Last Night at the Circle Cinema by Emily Franklin Read Free Book Online Page B

and his father wasn’t around much except for puttering in the basement.
    â€œThat boy loves his pranks,” Bee had said one afternoon while Codman and Bertucci tried to clean out the study downstairs. Bertucci told his mother that it was because he couldn’t stand the mess any longer, but Codman and I knew the truth: he had to empty the room to make space for her hospital bed, the kind with electric up-and-down functions, the kind that hospice brought in as a last little comfort. I kept Bee company upstairs, feeding her leftover Passover matzo ball soup with a baby spoon. Which was worse, that Bee had kept one of Bertucci’s baby spoons and now had it turned on her? Or that the soup was another symbol of freedom from our family Seder, while Bee was trapped in her body? I fed her tiny bits while Codman helped our best friend set up his mother’s deathbed, something so cruel and sad I could hardly breathe when I thought about it. The only thing worse, I guess, would be having a mother do the same for her child.
    â€œActually, I’ll tell you something, Bee,” I’d said as the bed got delivered, clanking through the metal screen door as Codman swore. “I’m not convinced it’s all Bertucci. It just seems like a lot of planning and execution for one person to pull off.”
    Bee looked up at me, her unwashed hair in oily ribbons on the pillow, her lips dry. “I don’t for a second think you doubt Bertucci. He’s a master of planning. Even as a boy, that’s what he did. Formulas, elaborate dinners that involved chemistry and smoke, chess matches.” She fell asleep as I continued a Bertucci story, but I told her anyway, feeling that some of her son’s grace and skill would filter into her dreams.
    Senior Start Day was always a big deal. Seniors started a day after the rest of the school—presumably so we wouldn’t be bothered by the bumbling newcomers. When we finally arrived on campus, banners wriggled in the new fall wind and potted begonias from the Parent Committee flanked the main doors. Everyone shuttled past the pillars and into the familiar hallways that already seemed small and distant, as though we were looking back on ourselves yearbook-style. Seniors had their own hallway of lockers reserved for them, and the entrance to that hallway was known to all as the Senior Doorway. The doorway itself was nothing special, just double-wide and with the school logo painted on either side. But it was something, to have a door just for our grade, the top of the student hierarchy. I’d arrived early like I always did, and stood around outside talking to Lissa in the hopes she might produce Codman—they liked each other already—all the while scanning the tops of people’s heads for Bertucci. He was always my savior in crowds, anchoring me.
    It was good luck to stand in the Senior Doorway, lingering as if under mistletoe, and I had a plan to make a wish as I stood directly under the center. But when the first group of us made our way toward the Senior Doorway, something looked weird. “The door’s gone!” Codman said in his whisper-yell. I shook my head, sure he was wrong, but by then the football team had noticed too, and Mark Denvers, drama king in a lacrosse jacket, was pounding the newly-scrubbed walls to confirm it. “What in the hell happened? Where the fuck’s our door?”
    Did we have proof that Bertucci was behind the hack? No. But I knew. Or at least I thought I knew. He—or someone—had covered the doorway with sheets of plywood, then placed fliers and announcements on the plywood so it blended in with the rest of the wall. The entire entrance was covered, camouflaged.
    â€œWho manages to hide an entire wing of the building?” I had asked him at lunch. “Did you plan for long?” Bertucci had his napkin on his lap as though we were fine-dining, though he scarfed up the daily sloppy