"Popcorn?"

"No...just gummy worms is all."

"You sure?"

The boy smiles, and though his eyes struggle, nailed to the floor, he glimpses just the shadow of a smile in her eyes. The boy doesn't understand what this means, a smile in the eye, but he knows he just saw it. He's never seen anything like it before, probably never will again. But he saw it. A smile. Not pressed against those chubby cheeks or upon those fat supple lips, but within the devilish contempt of those eery blue shadows piercing with injustice and writhing with anguish.

The girl, similarly, notices a gleam in the opposing view, yet takes it as nothing but lust, for she has seen much lust in her days. For, like most girls, lust is the only power which a woman may withhold from a man in this brave new world. The girl finds no anger in this, nor sadness nor wrong doing. She simply accepts things as they are. If thing must be as they may be, than so be it.

The boy wonders what the girl wonders, but finds the dragging lull in conversation upsetting and sort of awkward. The boy was never good with people. Not real people anyways. It's not like he's a crazy or anything, it's nothing like that. It's just, well, he's better at talking when there's no one to talk to. It's kind of a talent of his. Probably why he became a writer. But he doesn't tell the girl. He doesn't tell anyone, actually. To the rest of the world, he's just a kid with a hopeless dream and an inexhaustible debt. A nobody with nothing but something. And that something ain't worth much of anything. But the boy is okay with that.

The girl also acknowledges the lag in conversation, but heeds little notice more than that. To her, the whole world is full of strange oddities, and to question them is just peculiar. It's better simply to acknowledge the weirdness of the world and move on. It's the way things are. There's no reason to try to stop the inevitable. If all must be as it must be, than so be it. Why should she care? She's just a lonely college student paying her way through the cheap soda and ripoff prices of theaters across the country. She doesn't feel righteous about this injustice, but she doesn't bother to offer an opinion, either. Why question what works? Even if it is full of shit.

"Uhhh, yea." The boy mumbles, hesitating in either his lack of courage or inability to attain any sort of concern whatsoever.

"Okay! Enjoy the movie!" The girl smiles that pleading smile she forces to every customer, but the boy sees it differently.

To the boy, the smile is more than just a smile. More than a contraction of muscles and a firing of nerves. More than a thought and a movement and a reflex. More than just something that is. No, to the boy, the smile was deliberate. And deliberately deliberate at that. So, as any boy of any age would do, he concludes the only thing any logical human being could ever conclude in any such situation: the girl loves the boy, and, moreover, the boy loves the girl. This he takes with dignity. Some would even say pride. Most wouldn't. Actually, no one would. I would. But no one else.

The girl, of course, is no mind reader, and after he's gone takes no further interest in the thought of such a dull topic as love. To her, love is an emotion as frivolous as hate. It's not that she abhors love nor adores contempt. It's just, well, to the girl, none of that stuff really matters. This is not to say the girl doesn't enjoy a little romp every now and then. She is  human, and this is the twenty first century. But she does not enjoy it in the way you and I may enjoy such a delicacy. She enjoys it simply for the pleasure of manipulation. The ability to conquer another being fully and completely to the moment of jubilant ecstasy. The talent of seducing and tricking and controlling each and every situation she so pleases. Man, woman, it doesn't really matter. Whatever gives her the thrill of discovery is her's to acknowledge.

The boy enters the theater, now enraged by a strong curiosity, and sits with a stagger. Usually he is not one to see movies alone, but ever since his mom died, some three months before, he could never find the courage to see a movie with another. It's not like he hasn't seen movies with other people before, that would be just strange. But seeing pictures with his mom was more than a habit, it was a hobby, and perhaps more importantly, at least to the mother, a time to bond with a son grown out of maternal love for another. The boy is no psychopath by any means, he certainly contains the capacity for love. But his love for his mother is like a business man's love for his business. Yes, he respects his business and finds great gratitude in the work that he does, and yes, he enjoys what he does and even finds time to tell others of his great work, but he doesn't love it. And the day he quits is the day he truly lives, for he is no longer constructed by the monotonous constraints of the do this and say that and think this and wonder that. And so the boy treated his mother in a similar manner.

The girl never had a mother, or rather, never knew the mother she supposedly had. Yes, science will tell us that she must've had a mother and must've had a father, too. But as far as the girl was concerned, they were all just ghosts. It's not that the girl didn't love her mother, quite the contrary. The girl loved her mother very deeply the day they met. Unfortunately, they never met. And so no love could ever be offered. As for her father, well, he ended up in a similar situation, and so she loved him when he loved her, which of course was never, and so no love could possibly be found.

By this point in the story it all seems a little gloomy. This is not to draw pity from the harmless reader or force a tear where no tear is needed, quite the contrary. The facts are simply being laid as best one may lay the facts of fiction, and so they are laid. How you feel or how I feel or how anyone feels about anything is really the choice of the person who so chooses to feel. If you feel sad or gloomy I do apologize, but I offer no regrets. Feelings are those of your concern, not mine. Now back to the story at hand.

The boy watched the movie as best he could, which, to be fair, was a great difficulty indeed. The boy, unfortunately, could never watch a movie without the comfort of another, and so the last three months filled with empty tears and remorse mumbles, hollow promises and even hollower answers. The boy watched movies because that's what he did. Whether he understood a damn thing was a gamble to everybody. And by gamble, I really mean a gamble. People would travel far and wide to bet on the teasing boy, poking and prodding questions and concerns and dilemmas and possible plot dysfunctions. At times, the boy was as wicked as a wheel, flapping and babbling about every character and his mother. At other times he was a belligerent boy with a baboon as a screwdriver, no smarter than the dummy on third. What he was today was as good of guess as any, and it was certainly a guess.

