Lights, Camera, Disaster Read online

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Right Now

  Five Weeks Ago

  Friday

  Friday Lunch

  Saturday

  Four Weeks Ago

  Monday Evening

  Tuesday

  Tuesday Night

  Wednesday

  Wednesday Mid-Morning

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Wednesday Night

  Thursday

  Thursday Night

  Friday Night

  Saturday Afternoon

  Three Weeks Ago

  Sunday Night

  Monday

  Monday Lunch

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Tuesday Afternoon—Kitchen

  Later Tuesday

  Really Late Tuesday

  Wednesday Morning

  Wednesday

  Later

  Thursday

  A Few Minutes Later

  Afternoon—Science Class

  Friday

  Later—Language Arts

  Friday Lunch

  Saturday

  Moments Later

  Two Weeks Ago

  Sunday

  Sunday Afternoon—Bakery

  Monday Morning

  Seconds Later

  Still in the Closet

  Monday—Mr. Sinclair’s Office

  Monday Night

  Tuesday

  Lunch

  Still Tuesday—Before Science

  Tuesday Hoot Rehearsal

  A Few Minutes Later

  Wednesday

  Wednesday Afternoon

  A Few Minutes Later

  Thursday Morning

  More Thursday

  Thursday Evening

  Friday

  Later Friday

  Friday Afternoon

  Saturday

  Saturday—Nazari’s Bakery

  This Week

  Sunday Evening

  Monday Morning

  A Few Seconds Later

  Tuesday Morning

  More Tuesday

  Tuesday Night

  Wednesday Lunch

  Friday

  Friday Lunch

  The Hoot

  The Spy Who Bugged Me (Final Version)

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  FOR CHRISTINE C., ANTHONY C., ASHLEIGH M., HAYLEY P., DANIELLE R., ERICA R., DINO T., LUA T., AND ALL OF THE OTHER STUDENTS AT MONTSERRAT COLLEGE OF ART.

  I might puke.

  Panic ants swarm my body. I can’t sit here.

  What if no one gets it? Will they boo me?

  I scoot out of my row.

  “Where are you going?” Zada asks as I pass her.

  “Nervous,” I mumble. I stand by the emergency exit door. A light breeze blows in around the frame. I breathe. Keep breathing.

  “Hester? Is that you?”

  Ms. Walker. She’s leaning against the wall, a dim shape in the crowded auditorium.

  “Hi.”

  “Did you … ?” She gestures at the screen.

  My heart hammers, but I stand up straighter. “I did.” I can’t see her face clearly in the low light, but I’m sure she’s frowning. My hands twist together.

  The projector comes to life and the soft guitar builds through the overly loud speakers, and the title slides in from the top of the screen:

  THIS IS WHO WE ARE

  It’s my movie. On a big screen.

  I might puke, after all.

  << PAUSE >>

  How did I get here?

  It’s kind of a long story. Let’s—

  << REWIND >>

  Throwing away the orange

  Mom and Dad in the office

  Hiding in the closet, crying

  Ms. Walker frowning, handing me the test

  My blue elbow

  Reading the MK Nightshade website

  Watching Jaws

  Stressing about—

  << STOP >>

  << PLAY >>

  Ms. Walker stops at my desk, puts my vocab test facedown. Disappointment flows from her pores.

  Crud.

  I don’t want to turn it over. My palms go clammy.

  I breathe. I count. I breathe and count.

  I’m sweating.

  Ms. Walker finishes passing out the tests, returns to the front of the room.

  “You may look,” she says crisply.

  I don’t snatch my test like everyone else. The shadow of green marker shows through its last page. Ms. Walker doesn’t believe in using red ink because she says it makes tests look “too angry.”

  “Your homework tonight is to correct your test. Use your dictionary and look up the answers … ”

  In front of me, Sarah high-fives Nirmal across the aisle. No homework for them.

  Meanwhile, my heart gets heavier with each beat. I slowly slide the test packet across the desk, pick it up by its corner, and peel it back.

