Fade Out Read Online Free

favorite femme fatale is.
    When Jackson’s with me, it’s different. I can’t even talk about it with anyone. I mean, I know nothing could happen. I’m not dim. I know how far the divide is between high school and middle school, like between black-and-white and full-color, between silver screen and squeaky movie theater seat in the audience of real life.
    Besides, Jackson has a girlfriend. And not just any girlfriend:Elissa. And Elissa’s like family. When someone used to put you in pajamas and make you brush your teeth, you can’t help but have a deep, unspoken connection. That means any boyfriend of Elissa’s is automatically a friend of mine. That’s all.
    Anyway, what I like about Jackson is how he leaves me alone. He sees that I want to watch a movie and he just lets me watch. He doesn’t ask, How are you feeling about the divorce? He doesn’t say, Why do you spend so much time here? Don’t you have any friends? He’ll let me hide here as long as I want to. And that’s all I care about today.
    But back to Austin. Because he’s standing here, still blocking the door to Theater 1, like only over his dead body will I get in.
    “You are going in there to talk to my cousin, aren’t you?” he says. He tries to narrow his eyes into sharp points, but it just looks like he got soap in them. “What do you want to talk to him about anyway?”
    “None of your business,” I say.
    “Why won’t you admit you’re in love with him?”
    I did not just hear those words.
    Austin doesn’t actually think that. The kid has no idea. Which brings me to (3): Really, Austin just hates it that anyone would rather talk to me than to him. It’s like he can’t fathomthat I could be more interesting than he is, like that’s more unbelievable than the existence of, I don’t know, aliens.
    (And by the way, I do believe in aliens, it’s completely egotistical not to, and I’d bet a trillion dollars that Austin doesn’t.)
    Austin’s still standing in front of the door when his mom calls for him on the walkie. Seriously. Austin’s brilliant idea this summer was to use walkie-talkies so his mom could reach him anywhere in the theater. Not that she simply couldn’t yell out Austin! and he’d hear her and answer—he just happens to be insane.
    He holds up a hand to me and says into the walkie, “Austin here.”
    Ms. Greenway’s staticky voice says, “Is Danielle there with you? Tell her that her mother’s on the phone.”
    “Ten-four,” Austin says. (It’s so much worse when he uses the technical language.) Then he turns to me, all smuglike. “Your mom’s on the phone.”
    “I’m standing right here, Austin. I heard.”
    He motions at the house phone in the hallway. “So go get the phone.”
    Which of course I am not about to do. So instead I lean in and I try to be as nice as possible to him, which is like eatingants, and I say, “You didn’t see me. I’m like Orson Welles in The Third Man . I’m not here.”
    That’s the movie where this guy, played by Orson Welles, spends the whole time sneaking around in dank, dark sewer tunnels under the city. People are looking for him, but he’s hiding, just out of sight, being the third man no one can find. That’s me—only I don’t reek like a sewer. Now, if only Austin will let me in…
    But he says, “You’re like who in what?”
    And this is the guy who works at the movie theater.
    “Just never mind, okay? If my mom asks, you didn’t see me. That’s all I meant.”
    No matter what complaints I’ve got about Austin, I guess there’s also (4) Austin’s not so strong. Physically, I mean. I’m able to shove him out of the way, open the door to Theater 1, and walk on in.

 
     
    3

But Mom’s Not Exactly Ingrid Bergman
    M aybe this would be the part of the movie where we’d go back in time to see how it all happened. That’s called a flashback. Like, I open the door to Theater 1, take a step into the darkness, and my whole life spins out before my