✌ One

There comes a time in every girl's life when she realizes she's not actually a girlfriend but rather the unwitting beard of a gay man still thoroughly entombed in the closet. For me, it was when I dated Huang Zitao, captain of the wrestling team. In retrospect, I should have known he was gay, always prancing around in that skimpy, leopard-print leotard, feeling up on muscular male bodies all day long.

I was actually kind of jealous. My BFF, Jessica, told me I should try out for the wrestling team if I wanted some to . Like, ew, barf me out. They don't let girls on the team, and the last thing I needed was to ruin my reputation breaking a sweat in front of the entire student body. Besides, it's not like I couldn't get a boyfriend on my own. I was just so over ninety-nine percent of Exoplanet High's dateable male population: boorish, beefy athletes with little to nothing to offer in the intellectually stimulating conversation department.

Take Kris Wu for example, captain of the football team. He was hot on an otherworldly level, but the poor guy was dumb as bricks, and his package was definitely not as big as the rumors say. Apparently, he was planning to run off to Vegas with some bushy-haired ditz the moment they both turned eighteen. Jessica said she was knocked up or something. ("Like, grody to the max. Hasn't she heard of abortions? Like, oh my god. I've had, like, five.")

I was totally done with that type of guy, and that's why I had my eye set on the school's baddest bad boy, Kai. According to the class roster, his real name was Kim Jongin, but no one dared call him that. He was bad to the bone. I mean, the guy rode a motorcycle even though it was totally against school rules. He even parked it in the principal's reserved spot, and not once did the faculty try to stop him. He sauntered into class fifteen minutes late every day wearing nothing but ripped jeans and an open leather jacket, a lit cigarette stuck between his bee-stung lips.

He was such a rebellious, rule-breaking, trouble-making bad boy. I had to make him mine. And step one was marking my territory so Jessica knew he was unavailable.

It was already midsummer, and I had just finished recovering from my surgery by the time I invited my bestie over for mani-pedis. We were drifting on hot-pink lounge floats in my private pool while a few Chinese immigrants (the only ones Daddy could find that were willing to work for seventeen cents an hour and a bottle of sunscreen) filed and painted our nails.

"You look, like, so much better," Jessica complimented, expertly multitasking as she simultaneously signaled to the tiny woman at her feet that she wanted Barbie-pink polish. "I was so worried that garish bruise on your nose would last forever. I mean, what would I do without my BFF?"

"Aw, thanks, Sica," I cooed, slipping my favorite pair of oversized sunglasses back over my eyes. Avoiding overexposure to sunlight is the key to preventing premature wrinkling, after all. "Do you think Kai will like it?"

"Kai?" Jessica hummed. She slipped a foot off the side of the float, gently wading it through the clear, cool water. At this, the little lady at her feet shrieked in horror.

"Miss Jessica!" she exclaimed in heavily accented English. "You cannot put your toes in the water yet!"

Jessica rolled her eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you, Rosa? No hablo espanisho." Ignoring the woman's advice, she continued to dangle her leg in the water. "Anyway," she droned, turning back to me, "I didn't know you had the hots for greasy bikers. You normally date gay boys."

I sighed. "I'm, like, so totally over the guys I usually date. Kai is different," I explained. "He's bad to the bone. I mean, the guy rides a motorcycle even though it's totally against school rules. He even parks it in the principal's reserved spot, and not once has the faculty tried to stop him."

Jessica hummed pensively for a moment before smirking. "Good choice," she approved with a wink and a nod. "My contacts in the boys' locker room say he's packin'."

Of course, conversations with Jessica always ended the same way: with Jessica turning attention back onto herself. We spent the next several hours discussing the plethora of smokin' hot college hunks she met while I was in the hospital, and the sun had long since set by the time she excused herself to more important matters.

"Later, Mila," she purred, winking as she sent me a flying kiss from the foyer.

I never let it on when Jessica was around, but I always heaved a sigh of relief once she was out of the house. Don't get me wrong: I loved Jessica to death, but I needed some "me time" every now and again, and she could definitely chat my ear off with boring boy talk if left unchecked.

✌

I lived a secret double life at night. It wasn't like I covertly highlighted as a superhero. I definitely was not that gung ho about breaking a nail in the name of the greater good, but I did like to sneak out to the movies after dark to catch the latest Hollywood flick on the silver screen. I say "sneak out" because I really had to with a friend like Jessica. According to her, a girl shouldn't be caught dead at the movies unless she's with a guy she's going to give theater head to.

