It's Kind of a Cheesy Love Story

by Lauren Morrill

  Sure enough, right in the center of the middle row, Frank stands there in the grass with his hands on his hips, as tall and skinny as a road sign. At the sight of us (or, more accurately, the sight of Cecilia), he steps aside and begins waving us in with both hands like we’re approaching our gate at the airport. Tristan pulls in at a diagonal, which is a technique I’ve never seen at the drive-in before, but when he shuts off the engine and hops out to throw open the sliding door to the back, I see that he’s parked in the perfect viewing angle.

  “Thank god you’re here,” Frank says, his forehead pricked with sweat even though it’s not that hot out. “This lady in a minivan looked super bloodthirsty. She had a bunch of screaming kids in the back, and it seemed like she was looking for an excuse to commit a murder. Like maybe running me over would earn her a break in the state pen or something.”

  “Cecilia only goes as fast as she goes,” Tristan replies.

  “You made it!” Julianne leaps out of the bed of the pickup truck parked next to us. Jason and Greg are sitting in the back passing a bucket of fried chicken back and forth.

  “Thanks for the invite,” I say. “And for the ride?”

  She shrugs, but there’s a little tug of a smile on her face. “Sorry to pawn you off on Tristan, but Jason refused to go back for you.” She says the last part loudly and pointedly over her shoulder.

  “You were in the opposite direction! If we went back, the chicken would have been soggy by the time we got here,” Jason says, waving a leg around in the air as a visual aid.

  “No pizza tonight?”

  “Stefano’s is not a carry-out item,” Greg says from the pickup truck, reaching in a box of potato wedges. “It’s really best straight out of the oven.”

  “It does not box cure well,” Tristan says.

  “Box cure?”

  “Yeah, you know how delivery pizza sort of marinates in the cardboard? It gets this almost smoky flavor, and the cheese gets delightfully rubbery.”

  “And also sucks up a lot of the grease,” Frank adds.

  “That’s gross,” I reply.

  “It’s true,” Tristan says. I guess he’d know, as the delivery guy among us. He turns to me. “Hey, I didn’t bring any food. Do you wanna hit up the snack bar?”

  “Sure,” I say, and wave to Julianne as we stomp through the gravel and grass toward the squat, cinder-block building that smells of grills and popcorn and sugar. Tristan gets in line and just sort of stares off into the distance. It’s pretty crowded for a Thursday night, what with it being fall break, and the line moves slowly. Most everyone else who’s not chatting with a friend is staring down at their phones. But not Tristan. He rocks a little on his heels, but otherwise he seems perfectly content to be waiting in a long line.

  “How do you do that?” I ask him.

  “Do what?”

  “Just wait. Patiently, like it’s the nineties or something.” I gesture around to everyone else flicking their thumbs over screens.

  He shrugs. “I don’t really do social media, so there’s nothing calling to me,” he says. And I know that already, because I definitely attempted some light stalking and came up crickets.

  “Still. I mean, there’s email or the news or Candy Crush. Or you could read a book.” Just the thought of being trapped in a line without my phone makes my fingers itch. Is he some kind of monster?

  “Or I could just stand here and think my thoughts until it’s my turn to order popcorn. And of course, there’s always this scintillating conversation, which we wouldn’t be having if we were looking at our phones.”

  Thinking his thoughts? Okay, he’s definitely a monster. I want to ask him what he thinks about when he’s standing there being quiet, but that feels too intimate, a word that makes the tops of my ears turn red. So instead I ask him if he wants to split a popcorn.

  “Sure,” he says, and when he steps up to the front of the line, he pulls my crumpled ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and orders two sodas, a large popcorn, and a bag of circus peanuts.

  “You don’t,” I gasp.

  “Hey, I don’t want to hear it,” he says. He takes the bag of candy from the cashier, rolls it up, and shoves it in his back pocket. “I take enough shit from my dad over these things, but they’re delicious.”

  I hold my hands up. “Hey, I’m not judging. I love those things! I’m only judging if you’re not sharing.”

