This Is Not a Love Scene

by S. C. Megale

  I snuck over to the Facebook Live wannabe-crew. It was, like, two dudes in their thirties with goatees and douchebag beanies. The name of their basement studio was printed on their black T-shirts.

  “Hey. Buddy.”

  The cameraman pulled his brow together and glanced at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sup?”

  He didn’t answer at first. Swept his eyes around at the other disabled kids, as if it was weird that I was talking to him and knew such casual lingo.

  “Can you follow me to the camp owner? I’m supposed to be the first interviewee.”

  He paused and stared down at François, who kept wagging. François must have looked trustworthy enough for him to pick up his tripod and agree. The other dude followed.

  I tracked my way through the minglers. François’ nose wriggled at all the pizza crusts on plates.

  “François,” I chastised. “Keep it together.”

  He flapped his ears as if needing to dispel the temptation.

  Was it possible he really did just prance over for Patricia’s burrito at the mall? He’s no more perfect than I am, but a lot sweeter.

  Soon, Patricia was in sight. She spoke to another adult, drinks in hand. She wore the dangliest earrings and high heels, and she beamed and glowed and waved at the kids who clearly knew her, and suddenly I wondered if maybe I was being a little mean. She looked so happy. The kids looked happy. The camp was happy …

  I slowed down.

  But it was too late.

  I could hear the little snap of breath Patricia took. She saw me, and the Facebook Live bros assumed we’d reached our destination so they rounded forward. A little red light was already on the high-tech phone camera, and the adults around her backed up joyfully to let her do her thing, probably.

  I swallowed. Something, even something minor, switched gears in my brain. The muscles at Patricia’s collarbone tensed. She glared at the camera, and then looked at me with bitterness but mostly fear. My lips pursed.

  “Patricia.” I reached out my hand.

  With the cameras rolling, she had no choice but to come forward and shake my hand. She couldn’t diss a handicapped person onscreen.

  Then we were side by side with the camera and mic for News 6 Community Pulse with Rob and Timm trained on us. Facebook viewers watching live. Patricia gasped in a breath and started to say something, but I cut her off.

  “We have some things to set straight here in front of the media,” I said. “First of a crapload of things, I am not and never in my life would be—”

  “Puppy!”

  A little girl with leg braces limped forward right into our interview. She couldn’t have been more than eight. On her last step, she actually fell, and her arms looped around François. She cried at first with fear, but then François’ tongue probed out. Her eyes closed tightly, and she hugged my dog. She started to laugh as his tongue brushed her, and her caretaker rushed forward and pulled her away. She giggled, and the caretaker carried her back to her metal walker.

  I swallowed.

  Maybe tears were in my eyes.

  The camera still rolled.

  “Hey, my name is Maeve Leeson,” I said. “And this is my friend Patricia.” I turned to Wheelchair Charity Woman. She cleared her throat warily but gave an unflattering, toothy smile into the camera. “For this interview, I’d actually like to ask my friend some questions.”

  In my lap, I flashed the hard drive Quinten had given me with our conversation recorded on it so Patricia could see, but I don’t think she looked down.

  “Patricia, am I or was I ever a camper here at Caring Hands Camp?”

  Long pause. She blinked. The camera light shone. François continued to wag.

  “No,” said Patricia. “You aren’t. W-weren’t. Ever.”

  Right answer. I actually squeezed her hand—not aggressively—to let her know.

  “Exactly,” I said. Then I looked right at the lens. “I’m not a camper here, and it’s not for me. But it’s a pretty cool place for others with special needs. My photo was used mistakenly on the website, then shared to the Huffington Post, kinda funny how that works. So I’d like it taken down and not used again … but I’d like to replace it with new ones.”

  I turned to Patricia once more.

  “I’ll be coming in this summer with my service dog to read to the kids.” Patricia gazed at me, some of that fear clearing away in her eyes. “I think that should take up a whole gallery on the site.”

  She was speechless for a moment. Then she too squeezed my shoulders with her arm. “The campers can’t wait,” she said. “Thank you, everyone on Facebook, for your generous support.”

  “Anything else you want to say?” the cameraman asked.

  My eyes fell to François. The little girl in leg braces mowed her walker forward and giggled for him again. He rubbed his fur against her. I found it incredible that the little girl could laugh while tears of pain stained her cheeks.

  “No,” I said. “I’m done.”

  26

  I guess a decent way to avoid checking my phone for Cole’s reply was to illegally sneak into the Smithsonian and abduct footage of security guards with Elliot.

  It was the last weekend before winter break, before our project was due, and Elliot and I made the hour-and-a-half trip to the Museum of Natural History in DC for our B-roll at last. I’d called Quinten the night before to report on Wheelchair Charity Woman right after the dinner, but made a pact that that was it. I had to focus now on finishing up this video for good.

