Lights, Camera, Disaster Read online

  “You were totally scared,” she teases.

  “Was not!”

  “Was too!”

  I grin and slip my camera out to record their show. Neither of them were interested in watching Jaws, but it was my pick—we take turns, otherwise we’d never agree on anything—so they had to go along with it once I got here. I was late.

  I’m just about to press RECORD when Max catches me.

  “Hey!” He chucks the pink pillow in my direction. I duck and it flies by.

  “Rule breaker!” Nev yells.

  “All right, all right,” I grumble, putting the camera back in its case. That’s also part of the rule of Movie Extravaganza: no camera. I’m bummed that they caught me, but the moment is wrecked now, anyway.

  Max flops back on the couch. “Anyone want those snacks? I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry,” Nev points out. But she bounces up and leads us upstairs.

  There’s a bowl of cashews on the counter, and I dive in. Nev rummages in a cupboard and pulls out a bag of chips and salsa. Max grabs the jar and holds the label next to his cheek.

  “Olé! Olé! Olé!” he sings. “There’s nothing greater to eat today!” He waits, eyes wide, as Nev and I exchange glances. Max knows every food commercial on TV, plus he writes them in his spare time and is convinced that’s how he’ll make his millions.

  “Olé salsa, try it and you’ll buy it?” he adds, hopeful. We shake our heads.

  “No,” Nev says.

  “Come on!”

  “Keep trying,” Nev says. She takes the jar from him, and it makes a hissing crack as she opens it—and it brings her mom straight to the kitchen. She’s wearing blue running pants and a hoodie, which is a surprise. When I see her during the week, she’s usually in a suit. Most of the time we’re at Nev’s dad’s or my house on the weekend.

  “We have an open jar in the fridge,” she says.

  “Sorry,” Nev says, and rolls her eyes at me when her mom’s not looking. Nev gets a bowl and pours the chips in. Max grabs a handful. Her mom shakes her head.

  “You guys finish watching your movie?” Mouths stuffed, we make noises that mean “yes.”

  “Max isn’t going to go swimming for a long time,” I add. He scowls at me.

  “I was not scared,” he says for the thousandth time.

  “I was,” Nev’s mom says. She leans over the counter and dips a chip into the salsa. “I remember watching that movie with a bunch of girlfriends right before going to the beach for the Fourth of July. I don’t think we went into the water at all!” She laughs. “That movie’s been scaring people for ages, mostly because of an accident.”

  “Whup?” My mouth is full of tangy salsa and chips, and crumbs spray everywhere. I swallow and try again. “What?”

  “I’d have thought you knew this, Hess.” She looks kind of pleased with herself that I don’t. “The mechanical shark they called Bruce kept breaking down. So Spielberg had to shoot around it. That’s why you don’t actually see the shark very much.” She chomps a chip. “Makes it scarier, when it’s left up to your imagination, don’t you think?”

  I mull this over while Nev and Max argue over what is scarier: seeing something or not seeing it. I don’t even bother to get involved, because, like Spielberg, I know the imagination is way scarier than what anyone puts on film. All the great directors knew that. Alfred Hitchcock kept lots of stuff offscreen—like when Janet Leigh dies in Psycho. He never actually shows her getting stabbed in the movie.

  Mentally, I flip through The Spy Who Bugged Me footage. How can I shoot the chase scene so we can make it work and not get in trouble?

  “Earth to Hess!” Nev’s fingers snap in front of my face. “Earth to Hess!”

  I close my eyes for a sec, clearing the image from my head and trying to focus. “Yeah?”

  “We’re taking the chips downstairs. Coming?”

  “Olé.” I trail behind them, working on my options.

  << FAST-FORWARD >>

  Boring Sunday

  Boring day at school Monday

  Recording my brother, Jack, in his bedroom

  He gets angry

  I go to my room

  There’s a NOISE

  << RESUME PLAY >>

  The loud crack makes me stop working in my video editing program. “What the … ?”

  Then Dad’s voice, sounding not good at all—hoarse and awful—“Bonnieeee!” He draws out Mom’s name in a way I’ve never heard before.

