A Movie Script Ending
RJ Valentine’s final manuscript, bequeathed to the one who solved his murder, opened with a surprising wrinkle: Trouble, the pint-sized Girl Detective with a penchant for mischief, had finally grown up.
I Dream of Trouble
Chapter 1
The Poison Pen is dead. I just spent an hour rearranging the Staff Favorites shelf by color, without a single customer asking for help. Finally, Mrs. Carnegie relents and says we can close early, which is how I find myself unexpectedly free on a Friday evening. The weather is unseasonably warm for Blackbird Springs in April, warm enough to ditch my purple hoodie and let the humid air from the hot springs tickle my bare arms. I head across the park lawn in Town Square to see if the girlies at the Basque want to hang. Gusts of wind keep blowing out my matches before I can light a cigarette.
“Ya know, those things will kill you, Trouble,” says Jack.
My half-brother appears at my side with a Zippo lighter.
“So I hear,” I say, letting him light me up.
I’ve only known Jack a year—since Dad remarried an old flame. Kinda weird to learn at sixteen that you’ve got a sibling you never knew about, but Jack is all right. Bit of a fancy boy. Annoyingly tall. His mother has money. His mother hates me.
“Off early?” he asks.
“Was thinking about going to the movies.”
“What movie?”
I shrug and take a drag. He nods and turns his face into the wind, letting it ripple his chestnut hair. We share a smoke. We share the same cheekbones, too, but his eyes are a deep, melancholy blue.
“Something dumb,” I say. “Something with kissing and explosions and dinosaurs. And no murder.”
“It’s been six years, Jenny.”
Six years since the Stranger, my arch-nemesis, threatened to end my sleuthing career for good—and then disappeared without a trace. Sometimes, it feels like a dream. Did it really happen? Was it all in my head?
I used to be a human lie detector. Now I can’t even tell if a girl likes me.
I let him kill the last of the dart, and he flings the stub into the bushes.
“I’ll handle the girls. Why don’t you find Mason and the boys and meet us at the Ryalto,” I say.
Somehow, I get stuck in the worst seat, even though this movie was my idea. I’m at the end of the row, one seat from the aisle. Penny’s on my left, sharing her Mike and Ikes and laughing at jokes a half-second before the others. She’s sharp like that. I already can’t concentrate on the plot, and then, fifteen minutes into the movie, some weird guy takes the last seat on my right.
I try not to turn and gawk. He’s got his hood up, I think. He smells like gin and turpentine. Every breath he takes comes with a wheeze that only I can hear. At some point, out of the corner of my vision, I sense his head rotating my way. I refuse to look, my eyes locked on the screen.
Forty-five minutes later, the man gets up and leaves. My intuition says he won’t return. Penny offers me the last Mike and Ike. The oafish protagonist shares a kiss with the ingenue. She can do better. The climactic third-act chase is kicking into gear when the man surprises me by returning.
Except it’s not the same guy.
I never saw the first man’s face. I didn’t mark what he was wearing. But I know—I’d know even blindfolded—that this isn’t him. He doesn’t smell the same, he doesn’t breathe the same. He doesn’t feel the same.
I steal a glance. Nothing but a black silhouette—his hood is up, too. There’s something familiar, though… My whole body shivers, and I’m not sure why. Is my Girl Detective intuition coming back?
I sit in rapt silence through the rest of the movie. Anyone watching might think I was captivated by the story. I’m actually easing the box cutter from my back pocket a centimeter at a time.
A satisfying explosion annihilates the bad guy, and the hero throws his arm around the girl. They’ve saved the world and have a pet dinosaur now. One last sight gag with the comic relief sidekick, then a hopeful shot of the horizon. Her head on his shoulder, a movie script ending.
The patrons are leaving, but the man on my right sits silent and still.
I don’t want to get up. I want to wait the man out.
“Wait, I heard there’s a post-credits scene,” I say.
Penny passes it down the line as my classmates rise and pick out their wedgies. We all wait for the bonus scene.
The credits end. There is no final stinger. The production company logo comes up, and the lights turn on.
“Bad intel, sis,” says Jack.
The man stays seated. One by one, everyone files out of the theater until it’s my turn to leave. I steal a glance as I pass, and this time, I get a glimpse of his chin—her chin. It’s a girl! I’m sure of it. But then I’m past her, at the auditorium doors, exiting to the lobby.
My classmates have gathered by the arcade. Mason and Meghan want to hit the taqueria. I stall, keeping the conversation on the movie, one eye on the auditorium doors. The girl will have to leave sooner or later, and then I can get a better look at her.
Dinah Black says something, and my ears are burning. I look back, realizing I’ve been asked a question.
“I said, quit deflecting and tell us what you think,” Dinah says.
That’s a loaded question, Miss Black! Sometimes, it feels like she hates me. But she’s always talking to me.
It’s been five minutes. Surely, the cleaning staff would have kicked the girl out by now—wait! She might have left through the back exit! Damnit! I need to know.
“In a second, I have to check on something,” I say.
My gait is casual but determined. Dinah follows me, her longer strides outpacing mine as I return to the auditorium.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
A lone member of the cleaning staff is sweeping the back row. Closer to the front, the hooded figure remains seated where I left her—no, him! It’s not the girl anymore, it’s the man from before! I can tell from the smell. He waits, motionless, his eyes hidden under his protruding hood. He’s too patient. Too still. I walk over and push the hood back.
Dinah shrieks.
The man’s eyes have been carved out, leaving bloody sockets behind. Two red maws, peering into my soul. I check his pulse. He’s dead. The blood, like tears streaking his cheeks, is already dry.
There’s a commotion around me. My classmates rush in. The theater employee is panicking. I tune them out. There’s something in the dead man’s mouth. A paper card clenched between his teeth.
I’m not prepared. Trouble would have a latex glove in her pocket for a situation like this. I have to settle for covering my fingers in a shirttail and worrying the card free of the dead man’s bite. But it’s a formality at this point. I almost don’t even need to look.
I MISSED YOU TOO
And then a little drawing of a man in a hat, peeking over a fence. I could almost cry. I knew I didn’t dream it. He was real. It did happen. Welcome back, Stranger.
