The Impossible Fortress

by Jason Rekulak

  2000 REM *** VICTORY THEME MUSIC ***

  2010 READ Q1:READ Q2:READ Q3:READ Q4

  2020 READ Q5:IF Q1=0 THEN 4500

  2030 POKE W1,17:POKE W2,17:POKE W3,21

  2040 POKE H1,Q1:POKE L1,Q2:POKE H2,Q3

  2050 POKE L2,Q4:POKE H3,Q1/4

  2060 POKE L3,Q2/4

  2070 FOR J=1 TO Q5:NEXT J

  2080 POKE W1,16:POKE W2,16:POKE W3,16

  2090 RETURN

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK FRIDAY afternoon, Mary declared the game complete, but I insisted on making one last change to the title screen. I tweaked the code so the game began with the following message:

  THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS

  A Game by Will Marvin and Mary Zelinsky

  © 1987 Radical Planet

  “Aw, come on,” Mary said. “I don’t need any credit.”

  “You deserve all the credit,” I said. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t know machine language.”

  “What’s Radical Planet?”

  “Our new company,” I explained. “I took Radical Music and Planet Will and mashed them up.”

  “Radical Planet,” she repeated, testing the name. “It’s not bad.”

  The store carried all different kinds of padded envelopes, packing peanuts, and shipping supplies, and Zelinsky encouraged us to use whatever we needed—on the house. “After all this work,” he said, “you don’t want your disk getting mangled by a post office machine.”

  By the time Mary finished, the package looked ready to survive a nuclear blast, and we stuck on enough postage to send it around the world. We left the store and walked three blocks along Market Street, arriving at the post office with just minutes to spare. The blue mailbox out front had a sign reading LAST PICKUP 5:00.

  I reached for the handle. “Here goes nothing.”

  “Wait,” Mary said. “Don’t move.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’ve got an eyelash.” She reached out and gently swiped my cheekbone, capturing the stray lash on her index finger. Then she held it out so I could make a wish. “Perfect timing.”

  If only I’d wished to win the contest, maybe I’d be telling a different story here. Maybe I would have gone home and this all would have ended differently. Now that the game was finished, I didn’t have a reason to hang around the store anymore—but I wished I did. I wanted to do something, I wanted to celebrate, I wanted to go out. I blew on the eyelash and let the door of the mailbox clang shut.

  “We’re going to win,” Mary insisted. “The eyelash clinched it.”

  We took our time walking back. Rush hour traffic was inching along Market Street and the sidewalks were full of commuters. The temperature was creeping up into the eighties, and the businessmen all carried their sports coats draped over their arms. Halfway back, we passed the Regal, Wetbridge’s tiny one-screen movie house. A large marquee announced the current film, but the Regal rarely had enough letters to spell the complete title, so the owners resorted to abbreviations and weird phonetic spellings. In the past year, they’d screened CROKODYL DUNDY, LITTL SHP OV HORRS, and FERRS BLLR DAY OUGH. Sometimes the challenge of deciphering the title could be more entertaining than the actual movie. Today the marquee promised: SME KND OV WNDRFL.

  “Some Kind of Wonderful,” Mary said.

  I’d never heard of it. “Do you want to go?”

  “I’ve seen it three times,” she explained.

  “Oh.”

  “But I would totally go again. It’s awesome.”

  I hurried home for a quick dinner, but I was too nervous to eat very much. Mom studied my plate with concern. It wasn’t like me to leave meat loaf untouched. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Going to the movies.”

  “With Alf and Clark?”

  “With Mary,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything, just nodded, like I went to movies with girls all the time. I took a shower, put on my best Bugle Boy pants with an Ocean Pacific button-down. When I finally came out of the bathroom, I found a crisp twenty-dollar bill on my dresser. No note, no explanation. I went out to the living room to thank my mother, but she had already left for work.

