For Today I Am a Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

were two theaters in town. We went to the one that was closing down, that showed only old movies. The Luther’s marquee announced that for its final week, it was showing
Sabrina,
from 1954. Neon light blazed in the middle of a sunny afternoon, red and blue flourishes down the Luther’s vertical sign.
    Adele paid for our tickets. The man in the ticket booth looked at Adele with the eyes of a child who is hungry but no longer expects to be fed. As she took the tickets and change, she rested her fingers in his palm for a long moment. He shuddered from his sneakers to the tips of his long white hair.
    I looked back at him as we passed under the red curtain. He was old, but he probably smelled like popcorn all the time, buttery and warm. “The ticket guy likes you,” I said. “Maybe you should stay and date him.”
    â€œMaybe,” Adele said. Helen snorted.
    We let the afternoon pass in an air-conditioned haze. The movie was a modern Cinderella story: The unnoticed chauffeur’s daughter falls in love with one of the sons of the main house, played by William Holden. She goes to Paris a girl and comes back a woman, finally attracting his attention. Humphrey Bogart plays Holden’s older brother; he tries to discourage their romance by pretending to be in love with her too. Every frame was like a photograph, champagne and ball gowns in black and white. I watched Adele as much as I watched the screen, the scene changes playing out as light and dark on her face. She had her hands pressed to her mouth in delight. I thought she looked just like Audrey Hepburn—the gamine smile, the swan-necked beauty.
    As we left the theater, I noticed that the bakery next door had a bank-foreclosure notice in the window. The whole town was shutting down because Adele was leaving. At least the Luther exited with class, running up an electric bill of daytime neon.
    Time felt loose. We meandered in the opposite direction of home and came to the new bridge. It led to a housing development whose funders had run out of money while it was still concrete foundations in a pit. Helen had begun to speak out loud. “
Ensconce, lachrymose, crepuscular
.” She looked at me meaningfully. Now that she wanted me to ask her what the words meant, I’d lost interest. Her gaze drifted southward, past the river. Toward her future in the States.
    Bonnie dropped her arms down over the railing of the bridge. Cars rumbled behind us, a few at a time. They weren’t in a hurry either. “How do they build bridges?” Bonnie asked. She pushed her toe against a large bolt jutting up through the metal.
    I remembered the hollow frame being lowered on a hook. “Cranes,” I said.
    â€œLike the bird?” Bonnie traced a split in the concrete with her foot.
    â€œSort of,” Adele said. “They’re a lot like birds. They dip their beaks, pick up parts of the bridge, and raise them up high.”
    Bonnie nodded. Giant white cranes with ink-stained wingtips and red crowns built the world, steel crossbeams balanced on their stick legs. She traced the groove in the concrete again. “And what are these lines for?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Adele said.
    Helen had walked ahead a few steps, her back to us. “Those are expansion joints,” she said. The wind carried the words back to Bonnie.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œSo that the bridge doesn’t break when it expands and contracts with the temperature.”
    Bonnie stared down at her feet in horror. “What?” I asked.
    â€œHeat makes it expand, cold makes it contract,” Helen finished. Her hands were in her pockets and she leaned back on her heels.
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    Bonnie climbed up the railing, trying to get her feet off the bridge that might collapse at any moment. Adele went to hold her safe. “Concrete’s like people,” she explained. “When it’s hot, each little bit of concrete