That was just the problem. I actually enjoyed watching movies, not staring at a football player's lap in near-pitch-black darkness for an hour and a half. Not to mention, the last time I went out, I was almost spotted by Tiffany and her new beau of the week.

Believe me, that would have been the end of my life—or more importantly, my reputation—as I knew it.

It was sort of a deep, dark secret of mine, one that I would never have shared with even my BFF herself, but I had always been unbecomingly overemotional when it came to Hollywood movies. Yes, I was a crier... and a laugher... and a screamer. And I always applauded when the end credits rolled.

Since the main theater in town was officially off limits, as I couldn't chance being sighted leaving the cinema with mascara running down my face like an abominable banshee again, I was left with no choice but to find a new one. I only knew of one other theater in town, and that was a drive-in cinema near a poor neighborhood I only visited when Daddy hired a bodyguard to accompany me. Drive-in theaters were an automatic no-go anyway. I didn't have my license yet (but I did have a car—my pink convertible was already waiting in the garage for the day I passed my driving test), and it would have been too easy to spot me in the audience anyway.

After thumbing through the Yellow Pages, I learned of another cinema in town, a teeny-tiny one-theater building cozily tucked away between a museum and an old Cajun restaurant downtown. The museum was dedicated to science and natural history, so the only creature I had to worry about bumping into nearby was the slobbery 10th grade Chemistry teacher. And if people wanted to eat cheap knock-off French food, they could just go to the Olive Garden anyway.

The theater sounded like it would be a perfect match for me.

It almost was.

I arrived at the box office just in time for the latest showing. A modest building of worn-out red brick sat before me, pink and green lights at the peak of the overhead marquee sign spelling out the word "Theatre." Just "Theatre." No embellishment, no further title.

To my disappointment, the one and only movie Theatre was showing that night was already three years old. I had been hoping to see something recent, like the brand-new sci-fi comedy flick Innerspace starring one of my personal heroes, Dennis Quaid, but Gremlins would have to do. I had yet to see it, but it couldn't be that bad—especially since both films were directed by the same man and produced by Steven Spielberg himself.

Luckily, I didn't seem to recognize the guy sitting at the ticket window. (Not that it really mattered, since my identity was concealed by a giant pair of opaque sunglasses that veiled half my face and an old baseball cap I grudgingly subjected my poor hair to.) He leaned back idly in his chair, his short legs kicked up on the counter and crossed at the ankles. It was evident from the fact that he had actually dozed off in the box office that patrons were few and far between here.

I tapped my palm on the call bell, sending him jolting upright and nearly knocking his chair over in surprise. He quickly straightened up, clearing his throat as he fought to maintain composure.

"Ahem," he grunted before flashing a smile b with pearly whites. "One for Gremlins?"

"Please," I clucked, handing him a five-dollar bill.

With the ticket in hand, I strolled past the glass double doors into a dank little foyer littered with popcorn and jam-packed with out-of-order Pac-Man machines. Across the lobby sat a snack bar. A boy seated behind the counter seemed to be engrossed in the latest issue of Billboard and hardly even noticed me approach.

He was the most average kid I had ever seen in my life: average height, average build, with an average face hidden beneath a head of fluffy, brown hair. My eyes unconsciously fell on his nametag, and I couldn't help but gawk a little at the name scribbled onto it.

Y-i-x-i-n-g? Yicksing?

Brushing it off, I decided to buy a light snack and be on my way. Though I was usually averse to eating past nine o'clock at night (it's bad for your figure, after all), the least I could do was test the waters and see if the concessions at this rundown shack of a movie theater were remotely edible, just for future reference.

"Is the popcorn stale?"

The average kid glanced up from his magazine, blinking for a moment before smiling in greeting. "Not as stale as the nachos," he admitted, turning back to the article he was absorbed in.

I tried to peel my eyes off of the gaping dimple on one side of his face. "Well, which candy has the lowest calorie count then?" I asked, tapping on the glass display case.

"You'd miss the movie if I sat here and read the nutritional information on the back of every box to you."

Sighing, I realized I wasn't going to get far with this Yixing guy. "I'll just have a small Diet Coke," I ordered. He chuckled as he filled a cup with soda from the fountain.

I had been at Theatre for all of three minutes, and I could already see why the place was deader than Bruce Willis's music career. The customer service was hellacious, and the interior decorating .

At least the movie would be good, I told myself as I stepped into the empty theater.

When the gremlins attacked the mother in the kitchen, I realized I'd made a terrible mistake. This was a terrifying movie.