“So Chad’s bringing her?  Is there some kind of something going on there or what?”  Shannon Dougherty stood waiting with the rest of the movie group waiting for the box office to open.

“Not that I know of,” Martinez loved being the center of attention.  “He just said-” Carlos Martinez jumped and stuffed his hand in his pocket retrieving a buzzing cell phone.  “I hate that vibrate thing.”

Seconds later, he snapped it shut and turned back to Shannon.  “I guess not.  He thinks she’d find Beau Geste a little too sad right now.  He’s taking her to that Alcott one tomorrow.”

“Alcott?”

Eden Pohl pointed to the poster near their group.  “Yeah.  She’s the lady who wrote Little Women.  They made a move out of one of her other books, Eight Cousins.  It’s about some kid whose parents died and her uncle has to raise her.  That’ll be cheerful.”

***

“I feel sick.”

Chad stared in horror at Willow before he realized that she wasn’t discussing the quality of the movie.  Willow’s eyes were closed and her hand clapped over her mouth as though the gesture would make any difference.  He stared at the remainder of the popcorn in their bucket and tossed it on the floor at their feet.

“Here, use this.”

As though permission was all that’d held her back, Willow lost her refreshments.  The half-empty theater gave them some privacy but not enough for them to be able to sit still and wait for another wave of nausea.  She wiped at her mouth with a napkin and then tossed it in the bucket.

“I’ve got to get rid of this or everyone else will get sick.  Should I get another bucket?”

“Can we leave?  I’m afraid it’ll happen again.  I don’t know what is wrong with me but I don’t want to get everyone sick.”

Chad nodded and navigated his way down the row of seats to the aisle.  He saw Willow stand, take a step, and then collapse into the seat he’d just vacated.  He took a step toward her, saw the bucket, and realized he probably needed a fresh one.  Immediately.

Just outside the theater door, a trashcan tempted him but he resisted.  He disposed of the contents of the bucket in the men’s room and raced for the concession counter begging for another bucket.  “My friend is ill and-”

“You’ll have to buy an extra-large popcorn if you want a bucket.”

“I just need the bucket in case she gets sick!  Do you want it all over your floor?”

The pimply faced teenager shook his head solemnly.  “Nope, we wouldn’t want that but I have to charge the full price of an extra large popcorn or I can’t give you the bucket.”

“What about a large drink cup?”

“Nope,” the reply came before he’d finished speaking.  “I have to charge for those too.”

“I should let it just splatter your floor and see how your customers like it!”

“Well, I don’t have to clean it up but I don’t think it’d be very nice to do that to the girls.  They’d probably be pretty grossed out.”

Tired of arguing and praying that he wasn’t too late, Chad shoved another six dollars across the counter and waited impatiently as the kid punched buttons, smoothed bills, faced them all the same direction, and finally closed the drawer.  As he began to wash his hands, Chad lost his patience.  Again.

“I don’t need clean hands, I need the bucket!”

“I can’t handle popcorn after I touch money.  The health department is very particular about that.”

Chad reached ineffectively across the counter for the bucket in the boy’s hand.  “I don’t want the popcorn.  I just need the bucket.”

“Oh, I have to give you the popcorn; you paid for it!”

“But I don’t want it!”

Patiently, as though speaking to a very young child, the teenager explained cinematic protocol.  “It works like this.  You pay for the popcorn, I give it to you.  You didn’t buy a bucket, you bought a bucket of popcorn.  If I don’t give you what you bought, then I get in trouble with the boss.  You could pitch a fit and get me fired for not giving you what you paid for so I gotta give you the popcorn!”

“Fine!  Then give me the popcorn!”

Chad new what was coming the minute the metal popcorn scoop hit the golden kernels.  “Do you want butter?”

“No.”

“Ya sure?  It’s free.”

“Will I get it faster?”

“Well-”

Exasperated, Chad exclaimed, “Yes, give me butter, napkins, oh and I need a bottle of water.”

“That’ll be two bucks and the napkins are at the end of the counter.”

Chad glanced at his wallet as the steaming bucket of buttered popcorn slid across the counter.  He had several twenties, a five, and a single one.  His mouth opened to protest the usurious pricing in theatrical establishments but heard himself say, “Keep the change.”

