Read Online Only in the Movies by William Bell - Free Book Online

of the river and park—and it was easy enough to get her address from the online reverse telephone directory.
    This time I just jotted down a few ideas, hoping Vanni could flesh them out for me, and the next day, at our usual table in the cafeteria during lunch, I showed her what I had written. As she read, she twisted the unruly ends of her hair around her finger, or rested her chin on her thumb and slowly tapped the end of her very long nose with her index finger.
    “Well,” she said, looking up. “Quite the challenge you’ve set for me.”
    “It’s awful, isn’t it? That’s why I need your help.”
    “Don’t try to butter me up.”
    I could almost see the wheels and cogs and levers slip smoothly into motion as she began the process of turning my rough, stumbling phrases into graceful sentences. No, I thought, that’s the wrong metaphor. Vanni’s brain wasn’t a machine or a computer; it was more like a house of magic, where mysterious transformations took place in the dark.
    “Didja come up with this one—‘I really like your hair’—all by yourself?” she asked.
    “Didn’t even need the thesaurus.”
    She continued to read. Vanni’s gentle mockery didn’t bug me anymore. It was her style, I had learned, and she only used it with people she liked. If someone took a verbal shot at her or, worse, made a comment about her nose, she cut them to bits before they knew what hit them. She had left more than one guy who made the mistake of thinking he was clever standing with his mouth open, mesmerized by her verbal swordplay after he called her Hatchet Face or Eagle Beak.
    “Vanni,” I said as she took up her pencil and began to jot a few notes, “don’t answer this if you don’t want to, but … do you have a boyfriend?”
    Her head snapped up. Her eyes bored into mine. “Why? Are you applying for the job?”
    I held up my hands, palms out, to placate her. “Just wondering.”
    “The answer is no.”
    “Okay.”
    “Boys aren’t my thing,” she added, deadpan.
    Talk about being blindsided, suckerpunched, what Vanni herself would call gobsmacked. The background roar of a few hundred munching, yakking teenagers, the clatter of cutlery and crockery, all fell away. I held her eyes. When Vanni kidded or mocked, they crinkled at the corners. Not now.
    I flashed back to random scenes of times I had been with her, searching for any clue that I should have picked up, but couldn’t recall anything. Not that I would have known what to look for.
    “You mean—?” I began to ask, to confirm what I thought she was telling me.
    Still she held my eyes, her face calm and serious, and didn’t reply.
    “I didn’t realize,” I stumbled.
    There was a long pause.
    “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said finally.
    Her face hardened. “That’s generous of you.”
    “Because you’re my friend.”
    The firm line of her lips softened. Her eyes warmed a little.
    “You are,” I said quietly.
    “Well,” she said, smiling, “don’t let it get around.”

CHAPTER THREE
    I N MY SECOND LETTER I had asked Alba to meet me, and I had chosen the perfect spot. Each day, on her way home, she walked across the playing field to the gravel path along the riverbank. The trail followed the river through the trees for about a half a kilometre, then led over a wooden bridge to the far bank, where a stairway switchbacked up the steep bluff through the trees to her street. The bridge was the perfect rendezvous, I explained to Vanni.
    “There’s a flat spot beside the river that’s visible from the railing. I can stand there and you can hide under the bridge—”
    “Like a troll?”
    “—and whisper to me what to say to her.”
    “You’re daft.”
    “No, really. It’ll work.”
    “You’re soft in the head.”
    “If I’m with her alone I’ll get tongue-tied. You know that.”
    “‘If I’m with her alone.’ Didja hear yourself?”
    “Please, Vanni.”
    “This is a far cry from writing a