When Saturday arrived, it came rather gray. It was a nice morning, albeit one that couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or just threaten to. Warren stood in his room, staring at the two movie tickets he’d printed out at the library — it was the Drive-In’s “Go Ape” marathon, with five Planet of the Apes films back-to-back, and seven hours of simian cinema glory. With such a brilliant name, too…

He’d been turning the decision over in his mind all morning. Although Stella had sort of agreed to go with him, her “eventually” felt more like a polite no. He liked the idea of hanging out with her somewhere outside of school or the dorms, but the way she reacted to the whole thing just seemed to unnerve him.

On the other hand, following her suggestion — asking Nathan, that is — felt like admitting something he wasn’t ready to examine. He understood her concerns, yeah, but unlike most people in Blackwell, Nathan actually gave a shit about movies. He’d spent forty minutes analyzing Michael Mann’s use of negative space. He’d called the Looney Tunes movie a “postmodern masterpiece” without a trace of irony… and he was 100% right about that. It was.

Warren also knew that, in a better world, Max would have been the one going with him. She was the one who’d introduced him to weird cinema in the first place, and the two of them once stayed up until 3 a.m. discussing whether Donnie Darko (& its sister movies) were brilliant or pretentious (both, they’d decided). But eventually, Max started getting more and more busy, whatever that really meant, and the way she’d said it — polite, rather distant, maybe a bit careful — made him wonder if she’d ever not be busy again.

What if she’d hated everything on his flash drive? What if she’d watched the, erm, hidden stuff in there, and decided he was some kind of sadist? What if she’d told Stella to return it because she couldn’t stand to see him, to have to pretend his taste wasn’t terrible? What if she didn’t necessarily hate the movies, but realized she didn’t like… him?

He grabbed his jacket and headed out before he could spiral further. The academy’s parking lot was mostly empty; normal people were either sleeping off Friday night or had actual plans that didn’t involve spending seven hours watching progressively worse (or so said the critics…) monkey movies.

Nathan’s red truck was parked in its usual spot, and Nathan himself was leaning against it, scrolling through whatever was on his phone screen. Warren approached carefully, checking for witnesses. A few students were scattered around, but fortunately nobody who cared about Warren or what he was doing.

“Hey,” Warren said when he was close enough.

Nathan looked up, squinting. “Hm. What do you want?”

“Want to go ape?”

Nathan’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“Go… ape?”

“Is that even, uh, legal?”

“What? Of course.” Warren held up the tickets. “It’s a Planet of the Apes marathon at the Drive-In. Five movies, seven hours, Charlton Heston yelling at monkeys and all that.”

“That’s your idea of a good time?”

“That’s everyone’s idea of a good time. I-I mean, it’s culturally significant, you should know that.”

Nathan looked at him like he was insane — maybe he was —, then back at his phone where presumably important rich kid things were happening. “Uh, well, I’m supposed to be reviewing playlist options for next week’s Vortex Club party. Victoria’s being a Nazi about the music.”

He wasn’t sure why he signed up for that. Okay, technically he never did, but it turns out that Victoria had been

“You can do that tomorrow.”

“I could.” Nathan pocketed his phone. “It’s not like it’s important anyway; I can just send her whatever crap I’ve got saved. But if we’re doing this, we’re taking my truck. And I’m driving. Your piece-of-shit car probably wouldn’t make it past the city limits.”

“Hey, don’t say that about Maurice!”

“…Maurice. You named your fucking car ‘Maurice.’”

“Exactly.”

And so they agreed to go together.

The drive to Newberg was essentially two hours of Oregon countryside, everything green and damp and vaguely threatening in that Pacific Northwest way. (As famously seen in Twin Peaks and other series that Warren could not recall.) Nathan drove like everyone else on the road was personally offending him, which meant they made good time.

The radio filled the silence at first, some indie station playing things that were either too cool or too obscure for Warren to immediately recognize. Then Lorde came on. “Glory and Gore”, as they called it, filled the truck’s cabin. What a funny song, he thought. But he definitely liked it.

“This should’ve been a single,” Nathan said suddenly.

“You know Lorde?”

“Well, everyone knows Lorde.”

“No, everyone knows ‘Royals.‘ There’s a difference.”