He grabbed the waiting bottle of water, the bucket of popcorn, and resisting the temptation to pour it all over the service counter, dumped it in the trashcan on his way back into the theater.  Seconds after he sat next to Willow and passed her the bucket, he felt a tap on his shoulder.  “Here’s your change.  We’re not allowed to take tips.  Thanks though.”  The kid glanced at Willow.  “Hope you feel better.”

A glance at Willow and his mind was back on the crisis at hand.  “Feeling sick again?”

She nodded.  “The room is spinning- I feel so…”  Her eyes closed automatically.

“Don’t close your eyes.  Focus on the seat ahead of you.  Closing your eyes doesn’t help.  Focusing will.”

Willow concentrated on the seat until the wave of nausea passed.  “It worked.  I feel better,” she whispered back almost audibly to the entire theater.

Wordlessly, Chad took the bucket from her and passed the bottle of water.  “Do you still want to try to go?”

“I don’t think I can stand.  I’d rather wait until it’s over if I won’t get sick again.”

Chad showed her how to predict which scenes would send her stomach reeling.  Willow enjoyed most of the rest of the movie with relatively little discomfort once she understood how the swift panning of the camera caused her motion sickness.  As for Chad, he’d never seen anything like it.  If she were this ill in a fluff chick flick, she’d never make it through an action film.

The lights blinked and then glowed as the credits rolled.  Willow stood and collapsed back into her seat.  “I don’t know what is wrong with my legs and ears.”

“Ears?”

Willow shook her head like a puppy doused with water.  “Yes they’re buzzing and ringing and my head feels mushy.”

“Maybe now lay back and rest your head on the back of the seat and close your eyes?”

Ten minutes later, she sat up gingerly.  “I feel better.  Let’s try to get out of here before those girls get any angrier at us.”

She stood and holding onto the backs of the seats, shuffled down the row to the aisle.  Behind them, the girls made snide comments about their slowness and the mess of popcorn at their feet.  Chad tried to keep his cool but when the quips turned crude, he lost his patience.

“You had a choice between vomit and popcorn.  I chose popcorn.  Next time I’ll let her toss her cookies over the floor for you to clean up.”

At the front doors, Chad left Willow leaning against the glass wall and hurried back to find the girls.  “Hey, I’m sorry.  I had no right to snap at you like that.”

One attendant passed him without a word but the other said, “That’s really cool.  We trash talked you and your girlfriend and you apologize to us for putting us in our place.  I’m sorry and I hope she feels better.  Flu?”

“Motion sickness.”

“In Eight Cousins?”  The incredulous look on the girl’s face was priceless.

“First time at the movies.”

“What!”

***

They walked along Elm Street to Main and back to the square to Chad’s parked truck.  Each step in the balmy night air seemed to strengthen Willow until finally she laughed and said, “I can’t believe I got sick in the movies!”

“Well, it is a first for me too,” Chad began, and then told her about his popcorn bucket retrieval adventure.

They sat on his truck tailgate sipping coke and watching the teens cruise by on their way home from Rockland or the theater.  Chad pointed out how they’d make a pass one direction, double back, and then head home.  “They’re not allowed to actually ‘cruise’ the streets but they’ll make a double pass.”

“Why can’t they cruise?”

“The chief and his cronies at the city council think it encourages disreputable behavior.”

Willow stared at him confused.  “Driving up and down the street at slower than normal speeds talking to your friends in cars passing you is disreputable?  They’d rather the kids go find some place to break in and party perhaps?  At least on the street you know where they are and what they’re doing!”

“We need you to be their advocate with the Chief.  I don’t know what the appeal of cruising is but I loved it when I was a kid and my dad did it when he was a kid and there is just something about making that loop with a car full of your friends.”

She pointed at a Beetle convertible that crawled past and then made a loop.  “Didn’t that one go past a while ago?”

“He probably took the girlfriend home.  He’s probably heading home himself but he’ll make a double pass because he can.”

“Do they get tickets if the police come around?”

Chad’s head nodded.  “Yep.”

“What for?”

