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Abstract

lit up with color.I text through enough of the movie that its plot is beyond me, but the spectacular 3D adventure is enough to leave me awe-inspired in the moments I focus.The year is 2011 and we’re in an unruly line of far too many students making our way toward the high school. For many of us, it will be our first time in the building.It’s a hot June day and the smell of graduation is thick in the air. Eighth grade is almost over and we’re all about to become high school students. We’re on a “field trip.” To call it a field trip, though, feels a bit overstated. Our high school is four blocks away from our junior high.Unfortunately, there’s enough traffic on this short trek that the teachers chaperoning us toward the school sweat nervously as they try to keep an eye on the gaping queue of nearly 350 students. We’re on our way to see Avatar.“Why are we seeing Avatar instead of like, touring the school?” John asks. Our tug of war match over Jenny has ended and the tension in our friendship is mended. We’ve both moved on to other things and other people.“Beats me,” I say with shrugged shoulders.It’s a sentiment I hear echoed throughout the gargantuan single file line of students. It’s a question I’m not sure the teachers even know the answer to. Their sweaty and harassed faces hardly inspire confidence. But administrators will administrate.We sit loudly in the humid auditorium on the hot June day and watch the movie we’ve all now seen at least twice. I’m on my fourth watch-through. We throw things back and forth in early anticipation of an impending summer vacation. Disciplinarians try to discipline.“Is there air-conditioning in here?” asks what must be at least the fourteenth student.“The movie’s almost over,” responds the teacher sympathetically and incorrectly. Apparently she hasn’t seen Avatar before.The year is 2023 and I’m sitting beside the woman I love one-sidedly. The rumors surrounding the release of this sequel began swirling over a decade ago. Back then Veronica was still just a child. I was in eighth grade and she was in fifth when the movie was first announced. Now we’re both college graduates in hectic adult worlds.Our relationship has always been a complicated one. From the moment we met, it was clear that we were two people who connected meaningfully and I had feelings for her from the very start. As time’s gone on, our conversations have only grown deeper and stretched further into the night. She sends me playlists and invites me to concerts and beautiful places.Even after graduating, she’s still driven across states to visit me in Philadelphia. And each time she has, we’ve looked at each other with caring, enraptured stares as our conversations have stretched from love and life to cartoons and politics to death and suicide.Two days ago, she asked if I wanted to travel through Asia with her; I’ve been leaning heavily toward going. As we drive toward the theater, I can hardly keep the thought off my mind.We’re seeing the movie in 4DX. I’ve never seen a movie in 4DX before and neither has she. I’m delighted she was so happy to see it with me because there’s hardly a person in the world I’d rather be seeing it with. She knows that I love her.She tells me she doesn’t want popcorn, but I have a feeling she’ll change her mind about it as she gets to

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the theater. I’m right and we laugh about it as we enter the movie. Inside, though, it’s quickly clear that we’re in for an experience. The seats are a bit closer to roller coasters than those of movie theaters, and they rotate and vibrate enough to warrant seat belts and extra janitors.There’s a fog that emerges from a smoke machine placed at the front of the auditorium. There’s an intermittent and impressively authentic drizzling of water from the ceiling.“Are those coming from the emergency sprinklers?” I wonder. The placement appears about right.Veronica looks up curiously with a shrug and a gentle laugh. As the movie begins, it’s every bit as captivating as the one that came before. The fact that our seats rattle us back and forth throughout the movie only heightens the experience for both of us. We’re in firm agreement, though, that we could both do without this heinous smell effect.As the visual spectacle unfolds, I find myself immersed in familiar feelings of love from fifteen years prior. This time, though, it’s for the woman by my side. She laughs and smiles profusely throughout the confusing roller coaster of a movie. And now I’m the one sneaking sidelong peaks from beneath the glasses that have now moved on from cardboard to plastic as we’ve grown into adults. A rainbow of color dances across her face in the vibrating auditorium.We talk throughout the movie and laugh at its plot holes and share in its beauty. We revel in its immersive atmospheres as we share our soda and popcorn. As the movie ends, we spend the entire ride home immersed in conversation. She fights tired eyes as wistful orange highway lights color fluttering eyelids. I put on the soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I’m hardly surprised that she knows it.We arrive back at my house engaged in an increasingly drowsy conversation. I decide to tell her again the way that I feel about her. On the heels of what could a grand adventure through the world, it only seems right. But she tells me that the feelings aren’t there.She tells me the sincerity I saw in those tear-filled eyes on all of those late night talks never rose beyond friendship. She tells me that all of her kind words and light flirtations and all of our walks through beautiful arboretums and abandoned golf courses meant nothing. She tells me her first stop on her tour of the world is to see some significant other in Japan and my heart sinks.“I don’t think I could ever feel that way about you,” the words emerge violently. “You mean too much to me as a friend.”At this, I struggle to contain my shaking world. A thousand words bubble painfully within my throat but they don’t want to emerge. The few that do are timid, raw and broken. Travel plans crumble to ashes at legs that shake with something in between anxiety and seething rage. I try my best to fight it. I keep a catatonic calm as dejection sinks in. We hug good night and I close the door on my beloved friend for what I fear now may be the last time.We exchange texts the following morning, but they devolve quickly toward hostility. What had been a somber conversation the night before turns into a digital shouting match. She says hurtful words that can’t be taken back. She makes me regret caring for her. I lie in bed and try my best to sleep through a confused torrent of love, anger, and inadequacy. The sun rises slowly behind a dense wall of clouds.</article></body>

