Page 80 of Not You Again
Then Shireen walked down the aisle and out into the hallway. When the sound of the door opening and closing came, Carly stood and approached the coffin.
“I hope you heard that compliment,” Carly said. She hadn’t spoken to her dad in a real, honest way in some time. And she was relieved to have a reason to do so. “I haven’t given up on finding you, either. I haven’t forgotten what you told me.”
Come find me, Carly girl.
Bruce’s voice rang as clear in her head as it had the firsttime she heard it. She actually looked down, half expecting that he’d spoken. But there was nothing, just the unending hum of the air conditioner. “I’ll go to the theater today,” she said. “I’ll come find you.”
The theater was another place where she and Adam had spent time, but Carly had been reluctant to return to. It had proven to be an emotional place, and she was someone who had so many of those.
As she walked down the Main Street sidewalk, Spider-Man skateboarded past and offered her a wave. Goldie rode through the street with a red-and-white-striped bikini, letting everyone know there were twelve hours remaining. And then Carly spotted The Last Showing marquee in big black letters.
Carly stopped in front of the theater doors, hands on her hips, and took a big inhale. She could do this. She reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out the key ring and unlocked the door. She was met with the scent of popcorn and carpet cleaner. The dangling stars overhead. The framed film posters. Her dad present in every fiber of the place.
“Hey, Dad,” she said to the room. “Never got to tell you that I really like what you built, but I do. It’s incredible.” She walked past the concessions stand and toward the door marked Employees Only. The supply closet was where she and Adam had been, where film canisters sat next to unopened paper products and rolls of red tickets.
Carly followed the line of films on the shelves until she landed onJurassic Park. This was a movie she’d seen with her dad when he’d deemed her old enough—thirteen. The movie had been so epic, so utterly transcendent, that she’d spent the following year convinced she’d become a paleontologist.
If she was going to find her dad, this might be the best way. Carly loaded the film into the projector, hit the start button, then went to grab snacks. She made herself a candysalad and even turned on the popcorn machine for a fresh batch. She dove her hands into the buttery, sweet mixture and shoved a handful into her mouth as the opening credits of the movie began.
For the next two hours, she was engrossed. Completely transported out of Julian, and the loop and the reality that Adam might be truly gone. She lost herself to the orchestral score, visual effects and Jeff Goldblum’s shirtless scene.
When the end came, she almost forgot where she was, but then saw the empty rows of seats and remembered. “I know you’re watching over me, Dad,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve found you quite yet.”
Bruce had lived in a one-bedroom bungalow close to town with a fenced-in front yard. She hadn’t been back in... a long time. And as she opened the gate, she’d forgotten about the lavender lining the walkway and the sign just above the door in the shape of a big movie ticket stub that read Admit One.
Carly let herself into the bungalow, and as she closed the door behind her, she anticipated the dread she’d had whenever she came. There would be the scent of her dad, his well-worn flannel shirt hanging on a wall peg and knowing he’d never return.
She swallowed down her apprehension as she walked through the space. She stopped to read a note taped to his fridge: Call Carly, it simply said. She didn’t know if it was a reminder or about something specific, but her finger traced the letters and his handwriting. She saw her dad all around, but knew he was gone. And maybe for the first time, she accepted that.
Her dad’s desk had a stack of loose paper, a notebook and a Best Dad in the GalaxyStar Wars-themed coffee mug she’dgotten him one Father’s Day. Carly sat in the leather chair, feeling the spots where Bruce had made his lasting imprints, and took a sheet of paper and a pen.
She hadn’t written anything in so long, but it felt fitting that what she wanted to write was a tribute to Bruce. Because this time with herself, and her dad, gave Carly room to think. Her mind was clear.
She wrote into the night, late enough that she could hear the nearby chaos on Main Street starting to unfold. She filled two pages with good deeds she’d do for the people in town. She’d host free movie days at The Last Showing every few loops, with special matinee hours for the kids. She’d go to Rick Gaines’s airstream and finishBeacheswith him. She of course put Adam’s name in big block letters on a sheet of paper and left it on its own. She still didn’t know how to help Adam or bring him back, but she wasn’t giving up.
She started to form a plan of what shecoulddo. Maybe it wouldn’t bring Adam back, but it would bring Bruce forward.
Chapter 30
Carly
Day 261
When it came to asking for help, Carly certainly wasn’t above that. She loved group projects and had no problem with someone else holding a door open. Which is why she knew that in order to make good on the plans she’d written out, she’d need help.
At the reset, she hurried to find Shireen. While Shireen drove them into town, Carly told her about the idea for a free movie day—a way to honor her dad. The help she needed was in getting the word out, which Shireen offered to do, along with the daily drive to visit Adam’s parents.
So Carly would spend the day prepping the theater and hoping that someone showed up when they opened. Her high school summer job had been at the movie theater in the Burbank mall. The job was great because she got paid, it was air-conditioned, she ate concession snacks and, most important, she saw new movies. So when it came to reopening her dad’s theater, Carly knew the mechanics.
There was the storage closet with movies, but Carly also found boxes of 16mm and 35mm movie film canisters in herdad’s office. Mixed in with the newer releases, there was a collection of what her dad considered, “the classics,” which he must have regularly screened. Since she wasn’t entirely sure who in town would show up to the free movie day, Carly decided to stick to films that would take the viewer out of the real world and into a fantasy:Wicked,Coco, andE.T.
Holding the copy ofE.T.in her hands, she remembered when Bruce had taken her to see a re-release in their local theater for her seventh birthday. They’d watched it regularly on Friday nights at home, and they’d driven to watch it screened in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery when she was in high school.
Because of all those things, she had to show the film for her dad. If she was going to introduce the town to who Bruce was, this movie had to be part of that. If her intention was for everyone to meet the man they barely knew, then she had to be vulnerable, too.
Carly carried the three film reels out of storage when a knock at the front door made her stop. There was Hank the janitor, flanked on either side by two people Carly had never met. She set the reels down on the snack counter and unlocked the door.
“Hey there,” Hank said with his easy voice. “We heard from Mayor Franco that you were planning to open up the theater for a free movie day and we wanted to help.”