  A sick sensation fills my body and turns my stomach to pudding. I push back from my desk and race downstairs at the same time as Jack and Mom. We meet in the kitchen, and I’m guessing my eyes look as big and wild as theirs.

  “Where is he?” Mom peers down the basement stairs.

  “Bonnie!” Dad calls again, and now we can tell he’s at the front of the house.

  Track-star Jack gets there first. He throws open the door and there’s Dad in his running gear, curled at the bottom of the front stairs. There’s blood on his head, but it’s like he doesn’t even care about that, because he’s clutching his right shoulder with his left arm. His face is gray and knotted with pain.

  The loose flagstone—one he keeps saying he’s going to fix—is in pieces around him.

  We stand frozen, staring. Mom, of course, snaps to action first.

  “Call an ambulance!” she directs. I have no idea where my phone is. I’m shaking and couldn’t dial if I wanted to. Jack pushes past me into the house. I back up, bumping my head against our mailbox, a tide of panic rising in me. Mom crouches next to Dad, trying to see how badly he’s hurt.

  “Get a towel or washcloth!” she snaps. “And ice!”

  I jerk forward and stand up, heart hammering somewhere in my throat. My legs and arms don’t want to obey. I fumble with the doorknob and barrel into the house, nearly tripping over my own feet.

  In the kitchen, I grab a clean dish towel. My heart slams. Jack’s hanging on to the edge of the table with one hand, knuckles white. He’s giving our address to the operator.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m inside.” It’s like he’s forgotten that he can walk and talk on a cell phone.

  I’m no better. Should I wet the cloth or bring it dry? In the movies, head wounds are serious. Will Dad bleed to death on the front lawn? I can’t decide what to do.

  “Hess-TER!” Mom roars from outside, and I rush back to her with the towel, almost falling down the steps myself. I crouch next to them.

  “Be careful. We don’t need you hurt, too,” Mom says. She sees what I brought.

  “No ice?” she says. She must see the sinking feeling in my gut right on my face, because she sighs, then folds the towel into a small square and holds it onto Dad’s head. He’s sitting up now, at least, leaning against the step. Blood soaks the right side of his shirt.

  “Jack’s on the phone,” I gasp through my tiny windpipe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. The panic ants swarm me and I stand up. “Is he okay? His head … ” I don’t even know what to say. My hands twist together, fingers digging at skin.

  Dad’s head is back, nearly resting on the step behind him. His left hand crosses his body. And then I notice—his right shoulder doesn’t look right. It’s … lower somehow. My stomach gives a slow roll.

  The towel is nearly soaked through. Where is Jack? Where is the ambulance?

  “I think it’s broken,” Dad says, his face a bloodless white. And then we hear the sirens.

  Mom and I are arguing over my language arts assignment.

  Or, where my language arts assignment is.

  “I gave you the folders. I labeled them. I put them in your bag.” Mom’s frustration is approaching orange alert status. She rubs the bridge of her nose under her glasses, eyes closed. Dark circles from our late night at the hospital ring her eyes.

  “I don’t know what happened to it,” I say for the thousandth time, the words splatting lamely on the table. “I put it in the folder.”

  Mom op
ens her eyes. “Which folder?” she says through gritted teeth, “because we’ve looked through all of them and I don’t see it anywhere. Do you?”

  A ball of misery rolls in my stomach. I want to remember. I want to put the language arts stuff in the blue folder, and math in the red one, and social studies in green (even though science should totally be green, right?), and whatever goes in the purple one in that one, but when teachers start handing papers out, it’s like my brain flattens and all the folders are the wrong one. So I put it in whichever one I grab, no matter what it says on the white sticky label Mom put on the front. Mr. Sinclair calls it “executive function disorder,” which sounds to me like a disease where you can’t execute someone, but really means that you can’t organize. Or plan stuff. Or manage time. Or switch focus.

  In sixth grade, when I was tested and we found out I had it, it made everything clearer: Now we knew why I couldn’t find my worksheets, and why my locker was a mess, and why I kept confusing the homework assignments. But knowing why something happens doesn’t make it stop happening. Or make you less frustrated by it. That’s what Mr. Sinclair’s strategies are for.