  We stuffed a Canon 7D behind my shoe on my footplate and a tripod across the back of my wheelchair. I waited in line at the museum entrance. Tourists held out their arms and guards waved batons over them. Bags were plopped onto tables and searched.

  Skateboarders take pride in skating landmarks in DC and running off before police can chase them away. It is the same with filmmakers: DC has a strict no-tripod, no-filming law anywhere in the district. But a radical respect for stolen footage exists among the local film community. Elliot and I needed just a few last shots for our project due tomorrow. We wanted to snatch some real museum footage to make our little Fredericksburg location appear bigger than it really was. We needed an exterior of the whole Smithsonian, a few patrolling guards, and—at my insistence, not Elliot’s—a shot of the guards’ lockers.

  “You—over there.” A heavy, sassy female guard (acrylic nails three inches long) pointed Elliot into another line. She waved me forward.

  With effort, she rose to inspect me. “Do you have any bags?”

  “Just my oxygen bag, ma’am,” I said, pointing at the empty bag we used to cover the tripod.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re good.”

  They let me through. God, I could make money as a cartel lord. One time I had a spiked mace and probably a kidnapped baby at the Air and Space Museum and they let me through too. I snuck a thumbs-up to Elliot as we wandered inside.

  “Ooph,” said Elliot, shaking himself after being wanded, “let’s make it quick.”

  The getaway van—aka my handicapped car Elliot drove us here in—was just outside at a meter in case we needed it.

  I left tire tracks across the tile corralled with WET FLOOR signs. The flow of tourists merged to the right, into a tunnel with screens and cast bronze sculptures of early humans. You know, humans with problems like, Let’s not get eaten by the tiger or It’s really fucking cold in comparison to my first-world romantic problems. We followed a pod of chattering fourth graders.

  The blank, pupil-less bronze eyes of the first humans passed me. I couldn’t help but lock gazes with them and try to see something there. It’s never escaped me that, had I been born in any other century, I would not have survived. I would never have made it out of bed. But these busts looked just as human as the ones who keep me alive today are. They seemed to pierce right into me.

  Would you have taken care of me? The statue continued to stare as I asked. Would you have left me to die?
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br />   “Hey,” said Elliot, “your shoe is untied, hold up…”

  It wasn’t. But Elliot lowered in front of me and slipped the 7D from behind my foot. He glanced around to make sure no one saw and affixed it to the stabilizer that Roman had given me. Attached to the armrest of my chair, the stabilizer looked like just another appendage of the medical equipment. “I like the shot at my six,” Elliot whispered, and when he moved, I saw the security guard he’d spotted. He was a gruff mustachioed officer with visible keys and walkie-talkie, but best of all, he was looking at his smartphone. The blasé attitude perfectly suited the downbeat comedic vibe of the short film. I turned on the 7D and tilted it on the stabilizer, a gust of thrill whizzing through my veins at my first time controlling a camera solo. I tried to hide its bulky, long lens with my forearm. Elliot sauntered around at the exhibits to appear natural, and I focused the lens just a little and hit record. My neck was scrunched down in order to see the feedback screen.

  After three seconds of footage, the guard seemed to sense an eye on him and looked up, right into the camera. I laughed-cursed under my breath and threw my arm over the camera, veering away with my other hand. Elliot jumped with me and a flock of Czech tourists submerged us in their foreign-language-speaking, fanny-pack-wearing cover.

  “I think I got enough,” I said. We bounded for the elevator.

  “How many seconds?” said Elliot.

  “Like, three? It’ll be quick, but it’s enough.”

  Elliot punched the elevator button. “Shit.” He laughed. “Let’s just get our exterior shot and get out of here.”

  “No!” I said. “This is my holy grail!”

  “A damn locker room?”

  “Yes. It’ll push it from student film to profesh.” The elevator dinged. Elliot laid an arm across the seam to hold it open.

  “You know they’re gonna let you off and give me the time, right?” said Elliot. We both chuckled.

  Inside the lift, Elliot sighed. We were alone. “So what’s going on with you lately?”

  I shifted in my seat. The elevator smelled like lemon Pledge. No music played.

  “Nothing much,” I said. I didn’t look at him, though.

  “What’s new with Cole?”

  My stomach twisted. I once again noticed the weight of my phone silent on my lap.

  “He’s … dodging me, I guess.”

  “Really?” said Elliot. “Why?” I loved how real the concern in his voice was. So real that I told him everything that’d been going on with Cole as we moseyed out of the elevator and past the Hope Diamond wing of the second floor. I ended with how Cole left me on the ledge, not replying to my question about his true feelings for me.

  “Maybe something happened to him,” said Elliot. “Something personal going on.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But that’s more likely the case with KC.”

  So I told him that too.