  I walked back to the Regal—I didn’t want to bike over, I worried the bike would make me seem like a little kid—and found Mary standing under the marquee. She was dressed in the same T-shirt and skirt she’d worn earlier. Suddenly I felt silly for dressing up.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “I got pizza on my other shirt,” I explained. “These were my only clean clothes.”

  “Let’s get our tickets,” she said.

  The Regal was a small brick building that dated back to the vaudeville era; now it was just a second-run movie theater facing stiff competition from VCRs, cable television, and shopping mall multiplexes. The owner was rumored to be more than a hundred years old. She single-handedly sold the tickets, served up cold popcorn and watery Cokes, operated the projector, and famously refused to admit any latecomers. In flagrant defiance of the Wetbridge fire code (not to mention common sense), she locked the doors at the start of every film to prevent kids from sneaking inside without paying. Everyone I knew called her the Sea Hag because of her hump-backed posture and sharp tongue, but Mary greeted her at the box office window like an old friend. “Hello, Mrs. Beckenbauer,” she said. “How was your trip to the optometrist?”

  The Sea Hag peered through the smudged Plexiglas and smiled. I’d never seen the Sea Hag smile at anyone. Until that moment, I wasn’t even convinced she had teeth. “This is the third time he dilated my eyes,” she said, blinking furiously. “Look at my pupils! They’re like quarters!”

  Mary turned to me. “This is my friend Will.”

  The Sea Hag studied me with her enormous quarter-size pupils. I’d been to the Regal dozens of times, but she didn’t recognize me. “It’s very nice to meet you, Will. You kids are going to like this picture, it’s a good one.” We tried to pay for our tickets but she refused to take our money; instead she passed us a pack of gummy bears, on the house. “Popcorn’s ready in a minute, if you’re interested.”

  There were a lot of people still waiting to pay, so Mary and I moved along into the theater. “She’s in our store every day,” Mary explained. “Pack of Virginia Slims and a Wall Street Journal. She and my mom used to talk for hours.”

  “Do you know everyone working in this town?”

  “Pretty much.”

  The Regal Theater had a classic old-timey sort of beauty. There was a red velvet curtain, an orchestra pit, and boxed seats for distinguished guests, and the walls were adorned with portraits of silver screen movie stars: Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire. It wasn’t Carnegie Hall, but if you were a fourteen-year-old growing up in Wetbridge in 1987, you could almost believe the experience was classy.

  The theater was only half full, and we had no trouble finding good seats in the middle. As we took our seats, a girl across the aisle made eye contact with Mary and offered a flat “hello.” She was seated with a man and woman, presumably her parents. They were busy talking and didn’t look over.

  “Hello,” Mary said.

  The girl abruptly looked away, choosing to stare at the curtain rather than continue the conversation.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Used to be,” Mary said with a shrug. “Her name’s Sharon Boyd. We were best friends growing up, but then she sort of ditched me.”

  “What happened?”

  “High school, I guess.” She shrugged again. “If you want to know the truth, I don’t have a lot of friends right now.”

  This seemed hard to believe. Everyone at the store loved Mary. There were a half-dozen regulars who stopped in daily for newspapers or cigarettes and they always asked how Mary was feeling—as if her mother’s death was two days ago and not two years ago. “You have tons of friends. We just got free movie tickets, didn’t we?”

  “It’
s different at school,” she said. “St. Agatha’s is just like The Breakfast Club. They put everybody in these slots. Sporty girls, girly girls, party girls. But they don’t have a slot for me. So by default I’m Ally Sheedy.”

  “The basket case?”

  “I’m serious. They avoid me. Like I’m contagious.”

  I knew exactly how she felt. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “Radical Planet is going to change everything. The Impossible Fortress is just the beginning. We’re going to work together. You and me. We’re going to grow it into a giant company, and we’re only going to hire cool people. We’ll work out of a giant skyscraper in New York. We’ll drive around in a limousine, and everyone in Wetbridge will be jealous.”

  Mary laughed. “Look who’s dreaming now,” she said. “Are you serious?”