  “Sure. I mean, if I don’t share I’ll just eat the whole bag myself and regret it.”

  “They must put something in them that makes you unable to stop until you’re ready to barf.”

  “Just as long as you don’t barf in Cecilia.”

  “Well, if it’s only half a bag of circus peanuts, that won’t be a problem.”

  “Hey, Pizza Princess!” A voice cuts through the cinder- block depths of the snack bar. I look up to see Carina, Del’s sister. She’s tall and broad like her big brother, like she could lift the snack bar and move it a few feet to the left if the need arose. I love her and her booming accent, but I don’t love the public callout. “How’s things? Del treatin’ ya like the royalty you are?”

  “It’s work,” I say, shrugging and feeling the blush creep into my cheeks.

  “If he gives you any lip, you come find me,” she says. She gets the attention of the bored teenager working the register. “Popcorn’s on the house for that one.” Then she winks and disappears back into the depths of the snack bar.

  We carry our bucket of popcorn and sodas back to the van, and Tristan sets about getting his space ready. He’s got a bunch of pillows and an old plaid comforter laid out in a nest in the back of the van. He climbs in and practically burrows into the setup, leaning back against the built-in kitchen counter in the back of the van.

  The sun has just dipped behind the trees when the screen flickers to life, and suddenly there are dancing hot dogs and fountain sodas hopping across the screen. Julianne leaps into the bed of the pickup truck and takes her place leaning against the back of the cab. Frank is on one side of her, Greg on the other, with Jason splayed out near the open tailgate.

  “We can make room,” she says, scooting closer to Frank. And even in the dim light beaming off the screen I can see his cheeks start to turn red. She pats a sliver of space next to her.

  I glance back at the open bus, where Tristan is pulling out an old radio and extending the antenna. He doesn’t look like he’s waiting for company, or like he even wants any, but for some reason I find myself wanting to join him in his little cave. And I don’t think it’s just the half bag of circus peanuts he promised me.

  “It’s okay, I’m gonna stay down here. More room,” I add quickly, feeling the need to explain myself, but Julianne is already readjusting away from a slightly dejected-looking Frank. Like she knew what I’d say and was ready for it. She’s a crafty one, I think.

  I shuffle back over to Cecilia and stop at the open door. “Do you mind having company? It looked a little cramped in the truck.”

  “Sure,” Tristan says, not looking up from the radio, where he’s fiddling with the dial. The tape deck appears to be held closed with duct tape, and the antenna is slightly bent in the middle.

  “What are you doing with that thing?” I ask.

  “Drive-in plays the sound through a local radio station, but Cecilia’s battery won’t survive staying on that long. I have to bring backup.”

  “Good lord, where did you get that thing? 1984?”

  “Probably,” he says with a shrug. “It came with the bus.”

  He fiddles with the little dial, trying to get the station just right, but he’s only able to achieve varying levels of fuzzy. He finally settles on the spot with the least amount of static, kind of a low, persistent buzz. It’s the kind of sound that would normally drive me bats, but I’m surprised by how quickly it fades from my consciousness. I don’t know if it’s the cooling breeze now drifting through the bus or the musty smell of the upholstery or the glow of the screen in front of us as th
e previews begin, but just like the endless drone of the cicadas in the summer, the static is soon gone and only the thundering sound effects of some heist movie trailer fill the space between us.

  “Thanks for the free popcorn,” Tristan says as the screen lights up with the first movie.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I reply.

  “You’re not the Pizza Princess?”

  My cheeks flare, and I bury my face in my hands, groaning. “Ugh, don’t remind me.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is. Seems like a pretty good gig to me,” he says, tossing a piece of popcorn in the air and catching it on his tongue.

  The first movie of the night is one of the Mission: Impossibles. The newest one, not that I have any idea which one that is. I think they’ve made something like forty-three of them, and I’ve seen exactly none of them. All I know is that in this one Tom Cruise runs really fast and dangles from an airplane (or is that in all of them?).