  If this were a movie, I’d turn it over and it’d be an A. I’d be shocked, surprised, but secretly have known I could do it. Maybe there’d be a dance sequence, where the room would go dark and I’d jump out of my chair and do solo spins and leap onto the desks to a cheesy pop soundtrack.

  But this is not a movie. At the top, in a big circle, is a D+. Next to it, Better—but not good enough is spelled out in Ms. W.’s perfect green printing.

  My chest locks, like my ribs won’t expand and my heart won’t go and I can’t get any air in. Then my heart slams, hard, pounding like I’m running for my life.

  An anxiety attack. I’ve had them before, but not in the middle of a class. My hands shake and my skin gets tingly-itchy-twitchy, like there are ants swarming over me, and I want to pull. Them. OFF.

  Pop out of my chair. Can’t remember my calming strategies. Can barely remember my name.

  Bolt up the row. My foot catches in the strap of my messenger bag, yanks it across the floor, and all my stuff spills out. Can’t even look. Just GO.

  The room is silent.

  Bang into the classroom door, scrabble for the knob, throw it open. Behind me, Ms. Walker calls out, but her words blur and mash together.

  Stagger-run out into the hall, find my feet, pound past some lockers. I’m a gazelle chased by a lion in a nature documentary.

  Classroom doors, signs, and flyer blow by and I’m in front of Mr. Sinclair, the special ed counselor’s office, heart still slamming.

  Don’t knock, don’t stop, just throw the door open. A girl wearing a royal blue headscarf sits wide-eyed in the squashy red guest chair.

  Mr. Sinclair takes one look at me and tells the girl to leave. She bolts past me like I’m the lion.

  “Hess! Hester! Slow it down! You are in charge!” Mr. S. says, and nudges me toward the chair. I sink, struggling to bring my uncontrollable gasps to a more reasonable, human-being breathing speed. Inhaling as fast as a hummingbird isn’t working for me. My vision blurs. Limbs shake. It’s hard to swallow. Spit pools in my mouth.

  “You’re hyperventilating,” he says. I manage a weak nod.

  “Head down!” he orders. I drop my head to my knees.

  “Can I put my hand on your back?” he asks, and I nod.

  His big hand rests, solid and warm. It grounds me. He counts, “One-two-three-in, one-two-three-out,” and after a minute or so I’m actually able to follow his directions. The shaking subsides. The panic ants retreat. I’m breathing.

  The bell rings.

  “What happened?” he asks, after it’s clear that I’ve mostly rejoined the world of the functional.

  I shrug, helpless. “Vocab test returned,” I say, using short sentences like he told me, so I won’t talk too fast and get worked up. “I g
ot a D plus.” Breath. “It’s not good enough.” Two breaths. “I’m not going to be able to do the Hoot.”

  Mr. Sinclair kneels on the rug in front of me.

  “What’s our strategy here?” he asks.

  I shake my head. There are no thoughts or strategies in my brain. Only a big red STOP sign, blocking everything.

  “The one-inch frame,” he says. He leans over to his desk and picks up a small empty picture frame. “Focus on one thing at a time.”

  This I can do.

  “The vocab test,” he prompts.

  I nod. Breathe. “I got a D plus.”

  “How did you do on the last one?”

  “I failed,” I admit, seeing where he’s going with this. “But it’s not enough!” I say, louder than I’d intended. On the wall across from me is a poster of a dog completely covered in mud. The caption: It washes off. Yeah, right. I hate that picture.

  I breathe again.

  “You feel like you’re trying and it’s not enough?” Mr. Sinclair says. His bald spot shines in the light.

  I nod, miserable. “She even said so on my test.”

  “You are improving,” he says. “You have to keep doing the work, Hess.” He has this expression on his face—I’m not sure what you call it, but it’s friendly and serious and thoughtful and kind of stern, all at once.

  I guess I’d know that word if I’d passed my vocab test.

  “One thing at a time,” he says.