  “We’re a great team,” I said. “If we keep working, Sharon Boyd is going to rue the day she ditched you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Trust me.” I flicked a gummy bear across the aisle; it landed in Sharon’s hair, but she didn’t even flinch. Mary cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. Sharon tilted her head, and the gummy bear disappeared inside her curls.

  “You’re terrible,” she whispered. “She’s not going to find that bear until graduation.”

  I offered the bag to Mary, and she popped one of the candies into her mouth. “Radical Planet,” I said, as if simply saying the name aloud made it real. “We should start the next game tomorrow. We should keep working.”

  “Don’t you want to relax for a bit?”

  “I do not,” I said. “I want to keep going.”

  By then the lights were dimming and the curtains were parting and it would have been easy for Mary to avoid the topic. But instead she answered me, loudly and clearly.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll start a new game tomorrow.”

  There was a crash of cymbals over the Paramount logo and the movie was under way. Some Kind of Wonderful opened like a music video, introducing the lead characters in a montage fueled by New Wave synth-pop. The relentless drumbeat rattled the walls of the theater; the bass was so loud, I could feel it thumping in my chest. I looked over at Mary, and she was rapt with attention, eyes wide and smiling. I reached into her lap and took her hand.

  It was like jumping off a cliff. I braced myself for rejection. I knew there was a good chance she’d yank away her hand and cross her arms over her chest. But that didn’t happen. Instead she laced her fingers through mine, just like she’d done in the blackout.

  Within minutes my forearm was numb; I’d twisted it into a weird angle before reaching over, and now I didn’t dare adjust my grip. I was afraid even the slightest twitch would spook Mary into letting go. But she didn’t let go. She actually reached over and put her other hand on top of my wrist. And the closeness of her made everything on screen seem amplified. The colors were brighter, the sound was louder, the percussion rattled my core. And yet I couldn’t process any of it. I spent the next hour thinking only of Mary’s hands—the delicate curve of her wrists, the gentle texture of her skin, the smooth, clean surface of her fingernails. All the drama on the screen was secondary.

  And then out of nowhere the movie sputtered to a halt. The screen went white and the soundtrack stopped. Up in the projection booth, the Sea Hag howled in frustration. Then the houselights came on, and she walked out on the stage, explaining that the screening was canceled due to mechanical error.

  The audience booed but she held her ground. “There’s no point in complaining because I can’t fix it.” As a consolation, she offered to describe the ending to anyone who wanted to know what happened. “Basically, the artsy boy takes the pretty girl to a big dinner at a fancy restaurant, and the drummer girl is their chauffeur . . .”

  Mary pulled me out of my seat. “Come on,” she said. “We can’t let her spoil it.”

  I didn’t particularly care, but I could tell it was important to Mary, so I followed her up the center aisle to the lobby. The main entrance was already unlocked, but once outside we realized we had no place to go. Sometime during the movie, it had started to thunderstorm. Heavy rains were pelting Market Street, pounding the cars with a loud drumming and slowing traffic to a crawl. We huddled with our fellow moviegoers under the marquee, inches from getting soaked.

  “My father’s not coming for an hour,” Mary said. “He’s meeting me here.” I suggested that she call him from a pay phone but Mary hesitated. Neither of us was ready to go home. There was a crack of thunder, and a woman standing under the marquee yelped with fright.

  “The train station’s still open,” I suggested. “We could wait in the lobby until the rain stops.”

  “Would you rather go to the store?” Mary asked.

  “What store?”

  “My store.” She reached in her pocket for a key ring. “I can get us in.”

  “Your dad won’t care?”

  “I’ve done it before. He won’t mind as long as we clean up after ourselves.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  She smiled mysteriously. “We can play some games,” she said. Only I couldn’t tell if she meant Space Invaders or Asteroids or . . . something else.

  Actually, I was pretty sure she meant something else.

  “It’ll be fun,” she promised.

  “What about the rain?”

  “I’ll race you.”

