I suck the acid off of the Sour Patch Kid, rolling the little blue thing across my tongue
until I feel it turn to corn syrup goo. The movie theatre is an excellent place for people watching.
I sit here with my pink pinstripe paper bag of assorted candies, popping lemon drops and
cinnamon hearts and hunks of salted liquorice. I don’t like the sweet ones.
I watch the people walking past into theatre one. Some cartoon about animals that can
sing. It’s families: fun-time daddies with kiddos in tow, mom probably at home vacuuming after
asking for a night off, booking the cinema tickets herself, and reminding everyone they can have
one medium popcorn to split — nothing more. Some grandmas too, holding tiny, sticky hands,
giving the parents their first chance at a date night since kid number two. I watch. But these
people don’t interest me.
Gaggles of girls pile into theatre two, where some chick flick is playing. A will they/
won’t they, enemies to lovers type thing. We all know they will, of course. There’s at least one
birthday girl, wearing a rhinestoned sash and a plastic tiara from the dollar store. Her and her
friends walk like they’re tipsy, though it’s only four o’clock. One of them is holding a candy bag
like me.
I raise mine to her. “Cheers!”
“Santé!” She calls back.
They’re dressed too nicely for the movies: all glittery heels and neon lipsticks and
iridescent mini skirts. I figure they’re going dancing after. It makes me self-conscious in my grey
track pants and bare skin. The birthday girl is shaped like a wine glass, all long, thin legs and a
dress that juts out below the waist like a cupcake. I want to look like that; take those legs and
stitch them to my hips. But I haven’t figured out how to swap things out on myself just yet.
Part of me wants them to invite me to join their group. But they would never want me to.
I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d been out with a group of girls. They tend to find me abrasive.
I used to have girl friends back in high school, I’m not quite sure what happened there. They
stopped talking to me one day and I decided I hated them. I can’t help but get angry at the
birthday girl. I suck on a Warhead.
It’s been hours. You’d be surprised how long they let you sit here. Sometimes a staff
member wearing a uniform visor and toting around a little broom for sweeping up discarded
popcorn will approach me and ask if I’m okay. I just tell them I’m waiting for a later screening
and order a cherry cola refill and some more peppermints. It is a half truth. The people I’m most
interested in come in toward nightfall.
There’s some superhero flick in three. The boys that wander in there are of all ages, and
all types. There are dorky teenagers holding novelty popcorn buckets released for the movie —
allegedly collectible, though made of thin plastic chock full of BPA. There are guys in baseball
caps worn backwards that want you to know they are way too cool to be seeing a movie like this.
There are little boys replicating the poses of the heroes in the poster, getting their photos taken
with the cardboard cutouts in the theatre hallway. Groups of boys all together are more useful for
deciding what I don’t want for my Critter. When one boy grabs another by the shoulders and
belches loudly in his face, I know that I will pick lips of a different shade of pink. When a boy
hacks up a ball of white phlegm and spits on the floor, I know that I will pick a neck that is less
thick and less freckled. When a boy roughhouses another boy, securing him in a chokehold,
elbow cupping neck, I know I will pick arms that are not quite so veiny.
It had taken me many days of sitting here and eating candy to get as far with Critter as I
have now. He’s almost finished. After getting my inspiration, I spent hours roaming graveyards
to find all the pieces, getting as close as I could to the originals. Sometimes it was tricky. But I
made do, taking arms that had the wrong tattoos, or legs with moles in the wrong places. But he
can walk, and speak, and hold my hand, and that’s all that really matters.
The only thing left now is eyes.
The sun sets outside and theatre four is playing a horror movie. A slasher. This is how I’d
found the other pieces. The first time I came here, I was surprised to find that horror movies are
hotspots for date nights. I suppose they are a good excuse to get close, turn away from the screen
and into one another. She screams and he holds her. He jumps and she laughs.
The men here now are the ones I can take good ideas from. I see a man holding his
girlfriend’s raincoat, still damp, draped over his forearm and I admire the gentle curve of his
bicep. I see another taste test the pop to be sure it’s not diet before handing it to the girl beside
him and I am taken by the sharp shadow cast by his angled cheekbone as he sucks on the straw.
Another walks right by me. I can hear his voice. “It’s not too scary, I promise.” He says,
and I watch the tenderness of his fingers outstretching towards her for a pinky swear. She takes
his finger in hers and I bask in the glint of his shiny, Chiclet teeth, a grin stretching across his
face. “I watched it already, so I can tell you when the jump scares are.”
The girl is nearly skipping now. They’re coming in my direction. I want to run up and
kick her knees out from under her. I want to lock pinkies. I want to skip. But I refrain. It’s not her
fault she is loved.
My bag is half empty by now, but it spills dramatically when the man bumps into my
table. The candies clatter across the linoleum floors, sliding far and wide before coming to a stop
where carpets begin. It’s mostly jellybeans anyway and I don’t mourn the loss.
“I’m so sorry,” the man says. He kneels down beside the table, gently plucking candies
off the ground with one hand and placing them into the cupped palm of the other. I like that he
does this instead of scooping them, as if they are precious little things rather than newly made
garbage. I kneel down too. The girl hangs back.
“I’ll save us seats,” she says, and walks away.
His face up close is like nothing I’ve seen before. He has eyes of a deep golden brown
that reminds me of wintertime, of the warmth of hot chestnuts and the comfort of candlelight.
He’s whole and good and nothing like my unfortunate Critter. His smile pushes red cheeks up
over the underside of his eyes and I wonder how I’ll ever be able to pull myself away from this
stare.
“You waiting for a movie?” He asks me.
But how do I tell him there is no movie that could ever entertain me, no play that could
ever amuse me, no painting that could ever move me, after I’ve seen eyes like his. I settle on:
“Sort of.”
“Here,” he says, cupping my hand in his and pouring the little treats into my palm. I have
the urge to shove them all into my mouth at once. To taste the sickening sweetness and the dust
of the floor and the sweat of his skin where her hand used to be. I don’t, though, I don’t want to
seem crazy.
He starts to stand, brushing his hands on the front of his pants, “sorry again.”
I want to grab his arm and pull him in toward me. I want to make him hold my hand
again, and to make him let me stare into his eyes once more, and to make him watch the movie
ahead of time so he can warn me about the jump scares.
I just say, “don’t worry about it.”
It’s what the normal girls do: play it cool, go with the flow, be casual. Know what isn’t
yours. He’s walking away now and I admire his confident stride. Maybe he’s mine in another
life. In this one, I will build my substitute.
But then again, how will I ever find eyes quite like his?
I follow signs for theatre four.
Julia Edda Pape lives with her cats in Toronto, Canada. She loves coffee and reading. Her short stories have been published in Blank Spaces Magazine and Blade and Bloom Magazine.