Almost Midnight

by Rainbow Rowell

  ‘Can you breathe?’ she asked.

  ‘I can breathe.’

  ‘What usually happens?’

  He grinned. ‘This has never happened before.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘My mouth tingles. My tongue and lips swell up. I get hives. Do you want to check me for hives?’ Wolfish.

  ‘Then what?’ she asked.

  ‘Then nothing,’ he said. ‘Then I take Benadryl. I have an EpiPen, but I’ve never had to use it.’

  ‘I’m going to check you for hives,’ she said.

  He grinned again and held out his arms. She looked at them. She lifted up his striped T-shirt. . . . He was pale. And covered in goose bumps. And there were freckles she’d never known about on his chest.

  ‘I don’t think you have hives,’ she said.

  ‘I can feel the Benadryl working already.’ He dropped his arms and put them around her.

  ‘Don’t kiss me again,’ Mags said.

  ‘Immediately,’ Noel said. ‘I won’t kiss you again immediately.’

  She leaned into him, her temple on his chin, and closed her eyes.

  ‘I knew you’d save my life,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have had to save it if I didn’t almost kill you.’

  ‘Don’t give yourself too much credit. It’s the tree nuts who are trying to kill me.’

  She nodded.

  They were both quiet for a few minutes.

  ‘Noel?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  She had to ask him this—she had to make herself ask it: ‘Are you just being melodramatic?’

  ‘Mags, I promise. I wouldn’t fake an allergic response.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘With the kiss.’

  ‘There was more than one kiss. . . .’

  ‘With all of them,’ she said. ‘Were you just—embellishing?’

  Mags braced for him to say something silly.

  ‘No,’ Noel said. Then, ‘Were you just humoring me?

  ‘God. No,’ she said. ‘Did it feel like I was humoring you?’

  Noel shook his head, rubbing his chin into her temple.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Mags asked.

  ‘I don’t know. . . .’ he said eventually. ‘I know things have to change, but . . . I can’t lose you. I don’t think I get another one like you.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, Noel.’

  ‘You are,’ he said, squeezing her. ‘And it’s okay. Just . . . I need you to take me with you.’

  Mags didn’t know what to say to that.

  It was cold. Noel was shivering. She should give him his jacket.

  ‘Mags?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Mags swallowed.

  In the three years she and Noel had been friends, she’d spent a lot of time pretending she didn’t need anything more than what he was already giving her. She’d told herself there was a difference between wanting something and needing it. . . .

  ‘I need you to be my person,’ Mags said. ‘I need to see you. And hear you. I need you to stay alive. And I need you to stop kissing other people just because they’re standing next to you when the ball drops.’

  Noel laughed.

  ‘I also need you not to laugh at me,’ she said.

  He pulled his face back and looked at her. ‘No, you don’t.’

  She kissed his chin without opening her mouth.

  ‘You can have all those things,’ he said carefully. ‘You can have me, Mags, if you want me.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted you,’ she said, mortified by the extent to which it was true.

  Noel leaned in to kiss her, and she dropped her forehead against his lips.

  They were quiet.

  And it was cold.

  ‘Happy anniversary, Mags.’

  ‘Happy New Year, Noel.’

  Monday 14 December 2015

  There were already two people sitting outside the theater when Elena got there, so she wouldn’t be first in line. But that was OK. She was still here—she was still doing this.

  She grabbed her sleeping bag, and the backpack she’d stocked with books and food and antibacterial wipes, and got out of the car as quickly as possible; it looked like her mom might make one last attempt to talk Elena out of this.

  She rolled down her window to frown at Elena directly. ‘I don’t see a Portaloo.’

  Elena had said there would be a Portaloo. ‘I’ll figure it out,’ Elena said quietly. ‘These guys are figuring it out.’

  ‘They’re men,’ her mom said. ‘They can pee anywhere.’

  ‘I’ll hold it,’ Elena said.

  ‘For four days?’