MEMOIR

Sequels and Becoming Different People

Avatar and life’s stages

The year is 2009 and my best friend and I are filing into his mother’s silver Honda Odyssey. It’s a van well-suited to her three kids and all of their various sports and extracurricular activities. We’re going to see Avatar in 3D.

There’s an opened case of water bottles teetering around with plasticky jolts beneath the gentle hum of Christmas music. We’re old enough to know most of the words of these songs but young enough that they’re not quite cemented into our brains. Silly bands line wrists, the stock market is in even worse shambles than today, and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” has yet to even celebrate its sixteenth birthday.

John and I both love a girl for the first time. But it’s the same girl; her name is Jenny. We play an insidious tug-of-war match over her affections that lasts for the better part of a year. Right now, I’m winning. Aided by the QWERTY keyboard of my Alias 2 cellphone, I’m engaged in a feverish texting match with her as she lies sprawled out on the floor of her boyband-covered middle school bedroom.

John peers over at me nervously. He knows that I’m texting her but hardly wants to confront me about it in front of his mom. Me, I’m smiling like a fool at the first “You’re cute’s,” “I miss you’s,” and “I love you’s” we ever exchanged in those early digital days.

Dulled screens of archaic phones ring with custom tones we’ve purchased on early internets. They cost $2.99 each and our parents ask us what the hell we’re doing buying them, secretly impressed with our ingenuity. Navigating the VZW store on keyboards built for tiny people is a trying task. I bought “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day as an emblem of my persevering goth days. John’s decided on “Paper Planes” by M.I.A.

As we arrive at the movie theater, it’s more packed than we’ve feared. I’m still a little too preoccupied with my flirtations to notice.

“Three tickets to Avatar 3D, two kids and one adult,” John’s mom says to the acne-ridden man behind glass at the front desk.

I’m not sure whether he’s unaware or simply doesn’t have the heart to tell us that there’s not a single seat remaining in the entire theater. So after a few minutes of delegation, we decide the aisle is our best bet.

Amphitheaters are still the dominant infrastructure of the age and AMC and Regal still haven’t realized that seats should be comfortable, so, apart from the sparse spread of popcorn, the floor makes for modest movie chairs. Plus it’s neon! But we’ve aged out of our light up sneaker days and are still too young for our rave nights, so it’s hardly a selling point.

At the far back corner of the theater and with cardboard 3D glasses strapped to our faces, we watch as the unprecedented spectacle that is Avatar 3D unfolds before us. Unfortunately, my phone continues to vibrate furiously. I do my best to reply rapidly and discreetly as John peers suspiciously from his peripherals toward me, the red and blue glasses on his face lit up with color.

I text through enough of the movie that its plot is beyond me, but the spectacular 3D adventure is enough to leave me awe-inspired in the moments I focus.

The year is 2011 and we’re in an unruly line of far too many students making our way toward the high school. For many of us, it will be our first time in the building.

It’s a hot June day and the smell of graduation is thick in the air. Eighth grade is almost over and we’re all about to become high school students. We’re on a “field trip.” To call it a field trip, though, feels a bit overstated. Our high school is four blocks away from our junior high.

Unfortunately, there’s enough traffic on this short trek that the teachers chaperoning us toward the school sweat nervously as they try to keep an eye on the gaping queue of nearly 350 students. We’re on our way to see Avatar.

“Why are we seeing Avatar instead of like, touring the school?” John asks. Our tug of war match over Jenny has ended and the tension in our friendship is mended. We’ve both moved on to other things and other people.

“Beats me,” I say with shrugged shoulders.

