“I think your parents would disagree.”
“They disagree with a lot of things these days.”
“I’m sorry.” The words slip out, but they feel right. I am sorry, and I feel as though I need to say it to her, over and over, even if I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for.
“Where are we going?” she asks. Her eyes find mine in the dark, and I don’t know why, but I feel myself relax as we watch each other. Truthfully, I didn’t come over here with any sort of plan. I just wanted to see her, something in me reaching out for something in her. As we sit in the silence, exhaustion and powerlessness physical things lying heavy on our skin, I smile.
“I think I know a place we can go,” I say.
We drive through Frederick’s tiny downtown, all softly glowing streetlights and cobbled sidewalks, the air deceptively gentle and accepting. I park on a side street near the centuries-old Presbyterian church and we walk south, staying off the main road, heading away from the city center and restaurant patrons out for dinner.
Finally, our destination looms before us, a white ghost against the black sky. A wordless marquee, save for the name THE MENAGERIE at the very top, wraps around the front of the old abandoned theater. The front façade is almost cathedral-like, whitewashed stone and turreted roof reaching toward the heavens.
I cup my hands around my eyes, peering through the darkened brass-lined doors. Inside, I see ragged red carpet covered in dust and littered with old movie tickets and popcorn cartons. This theater has been around since movies were called moving pictures, but it closed for repairs a few years ago, much to the town’s chagrin. It housed one auditorium, which had curtains lining the screen, velvety seat cushions, and ushers dressed like fancy hotel bellhops. They used to show old movies and serve Italian ices and chocolate malts at the concession counter. I saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time in this theater, my excited feet swinging from the seat next to Owen’s, my toes never even grazing the ground.
“What are we doing here?” Hannah asks.
I turn back toward her, expecting to find a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, like that first day I met her and she took off running with my hand in hers, hurling us into the lake.
But her eyes are wary, flitting from my face to our surroundings.
I walk back to her and lace both of my hands with hers. I do it slowly, reaching out carefully, making sure she sees my every move. When she doesn’t pull away, I squeeze her fingers. “We’re going to break into this theater and explore and remember being girls watching old black-and-white movies. We’re going to do something stupid and wild and fun.”
“Why?”
“Because we still can.”
She stares at me for a few long seconds and I think she’s going to say no. We can’t. Maybe we never could. But then the tiniest smile lightens the tight set of her mouth, eyes flaring briefly with a bit of her old self. The smile grows, spreading to me and catching like fire until we’re both laughing. We keep our hands linked as we run around to the side of the building, searching for a way in and giggling the entire time.
Finally, at the back of the building, in an alleyway piled with old trash bins and a dumpster filled with theater seats and rat-gnawed velvet ropes, we see a window that’s cracked open about an inch. It’s a couple of feet above our heads, but with the help of the dumpster’s rim, I’m pretty sure I can reach it.
“Can you give me a boost?” I ask Hannah, and I step into her linked fingers. She tosses me up and I nearly overshoot the dumpster and land inside of the damn thing. I manage to hang on to keep my stomach on the edge and then hoist myself onto my feet.
“Oh my god.” Hannah laughs. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sure you are.” I grin down at her.
Balancing with my arms out, I make my way to the window. Dust and dirt and something that looks disturbingly like small animal bones line the sill. I brush it all aside with my sleeve and wiggle the window up. Peeling paint sprinkles to the ground, but I get the window open enough to crawl through. Hannah finds an old milk crate behind the dumpster and climbs up behind me. Soon, we’re both tumbling into a men’s restroom.
“Ugh,” Hannah says, getting to her feet and smoothing her hair. “Smells like piss.”
“Don’t most men’s rooms smell like piss?”
“Exactly how many men’s rooms have you been in, Mara?”
“Oh, loads.”
She offers a smile and it feels like a victory.
The city is supposed to be renovating the theater, so they keep the electricity running and there are already a few lights illuminating the hallways. I find a set of switches and flip the rest of the lights on, filling the lobby ahead of us with a sepia glow. We wander around for a while, stepping around unidentifiable crap all over the floor, looking at old movie posters I remember as a kid still attached to the peeling walls. There is even a smattering of personal items long forgotten—?a tattered black and white polka-dotted umbrella, a faded Atlanta Braves baseball cap, one of those ancient flip cell phones. It’s like touring the inside of a ghost, seeing all the things that used to make it a real live person. For some reason, it makes me sad, but a cleansing kind of sadness, a sickness that needed to get out.
Eventually we find our way upstairs. The ceiling in the auditorium is domed and textured, dark pink paint bleeding in between ornate cream-colored swirls of plaster, all of it worn and molting like a bird sloughing off its old feathers. We stand side by side at the balcony edge, the wide expanse of the theater spread out before us.
“Is it just me, or is this depressingly beautiful?” Hannah asks.
“It’s not just you.” I clap my hands once and the sound echoes through the space at least five times. “And tonight, all this depressing beauty is ours alone.”
I say it as a joke, but neither of us laughs. Because this feels right, being here with Hannah. This place, hollowed out and still standing, full of history but nearly forgotten.