  ‘Mom,’ Elena said. And what she meant was: We’ve been through this. We’ve talked about it for weeks and weeks. I know you don’t approve. But I’m still doing it.

  Elena dropped her gear on the sidewalk, behind a tall white boy who was second in line. ‘OK,’ she said cheerfully to her mom. ‘I’ve got this. See you Thursday!’

  Her mom was still frowning. ‘See you after lunch,’ she said, then rolled up her window and drove away.

  Elena turned back to the line, smiling her best first-day-of-school smile. The guy next to her—he looked like he was probably about her age, seventeen or eighteen—didn’t look up. First in line was a big white guy with a blond beard. He looked old enough to be one of Elena’s teachers, and he was sitting in a fold-out camping chair with his feet propped up on a giant cooler. ‘Hey!’ he said happily. ‘Welcome to Star Wars, man! Welcome to the line!’

  This, she quickly learned, was Troy. He’d been in line since Thursday morning. ‘I wanted to invest at least a week in this, you know? I really wanted to gather my focus.’

  The younger guy, Gabe, had got in line Thursday night.

  ‘There was a couple who hung out with us Saturday for a few hours,’ Troy said, ‘but one of them forgot her sunglasses, so they went home. Weak!’

  Elena hadn’t brought any sunglasses. She squinted into the sun.

  ‘I’m guessing this is your first line,’ Troy said.

  ‘How can you tell?’ she asked.

  ‘I can tell,’ he said, chuckling. ‘I can always tell. It’s Gabe’s first line, too.’

  ‘We were eight when the last Star Wars movie came out,’ Gabe said, not looking up from his book.

  ‘Revenge of the Sith!’ Troy said. ‘That wasn’t much of a line anyway. It was no Empire.’

  ‘Nothing is,’ Elena said.

  Troy’s face got somber. ‘Hear, hear, Elena. Hear, hear.’

  All right, so . . . she’d expected there to be more people here.

  The Facebook group she’d found—Camp Star Wars: Omaha!!!—had eighty-five members, not including Elena, who was more of a lurker than a joiner. This was definitely the right theater; the Facebook posts had been very clear. (Maybe it was Troy who posted them.)

  Elena had planned to continue her more-lurker-than-joiner strategy in the line. She thought she’d show up and then sort of disappear into the crowd until she got her sea legs. Her line legs. It was a pretty good strategy for most social situations: show up, fall back, let somebody else break the ice and take the spotlight. Somebody else always would. Extroverts were nothing if not dependable.

  But even an expert mid-trovert like Elena couldn’t lie low in a crowd of three. (Though this Gabe kid seemed to be trying.) Elena was going to be here for four days. She was going to have to talk to these people, at least until someone else showed up.

  ‘Cold enough for you?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Actually I think I might be little overdressed,’ Elena said.

  She was wearing three layers on the bottom and four on top, and she had a big puffy coat if she needed it. If the temperature dropped dangerously low—which would be inevitable during a normal Omaha December—she’d have to go home. But the forecast was pretty mild. (Thanks, global warming?)

  ‘What were they thinking when they scheduled this movie for De
cember?’ Troy said. ‘They weren’t thinking of us, I can tell you. May,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘May is when you release a Star Wars movie. If this movie were a May movie, the line would already be around the block.’

  ‘Lucky for us, I guess,’ Elena said. ‘We get to be first.’

  ‘Oh, I’d be first no matter what,’ Troy said. ‘I am here for it, you know?’ He cupped his hands around his lips and shouted, ‘I’m here for it!’

  Me, too, Elena thought.

  Elena couldn’t remember the first time she saw a Star Wars movie . . . in the same way she couldn’t remember the first time she saw her parents. Star Wars had just always been there. There was a stuffed Chewbacca in her crib.

  The original trilogy were her dad’s favorite movies—he practically knew them by heart—so when Elena was little, like four or five, she’d say they were her favorite movies, too. Because she wanted to be just like him.