  We settle in to watch the movie, although I’m not actually watching the movie. Mostly I’m watching Tristan without watching him, which takes a lot of effort and concentration. It’s an art form, really, and I might have finally found where my true artistic skills lie. There’s no room in that equation for Tom Cruise. Tristan is watching the movie, in that his eyes are pointed at it, but I don’t think he’s really watching it, either. His mind must be somewhere else, or maybe he’s asleep with his eyes open. He’s staring at the screen, unmoving and intent, which is a whole lot more attention than a Mission: Impossible movie requires.

  Thinking his thoughts. And what are those, exactly? He guards them like they’re state secrets. It’s amazing how little I know about him. Our school isn’t small, but it’s small enough that it’s easy to absorb information about just about anyone. But I barely even knew Tristan was a student. How he’s managed to float through four years at Brook Park High without being someone to be talked about is an achievement on par with summiting Everest. I try stealing another glance at him. Up close I can see that he’s a little scruffy along his jawline, though the hair looks soft. I quickly look away before he can catch me, my eyes dropping down to his hands, which are clutched around a large soda cup. His fingernails are short, but there’s still dirt or grease beneath them, and there’s a small cut on his knuckle. Was that a pizza delivery accident? Or something else? What does he do when he’s not delivering pizzas? And where does he go at lunch every day? Who is he?

  That line of wondering occupies me for the next hour or so, until the vat of root beer I drank finally catches up with me.

  I shift a little, but I’m worried I’m going to start annoying him, so I finally begin to unfold myself from the floor of the bus.

  “I have to go pee,” I say.

  “I’ll go with you,” he replies, which I was not expecting, though it does confirm that his interest in the movie is probably hovering right around zero. When I glance at the screen, things seem pretty tense … not a time you’d really wander away if you were particularly invested in Tom Cruise (I know he’s playing a character, but, honestly, unless his name is Mission Impossible, I have no idea what it is).

  We walk slowly through the lot, weaving between cars and lawn chairs and picnic blankets as we make our way back to the concession stand. It’s glowing in the back of the lot, but mostly empty, everyone else being focused on the movie—or the person they’re making out with, which is definitely what was happening in the Jeep we just passed. That, or we need an ambulance because that was some unsuccessful CPR. But when we walk around the side where the bathrooms are, there’s a strip of yellow caution tape looping around the door handle of the men’s room and sweeping across to loop around the handle to the women’s. OUT OF ORDER reads a crumpled sign printed on neon yellow paper.

  “Crap,” I mutter, because now that I’m faced with the possibility of holding it, I’m realizing that I really don’t think I can.

  “It’s fine, there are porta potties,” Tristan says, pointing to a row of them, forest green with white roofs a few paces behind the concession stand.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “No way.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not using a porta potty. I’d sooner pee my pants.”

  “Are you serious? Why not?”

  “Because they smell like a hell mouth. Because I’ve seen those viral stories about snakes in there. Because it’s dark and tiny. Because no.”

  “So what are you going to do? Because if you pee your pants, you’re not allowed back in Cecilia. Not even to drive home.”

  “I’ll just hold it,” I say.

  He lets out an exasperated sigh. He looks at me, his eyes drifting down to my feet, where I’m sort of bouncing back and forth.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s a tub of soda inside you and you’re already over there doing the cha-cha.”

  He’s not wrong. I literally feel like there’s a water balloon sloshing around where my bladder should be, but that doesn’t change my stance on porta potties. I hold firm on my anti–porta potty policy (say that five times fast).

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say, knowing I sound a little bit breathless. I close my eyes tight, like I’ll be able to marshal some power over my bladder if I just concentrate really hard. Then I cross my arms over my chest for some good old-fashioned defiance. “I’m not going in there.”

  When I open my eyes, I see him scanning the lot. “You don’t have to. Follow me.”

  I pray he’s spotted a backup restroom somewhere as I follow him across the lot, toward the porta potties. Then he walks right past them, heading for the line of trees at the back of the lot. He disappears between the trunks of two enormous pines, his sneakers crunching over a bed of pine needles.

  “You want me to pee in the woods?”

