Free Last Night at the Circle Cinema by Emily Franklin Page A

incorrectly, and he fiddled with the top button, drawing attention to that fact. “What if I like my perspective just the way it is?”
    â€œThen I would say you are in the dark,” I told him, and the lights dimmed.

13
    Livvy
    I hung up, wishing Codman had been clearer—in every sense. How hard could it possibly be to just be fucking sure of something?
    I dropped the phone in my bag, not wanting to use the last gasps of power on the flashlight function. I rummaged in my bag, identifying objects by feel: apple with a significant bruise, wallet that doesn’t close properly, change from that wallet, extra socks, a small but thoroughly absorbent towel, and my keys. I pulled the keys out, linking my finger through the heart-shaped key ring so I wouldn’t lose them. I was keenly aware that the keys were my one guarantee that I could get away from the Circle if I needed to. I’d promised to do this, but I didn’t promise to stay indefinitely. Just till dawn. After all, Codman seemed to take leaving—or hanging up—lightly. Is that what we had in store? A future of weird texts, Thanksgiving or summer meet-ups that felt more and more obscure?
    On my key ring was a tiny light that Bertucci won at the third rate amusement park. The pathetic light only worked when I pressed it at just the right spot in the middle, and then only sporadically. I tried it and felt a thrill when it cast a thin but noticeable beam onto the patterned carpet. I could see walls ahead, and the edge of the corridor, and I made my way in my still-damp clogs.
    The Circle Cinema was where I had seen Fantasia as a kid and where my friend Marta and I had gone to late afternoon shows after tennis matches, dreaming about boyfriends and sometimes making them up, having dialogues for the benefit of onlookers as though the whole world was listening in on us. “Oh, Giles said he’ll be late tonight,” she’d say, or “I loved that bracelet Tom gave you last week.” “Yeah,” I’d reply, exaggerating my eyes. “Tom is great. He has incredible taste. That bracelet is from Oregon—he hiked there last summer.” “I didn’t realize Tom was a hiker,” Marta would say. “Oh, there’s so much about Tom you don’t know,” I’d reply as we waited in line for snacks, and we’d crack up.
    I wished Marta were here, though I knew she couldn’t have dealt with it. I wished that anyone was with me. Bertucci to hold my hand, or Codman. I slipped my phone out of my back pocket and checked for messages. It was possible the reception sucked. It was also possible that no one had called or texted me back since I’d checked minutes ago. God, was I really one of those phone-as-security-blanket people? Pleasure center, my mother had warned. Like cocaine. Every ding, every notification lighting up the dopamine in my brain. I needed to quit. To be present. Hadn’t we learned that by now? Not sucked into some imaginary world—phone or otherwise—but where I stood, right then.
    As I edged my way from where I’d been to whatever was ahead of me, the fact that I had no plan began to gnaw at me. I was always a planner, organized, overly prepared—more practical than Bertucci, but a planner all the same. I was the kind of person who delighted in my assignment book, checking off items as I completed the tasks. Sometimes I even added items I’d already done just to get the satisfaction of crossing them off.
    In all the times we’d been together, Bertucci hadn’t explained much about what he envisioned the three of us doing at the Circle. I’d asked once, “But why? What’s the point of breaking in?”
    And both Codman and Bertucci had given me a look that suggested I’d missed a vital part of it. “Does there have to be a point?” Codman had asked.
    Bertucci shook his head. “There’s obviously a point.