  And then, as she got older, the movies started to actually sink in. Like, they went from something Elena could recite to something she could feel. She made them her own. And then she’d kept making them her own. However Elena changed or grew, Star Wars seemed to be there for her in a new way.

  When she’d found out that there were going to be sequels—real sequels, Han and Leia and Luke sequels—she’d flipped out. That’s when she’d decided to get in line.

  She didn’t want to miss this moment. Not just this moment in the world, but this moment in her life.

  If you broke Elena’s heart, Star Wars would spill out. This was a holy day for her—it was a cosmic event. This was her planets lining up. (Tatooine, Coruscant, Hoth.)

  And Elena was going to be here for it.

  Her left foot was asleep.

  She kept kicking the sidewalk, then stood up to bounce.

  ‘Is your leg asleep again?’ Troy said. ‘I’m worried about your circulation.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Elena said, stamping her foot.

  She’d only been sitting for two hours, but she was so bored she could hardly stand it. She could literally hardly stand; even her blood vessels were bored.

  She’d brought lots of books. (She’d planned to read Star Wars books whenever she had a quiet moment in line.) (Which was every moment so far.) But the wind kept blowing the pages, and the paper was so bright in the sun that reading made her eyes water.

  None of that seemed to bother silent Gabe, who read his paperback without seeming to notice the sun, the traffic, Troy, Elena or Elena’s mom, who kept driving by slowly, like someone trying to buy drugs.

  ‘The Imperial March’ started playing, and Elena answered her phone.

  ‘Why don’t I pick you up now?’ her mom said. ‘Then you can get back in line when there are more girls here.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Elena said.

  ‘You don’t even know these men. They could be sexual predators.’

  ‘This doesn’t seem like a very good place to prey,’ Elena whispered, glancing over at Gabe, who was still absorbed in his book. He was pale with curly, milk-chocolate-colored hair and rosy cheeks. He looked like Clark Kent’s skinny cousin.

  ‘You know you have to be extra careful,’ her mom said. ‘You look so young.’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ Elena said.

  They’d been through it a lot:

  ‘You look twelve,’ her mom would say.

  And Elena couldn’t really argue. She was short and small. She could shop in the kids section. And the fact that she was Vietnamese seemed to scramble non-Asians’ perceptions of her. She was always being mistaken for a kid.

  But what was she supposed to do about that? Act like a kid until she looked like an adult? Start smoking and spend too much time in the sun?

  ‘Just because I look twelve doesn’t mean you can treat me like I’m twelve,’ Elena would say. ‘I’m going to college next year.’

  ‘You told me there’d be other girls here,’ her mom said.

  ‘There will be.’

  ‘Good. I’ll bring you back after they get here.’

  ‘I’ve gotta go,’ Elena said. ‘I’m trying to conserve my phone battery.’

  ‘Elena—’

  ‘I’ve got to go!’ Elena hung up.

  The first theater employees started showing up around two. One, who looked like the manager—a Latino guy in his thirties, wearing maroon pants and a matching tie—stopped in front of the line and crossed his arms.

  ‘So we’ve got a new addition, huh?’

  Elena smiled.

  He didn’t smile back. ‘You know you can buy your ticket online, right?’

  ‘I already bought my ticket,’ Elena said.

  ‘Then you’re guaranteed a seat. You don’t have to wait in line.’

  ‘Um,’ Elena said. ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘You can’t talk her out of this,’ Troy said. ‘She’s a true believer.’

  ‘I’m not trying to talk anybody out of anything,’ the manager said, looking harried. ‘I’m just explaining that this is an unnecessary gesture.’

  ‘All the best ones are,’ Troy said. ‘Now open the doors. My bladder is about explode.’

  The manager sighed. ‘I don’t have to let you use the restroom, you know.’

  ‘Give it up, Mark,’ Troy said. ‘They tried that during Phantom Menace, and it didn’t work then either.’

  ‘I should make you hoof it to Starbucks,’ the manager said, walking towards the front doors and unlocking them.

  Troy stood up and made a big show of stretching. ‘We take turns,’ he said to Elena, ‘in line order.’