For some reason, they spent the next twenty minutes arguing about Pure Heroine’s track listing. Although Nathan was certainly up-to-date on most of the tracklist, Warren was not. Why did he even decide it was a good idea for both of them to discuss it? Not that he brought it up, of course, but he still felt quite embarrassed at the end. It was an album that he knew maybe the bare minimum about, an artist that he knew so little.

It was the kind of conversation Warren used to have with Max, back when she still answered his texts. He knew many things, but she seemed to know much more. It was amazing, too, given she was just a year older than him. In fact, a lot of people he knew seemed to know more than him… from Brooke to Max, from Stella to… well, Nathan; that was a short list. The fact he was not Blackwell’s #1 movie enjoyer dawned on him from time to time, but perhaps he could prove that he still had it.

The Newberg Drive-In was a relic from another era, somehow still surviving in an age of Netflix and illegal streaming. (If only Blockbuster could say the same…) The screen towered against the darkening sky, surrounded by rows of speakers on posts that probably hadn’t been updated since 1987. Maybe a bit earlier, even; many of the U.S.’s problems started in the 80s, his mom had told him. As time went on, he realized she was quite right. There were maybe thirty other cars there, most parked strategically far from each other.

Nathan paid for their spot before Warren could object, then drove them to a space in the middle — not too close to the screen, not so far back that they’d miss details. It was good enough.

“Popcorn?” Warren asked.

“Uh, obviously. And maybe some nachos if you can find them? I really like those.”

They loaded up at the concession stand, which looked like it had been decorated by someone’s grandmother in 1952 and never touched since. The popcorn was perfect, thankfully: too much butter, enough salt to kill a horse, just the way they liked it. Luckily, they also found nachos. Of course, they were quite questionable and Nathan was pretty sure the cheese was a color not found in nature. But it was acceptable. It’s not like this was a first-rate screening.

The first movie started as the sun finished setting. The original Planet of the Apes was beautiful. Square-jawled Charlton Heston before the world was full of other, more squared-jawled Charlton Heston copycasts. Not only that, but crash-landing on a world where apes evolved from men. Or did men evolve from apes? Or was it all an allegory for race relations in 1960s America…?

Damn. Stella would’ve really loved this, Warren thought. Actually— wait, no, Brooke would’ve loved this. In fact, she’d be the one asking him these questions. No, even better: it could’ve been Max, as hard as it was to admit. He tried to keep that thought locked away in a room inside his head, at least for the duration of the film.

“This is actually good,” Nathan said twenty minutes in, though he sounded personally offended by the fact.

“Oh- I mean, it’s a classic for a reason.”

“Yeah, but most classics are boring as fuck. This is just… uh… weird enough to work.”

They made it through the original, then Beneath the Planet of the Apes (which was objectively terrible but fascinating in its terribleness), then Escape (surprisingly emotional for a movie about time-traveling chimpanzees). Somewhere during Conquest, Nathan’s phone started buzzing incessantly.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, pulling it out. The screen lit up with text after text. Victoria, from the contact photo that popped up. Of course.

“Hm. Is it an emergency?”

“A Victoria emergency. Which is the same thing as no emergency.” He turned the phone completely off and threw it in the glove compartment. “Fuck that. She can survive without me for one night.”

He was probably right. Victoria wasn’t exactly a bad friend, by the contrary, but she was someone who Nathan never fully trusted. She was always more of a party friend of his than an actual school friend, and he hung out with her not only because they were in the same club, or shared most classes, but because he thought she was okay. Not great or whatever, and perhaps more than okay… but she was alright.

Warren, not to be outdone in the ignoring-responsibilities department, turned his own phone off too. Although he’d left it on mute and, quite frankly, the only notifications he got these days were from Candy Crush Saga, better known for its cameo in that song the Gangnam Style guy did. What was it again? It had a classy name, but Warren couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Either way, this could definitely wait until after the apes.

By the time Battle for the Planet of the Apes ended (with a whimper and not really a bang), it was nearly midnight. What the hell. They had actually spent seven hours of their life watching progressively worse special effects, increasingly convoluted time travel logic, and Roddy McDowall in various stages of chimpanzee makeup.

“Okay,” Nathan said as they gathered their trash, “so, uh, you know, I have to admit — that was actually fun.”

