Free Only in the Movies by William Bell

that part.”
    She looked around, as though something had caught her attention. The mood had been broken. I had ruined it. And as if on cue, laughter burst from the trees, in the direction of the school, and four ninth-graders loped toward us, punching shoulders, shoving each other. They clattered over the bridge, giving Alba an exaggerated once-over as they passed.
    “I’ve got to get going,” Alba said. “Nice talking to you, Jake.” She smiled and began to walk toward the far bank, the sway of her hips brushing further thoughts from my mind.
    “Farewell,” I said, gallantly, I hoped.
    When she was gone, I kicked the ground as hard as I could. Just when I had been getting into the scene, making headway, things had fallen apart. Those damn niners with their stupid antics and stupider smirks and remarks.
    “I could use a hand here,” Vanni called out. “If you’re not too busy.”
    “No sarcasm, Vanni. I’m not in the mood,” I said, taking her by the arm to steady her as we struggled up the slimy bank.
    “You gave it a good try,” she said slipping her shoe onto a muddy foot.
    “Do you think I got anywhere?”
    “Certainly. You made your feelings plain.”
    “I—you—did that in my letters.”
    “Person to person is best.”
    “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
    “True. Is it working?” she asked as we crunched along the path toward the school.
    “Sort of.”
    But as we walked I replayed the scene on the movie screen behind my eyes. For a moment there, when Vanni was feeding me my lines, she sounded very passionate, as if she really did mean what she was saying, as if she too had fallen in love with Alba.
    Oh, no, I thought. Things have gotten
really
complicated.
    I didn’t have the nerve to ask Vanni right out if she had feelings for Alba. Was Vanni my rival, too, like the guys who followed Alba around the school like brainless ducklings? Was I like a character in one of those pathetic old teen movies where two best friends are in love with the same girl? With, you might say, modern variations?
    Alba wouldn’t be attracted to Vanni, though. Would she? When I thought about it, Alba didn’t seem to have a boyfriend. None of the guys at York seemed to be doing any better with her than I was.
    It was weird competing against a girl for a girl. Was I odd man out in an odd love triangle?

CHAPTER FOUR
    “D IDJEVER WONDER,” Vanni asked lazily, tilting back her chair, “where the story goes when you delete it?”
    We were in creative writing class, which was held in the library’s computer centre. Mrs. Cleaver was conferring at her desk with two girls who were working together on an endless fantasy novel involving gnomes, pretty princesses, two unicorns, intergalactic travel and a precocious beagle named Ernie. I knew the plot because the girls had read a bit of the tale out loud and given an outline during the sharing circle two days before. I had suggested substituting a gerbil for the beagle. “Gerbils are cuter,” I claimed, having no idea what I was talking about. “And smarter. Most people don’t realize how intelligent gerbils are.” Other students—the ones not whispering behind their screens—worked away on their own projects or used the computers to make forbidden forays into chat rooms or websites with free games.
    Attempting to ignore all this, I tapped furiously away at my keyboard, pounding out the last scene of what I would have freely admitted was a mind-bendingly lame short story. A couple of days had passed since the fiasco at the bridge, and I was racing the clock to the end of the period, when the story was due.
    “No,” I said in answer to Vanni’s question, to head off what promised to be one of her rambles.
    “Really?” she replied.
    “Really.”
Tap, tap, tap
.
    “Hmm.”
    I refused to bite. I couldn’t let Vanni get started or I’d be led astray.
    “It must go somewhere,” Vanni mused, gazing at the ceiling. “It’s a law of the universe or