The squeeze of my hand snapped me out of my trance. I looked to see who it was holding my hand. Of course, it was him. I had forgotten where we were. We were standing in line to get into the movie theatre. The movie theatre itself was not what had put me in a trance. No, I had seen the blood red, tattered curtains hanging inside the faded gold doors with the little diamond windows at the top. The big white screen announcing what movies were playing when had stopped being used; the last entry was for Jaws at 6:30. And then there was the little golden box with the same wiry, lean, white-haired, old man standing inside. I imagined that he’d been there since the day he was old enough to get a job.

No, it was the stars that had put me in my trance. Every night I would just stand somewhere in our little town and watch the stars. I had taught myself to identify constellations, and I had even made up some of my own. You would think staring at the stars your whole life would get boring after a while. But not for me. Every time I saw a star blink, my heart would skip a beat. My eyes would trace patterns in the night sky, and I would find myself identifying people I knew and people I would probably never know.

Another squeeze of my hand told me we were ready to buy our tickets. He pulled a wrinkled ten dollar bill out of his smooth leather wallet and paid for two tickets to see the first Harry Potter. This would be the first time any of us in our little town saw it. You see, our town is in the middle of nowhere. That’s the way we like it. We have no contact with the outside world, besides the occasional delivery man with food or last week’s extra newspapers.

No one ever moves to out town. Who would want to live here, anyway? Nothing is modern. Sure, we have telephones and our little box TV’s, but that’s about it. No computers, no HD TV’s, no cellular devices. People call us weird and crazy, but that’s how we want to be.

We walked inside and handed our tickets to the ticket collector lady. “Theatre 4,” she said in a thick western accent. She smiled a toothy grin at us, and then returned to looking at herself in a little mirror that she seemed to produce from nowhere. Really, it had just come out of her oversized purse filled to the brim with an assortment of things.

“You want anything?” he asked. I smiled and shook my head no. He walked up to the counter and got me a soda anyways. He also ordered a medium bag of popcorn.

“Thanks,” I said. He smiled his white smile. I wrapped my arms around him and he draped his left arm across my shoulders. We walked down the hall and took a left into theatre 4. We stepped inside the darkness.

He fumbled his way up to the top and found us a seat in the middle. As the movie began, I picked up his hand and studied it. I always did that with anybody. I don’t know why, but it was like my obsession. He didn’t even seem to notice because I had studied his hand so much. Actually, his hand was probably the one I observed the most.

I took another mental picture of the lines on his hand and then returned to watching the movie. Before I knew it, the credits were rolling up the screen and the theatre lights were back on. There was another showing in half an hour, so we stayed put. This was a tradition for us.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked. I smiled and could feel the blood rush to my cheeks. I drooped my head, and my long black hair fell down around my shoulders. He put a finger under my chin and lifted my head, so that I was stuck in his green gaze.

“I love you.” I smiled and kissed him. We broke apart.

*

Maybe now I should give you a little history lesson on our little town. First of all, a man named Midnight Gustafson founded it. He and his family. They wanted-no, needed, a town in the middle of nowhere because of what they were. You’re probably thinking vampires, or sasquatches, or monsters, or something like that.

But actually, they were a family of werewolves. They were part of a secret society that had a plan. No one knows what that plan is today, for it was never written down and the last person to know it took the secret to his grave. Anyway, from this society came ten families. They moved to this town to start a new life. Eventually, there came the town that is there today.

And there’s not a single human being living in it. Every citizen of the town is a werewolf. Contrary to popular belief, we werewolves do not change every full moon at midnight. In fact, we can change whenever and wherever we want. And we aren’t crazy psychopath blood-lust killers, either. We can eat your average every day beef or chicken whenever. We hardly ever touch humans…