“You’ve got to sacrifice something for this experience,” Troy said, refusing to be sidetracked. “That’s why we’re here. You’ve got to leave some blood on the altar. I mean, you heard Mark. If you just want to see the new Star Wars movie, you can buy your ticket online and then forget about it until showtime. But if you want to wait in line, you wait in line, you know?”

Elena was nodding. Gabe was standing on the sidewalk. “Did you just vote me out of the line?” he asked.

Troy laughed. “No, dude, you’re good—you want some popcorn?”

Gabe took some and sat down.

Elena had been imagining this day for months. She’d been planning it for weeks.

This wasn’t what she’d been expecting from the line experience.

This was more like being in an elevator with two random people. Like being stuck in an elevator.

Elena had been expecting . . . well, more people, obviously. And more of a party. A celebration!

She’d thought it would be like all those photos she’d seen when she was a kid and the last Star Wars movies came out. All those fans out on the street, in communion with each other.

Elena had been too young to camp out then. Her dad wouldn’t even let her see the prequels. He said she was too young. And then, when she grew up, he said they were too terrible. “They’ll just corrupt your love of Star Wars,” he said. “I wish I could unsee them.”

So even though Star Wars was Elena’s whole life at ten, she didn’t get to go to the party.

She was eighteen now. She could do whatever she wanted. So where was the party?

The afternoon was even more mind-numbing than the morning.

Her mom drove by three or four more times. Elena pretended not to notice. She read a few chapters of a Star Wars book. Troy pointed out that all the expanded-universe books weren’t canon anymore—“Disney erased them from the timeline.” Elena said she didn’t care, that she liked them anyway.

At nightfall, people started showing up for the evening movies, and Troy got into a fight with Mark about refilling his popcorn. “It says, ‘Endless refills same day only,’ ” Troy said.

“You’re perverting the intent,” Mark said.

Elena kept hoping that some of the people walking toward the theater were there to join the line—there were two thirtysomething guys in Star Wars shirts who looked like good candidates, and a few college girls who looked nerdy enough—but they all walked right by.

Elena had stripped down to her Princess Leia T-shirt, but now that the sun was gone, she started reapplying her layers.

Maybe her mom was right. Maybe Elena should leave and come back when the line really got going . . .