  “I tried to put it in the right one,” I whisper.

  My mom looks like she wants to execute someone right now. Her face is red and her eyes bug out a little. Even her normally smooth bobbed haircut is going flyaway frizzy. And it’s my fault.

  It usually is.

  Although she’s been way more patient with me since we found out about the EFD—she’s a super-organized person who never could understand why I was such a hot mess—we still struggle over my homework.

  Sometimes the strategies just aren’t enough.

  She puffs air from between her lips.

  “I need a minute,” she says, and pushes back from the table. She’s probably going to sit on the now broken front steps, which is what she does when we drive her crazy.

  In front of me, homework and graded papers march across the table in a neat row. Grids and lines are supposed to help me, but today the pages turn into white walls and the space between becomes a maze.

  My hands itch. I want the camera. Mom makes me put it on top of the fridge so I’ll focus on my work, but with it there and her not here, all I want to do is shoot. I set up the frame in my head:

  INT. Close-up of a tabletop. Stacks of paper line its perfect surface. The camera closes in on one, blurry words coming into focus: a test.

  Hess Greene

  Language Arts, Ms. Walker

  Weekly Reading Comprehension Quiz #2: THE GIVER

  A big green D with a sad face inside is circled on the top. “Did you read?” written next to it.

  Of course I hadn’t read it. I’d watched the movie. Most of my language arts tests—and we take a lot of tests in Ms. Walker’s class—are marked with frowny faces. My other teachers let me do cool extra credit projects, like making videos, when my grades slip into frowny face range. I am so bummed I got Ms. W. instead of Mrs. Hoffstedder, who retired at the end of last year and who let kids do all kinds of interesting projects. There’s nothing interesting this year. Only things I stink at. Over and over again.

  I’m already taking summer school for social studies and math. The district only lets kids take two summer classes—which I also did after sixth and seventh grades, even with tutoring and extra help.

  I hoped this year would be different, and it is—it’s harder. During the winter, failing felt far away, but now that it’s April I’m freaking out a little. I’ve never failed three classes before. What could happen?

  One thing is for sure: If I can’t get it together, there won’t be a movie in the Hoot. I’ll fail my friends, too.

  If this were a movie, I could pull everything off in a way that would make the audience cheer for me.

  But this is not a movie. I can’t even pull out the right folder. I drop my forehead to the table and close my eyes. There’s a heaviness around my heart.

  Mom returns. I lift my head. That heaviness? It’s the weight of disappointing my parents. Over and over again.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “I know, honey,” she says. Her face is smoother, teeth not clenched. “Let’s try again.”

  A breath.

  “Did you write the assignment in your planner?”

  My planner?

  I sigh. “It’s probably in a galaxy far, far away … ”

  << PAUSE >>

  You want to know why I’m so into movies?

  I’ve always loved sitting in a theater as it gets dark, watching the story unfold on the big screen like I’m peeking in a window into another world. But I didn’t want to make movies until this one time I was out with Mom and Jack when I was eight. We saw The Avengers and the credits started to roll and Mom and I stood up.

  “Sit down,” Jack whispered at us. “Don’t go yet.”

  “But it’s over!” I said to him. “I want to get ice cream!” Mom had promised us ice cream after.

  “Watch,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  What I thought he wanted me to see were the rows and rows of names that scrolled by on the screen. I was annoyed at first, then curious.

  “Key grip? Best boy? Director’s assistant?” Who were those people? What did they do? How did their names get up there?

  What Jack really wanted to see was the credit cookie at the end-end of the movie, after the credits: a short skit with Iron Man and the other Avengers. It was funny and quick and cracked all of us up.

  That was the first time I’d seen a credit cookie and I was full of questions. The big one:

  “They can do that?” I asked him as we walked across the parking lot, lagging behind Mom. “They can stick a mini-movie on the end of the big movie?”

  “They can do whatever they want,” he answered.

