Kindred Spirits by Rainbow Rowell Page A

forecast was pretty mild. (Thanks, global warming?)
    “What were they thinking when they scheduled this movie for December?” Troy said. “They weren’t thinking of us, I can tell you.
May
,” he said, shaking his
head. “May is when you release a Star Wars movie. If this movie were a May movie, the line would already be around the block.”
    “Lucky for us, I guess,” Elena said. “We get to be first.”
    “Oh, I’d be first no matter what,” Troy said. “I am here for it, you know?” He cupped his hands around his lips and shouted, “I’m here for
it!”
    Me, too
, Elena thought.
    Elena couldn’t remember the first time she saw a Star Wars movie . . . in the same way she couldn’t remember the first time she saw her parents. Star Wars had just
always
been
there. There was a stuffed Chewbacca in her crib.
    The original trilogy were her dad’s favorite movies—he practically knew them by heart—so when Elena was little, like four or five, she’d say they were her favorite
movies, too. Because she wanted to be just like him.
    And then, as she got older, the movies started to actually sink in. Like, they went from something Elena could recite to something she could
feel
. She made them her own. And then
she’d kept making them her own. However Elena changed or grew, Star Wars seemed to be there for her in a new way.
    When she’d found out that there were going to be sequels—
real
sequels, Han and Leia and Luke sequels—she’d flipped out. That’s when she’d decided to
get in line.
    She didn’t want to miss this moment. Not just this moment in the world, but this moment
in her life
.
    If you broke Elena’s heart, Star Wars would spill out. This was a holy day for her—it was a cosmic event. This was her planets lining up. (
Tatooine, Coruscant, Hoth.)
    And Elena was going to be here for it.
    Her left foot was asleep.
    She kept kicking the sidewalk, then stood up to bounce.
    “Is your leg asleep again?” Troy said. “I’m worried about your circulation.”
    “It’s fine,” Elena said, stamping her foot.
    She’d only been sitting for two hours, but she was so bored she could hardly stand it. She could literally hardly stand; even her blood vessels were bored.
    She’d brought lots of books. (She’d planned to read Star Wars books whenever she had a quiet moment in line.) (Which was every moment so far.) But the wind kept blowing the pages,
and the paper was so bright in the sun that reading made her eyes water.
    None of that seemed to bother silent Gabe, who read his paperback without seeming to notice the sun, the traffic, Troy, Elena or Elena’s mom, who kept driving by slowly, like someone
trying to buy drugs.
    “The Imperial March” started playing, and Elena answered her phone.
    “Why don’t I pick you up now?” her mom said. “Then you can get back in line when there are more girls here.”
    “I’m fine,” Elena said.
    “You don’t even know these men. They could be sexual predators.”
    “This doesn’t seem like a very good place to prey,” Elena whispered, glancing over at Gabe, who was still absorbed in his book. He was pale with curly, milk-chocolate-colored
hair and rosy cheeks. He looked like Clark Kent’s skinny cousin.
    “You know you have to be extra careful,” her mom said. “You look so young.”
    “We’ve been through this,” Elena said.
    They’d been through it a lot:
    “
You look twelve
,” her mom would say.
    And Elena couldn’t really argue. She was short and small. She could shop in the kids section. And the fact that she was Vietnamese seemed to scramble non-Asians’ perceptions of her.
She was always being mistaken for a kid.
    But what was she supposed to do about that? Act like a kid until she looked like an adult? Start smoking and spend too much time in the sun?
    “
Just because I look twelve doesn’t mean you can treat me like I’m twelve
,” Elena would say. “
I’m going to college next year
.”
    “You told me