The girl knew of these games and pitied the boy, though not enough to actually do much of anything. At one time, she thought of gambling her own money, seeing that she could sweeten the pot with her cool words and ravishing looks, but decided against such travesties. Why, she did not really know, but oddly enough, really cared. I would not be one to venture as to why she cared, but it was certain that she cared. What she cared for can not be inferred, nor assumed nor even guessed. But clearly she cared, for her stare grew more aghast with each and every bet, more contemptuous than a pope on birth control. The men shied from these gazes but did little to stop their own actions. The men had money on the line, real money, and they weren't about to lose it to some goddamn gaze. Not in their lifetime.

The boy also knew of the game, and, to his amusement, played the strings like a fiddle. Yes, there were questions he truly could not answer, and times he came out with less information than he came in with, but most of the time, well, most of the time, he knew just what to say. Who told him or how he decided was a great mystery to me, and moreover, all the people. Of course the women knew of the scandal, and the men obliged by acknowledging, but none of them actually believed. To them, he was just a toy, a card, a roulette wheel without a ball. Something to be poked, prodded, inquired. But not something to befriend. No, no one would dare do such a horrendous thing as that.

But the girl thought differently. It's not that she necessarily liked the boy. In fact, she had no opinion whatsoever. According to her, he was just one of millions, and millions more after that. But this, of course, was a lie. For the girl cared, and the girl cared deeply. Like I mentioned earlier, I don't know why she cared, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to care for a thing like that, but she did, and so she acted, on this day out of all days, for reasons I may never quite fathom.

"You didn't eat your popcorn."

"I didn't get any popcorn."

"Well that's no excuse for not eating it!"

"Well it seems as good excuse as any."

"I dare say your a liar!"

"How so?"

"Well your not telling the truth."

"What truth?"

"The only truth."

"And what truth is that?" The boy inquired with unbeknownst curiosity.

"The truth that you think something that no one else thinks and you won't tell anyone anything."

"Well that's not a lie. It's a secret."

"What's the difference?"

"Well to tell a lie, I must purposely hide the truth."

"And how better to hide the truth than through the secrecy of silence?"

The boy didn't know how to answer this. For most of his short life, the boy always had an answer to everything. What that answer was, I'm sure he could not remember, but he certainly had an answer. Yet here he was, stumped, for no good reason other than fate, and the boy didn't much believe in fate.

"I don't believe in fate." The boy states matter of factly.

"Well now you're most certainly a liar!"

"I can't lie about the truth."

"You can't tell the truth about it either."

Again the boy is stumped, but now his nerves have faded, and his courage has grown weary. The slow bustling of shame begins to bubble with the ferocity of a boil.

"I...I don't know what to say." The boy admits hastily.

"They never do."

"Who doesn't?"

"The boys."

"I'm not them."

"And how do you know that?"

"I'm me."

"And what makes you so special?"

"I don't want you."

"What?" The girl has never witnessed so blunt a blow, especially from a boy.

"Most boys want you. Most girls want you. Everyone wants you. But I don't."

The girl instinctively riles at this statement, but curiosity overturns agitation, "Why not?"

"You can't want what you need."

"What?"

"If I wanted you, I wouldn't need you. But I don't want you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I need you. And not like Winnie the Pooh needs honey or bears need fish. I need you like plants need sun and omnivores need plants. I need you like you need me."

"I don't need you!" The girl screams, aghast, clearly taken aback by such a ravage assumption.

"Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. I've certainly been wrong before." He has, and he will be again.

"If you really need me, like you say you do, why haven't you ever said anything before? You've been coming here for three years, probably longer if I can guess. Why didn't you say anything before?"

"I didn't need you then."

"But you need me now?"

"Yes."

"Well who the hell says I need you?!" The girl was offended, for the girl had never before been taken for granite.

"No one said anything about anything. I just know what I know. And what I saw in you is what I see in me, and that's that."

"Well maybe you saw wrong!"

"Maybe, but I didn't."

The girl, for the first time in her life, was at a loss for words. "I don't know what to say."

"No one said you did."

"If I need you...and you need me...what does that make us?"

"Some really needy people."

"What are you trying to get at?"

"I'm not trying to get at anything."

"Well everyone's always trying to get at something."

"Well I've got nothing to get."

"Then what do you want."

"I already told you. I don't want anything."

"Then why are you doing this?" The girl pleads.

"I'm not doing anything. I'm simply stating the facts as they are."

"I hate you!"

"Understandable."

"Don't you hate me?"

"What is there to hate?"

"I...I...I don't know. That's just what you do."

"It's not what I do"

"What do you do?"

"I watch movies."

"I don't think you can call what you do watching."

"Maybe...maybe not. How would you know? Have you ever seen me watch a movie?"

"Well...no...but..."

"Then you can't know. Do you want to know?"

"Know what?"

"Whatever it is you don't know."

"I suppose everyone does."

"Then find out."

"If I knew how, I wouldn't be working here."

"If you knew how, you'd never find it."

"What is that suppose to mean?"

"Whatever you want it to mean."

"I don't get you."

"No one said you had to."

"Do...do you really watch the movies? I mean...all by yourself...since your mom..."

"Yes." The boy replies hastily.

"And you don't feel...I mean...you don't..."

"You can't understand what you don't know. And you can't know what you don't look for."

"What are you saying?"

"Come look."

"Will there be food?"

"I suppose so."

"Popcorn?"