Warren blinked for a second or two. “R-right? I told you, it was the perfect marathon. It started great! Then it got terrible, then became great again, then terrible again, then great again… because it’s so terrible. Right?”

“The second one, though. What the fuck was that ending? Whoever thought telepathic mutants worshipping a bomb or whatever that was should’ve been beheaded.”

“The seventies were a different time.”

Indeed, they were. It could’ve been worse though; getting Nathan to watch a monkey marathon, but he’d never get him to watch the next best thing: a Scooby Doo marathon, especially after finding out what the gang was based on.

They walked back to the truck, and the parking lot was now mostly empty except for a few other survivors of the marathon. The air was cool and damp, and fog was starting to roll in from the coast.

“We should do this again,” Warren said without thinking. “I think they’re doing a Godzilla marathon next month? I’d need to check, though.”

Nathan looked at him sideways. “You want to spend another seven hours watching rubber monsters destroy Tokyo?”

“I mean… yeah?”

“Pftt. You’re such a fucking nerd, Graham.”

But he was smiling when he said it.

Their drive back started surprisingly quiet, as both of them were coming down from the sugar high of theater candy and the weird endorphins that came from watching truly ridiculous movies with someone who appreciated them properly. Warren leaned his head against the window, watching the fog roll in from the coast, turning the highway into something dreamlike and distant. What a beautiful world…

“That was good,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed. “It was.”

And the conversation didn’t develop much from there.

Though Warren very much appreciated that Nathan went with him, it was also part of a series of rather unpredictable events in his life that, a month ago, would not have made sense to him. In fact, they still didn’t. If anything, his life seemed like a soap opera whose ratings had reached lows never seen before, and the directors were pulling all the strings to get it back on track.

The issue was, well, talking about it with someone other than his witch doctor, Stella.

The fog got thicker as they approached Arcadia Bay, turning familiar landmarks into ghosts of themselves. The Blackwell campus emerged through the white like something from another world — which, to be honest, it was —, but something felt wrong. The lights were too bright, and too many, turning the parking lot into a strange daylight, for the lack of a better word.

“Huh. What the fuck?” Nathan slowed the truck as they got closer.

There were cop cars. Not many — maybe two or three? — but their presence turned everything a bit sinister. There was no way they would just be there, hanging around, baking cookies and having tea; that would be a waste of good donuts. This was strange. Red and blue lights were cutting through the fog, and there were a few officers standing near the entrance, talking in low voices.

“Did… uh… someone throw another party or…?” Warren asked, but his voice was uncertain.

Nathan parked far from the entrance, killing the engine. The campus was too quiet for a Saturday night, he thought. Not that it would be particularly noisy, especially at this time of night… but it was odd.

“Stay here,” Nathan said, already reaching for his door.

“Like hell. I’m coming too.”

He didn’t insist.

They walked across the parking lot together. Whatever this was vaguely reminded Warren of his own dreams, all muffled and dreamlike. The main difference is that his dreams had many more inanimate objects (looking at you, magnets!) and not the city’s law enforcement. The cops glanced at them but didn’t approach; just two students coming home late, what was wrong with that?

Warren saw her before Nathan did. His friend Stella was sitting on the curb near the bike racks, knees pulled up to her chest. She was staring at nothing (or everything?), her eyes slightly unfocused. He had no idea what was going on.

“Stella?”

Her head turned slowly, like she was moving through water. When she saw Warren, something in her face cracked.

“Oh, thank God.” She stood up too fast, stumbled slightly, and caught herself on the bike rack. Ouch. “I was so— you didn’t answer. I called like six times and you didn’t—”

“My phone’s off. What’s going on? What happened?”

Stella looked at Nathan, then back to Warren, her expression doing something complicated. “Kate,” she said, the name coming out scratchy. “You know her, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, uh, see, when— you know what they say, ‘when pigs fly,’ right? Except, uh, it wasn’t a pig and ugh— you know, Kate—”

“What?”

“I don’t know all the details, I just— well, she… on the roof, she tried to—” Her hands moved vaguely upward, unable to finish the sentence.

Warren felt the ground shift. “Tried to what?”

“Jump. I don’t know. I think she was going to jump, it was close to it.” Stella wrapped her arms around herself. “There were ambulances and cops and everyone was screaming and… all that. But I think— I think she’s okay. I think someone went up and talked her down or something.”