“Endangering other drivers and if the car sits in one spot idling for more than five minutes, loitering.”

Indignant, Willow jumped from the tailgate and tossed her empty cup in a nearby garbage can.  “I think that’s ridiculous.  I’ve never heard anything so absolutely inane.  Mother always said that if you treat a kid like he’s going to get into trouble, he usually will.”

Chad’s eyebrows rose in question as he opened her car door.  She slid into her seat talking as she buckled the seatbelt.  “Well, Mother said that people had a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and it fed the actions that prompted the statement in the first place.  I remember her being very incensed at something someone did when she was in town once and she talked about it all the way home.”

“What happened?”

“A couple of little boys chased a little girl and pulled up her dress and laughed at her tears.  The child ran home crying and the father told her mother, ‘boys will be boys, no harm done.’”

“I’d thrash any boy of mine for that kind of-”

Willow interrupted excitedly.  “That’s what Mother was talking about.  She said that if that father had expected his sons to protect little girls and treat them like beloved little sisters rather than objects to ridicule, the chances of that happening were much slimmer.”

The truck started and Chad backed into the square and joined the slow procession of cars.  He made the obligatory loop and backtracked once before he started toward the highway.  “I think your mom was right.  Kids are still sinners.  They’re going to flub up regardless of expectations or good training but if you expect them to do wrong, they usually will.  If you expect them to do right, they often will.  I’d rather have children who often did right than children who usually did wrong.”

The night sky was pitch-black as they drove toward the Finley farm.  The new moon allowed the stars to shine brighter than ever s they sped along the highway.  “Two firsts for me tonight.  Well, three actually.”

“Three?”

“I went to a movie and I went cruising.”

“That’s two,” Chad protested.

“I got motion sick.”

“Will you try another movie some time?”  Chad’s curiosity got the better of him and as the words left his mouth, he realized it sounded like another invitation.  Just as he started inwardly to curse his lack of discretion, she answered absently.

“Oh, movie.  Yes, I’ll be going back.  Probably next week.  Didn’t you say that you can see them in the afternoon?”

“The matinee, yes.  They’re cheaper then too.”

“I’ll go next Wednesday when I meet Mr. Franklin and Ms. Freeman, mother’s lawyer.  It’ll be a nice diversion after all that stuff.”

At her door, Chad looked out across the pasture in the direction of the grave.  “Does Othello still sleep out there?”

“Every night the moment it gets dark he barks a few times and then trots off over there.  He’s back at daybreak waiting to go with me to milk Wilhelmina.

“Think he’d handle another dog?”

She eyed him curiously.  “Probably a younger dog, why?”

“I’d feel better if you had a dog around here.  We don’t know if that dog’ll come back if someone was prowling-”

“I’ve got the gun.”  Willow’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact.

“And a dog’s bark would probably scare off anyone before they got close enough for you to shoot.”

“I’ll think about it Chad.  Thank you for the movie; I had a great time.  Goodnight.”

Without another word, in her characteristic blunt manner, she slipped inside the door, shut, and locked it behind her.  He stepped lively down the steps and climbed back into his truck.  “Lord, having her as a friend might not be so bad.  I thought she would be more clingy or something but she’s not, thank heaven.  Maybe this won’t be too bad.”

***

Willow undressed and pulled on her camisole and bed shorts.  As she tidied her room, brushed, and braided her hair, she prayed.  “Lord, Chad’s a nice friend.  I enjoy having him around sometimes but he’s kind of clingy.  Please give him something to do somewhere else a little more often.  I’m starting to feel a little smothered.”  She pulled the covers over her and turned down her oil lamp.  “At least he didn’t invite himself along to my next movie.  Although, if he hadn’t invited himself to this one, I might have been in trouble so that was good.”

The cicadas’ song drifted through the window over the sound of the fan.  Willow lay in bed thinking.  Her mother had spoken once of hating to feel like someone’s “project.”  Suddenly, she realized what her mother meant by that statement.  However, knowing that someone out there cared enough to make her a project felt better than extreme loneliness that came in moments when she realized that without a few near strangers, she was truly alone.  Shame filled her heart as the Lord’s stillness impressed upon her with His presence.  “Ok, not quite alone…”