2. Stir Up some fun

Saturday night, Ivy sat in the old brick theater in Rosendale with a giant tub of popcorn in her lap. The theater’s velvet-covered seats were small and narrow; everybody’s arms and elbows banged gently together.

Ivy scooped up a handful of popcorn without taking her eyes from the screen. It was repertory night and the movie, Hugo, was about an orphaned boy who lived in the walls of a train station in Paris, France, in the 1930s.

Ivy watched Hugo race through the station, fleeing the stationmaster who’d have him flung into an orphanage if he caught him. Her eyes were wide. If someone had poked her with a pin, she might not have noticed, she was so wrapped up in the story. She felt like she’d ducked under a fence and crossed a border, out of her own life and into his.

• • •

She read the credits at the end of the show carefully. Every hair stylist and prop manager, every gaffer and best boy, every cable puller and coach was a link in the chain it took to make a movie, and the land of making a movie was a place—like a foreign country you yearned to visit— she’d been fascinated by forever. Maybe because her dad had loved movies.

On her right, Grammy leaned forward and squinted. On her left, Prairie tapped her thumb on her knee contemplatively. Beyond her, Mom and Dad Evers sat with their heads tilted at identical angles. Only when the houselights came up did everyone start fishing their arms into their coat sleeves.

“That was a real fine show!” Grammy said as she shuffled past the seats. “I never saw such a contraption as that mechanical man. And those clocks—I guess I never gave much thought to how they work, but now my curiosity’s piqued. It’d be fun to get one of those clock kits, see what makes it all tick. Tick—ha! Get it?”

Ivy said uh-huh as a boy came up the aisle with a broom and dustpan. He was thirteen or fourteen, probably, with tea-colored hair held back in a ponytail. Grammy nodded at him and he smiled as he stopped to let her pass.

You could tell a lot about people even when they didn’t say a word, and this boy was nice. It was in his eyes, for one thing, hazel with crinkles at the corners, and in his smile, which started at one side of his mouth and slowly spread across to the other. Also in the way he didn’t make a production out of waiting for a slow old lady. Plus, he wore a faded yellow T-shirt that had the Nestlé’s Quik bunny on it, saying Stir up some fun! Ivy thought that only a really nice boy would wear a shirt like that.

“I didn’t know as I’d like a show made for kids, but I did,” Grammy boomed. “I liked it fine. I might even come watch it again. Might be up here every night of the week, now you’ve got me started. Walton and Loren’ll have to come pluck me off the seat like a berry off a bush.” Her voice got louder every moment, like someone was turning her volume up, and the boy’s grin became wide and delighted.

It wasn’t like Ivy, really—life had taught her to be cautious—but she smiled back at him. He winked, and in that instant they were friends.

Grammy finally noticed that Ivy wasn’t behind her. “Ivy-girl! What’re you doing? Get a move on, child, the train’s gonna leave the station.”

There was no train, really. They’d ridden to Rosendale in the Everses’ new-to-them car, and of course Mom and Dad Evers and Prairie wouldn’t leave without them.

Ivy took one more look at the boy. He arched his eyebrows. A smile stole out quick from Ivy before she ducked her head and hurried up the aisle.