  He keeps going, telling me I am okay, and everything will be fine, and blah blah blah. And part of me wants to believe him.

  Part of me really does.

  But the other part? That part thinks nothing is going to be fine at all.

  “Took long enough,” Max says as I step out of Mr. Sinclair’s office. But he grins while he says it. He and Nev are leaning up against the lockers across the hall. It’s lunchtime. Max hands me my messenger bag and I glance inside.

  “Camera’s there,” Nev says. I’m grateful that she looks out for me, even though I drive her nuts sometimes. She’s super-organized and a planner, and I am so not. She’s also the one who pulled our little group together—she and Max met in Theater Club last year, after he switched into our school when his family moved here. Like Nev, he’s more into books and theater than sports, and they bonded over some musical about a president and an elementary school obsession with the Wings of Fire series. I could care less about either, so I spent a lot of time bored when the three of us were together. But then I found out that Max was actually in a chicken nugget commercial as a little kid and is totally into acting—and that’s when we formed our movie production group.

  Nev and Max are my actors. I do scripts and shooting. We’re not a formal club or anything, we just work on our movies outside of school (or movie—we haven’t actually finished one yet). Nev is super busy and tries a different club every quarter, but always does theater to keep up with her skills. She’s also doing Hook and Line right now—the crochet club. Or knitting. I can’t remember. It has yarn. She talked me into doing Movie Club last year, but this year my grades don’t meet the minimum for activity participation. No big loss—Movie Club was lame. The kid who runs it has no idea what makes a good movie. I mean, he thinks The Last Airbender is the best movie ever made. And he likes the Star Wars prequels better than the originals. Oh, please.

  “Thanks, guys,” I say. “Panic attack.”

  “About … ?” Nev asks.

  I don’t answer. I want to talk about something else.

  “You nearly gave me a panic attack,” Max says as we make our way to the caf. “You bolted past the door of my math class like you were trying to outrun a tornado.”

  I am a tornado, I think.

  “Sorry! It was scary on my end of it, too. Oh—I have a new scene for you guys to look at,” I say.

  “Finally!” Nev says.

  We sit at our table in the corner and I dig through my bag for the script pages I stuffed in there last night. We’re making a short spy movie for the school talent show—the Howard Hoffer Junior High Talent Night, aka the Hoot. So we have to finish it. This will be the first time I show a movie on a big screen, like a real director. Nev is a secret agent assigned to go back to junior high to find a teacher who is planning Mass Destruction Of Some Kind (I need to work that part out). Max works for the evil teacher, trying to stop Nev before she ruins their plans.

  While they pore over the script, instead of opening my lunch, I power up my camera and point it at the two worried-looking sixth graders perched at the other end of our table, staring at their cafeteria-gray burgers and fries. The starchy smell of the fries fills the caf. The last of the adrenaline leaves my body. Seeing things through a lens makes me calm, gives me control.

  “Lasagna? Really?” Max says. He stuffs almost half his sandwich into his mouth while he reads.

  INTERIOR. Noisy, busy middle school cafeteria.

  AGENT SATCHEL stands at the edge of the room holding a lunch tray of lasagna, looking for a place to sit. MAXIMUM EVIL approaches, with a lunch bag.

  MAXIMUM EVIL

  Do you need somewhere to sit?

  AGENT SATCHEL

  (nods)

  MAXIMUM EVIL

  Follow me.

  Camera follows the two of them. MAXIMUM EVIL leads her out of the cafeteria.

  AGENT SATCHEL

  (suspicious)

  Aren’t we supposed to eat in there?

  MAXIMUM EVIL

  (over his shoulder)

  I have a better spot.

  INT. Door to Room 225. AGENT SATCHEL knows what’s behind that door. Her cover is blown.

  AGENT SATCHEL

  Hey!

  MAXIMUM EVIL turns. AGENT SATCHEL tosses her lunch tray of lasagna right at his face. Takes off down the hall, trying to get to the main office.

