I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped when I saw the corner of his blue shirt hanging out beneath the hem of his jacket.

Like a cape.

Franny

Besides Evelyn, kids didn’t invite me to sit with them at lunch or to go to parties or to play after school. They’d smile at me or say hi but that’s about all. Some of the time, I wished I could disappear even more, and other times I wondered what it felt like to be normal. So when Leah offered to take Evelyn and me to a movie, I thought about courage. Evelyn was so excited and I didn’t want to tell her that I had never been to the movies. My mother sometimes took Matilda, but the thought of my going with them had never crossed anyone’s mind, including my own.

We picked a movie about a princess who falls in love with a monster and after we got the tickets, we stood in line at the concession stand. Leah bought us each a bag of popcorn. I didn’t tell her that I was scared of popcorn. That it was crunchy and loud was troubling enough, but the fact that it needed to explode before you could eat it terrified me even more. While Leah paid, I threw half of it into the trashcan. I folded down the top of the bag and when Evelyn asked if I was going to have some, I told her I was waiting until we got inside and then I stuffed the rest into my coat pocket.

The theater was dark, which I liked because then no one could see the letters slipping past my lips. I sat between Leah and Evelyn. Leah eased down into her chair so that her knees pressed into the seat in front and her head was level with mine. The lights went down and then it got darker, like a blanket I could hide under. Suddenly the curtain went up and the screen was filled with light and I felt like I was in the middle of a snowstorm being pelted by hail. I felt my stomach squeeze like it did sometimes when we drove in the car for too long. My grandmother always told me to find something steady to fix my eyes on. It was dark enough in the theater that I could turn my head and focus on Leah without anyone really noticing. The brightness from the screen made her face glow like she had swallowed a candle, flame and all.