  He stops and turns, giving me a pointed look. “You have a better idea?”

  The thing is, I don’t. My bladder feels like an overfull balloon, and with each step, it bounces with the threat of popping. I’ve got to go. And it is really dark out here. I glance back over my shoulder, and I can barely even see any of the cars. I don’t hear any people. The sounds of the movie are muffled, and even the screen is just a ghostly glow between the thick branches of the trees.

  Tristan pulls out his keys and clicks on a tiny flashlight connected to the ring. It’s shockingly powerful, and he uses it to illuminate the path as we walk another ten paces or so into the trees.

  “Were you a Boy Scout?” I ask at his gadgety key ring.

  “No,” he replies. Then he stops and points the tiny beam of light toward a small clearing. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear that that’s my bathroom.

  “Turn around,” I tell him as I step gingerly over pine needles.

  “I wasn’t going to watch,” he says as he dutifully spins on his heel. He takes a few steps away, but I stop in my tracks.

  “But also, don’t leave me,” I say, the words coming out quick and forceful, my voice climbing higher with each word. He’s behind me, and I don’t dare turn around.

  There’s a pause, and then I hear him say, “Fine.”

  I make it to the clearing and step behind a tall tree that seems wider than me. I slowly unzip my jeans and start to ease them down my hips, my eyes scanning the area like a SWAT team captain. I’m on high alert for anyone who might come stumbling through the woods to see me squat in the dirt. And as I’m thinking that, I can hardly believe I’m about to do it. Could I get arrested for this? Yeah, it’s the woods, but it’s the woods at the drive-in. That’s for sure public urination. I’m starting to spiral, nearly ready to talk myself out of this. But then I start to go, and as soon as I do, oh my god I know it was the right decision.

  That is, until I find myself standing in a puddle of my own pee.

  “Oh, gross!” I say, jumping up and trying to leap away, which doesn’t exactly work with my skinny jeans
around my ankles. I pitch forward, arms outstretched, and wind up doing a very undignified tuck-and-roll, landing with my bare butt in a pile of leaves that are—thank god—dry.

  “Are you okay?” Tristan calls.

  “DON’T TURN AROUND!” I shriek. I glance over my shoulder. As promised, he’s facing the other way. I rise gingerly to my feet, dust off my butt, and quickly pull my pants up. Then I walk over to Tristan, careful to avoid the puddle of pee on my way. I tap him on the shoulder.

  “All done,” I say.

  He takes one look at me and instantly bursts out laughing.

  “What?” I look down, hoping there’s not pee soaking into my shirt or something, but I don’t see anything. “What are you laughing at?”

  “What the hell happened to you out there, Brix?” He reaches out and pulls two large leaves out of my hair. “Did you have an accident?”

  “No,” I say, brushing at my hair and straightening my sweatshirt. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  “Okay, well, it’s my turn. And I don’t need a chaperone, so feel free to head on back,” he says, walking past me to find his own tree. “I’ll see you at the bus.”

  I wend my way back to the bus (yup, that couple is still making out like he’s her oxygen source). I climb in and take my spot on the shag-carpeted floor. Tristan returns just a few minutes later, and we settle in. The mission became possible sometime during our pee-in-the-woods adventure, and the second show in the double feature is just starting. This one is some terrible horror movie that seems like it’s going to be low on actual scares and high on gore, as if the two are the same thing. I hate those kinds of horror movies, so I prepare myself to mostly stare off into the middle distance instead of watching. The temperature has started to drop, and Tristan pulls out a blanket and drapes it over me. I burrow beneath it and offer him the other end, and before I know it we wind up closer. Our knees are touching. He’s warm, and my instinct is to lean into him like I would a space heater on a cold night. There’s a mysterious electricity zipping between us, and I sit stock-still, trying not to disrupt the current. Or maybe get zapped. I’m not sure which. He shifts, and I swear he pulls his arm back to give me more space next to him. And without thinking, I take it. I tuck my shoulder up under his arm and lean back. But I don’t lay my head on his shoulder. That’s not what this is. That’s not what we’re doing.