  MAXIMUM EVIL wipes his face, runs after her. Chase ensues. AGENT SATCHEL throws hall garbage cans in his path.

  “We need to talk about this,” Max says through a mouth full of sandwich.

  “One sec.” I pan the room one more time, then shut down the camera. If I use this, I’ll have to edit out the roar of kids talking, trays smacking the tables, and chairs scraping the floor. Worth it? “What’s up?”

  “How are we going to shoot it?” Max asks.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Totally.” Nev jumps in. “But it’s a good question. We’re going to run from the cafeteria, and I’m throwing stuff in the hall? How is that even possible?”

  I thought they’d be all excited. “We’ll figure it out,” I mumble.

  “Maybe we can get permission?” Max offers.

  Nev snickers. “Doubt it.” The two of them go back and forth on whether or not the vice principal will let us if we ask. But every spy movie needs a chase scene, so we’ll make it happen.

  The bell rings, and I glance at my still-unopened Avengers lunchbox. My stomach growls. I didn’t get to eat, but talking about the script distracted Nev and Max from more conversation about my panic attack. Who wants to relive that? Not me.

  They pack up their lunches and I stuff my camera in my bag. I also grab half of my PB&J and take a giant bite as we step away from the table.

  Nev catches me and glares. Our school has rules about where we can eat peanut butter because of the kids with nut allergies.

  I sigh, toss the sandwich, rinse and spit into the garbage can, and stick my tongue out at Nev. No more Skippy. Hopefully next period I won’t kill anyone with my breath.

  “Are you okay?” Nev asks as we head down to the science wing.

  I shrug. Not really, but what is there to say? She’s listened to me stress about my grades forever. She’s over it. I’m over it.

  “Maybe you can ask Walker for extra credit?”

  “Yeah, right. You know her deal. No way.” We dodge a group of kids.

  Nev fiddles with the end of her long braid.

  “Well, maybe … since the Hoot is coming, you could ask her anyway? My
class is doing that author assignment, where you write to your favorite author. It’s so easy, you could do that.”

  But I’m not in the advanced class.

  I don’t have a favorite author.

  I don’t read if I can help it.

  I don’t say anything.

  “I picked Megan Marie—she wrote that book about selkies that I loved … ” Nev goes on as we make our way into the classroom. “I mean, I think you should. Try. Maybe Mr. Sinclair could help convince her. ’Cause if your marking period grades aren’t good … ” She trails off, which is fine, because I don’t want her to finish.

  She doesn’t need to, because inside I’m screaming, I know! If I fail, there’s no movie in the Hoot.

  << FAST-FORWARD >>

  Boring rest of the day

  Pizza for dinner!

  Stay up late and watch Alfred Hitchcock marathon on AMC

  Sleep in

  << RESUME PLAY >>

  “They are so dead,” Max whispers. He peeks out from between his fingers. “So—”

  “Shhh!” Nev shushes him without looking away from the TV. “Watch!”

  The boat, helpless without a motor, bobs on the surface of the water. The camera pulls back—way back, the boat is small in the frame—and pop! The yellow barrel dotted with the blinking orange light pops to the surface.

  Max jumps. I whack him with a pillow.

  “This is the best part!”

  The shark goes for the ship, and we all yell when it rams the back and tears off a piece of the boat.

  Nev hops onto the couch from the floor. We push into the cushions, into one another. The shark circles back—

  The lights flick on.

  “You kids need a snack or anything?” Nev’s mom calls.

  “MA!” Nev shouts. “No! You’re ruining the movie!” The lights go off.

  Crunch.

  “Quint-kebob!” says Max. But when the shark clamps down on Quint’s body, Max goes quiet.

  Chief Brody does his thing with the oxygen tank, and it’s buh-bye shark. As Brody and Hooper paddle back to shore, Max resumes his never-ending movie chatter.

  “That was awesome!” He bounces on the couch cushions. “I mean, I heard it was good, but it was, like, way better than I expected.” Nev whomps him with a fuzzy pink throw pillow.