant was crowded with refugees from Evernight Academy. Lucas and I silently passed each of them, searching for what we really wanted—a place to be alone. The idea that Lucas wanted some privacy for us made me feel both thrilled and a little bit intimidated. The night was cool, and the autumn leaves were rustling as we went down the sidewalk, stealing glances at each other as we made small talk.
At last, once we’d walked beyond the bus station that marked the end of the main street, we found an old pizza place just past the corner that looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since about 1961. Instead of ordering a whole pie, we just grabbed some plain cheese slices and sodas and slid into a booth. We faced each other across a table with a red-and-white checked cloth and a Chianti bottle thickly covered with candle wax. A jukebox in the corner was playing some Elton John song from before we were born.
“I like places like this,” Lucas said. “They feel real. Not like some corporate focus group designed every inch of it.”
“Me, too.” I would’ve told Lucas that I liked eating eggplant on the moon, if he liked it, too. At the moment, though, I was telling the truth. “You can relax and be yourself here.”
“Be myself.” Lucas’s smile was sort of faraway, like he had a private joke. “That ought to be easier than it is.”
I knew what he meant.
We were all but alone in the pizza parlor; the only other occupied table had about four guys who seemed to have come from a construction site, with plaster dust clinging to their T-shirts and a couple of empty pitchers testifying to the beer they’d already drunk. They were laughing loudly at their own jokes, but I didn’t mind. That gave me an excuse to lean across the table and be a little closer to Lucas.
“So, Cary Grant,” Lucas began, shaking red pepper flakes onto his slice. “That’s pretty much your dream guy, huh?”
“He’s sort of the king of dream guys, isn’t he? I’ve had a crush on him ever since I first saw Holiday when I was about five or six.”
You would think Lucas the movie buff would agree with that, but he didn’t. “Most girls in high school would be crushed out on movie stars who, you know, are making movies now. Or somebody on TV.”
I took a bite of pizza and had a very awkward cheese-strand situation to deal with for a second. Once I finally had a mouthful, I mumbled, “I like a whole lot of actors, but who doesn’t love Cary Grant the most?”
“Even though I totally agree that this fact is tragic, let’s face it: A lot of people our age haven’t even heard of Cary Grant.”
“Criminal.” I tried to imagine what Mrs. Bethany’s face would look like if I suggested a Cinema History elective. “My parents always introduced me to the movies and books that they loved back before I was born.”
“Cary Grant was big in the 1940s, Bianca. He was making movies seventy years ago.”
“And his movies have been on TV ever since. It’s easy to catch up on old movies if you just try.”
Lucas hesitated, and I felt a tug of dread, a swift, urgent need to change the subject to something else, anything else. I was one second too late, because Lucas said, “You said your parents brought you to Evernight so you could meet more people, get a bigger view of the world. But it seems to me like they’ve spent a whole lot of time making sure your world stays as small as possible.”
“Excuse me?”
“Forget I said it.” He sighed heavily as he dropped his pizza crust onto his plate. “I shouldn’t have brought this up now. This should be fun.”
Probably I should have let it go. The last thing I wanted to do on my first night out with Lucas was argue. But I couldn’t. “No, I want to understand. What do you even know about my parents?”