  I thought about that: Getting to tell the story however you want seemed so cool. It was way better than my eight-year-old life, when everyone was telling me to do something all the time. But—

  “Who’re they, anyway?”

  “The producers. The directors. They’re the ones who make all the decisions about the movie,” he told me. “The actors do what they say, and then the director takes all of the stuff he shot and puts it together to tell the story.”

  “Well then, that’s what I’m going to be.”

  Jack really had no clue what directors did, but his bad description was enough to get me to pay attention to who directed every movie I saw after that day, and to ask for a camera for my birthday when I was ten.

  People still tell me to do stuff all the time, but now I get to tell stories any way I want.

  << RESUME PLAY >>

  After that bad scene with Mom, I am determined to fix things. I will ask Ms. Walker to let me do extra credit. I will focus as hard as I can on my classes. I will get our movie in the Hoot.

  Sweeping the papers, old copies of Movie Weekly Magazine, and random granola bar wrappers that cover the top of my desk into a pile, I put them on the floor. I dig my notebook out of my backpack and sit down. Then I push back from the chair, grab my camera off my bed, and run to my parents’ bedroom, where I knock. Dad grunts, and I stick my head in.

  He’s propped up in bed, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns. I stand for a few minutes, watching the crew of the Enterprise fight the latest threat, then I remember what I’m doing there.

  “Can you watch this for me?” Without waiting for an answer, I leave the camera on a shelf near the door, and bolt back up to my room.

  I open my spiral notebook to a fresh page:

  Dear Ms. Walker, I write. I would like to propose a special project and I’m hoping you’ll consider it.…

  I force my attention to stay on the notebook. Chain it there, with heavy ropes and locks and threats.

  And I write her a dang letter.

  In the morning I wave my envelope in Nev’s and Max’s faces on our way to the lockers.

  “What’s that?” Max says through a mouthful of cin
namon raisin bagel. He crams another huge piece between his teeth. There’s cream cheese smeared on his cheek and his hoodie is on inside out. We stop at his locker first.

  “A letter,” I say, unable to contain my smug grin. Max pulls out his books, the rest of his bagel clamped between his teeth.

  “Duh,” Nev says. “Who’s it to?”

  “Ms. W.,” I answer. “Asking if I can make a video for an extra credit project.”

  “A video?” Nev tilts her head. “Another one?”

  I don’t know what she means. “Like you suggested the other day. To make sure my grades stay up for the Hoot. Academic permission slips are due the Monday after next.”

  A slow, crumb-covered grin spreads across Max’s face and he swings his locker shut. “So you think that a letter will be more convincing than just asking? Smooooth.”

  Nev frowns. “It seems like that’s taking on way more work, Hess.”

  “It’s perfect,” I say, ignoring her. “I’m going to take it to Mr. Sinclair and see if he’ll help.”

  Of course, Sarah, the girl who sits in front of me in Walker’s class, has the locker next to Max. She stops messing with her books and turns to see what the excitement is about. Last week I heard her going on about this “hilarious” movie that she’d seen—Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Um, yeah. It’s only been hilarious for almost thirty years. Welcome to the world, Sarah.

  “What’s going on?” she asks, like she hasn’t been listening.

  “None of your business,” I say.

  “If it’s about our class it’s my business.” I don’t agree with her logic, but before I can say anything else, she plucks the envelope out of my hand and unfolds the letter.

  Why hadn’t I sealed it?

  “Give it back,” I demand. “It’s for a teacher.”

  “You want to make a video to your favorite author? For extra credit in Walker’s class?” Sarah cackles. “Are you serious?! She’ll never let you do it.”

  “I wasn’t asking you,” I say through gritted teeth. I snatch the envelope and letter back, neither of which are as crisp and white as when I folded and packed them this morning.

  “Go brush your hair or something,” Nev says.

  Sarah scowls and stomps away.

  My good mood is toast. Sarah’s right—there’s no way Ms. W. will go for this, with or without Mr. Sinclair backing me up. I stuff the envelope into the front pocket of my backpack and, still doomed, don’t say anything else to Nev and Max.