“Jesus Christ.” Warren’s voice didn’t sound like his own.

“And I was worried,” Stella continued, though her words were tumbling out too fast. “You weren’t answering and I didn’t know if you knew or if you were okay or if— I’ve been out here for like an hour just…” She trailed off, swaying slightly.

Warren looked at her more carefully. Her eyes were lightly red, though not necessarily from crying. There was a glazed quality to them, and she kept losing focus, her attention drifting.

“Stella, are you—”

“What?! No no no, definitely not. I was with Justin and Trevor,” she said quickly, defensively. “And uh, after everything calmed down. We just needed to— we had a quick smokey-smoke. And then we went to Two Whales, of course. So many whales, an unbelieable amount of whales. Justin bought like sixty dollars’ worth of lobsters.” She laughed a bit. “Isn’t that insane? I mean, come on, who spends sixty dollars at Two Whales? Where did he even get that money? Heh…”

“You’re high.”

“I’m not.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m just trying to spend my time thinking about happier things and hoping you were also okay. I mean, come on. Kate tried to die, Warren. Sweet, little perfect Kate who wouldn’t hurt anyone. And I just stood there watching with everyone else like it was entertainment. Like it was fucking Netflix or something… what a horrible friend I am.”

Warren stepped closer, wanting to comfort her but not sure how. Behind him, Nathan was completely silent, and when Warren glanced back, Nathan’s face had seemingly gone gray. His jaw was clenched so tight it had to hurt.

“Nathan?” Warren tried.

Nathan said nothing. He was staring past them both at the dorm building, at the roof they couldn’t really see through the fog, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Is Kate really okay?” Warren asked Stella.

“I think so. I mean, I don’t know for sure, nobody knows. They’re not telling us anything.” She focused on Warren with effort. “But I think she’s alright. But uh… you need to get some rest. We all need to— everything’s fucked right now. Just go to bed. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

“I can’t just—”

“Warren.” She put a hand on his shoulder, steadying herself as much as grounding him. “There’s nothing we— you, can do tonight. Kate’s at the hospital, the cops are leaving, everyone’s going to sleep or pretending to… just please. Go to bed.”

Warren looked between her and Nathan, both of them radiating wrong energy in different ways. Stella, too loose and fragile; Nathan, too tight and locked down. At least for one of them this was particularly unusual.

“You should go too,” Warren said to Stella.

“I will soon. I just need a minute.”

“Stella—”

“I’ll be fine. I promise. Just give me a minute.”

Warren hesitated, but Stella’s expression was firm despite the glassiness in her eyes. He looked at Nathan one more time, although Nathan wouldn’t meet his gaze, still staring at the building like it held answers he didn’t want — or, in this case, didn’t know.

“Okay,” Warren said finally. “But text me when you get inside. Both of you.”

“Sure,” Stella said, already turning away.

And so Warren walked toward the dorm. He glanced back once and saw Stella and Nathan standing in the fog, several feet apart, not looking at each other. These two didn’t seem to like each other so much, thinking of it now. He had his suspicions… but now he seemed somewhat sure of it.

The dorm lobby was practically empty, surprisingly. By the time he entered his room, Warren sat on his bed without turning on the lights and stared at the phone in his hand. He hadn’t turned it on yet, and part of him didn’t really want to.

In the parking lot, Stella waited until Warren disappeared into the building before turning to face Nathan fully. The fog swirled between them, making everything feel at least a bit unreal.

Nathan still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t looked at her.

“I think you and I,” Stella said slowly, her words careful despite the fog in her brain, “need to have a chat.”

Nathan’s jaw worked, his hands still buried in his pockets. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were flat and dark, with nothing behind them but walls. (Metaphorically, that is.)

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Yeah,” Stella said quietly. “I bet you don’t.”

There were probably a few questions Stella could ask him. Not that many of them would be particularly useful, but maybe one or two could be useful enough. Nathan, even if he wanted to, didn’t really want to give explanations left and right to her in a moment like… this. At times, Stella vaguely reminded him of his own mother. A slightly better version of her, that is.

“Well… let’s walk,” Stella said. She didn’t even give him time to reply; she was already moving toward a path that led behind the dorms, away from the cops and the lights and anyone who might overhear.

After a long moment, Nathan followed.