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it. He promises youa fresh portion next time. You ask him which next time that’s going to be. He turns red and Schnappi laughs and bumps you with her shoulder, making you spill half the popcorn over the counter.
    Schnappi leads on and you find row 45 and squeeze in. Because you’re late the ads are on already and everyone groans and comments, particularly Jenni, and you give her the finger, tell her to be quiet or she’ll get Sprite on her ugly hairdo. And then at last you’re sitting down and Schnappi says, “We’re late, the ads are over.” And you say, “I’ve noticed that already.” Only Nessi keeps her mouth shut, sits there looking as if she’d rather be somewhere else. The trailers start and at that exact minute Stink comes running in and everybody starts groaning again while Stink squeezes down the row and stands on everyone’s feet, and as soon as she’s sitting down, as soon as everything’s quiet, Schnappi’s phone coughs, which always sounds funny, because Schnappi recorded her cousin coughing as a ringtone, but it’s only funny if you’re not at the cinema, so everyone groans again and Schnappi says, “Sorry, sorry,” and turns her phone off. At last the movie begins and you see a ship in the harbor and everyone on the screen cheers so much that you start yawning.
    “Are we in the wrong movie?” asks Stink.
    “Shut up.”
    Stink slips down in her seat slightly and says she hates half-price Tuesday.
    “So why do you come?”
    “Why not?”
    You drink from your Sprite; Schnappi bends down, takes some of your popcorn, and immediately spits it back out.
    “Is this stuff cardboard, or what?”
    Stink snorts with laughter and you can’t help it, the Sprite shoots out your nose and drips on your chest.
    Well, thanks a lot
.
    On the screen the people are looking forward to a boat trip, they’re wearing uniforms and they look the way you imagine Americans look on a Sunday. Eric turns around and winks at you, Stink asks him if he wants to take a picture, Schnappi throws popcorn at his head and you say, “That stuff tastes like old feet,” then Jenni kicks your backside from behind and goes
Shh
and you’re aboutto turn around, when everything explodes and your heartbeat just stops, flames and more flames, the whole screen is burning up, one explosion after another. It makes your jaws drop so you girls can’t speak anymore. At least you’re a hundred percent sure that this is the right movie.

They get up and go outside, they look at their phones, talk, forget their crushed popcorn boxes and empty cardboard cups and call out to each other. They yawn, they grab each other’s butts and have long forgotten what movie they were just watching. They’re as superficial as a puddle at the roadside, looking at their phones as if they were navigational devices without which they wouldn’t know where to go after the movie. They have too much, and because they have too much, they want more and more, because it’s all they know. Greedy, never satisfied and never really hungry, because they get fed constantly before they can even feel the slightest hunger.
    You wish you weren’t part of it. They’re so far removed from you that you could call to them and they wouldn’t hear you. Your voice, yes; the words, no. And when they have left, peace settles in as if the cinema is holding its breath. The only sound is the murmuring from the corridors, then the door falls shut and it’s completely still. The cinema breathes out and it sounds like a sigh. The world has been switched off. You are the world and you wish you were someone else. A tear in the curtain is a tear in the screen is a tear in your life. You look at your wrist, the tattoo gleams dully.
Gone
. You can’t take your eyes off those four letters and wonder what would happen if you saw all the things in your dreams that you didn’t want to see in real life. Things you close your eyes to. Things you don’t want to imagine because they’re so