It’s a sentiment I hear echoed throughout the gargantuan single file line of students. It’s a question I’m not sure the teachers even know the answer to. Their sweaty and harassed faces hardly inspire confidence. But administrators will administrate.

We sit loudly in the humid auditorium on the hot June day and watch the movie we’ve all now seen at least twice. I’m on my fourth watch-through. We throw things back and forth in early anticipation of an impending summer vacation. Disciplinarians try to discipline.

“Is there air-conditioning in here?” asks what must be at least the fourteenth student.

“The movie’s almost over,” responds the teacher sympathetically and incorrectly. Apparently she hasn’t seen Avatar before.

The year is 2023 and I’m sitting beside the woman I love one-sidedly. The rumors surrounding the release of this sequel began swirling over a decade ago. Back then Veronica was still just a child. I was in eighth grade and she was in fifth when the movie was first announced. Now we’re both college graduates in hectic adult worlds.

Our relationship has always been a complicated one. From the moment we met, it was clear that we were two people who connected meaningfully and I had feelings for her from the very start. As time’s gone on, our conversations have only grown deeper and stretched further into the night. She sends me playlists and invites me to concerts and beautiful places.

Even after graduating, she’s still driven across states to visit me in Philadelphia. And each time she has, we’ve looked at each other with caring, enraptured stares as our conversations have stretched from love and life to cartoons and politics to death and suicide.

Two days ago, she asked if I wanted to travel through Asia with her; I’ve been leaning heavily toward going. As we drive toward the theater, I can hardly keep the thought off my mind.

We’re seeing the movie in 4DX. I’ve never seen a movie in 4DX before and neither has she. I’m delighted she was so happy to see it with me because there’s hardly a person in the world I’d rather be seeing it with. She knows that I love her.

She tells me she doesn’t want popcorn, but I have a feeling she’ll change her mind about it as she gets to the theater. I’m right and we laugh about it as we enter the movie. Inside, though, it’s quickly clear that we’re in for an experience. The seats are a bit closer to roller coasters than those of movie theaters, and they rotate and vibrate enough to warrant seat belts and extra janitors.

There’s a fog that emerges from a smoke machine placed at the front of the auditorium. There’s an intermittent and impressively authentic drizzling of water from the ceiling.

“Are those coming from the emergency sprinklers?” I wonder. The placement appears about right.

Veronica looks up curiously with a shrug and a gentle laugh. As the movie begins, it’s every bit as captivating as the one that came before. The fact that our seats rattle us back and forth throughout the movie only heightens the experience for both of us. We’re in firm agreement, though, that we could both do without this heinous smell effect.

As the visual spectacle unfolds, I find myself immersed in familiar feelings of love from fifteen years prior. This time, though, it’s for the woman by my side. She laughs and smiles profusely throughout the confusing roller coaster of a movie. And now I’m the one sneaking sidelong peaks from beneath the glasses that have now moved on from cardboard to plastic as we’ve grown into adults. A rainbow of color dances across her face in the vibrating auditorium.

We talk throughout the movie and laugh at its plot holes and share in its beauty. We revel in its immersive atmospheres as we share our soda and popcorn. As the movie ends, we spend the entire ride home immersed in conversation. She fights tired eyes as wistful orange highway lights color fluttering eyelids. I put on the soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I’m hardly surprised that she knows it.

We arrive back at my house engaged in an increasingly drowsy conversation. I decide to tell her again the way that I feel about her. On the heels of what could a grand adventure through the world, it only seems right. But she tells me that the feelings aren’t there.

She tells me the sincerity I saw in those tear-filled eyes on all of those late night talks never rose beyond friendship. She tells me that all of her kind words and light flirtations and all of our walks through beautiful arboretums and abandoned golf courses meant nothing. She tells me her first stop on her tour of the world is to see some significant other in Japan and my heart sinks.

“I don’t think I could ever feel that way about you,” the words emerge violently. “You mean too much to me as a friend.”

At this, I struggle to contain my shaking world. A thousand words bubble painfully within my throat but they don’t want to emerge. The few that do are timid, raw and broken. Travel plans crumble to ashes at legs that shake with something in between anxiety and seething rage. I try my best to fight it. I keep a catatonic calm as dejection sinks in. We hug good night and I close the door on my beloved friend for what I fear now may be the last time.

We exchange texts the following morning, but they devolve quickly toward hostility. What had been a somber conversation the night before turns into a digital shouting match. She says hurtful words that can’t be taken back. She makes me regret caring for her. I lie in bed and try my best to sleep through a confused torrent of love, anger, and inadequacy. The sun rises slowly behind a dense wall of clouds.