  She nodded.

  The manager, Mark, held the door for Troy, but he was still looking at Elena. ‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

  ‘I’m eighteen,’ she said.

  He looked surprised. ‘Well, all right. Then I guess you’re old enough to waste your own time.’

  Elena was hoping Gabe would open up a little while Troy was gone. They’d been sitting next to each other for hours now, and he’d only said a few words. She thought maybe he was being so quiet because he didn’t want to get Troy going on one of his stories. (Troy had so many stories—he’d camped out for every Star Wars opening since The Empire Strikes Back—and he was clearly pleased to have a captive audience.)

  But Gabe, with his navy-blue peacoat and his gunmetal glasses, just sat there reading about the history of polio and ignoring her.

  When Troy came out with an extra-large sack of popcorn, Gabe nodded at Elena. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Elena said. ‘I just got here.’ She wasn’t fine; she had to pee so bad she was worried she was going to leak when she stood up.

  Gabe didn’t move. So Elena got up and walked into the theater. The manager kept an eye on her the whole time, like she might sneak in to see a movie. She should. It was so warm inside the theater.

  When she got back outside, Gabe took his turn.

  ‘We have to save his spot,’ Troy said, ‘and look out for his things as if they were our own. Code of the Line.’ He held his bag of popcorn out over Gabe’s sleeping bag.

  Elena took some. ‘What invalidates the code?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like, are there any circumstances where someone loses their spot?’

  ‘That is a fine question,’ he said. ‘I mean, some things are obvious. If someone takes off, without telling anyone or leaving any collateral—they’re out. I think there’s a time limit, too. Like, you can’t just go home and take a nap and expect to come back to your spot. Everybody else is here, earning it, you know? You don’t get a free pass for that. Though there are always exceptions . . .’

  ‘There are?’

  ‘We’re human. We had a guy in the Phantom Menace line who had to leave for therapy. We saved his place. But another guy tried to go to work, he said he was going to lose his job . . . We pushed his tent out of line.’

  ‘You did?’ Popcorn fell out of Elena’s mouth. She picked it up. ‘Th
at’s brutal.’

  ‘No—’ Troy was grave—’that’s life. We were all going to lose our jobs. I camped out for three weeks. You think I got three weeks’ vacation? At the zoo?’

  ‘You worked at the zoo?’

  ‘You’ve got to sacrifice something for this experience,’ Troy said, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘That’s why we’re here. You’ve got to leave some blood on the altar. I mean, you heard Mark. If you just want to see the new Star Wars movie, you can buy your ticket online and then forget about it until show time. But if you want to wait in line, you wait in line, you know?’

  Elena was nodding. Gabe was standing on the sidewalk. ‘Did you just vote me out of the line?’ he asked.

  Troy laughed. ‘No, dude, you’re good—you want some popcorn?’

  Gabe took some and sat down.

  Elena had been imagining this day for months. She’d been planning it for weeks.

  This wasn’t what she was expecting from the line experience.

  This was more like being in an elevator with two random people. Like being stuck in an elevator.

  Elena had been expecting . . . Well, more people, obviously. And more of a party. A celebration!

  She’d thought it would be like all those photos she’d seen when she was a kid and the last Star Wars movies came out. All those fans out on the street, in communion with each other.

  Elena had been too young to camp out then. Her dad wouldn’t even let her see the prequels. He said she was too young. And then, when she grew up, he said they were too terrible. ‘They’ll just corrupt your love of Star Wars,’ he said. ‘I wish I could unsee them.’

  So even though Star Wars was Elena’s whole life at ten, she didn’t get to go to the party.

  She was eighteen now. She could do whatever she wanted. So where was the party?

  The afternoon was even more mind-numbing than the morning.

  Her mom drove by three or four more times. Elena pretended not to notice. She read a few chapters of a Star Wars book. Troy pointed out that all the expanded-universe books weren’t canon any more—’Disney erased them from the timeline.’ Elena said she didn’t care, that she liked them anyway.