Apparently, there weren't a whole lot of Humphrey Bogart fans out and about that night. Besides Sam, Mattie, Chris and Gordie, the only other people in line for tickets was an elderly couple, one of which was practically deaf, and the other barely tall enough to see over the counter.

Sam and Chris had discovered that they had a love for boxing in common and they talked animatedly as if they had been best friends forever rather than acquaintances that had spoken less than thirty words to each other.

"Are you shitting me?" Chris demanded. "Albini looks about ready to die let alone win his next one."

"Oh, you've lived in a town with like one toilet all your life, what do you know?" Sam teased.

"There's more than one toilet here, you retard." Chris smirked slightly. "Good God, you'd think you'd just dropped here out of heaven instead of coming here in a station wagon from Portland."

Gordie and Mattie stood awkwardly beside them, feeling thoroughly left out. Gordie struggled to come up with a good conversation starter, but all he could come up with was 'Read any good books lately?' and 'What's the grass like where you come from?'

Suddenly, Mattie said, "So, how much did you bring?"

"How much what?" Gordie asked, in a rather dumb voice. This time he sounded a bit like Goofy.

"Opium," she said, giggling. "How much money? You said you had money to burn."

He grinned, somewhat bashfully. "Sorry, I guess it takes time to adjust to my slowness. Seven dollars."

"Wow, you could even buy me popcorn," she said, with a lightly mocking smile.

"I could, but I'm not going to," he shot back, mirroring her smile.

She pretended to look deflated and defeated. "I didn't think so," she sighed, but that smile never faded.

The old couple ahead of them got their tickets and waddled off, hand in hand. Mattie couldn't help but watch them. She felt a little pang of sappiness. Someday, she hoped, she'd get old with the person who she loved even though he was pretty much deaf and who loved her even though she'd shrunk to the height of a fourth-grader.

She hadn't being paying attention while Gordie paid for his movie ticket. When she snapped out of her thoughts, she saw him balancing two bags of popcorn in each arm, holding out a slip of paper to her. "Hurry up, take it before I drop something," he told her tersely.

"Gordie," she said, her eyes going wide. She felt a tenderness suddenly for this boy that she hardly even knew. The feeling didn't go as far as infatuation or even a tiny crush, she just knew that she felt a little twinge of something sweet towards him. "I was just kidding! You didn't have--why did you--"

"I told you, I had money to burn and so I burned it on you," he said distractedly. "Take your damn stuff or it's going on the floor."

The guys barely made it through the first movie, Casablanca, without getting up, running out of the building, screaming, but they endured. Mattie, however, loved it, and they all teased her when she got tears in her eyes at the end. She'd seen it before, each time with her girl friends, but seeing it in this new place with these new people made it different somehow, and it was somehow more sad.

Then, it was Mattie's turn to barely make it to the end of the next movie without killing herself. Maltese Falcon, now there was a real gem. It pleased Sam in some strange way that he shared the same first name as the main character, but to Mattie, it was a stupid boy movie. There was practically zero romance in it, and it was just a guy who thought he was all that and a bag of chips for wearing a detective hat and saying the word "gumshoe."

"Hokey-doodle, what a ripsnorter THAT was," Mattie said sarcastically when they left the theatre, and began walking down the dark sidewalk with no particular destination.

"I'll say," Sam gushed, not catching onto his sister's blatant sarcasm. "I have to go see that again. Maybe I'll take Will with me, he's been bugging me about taking him places."

"No, don't fill his mind with that crap!" Mattie cried. "He's so cute! I don't want him running around going 'she was a feisty dame,' or whatever! I kinda stopped paying attention after awhile."

Munching on Mattie's popcorn because he'd finished his own during the first movie and Mattie had gotten full and gave it to him, Gordie looked thoughtful. "So, is this alleged 'Will' character a brother of yours?"

Mattie giggled. "Yeah, he's my best friend. He's six. I don't like any of my other brothers because they're all mean to me. But Will makes me laugh quite frequently."

"How many more brothers do you have?" he asked, pleased that he had started a conversation that flowed easily.

Sneaking some of his popcorn and popping the handful into her mouth, Mattie's eyes crinkled happily in response to his glare. "Two more. Nicky is tolerable but he's eight, and eight-year-olds are really irritating. And then Simon is twelve, and he's a little jackass."

"Oh don't do that, Mattie," Sam scolded. "He's dealing with it in his own way, albeit it's a shitty way, but it's not really his fault. It's not like he's had a whole lot of experience in the whole losing-a-mother area."

"Neither have we, but we're pretty well adjusted," she grumbled.

Sam just raised an eyebrow at her, as if begging to differ with what she had said.

"Hey, Gordo, toss me some popcorn," Chris called. He was walking alongside Sam ahead of Gordie and Mattie. He tried to catch the flying popcorn with his mouth, but it felt to the ground and he stepped on it. "Dammit. Just give me a handful."

"Take the rest," Gordie offered, holding out the bag to him. "I'm done."

This news of generosity appeared to delight Chris. He gobbled the remainder of the popcorn, and Mattie was alarmed when she realized that he reminded her of a rabid dog on drugs/vampire hybrid.

"Well, Chris, that's very attractive, what with the half eaten slobbery popcorn tidbits flying through the air," she laughed. "So, you seeing anyone?"

He grinned at her. There was a popcorn kernel in his hair, but he quickly brushed it off. "Yep. Toby. Since ninth grade."

"You're going out with a boy?" she cried.

Just laughing spiritedly, Chris shook his head. "No, she's a girl. And she's a fine piece of--"

"And she's my cousin," Gordie interrupted before Chris could finish his sentence. "She's sick, otherwise she probably would have been out with us tonight. God, she was like oozing from every possible oozable place."

Chris shot him a dirty look. "I gave her a cold, you dillweed. She has a cold. She does not ooze."

"That's probably not the only disease you gave my poor innocent cousin." Gordie raised his eyebrows at Chris indignantly, but then smiled. "I kid you, she already had many diseases before you even met her."

"You terrify me, Gordie," Mattie breathed. "Where are we going?"

"You're going home," Sam said. "We've been gone for a long time, Simon's probably duct taped Will and Nicky to a wall and he's probably throwing darts at them."

"I'm going home?" she demanded. "What about you?"

"Dad left you in charge of them, not me," he snapped. "I'm free to do whatever I want."

"That's totally unfair!"

"Life's unfair, sorry to break it to you."

Reeling with frustration and the desire to kick his ass to a foreign country where cannibals would eat him, Mattie could think of no better response than "Grr!" She mumbled a goodbye to Gordie and Chris and then turned around in the direction of Asher Avenue.