  Before I could respond, Mary was already sprinting down Market Street. I ran after her, and within moments I was soaked. The sidewalk puddles were inches deep and my Chuck Taylors filled like sponges. Thunder cracked again and Mary shrieked, running faster. We ran past the bank and the post office; we blew through stop signs and red lights and we ducked in front of idling traffic. A station wagon locked its brakes to avoid hitting me, hydroplaning on the asphalt and nearly colliding with a pickup truck. After three blocks, Mary abruptly switched to walking and I blazed past her.

  “What’s wrong?” I called back.

  She was out of breath. “It’s no use,” she said. “We’re soaked!”

  The front entrance of Zelinsky’s was shuttered with a large metal grate; Mary knelt down and unlatched the bottom, and then the spring-loaded grate rose up, coiling beneath the awning like a window shade. Then she unlocked the door and went inside. I moved to follow her, but she stopped me.

  “You need to stay here.”

  “But I’m drenched!”

  “It’s my dad’s rule. There’s a security code, and no one’s allowed to see it.”

  She pulled the door closed, leaving me out in the rain, and the significance of the moment was lost on me. I wasn’t thinking about alarm codes or security systems; I was thinking of the way she’d held my hand in the Regal, gently squeezing my palm whenever anything exciting happened in the movie.

  And now we were going back to the store.

  To play some games.

  A moment later, Mary opened the door, letting me inside.

  The store was dark except for a small work lamp beside the cash register. My heart was still pounding from the run. Mary looked at me and laughed. “We’ve got towels in the back,” she told me. “Don’t move. If you get water on any of the magazines, we can’t return them.”

  Rain had flattened her hair and made her T-shirt transparent, revealing the outline of her bra; she looked like she’d just stepped out of the shower. She saw me looking at her and bit her lower lip. And that was it. She started to say “I’ll be right back—” when I stepped forward, placed my hands on her hips, and kissed her. We toppled against the counter where Mr. Zelinsky repaired his typewriters. Mary was kissing me back, and I had never experienced anything like it. She tasted like thunderstorms and gummy bears. And it was all so natural. It was my first time kissing a girl, but to my astonishment it felt like the easiest thing in the world.

  Until Mary pushed me away.

  “No, no, no.”

  I stopped kissing but didn’t let go.

  “
What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t.”

  “I like you, Mary. I think I—”

  “Get off,” she said.

  I was too surprised to move. I was shocked.

  She shook off my hands. “Let go.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were all over the store. She looked at the windows and the newspapers and the floor—at everything but me. “You shouldn’t have done that, Will. We had a good thing going and you ruined it. Why did you ruin it?”

  Why did I ruin it? Me?

  “I thought you wanted me to.”

  “I like you as a friend,” she said. “None of this other stuff.”

  All the other stuff raced through my mind: Mary holding my hand in the movie, Mary complimenting my Bugle Boy pants, Mary scooping an eyelash off my cheek with a touch that felt like a kiss. “But I thought—”

  “I’m sorry if I gave you wrong signals,” she said.

  I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t believe her. We were not just friends. There was something more, I was certain of it.

  Mary was shivering. She suddenly looked wet and cold and miserable. She turned to the Ademco alarm panel and pressed EXIT. The LCD screen flashed ENTER ACCESS CODE, and Mary pressed four keys in quick succession. I didn’t process what I was seeing; I was still too bewildered by her reaction.

  “You’re serious?” I asked. Later, I would cringe over the desperation in my voice, the way I practically whined to her. Later, I would feel ashamed of myself, ashamed of my stupid pathetic mumbling: “You really don’t like me?”

  “Not that way. I can’t, Will. I’m sorry.”

  The panel was beep-beep-beeping, warning us to get out of the store, and Mary elbowed me outside into the rain. Then she locked the door and pulled down the grate and locked that, too. I just stood there watching her as the rain crashed all around us. I had to shout to be heard over the noise.

  “Where are you going?”

  She nodded to the pay phone at the train station. “I’ll call my dad.”

  “Do you want me to wait with you?”

  “I want you to go home.”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer. She just turned and walked to the train station.