I just stared at him, waiting for these words to make sense. “Friday?” I finally asked.
“Movies Under the Stars,” Fred said, and I could hear the capital letters in his voice as he said it. “I told you on your first day. You’ll be running it. First one’s this Friday.” He dropped a stack of posters on the counter. Movies Under the Stars were movies shown on the beach once a month, with a large screen set up at the water’s edge on the sand. People brought blankets and chairs and, like the name suggested, watched movies under the stars. I’d gone a few times when I was younger, but usually they were old movies that I’d had very little interest in.
I looked down at the poster for longer than it took for me to read the title of the movie—What About Bob?—and the date and time. Fred had mentioned that I’d be doing something with this, but I had expected that I’d have more of a heads-up than three days. “Okay,” I said slowly. “So, what exactly do I have to do?”
“Well, we’re in a little bit of a situation after last summer,” Fred said, and both he and Lucy looked at Elliot, who turned bright red.
“You let me pick the movies,” he said, defensive. “If you had wanted specific movies, you should have let me know.”
“Attendance was very, very low by the end,” Fred said. “Very low. So we’re looking for movies that will bring in a crowd. Family-friendly movies,” he said, glaring at Elliot. “The first one’s already set, but you’ll pick the next two. And help put up posters around town. Everyone can help with that,” he added, as he pushed the stack across the counter.
“Oh,” I said. This didn’t sound so bad. “Sure.”
“Good,” Fred said, picking up his tackle box. He looked out at the nearly empty beach and shook his head. “We certainly don’t need three people working when there’s no customers. Two of you can go home, if you want. I’ll leave it to you to choose.” He nodded at us, then turned and headed toward the parking lot.
As soon as he was gone, Lucy turned toward me and Elliot. “Not it,” she said, quickly.
Before I could even draw breath, Elliot echoed her. “Not it.”
I shrugged. “I guess that means I’m staying.” I actually didn’t mind, since working by myself would basically be the same as working with Lucy—just as silent, but less stressful.
“Don’t sweat the movie thing,” Elliot said as Lucy passed him, heading toward the row of hooks where we all kept our things. “I promise it’s no big deal.”
“I won’t,” I said. “It sounds doable. But, um, what happened last year?”
Elliot blushed again, and Lucy returned, looking at her phone as she said, “Fred put Elliot in charge of choosing the movies.” This was the most direct thing she’d said to me since our initial confrontation, and so I just nodded, not wanting to upset whatever delicate balance had brought this about.
“He said ‘summer movies,’” Elliot said, his voice becoming defensive again. “He said ‘beach-themed.’ So…”
“He picked Jaws,” Lucy said, still looking at her phone and not me, shaking her head. “To be shown at the beach, right near the water. One kid had to be carried out, he was crying so loud.”
Elliot cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said loudly, “the point is that—”
“And then,” Lucy continued, glancing at me only briefly before looking at her phone again, “he picks some horrible sci-fi that nobody’s ever heard of….”
“Dune is a classic,” Elliot said hotly, though I noticed that he was blushing more than ever. “And there are no sharks it in, which was all Fred specifically requested.”
“Sand monsters,” Lucy said flatly. “Again… we were on a beach. Again, children carried out crying.”
“But the lesson we can glean from this,” Elliot started. “Is that—”
“And movie number three?” Lucy said, shaking her head. “To show to an audience of kids and their parents?”
“Listen,” Elliot said, turning to me, as though pleading his case, “since my last two choices were apparently unacceptable, I went online, looking for the most popular summer movie. And still, apparently, it didn’t work.”
I turned to Lucy, who was shaking her head again. “Dirty Dancing,” she said. “It didn’t go over too well with the mothers of the six-year-olds.”
“So,” Elliot said, with the air of someone who very much wanted to change the subject, “when you have to pick, just check with Fred first. And keep your intro short, and you should be fine.”
“Intro?” I asked. I could feel my palms start to sweat. “What do you mean?”
“See you,” Lucy called, giving a backward wave to the snack bar in general as she slung her purse over her shoulder and headed out the door. Elliot watched her leave, and then continued watching the door for a moment after she’d gone.
“Elliot?” I prompted, and he turned back to me quickly, adjusting his glasses, something I’d noticed he did when he was flustered or embarrassed about something. “What intro?”
“Right,” he said. “I promise it’s no big deal. Just stand up before it starts, say a few things about the movie, tell people how long the snack bar is open. Easy.”
I nodded and tried to smile at him when he left, but my heart was pounding hard, and I wondered if this would finally give me the loophole I needed to quit. I hated public speaking for as long as I could remember. I was fine speaking to one or two people, but as soon as the numbers got big, I turned into a wreck—stammering, sweating, shaking. As a result, I tended to avoid it whenever possible. I really didn’t know how I was going to get up and talk in front of a group of people just three days from now.
The rest of the afternoon crawled by, with only two more customers, both of whom wanted hot beverages. When the hand on the clock above the microwave started hovering near five, I began the routine of shutting the snack bar down for the day—wiping down the counters, totaling the register and collecting the receipts, cleaning and turning off the coffeemaker. I was just about to pull down the grate and lock it when I heard, “Wait! Are you still open?”