Chapter 1

Movies

"Thanks Em," Rose said as I handed her my dollar. My sisters are the only people in the world who are allowed to call me Em, and Totsie and Hopie are only allowed when I'm in a good mood. Even my best friend Sarah has to call me Emily. I'm not particularly fond of Em as a nickname, I like my full name, Emily, much better, but I will usually let my sisters get away with it because they called me that before I minded.

Growing up with five sisters can get on my nerves at times. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm right in the middle. I have two sisters who are older than I am and two that are younger. I probably get along best with Isabelle, who's fifteen, only a year younger than I am.

Hopie is my youngest sister. She's only twelve, and although she's cute, I can't really see her as anything other than the baby.

My oldest sister Totsie is twenty-one, and in college. We don't really get along. She seems to think she's better than the rest of us because she's the oldest.

Rose is eighteen, two years older than I. We get along… usually.

The five of us used to go to see a movie every Friday. Since Totsie went to college, it's only been the four of us. Rose likes it because she's the oldest now, but it hasn't gone to her head as bad as it has Totsie's. I don't think it will, Rose isn't really the oldest, and she knows that, although she doesn't always like to admit it.

Rose handed the man at the ticket counter the five dollars she had received from my parents in exchange for four tickets. Tickets are a dollar fifty for adults and a dollar for children, which is Hopie, because she's still twelve. We each contribute an extra dollar each week for popcorn and other movie snacks. My parents would have paid for that too, but we probably would have had to listen to a lecture from my mother about eating healthfully every week, so it was well worth it for us to pay for our own snacks.

I'd seen the movie that was playing four times already, and although I have always enjoyed movies, this one had started to become monotonous. As always, I was sitting beside Isabelle in the theater, and we were continually whispering comments in each others' ears about the movie. We never commented the first time we saw a movie, but the second time we did, and the more times we saw a movie, the more frequent our comments become.

"That man walks like he has something in his you-know," I said to my sister.

She laughed, and replied with "Her face looks like it's been slammed into a brick wall."

At this point our comments had become closer to gossip than legitimate movie commentary, and I knew it, but I didn't mind a bit. Halfway through the movie, we got bored with the movie itself and begin commentating on others in the theater instead. "Look how surprised that lady in front of us is, I saw that coming the first time I saw this movie," I told Isabelle.

"The couple two rows in front of me and three seats to the left are more interested in each other than the movie." Couples like this one were one of our favorite things to watch after we'd seen a movie three or four times.

"Ha! Look how he's all over her!" I said.

The boy moved in and started kissing the girl's neck. "That's going to leave a mark," Isabelle said.

"Right about that," I said, giggling a little. We commented like this until the end of the movie.

Isabelle and I lagged behind on the walk home so that we could talk undisturbed by Rose and Hopie. "Our comments were particularly horrible today, don't you think?" I asked Isabelle, pleased with myself. We tended to take pride in our rudeness rather than shame.

"Definitely," she said, pleased as I.

"You know, Rose was listening to some of what we were saying, I could see her." Since Totsie had left, Rose always sat on my left, Isabelle on my right. Hopie sat on Rose's left. We almost always sat in the same order.

"Really?"

"Oh yes, I don't think she cares what we say. She's so much nicer than Totsie, she would have yelled at us."

"Remember the time she made us leave the theater?"

"She said we were disturbing others trying to watch the movie," I laughed.

"We were disturbing her and… No, that's all."

"That was years ago. Weren't we only seven and eight? Mom got so angry with her for letting us go home alone."

"I don't know what she thought was going to happen. It's not like we usually have killers roaming the streets."

"It's eight blocks though, it was far for us when we were that young," I said reasonably, much more willing to take my mother's side than my oldest sister's.

"At that point we weren't even saying anything bad, we were just talking."

"I know. You have to admit it was funny though, wasn't it?"

"Hilarious. I loved seeing Mom's face when we told her that Totsie had kicked us out. You know, you'll be the oldest when Rose goes to college next year," Isabelle pointed out.

"I know. There will only be three of us then."

"We might as well just go to the movies ourselves, why drag Hopie along?"

"She would have a fit. Besides, it's our tradition."

"It won't be long before you're in college. I can't bear the thought of going with only Hopie."

I couldn't get the thought of going to college into my mind. I was sixteen, but it felt like I still had so far to go to that point. "You have a while to worry about that," I said, "But when it happens, I'll go someplace that isn't too far away, and I'll come home every Friday so that we can continue the tradition. We should go ourselves sometime though, without the rest of them. That would be fun."

"Why? We go every Friday anyway. It's not as if we could see something we wouldn't see anyway."

"I know, but it would be fun without the other two.
"Why don't we do something different? We could go shopping or out for ice cream."

"We could do that some time. We should. Maybe I could bring Sarah and you could bring Catherine," I said, referring to Isabelle's best friend. "We could make a real party of it."

"No. Let's just you and I go. If we have friends, we won't talk to one another, we'll only talk to our friends."

"Well, all right, I suppose you're right," I said to Isabelle.

"So, what do you think of Robert Norman?"

"Robert Norman, now?" I ask with a slight giggle. Isabelle seemed to be attracted to a different boy every third day.

"Yes, what do you think of him?"
"Oh, he's all right I guess. At least he's your age," I joked. The last two boys Isabelle has fallen for had both been a year older than I.

"Oh, be quiet. You haven't liked anyone since Bo Kleid."

"Now you be quiet. I dated Bo for three months, which is longer than you have even liked one single boy."

"I liked Nate Trinsade for three and a half months."

"Nate Trinsade wouldn't have gone out with you if you had tied him down. He's nearly Rose's age!" Why Isabelle always fell for older men was beyond me.

"You have to admit he's good looking."

"I don't care that he's good looking, he has candy wrappers for brains and he's almost two years older than I am!"

"Why don't you like anyone? You haven't liked anyone for two whole months."

"Why are you keeping track?"

"I'm your sister, it's my job."

"It is most certainly not your job to keep track of who I like and when, right down to the hour. How do you know I haven't liked every boy in school and I just haven't told you about it?" I was getting angry with her, the last thing I needed was my little sister monitoring my social life.

"You tell me most everything, especially about boys. I can't help it that I'm younger than you but have had more boyfriends. I know more about boys than you. You may be smarter than I about most things, but boys are one area where I can top your knowledge, and you know it."

"Maybe I'd talk to Rose or Totsie."

"You wouldn't talk to Rose. The last time you talked to Rose about a boy she told you that you were too young to think about boys. You were thirteen. And you can't usually talk to Totsie for five minutes without it turning into a brawl."

"How do you know I haven't talked to Rose since then?"

"I know these things."

"You're right. I only talk to you and to Sarah. Sarah isn't a very reliable source on the subject though, she's never dated anyone."

"Why not? She's pretty."

"I know, but she doesn't want to date. She's been asked out by three boys in the last year, but has declined each of them. You know how smart Sarah is, she says she doesn't want to be distracted from her schoolwork."

"That's a little too conservative for me," Isabelle said.

"And for me," I replied. "That's Sarah though; she's a little… off, at times."

"You're right about that," Isabelle said as we walked up the pathway to our house behind Rose and Hopie. Sometimes I thought I enjoyed the time before and after movies on Fridays even better than the movies themselves.