5. Go Your Own Way #2
Charlie grabbed Katie's arm in the dark without realizing, leading to her barely watching through the rest of the movie they'd actually come to see.
When the movie let out, they walked to the parking lot and Charlie couldn't stop talking about the trailer.
She described every frame, every ship, every detail she'd caught in those thirty seconds, gesturing with her hands the way she did when her brain was moving faster than her mouth.
Katie listened to all of it, grinning, because she'd seen the trailer too, and she'd also seen what it did to her sister.
Charlie asked Katie that night in the garage if she wanted to go opening weekend. Katie looked at her like she'd asked her to spend the rest of her life eating nothing but ice cream.
They made a pact then and there: opening weekend, together, no matter what.
The problem was the Grand. Shelbyville's single-screen theater got movies when Shelbyville got movies, which was usually weeks after the big cities. That meant Shelbyville wouldn't get the movie until long after opening weekend.
But Indianapolis would.
Charlie and Katie turned to each other at the same moment.
Indianapolis was thirty-two miles up the road.
A thirty-six-minute drive. Nothing, really.
Just a stretch of highway and a city that had what they needed.
But how would they get there? Charlie had her license but she wasn't sure Mr. Beckman would let her take the Cutlass into the city.
There was only one thing to do.
"Mr. Beckman!" Katie shouted up the driveway one Sunday morning, Charlie following behind her, plugging her fingers in her ears at her sister's loud voice. For such a small girl, she had quite a set of pipes on her.
"Holy Toledo, Katie," Frank said as he appeared coming around the side of the garage, rubbing a spot on top his head. "Where's the fire?" he asked.
"What fire?" Katie asked, confused.
"The one that better be raging nearby for you to be shouting that loud," Mrs. Beckman said, coming out the side door from the kitchen.
"Oh." Katie's voice went small. "Sorry, Mrs. Beckman."
"It's okay, dear," Helen replied, softness laced through her voice.
"So, no fire?" Frank asked. Katie shook her head 'no.
' "Is anybody bleeding?" Katie again shook her head 'no.
' They all heard Charlie snicker behind Katie, even though they knew she was trying to hold it in.
"Well then surely the zombie apocalypse is upon us!
" Frank shrieked, his eyes going wide while he spun his head around, looking everywhere he could to find the infected beasts. Katie giggled loudly.
"No, Mr. Beckman!"
"Well then what in the heck made you shout so loudly I bumped my poor head on the outdoor table out back?" Frank asked, rubbing the top of his head again for emphasis.
This time it was Helen who had to stifle a giggle. Frank shot her a look.
"It's just..." Katie started, but now she wasn't sure if Frank was in the best mood to ask an important question.
"Mr. Beckman, she wants to know if it would be okay with you if I borrowed the Cutlass next weekend to drive to Indianapolis," Charlie interjected. Frank's eyes spun to her.
"Indianapolis?" Frank asked.
"Oh, that's a long way, honey," Helen said.
"I know," Charlie said. "But I will be super careful, and it will only be for a couple of hours so Katie and I can see a movie—"
"Katie will be in the car with you?" Frank interrupted, his voice going an octave higher. Charlie heard the tone his voice began to take.
"Yes, sir," she said, slightly downcast because, listening to his tone shift and change, she was pretty sure Frank wasn't going to let her borrow the car.
She'd fail the pact she made with her sister, and they'd have to wait weeks now for the movie to get to the Grand so they could see it.
There was no way she was going to see it with anyone else but Katie, but now she was so sure she'd be one of the last people to see it, making her have to listen to all the kids at school who would see it opening weekend go on and on about how wonderful it was, and even after—
"Why don't I take you girls?" Frank offered, derailing Charlie's spiraling thoughts.
Both Katie and Charlie just stared at Frank for a solid five seconds. Five seconds doesn't sound like a long time until it's five seconds of silence with nothing else happening around you.
Then—
"Holy cow, reall—!"
"Yes, please, Mr.—!"
"I can't believe—!"
Charlie and Katie started talking so fast and with such animation that neither Frank nor Helen were able to understand what they were saying after the first few words.
But they both knew it was happily agreed to by the girls strictly by their actions of rushing over to him and the hugs they hit him with, such force from their joy that he almost collapsed and hit his head... again.
