Page 40 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

And then—

Ethan, still flat on his back, held up the stolen chips.

"Totally worth it," he wheezed.

I groaned, rolling over. "I hate you so much."

Ethan just chuckled. "We should do this again sometime."

I stared at him.

"Absolutely not."

Ethan and I didn’t stop running until the petrol station was a distant memory, our lungs burning from exertion and possibly guilt. Or at least my lungs were burning from guilt—Ethan seemed just fine. In fact, he was thrilled.

“That,” he gasped between laughs, “was the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

I glared at him. “You stole a bag of chips.”

“It’s not stealing if the universe gives it to you.”

“You hit the vending machine!”

“And it rewarded me.”

Before I could continue yelling at him, something caught my eye—a giant screen flickering in the distance, casting dim, colorful light across a vast parking lot.

A drive-in movie theater.

Except there were barely any cars, and the ones that were there looked like they’d been abandoned since the dawn of time. The film playing on the screen was some kind of fantasy epic, complete with dragons, glowing swords, and a ridiculously dramatic soundtrack.

“Whoa,” Ethan said, slowing down. “Movie night.”

I huffed. “We don’t have a car.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Technicality.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What, are we going to hotwire one?”

“No,” Ethan said, grinning. “We’re going to improvise.”

I had a bad feeling about this.

I followed him and his idea of “improvising” was climbing onto the roof of the rustiest, most questionably stable car in the back of the lot.

“This is definitely illegal,” I muttered as I settled beside him, half-expecting the car to collapse under our weight.

Ethan shrugged and tore open the bag of chips—the chips. The ones we had technically acquired through mild criminal activity. He popped one into his mouth, completely unbothered by the whole ordeal.

1, 2,3,4—breathe.

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “So let me get this straight. We ran from an old man, jumped over a wall, and are now sitting on top of a stranger’s car watching a movie we can barely see?”

Ethan crunched his chip. “Sounds about right.”

There were so many ways my life could have gone. So many better choices I could have made. And yet, here I was, sharing a stolen snack with the world’s most irresponsible demon.

The movie flickered on, the dialogue barely audible from this far back. I could make out the general plot—a hero on a quest, a wise old mentor, an ominous villain with an even more ominous laugh. The CGI dragon looked particularly fake. No real dragons could maneuver like that, but Ethan still watched it like it was the most gripping thing he’d ever seen.

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