"I guess that's a 'yes?'" Frank asked as the girls continued shrieking and thanking him over and over and over again.
"Yes!" Katie said.
"Yes, please!" Charlie added.
Frank and Helen both laughed.
"Okay, okay," Frank said once the excitement started dying down. "It's a date, then."
At that moment, he turned to the two girls, a question burning on his lips.
"So," he began. "What are we seeing?"
And so, the next Saturday, Frank, Charlie, Katie, and even Helen, got into the Cutlass and made the drive to Indianapolis on the Saturday after opening day.
They found a theater, one of the big ones with a marquee that stretched across the front of the building and a line that went around the block.
Frank dropped them at the doors so they could get in line and he could park the car.
When they finally made it in, Charlie handed a ticket to each member of their party.
When she handed the last one to Katie, she presented it to her with a small, formal bow. "Your ticket, madam."
Katie took it with equal gravitas. "Thank you, good sir."
"Sir?"
"You have grease on your face. It looks like a mustache."
Frank and Helen both laughed heartily as Charlie wiped her chin with the back of her hand, which did not help. Katie began to giggle, which made Charlie give her a look that Katie knew a tickle attack was on its way. She tried to evade it.
"I thought it was your new style!" Katie said as Charlie lunged for her.
When Katie began to squeal, Charlie lifted her under her arms, and held her hostage while she did, in fact, tickle her before blowing raspberries on her wrist. Once she figured she'd made her sister's shrieks echo enough through the lobby, she set her gently back on the ground.
"I mean, I have always wondered what it would be like to be Napoleon Bonaparte," Charlie said as Katie wobbled.
"Who's that?" Katie asked once she regained her bearings. Charlie rolled her eyes.
"Never mind, Kitty-Kat." Katie smiled and grabbed Charlie's arm, pulling her through the doors to the theater, Frank and Helen following behind them.
They all found their seats, Katie settling in on Charlie's left, just like in Shelbyville, and balanced the popcorn between all of them, just like on the Beckmans' sofa.
Charlie draped her arm across the back of Katie's chair the way she always did, not because Katie needed protecting in a movie theater, but because this was how they sat, and how they'd always sat, and Charlie would never have it any other way.
The lights went down. A line of text in blue against a black screen, then the biggest crescendo of music erupted through the theater while the title appeared on the screen and zoomed away. Both Katie and Charlie jumped in their seats, but Charlie would later say it was because of her excitement.
Katie knew better.
STAR WARS
Scrolling gold text against a field of stars, telling the story of the war between the Empire and the Rebellion, what had happened before this, and the important facts you needed to know. Katie's hand found Charlie's arm and squeezed.
It wasn't the story that Charlie would remember, though she would still love it. The farmboy and the princess and the old wizard and the walking carpet who turned out to be the most loyal friend any of them had. It wasn't the blasters or even the lightsabers.
It was the ships.
The Millennium Falcon dropping out of lightspeed with a shudder she could feel in her joints. Engines that didn't care about elegance and cared enormously about function.
And they worked.
They worked beautifully, impossibly, the way a thing works when the person who built it understands it inside and out, piece by piece, all the way through.
When the X-wings banked into the trench run, Charlie's hand gripped the armrest because she could see the angles, feel the drag, could sense the exact moment the pilot cut thrust and let the ship's own momentum carry it into the shot.
Next to her, Frank's hand gripped his armrest at the same moment.
Charlie didn't see it, but Helen did. Helen looked between the two of them, both frozen, both leaning forward, both locked onto the screen with identical expressions of wonder, and nudged Katie with her elbow.
Katie followed her gaze and saw it too. Charlie and Frank, mirror images of each other, the same jaw set, the same barely contained excitement, the same look of someone watching something they'd been waiting their whole life to see.
Katie and Helen shared a glance and a small smile, and said nothing, because the moment didn't need words. It needed witnesses.
Then the climatic ending showed up. The exhaust port.
Two meters wide. One shot. Everything the Empire had built, all that armor and all that firepower, and the whole thing came down to a single point of failure so small that the targeting computer couldn't calculate the approach.
So the pilot turned it off. He closed his eyes and trusted his hands, and the shot went in clean.
Charlie forgot to breathe.