  “Damn,” was all Elliot said. We were silent for a few moments as we searched for an employee room. “One day,” Elliot said at last, “you’re going to be a famous director. You’re gonna write a script about all of this shit and get rich, and I’m going to be a bouncer at your rooftop parties.”

  “I’ll be the bouncer at your rooftop parties,” I said.

  “We’ll both be so rich our bouncers will have bouncers.”

  I smiled sadly. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Come on,” Elliot encouraged sweetly.

  “I think life is learning how to live without what you want,” I said.

  Elliot didn’t answer. He grasped a bar of my wheelchair and kept walking at my side. For a second, I worried that I’d convinced him.

  When my phone buzzed, my heart didn’t even race. It was resigned to whatever it would face.

  “Mags wants to know if you know where KC lives.”

  “I don’t…” said Elliot regretfully.

  Ugh, Mags. Don’t make me explain.

  I ran out of things to reply when Mags sent me screenshots of KC’s latest Facebook posts getting darker and darker. What started with Rammstein lyrics and more ink skulls spiraled into three-word sentences about meaninglessness. There had to have been times before when KC refused to have us over to edit or storyboard or just hang out. We should have pressed it harder. We should have asked him why. I frowned and stroked his profile picture with my thumb before closing the app.

  Next, Elliot and I passed the fossil wing. Used to be one of my favorites. I remembered last time I was here, a middle-aged woman in an almost-identical wheelchair wheeled up to where I studied this enormous fossil mounted to the wall.

  “Cool, isn’t it?” I’d said. She didn’t answer for a beat. Then her voice grumbled out a few words.

  “You ever feel like just another exhibit here?”

  I’d turned to her then. In the following pause, I’d tried to think of something ironic or uplifting to say. Nothing came. She left a moment later.

  I suppose I understood her point. Little kids liked to look at me too. They asked how this happened to me. Usually, I said, “Cigarettes!” That day, however, I was quiet until the kids’ parents took them away.

  Elliot shoved my shoulder at that moment. “Look. There.” He nodded to a security officer walking into a dark hall that had a NO ENTRY sign.

  “You go,” I said, “you’ll be quieter.”

  Elliot guffawed. “Are you kidding? This is your shot. Get in there.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll just act mentally disabled if they apprehend me.”

  “Quit stalling.”

  I cruised forward. Right past the NO ENTRY sign.

  My confidence was almost giddy. Controlling that camera on the stabilizer all alone made me a new woman.

  The chatter and light of the main hall faded away as I delved into the narrow employee passageway. It started to smell less of lemon Pledge and more of rubber and cold metal. Because time would be precious, I rolled the camera on my knee. Ahead was an ajar door I’d heard footsteps disappear into …

  The pressure I gave my joystick was soft. I tried to turn my wheels without the slightest sound, and soon the nose of my camera was poking into the doorway.

  Perfect. A few guards talked and attached guns to their belts. Their heads were turned away, so I wouldn’t have any trouble with film festivals if they asked for release forms. As for the guard who looked into the camera, well—that’s what Adobe Premiere Pro cuts are for. Lockers lined the wall, and a large MUSEUM POLICY poster could be read at the far end. My camera ate it up. Four seconds, six … that should be enough …

  I jumped when my phone not only buzzed, but rang.

  Fuck!

  “Hey!” said a guard.

  I skidded against the floor and bolted out of the hall.

  “Go, go, go!” I yelled at Elliot, and we fishtailed for the elevators, making a few tourists leap aside. Luckily, one elevator was already open, people filing in, and Elliot and I dove inside just as the doors closed and shoes squeaked in our direction. My heart pounded so hard I gasped, clutching my chest.

  We played it cool until we hit the ground floor and, before anyone could be notified, poured out of the museum and onto the bright sunlit sidewalk of Constitution Avenue. Cars honked, sirens wailed for bigger criminals than us, and we beamed and high-fived.

  “Fucking savage!” said Elliot.

  “I know,” I breathed. Proud as hell.

  “I’ll get the exterior of the museum,” said Elliot, taking the camera off the stabilizer. “You get in the van. You earned it.”

  * * *

  An hour later, every damn shot perfectly accomplished, Elliot and I unwrapped the paper from these famous Georgetown bakery cupcakes because I had a moment of girliness and wanted to see it before we headed home. Elliot agreed, only if we drove by the steps where the priest tumbled down and died in The Exorcist. Seemed a fair trade.

  Orange sun kneeled over the Key Bridge and painted the Potomac. It would be a long drive back to the Ra
ppahannock, but I’d already told the parental units I wouldn’t be home before nine. Adrenaline and giddiness still shook my hands.

  “That was awesome,” I repeated.

  “Bruh.” Elliot laughed. “You were hardcore.”

  “I was,” I said.

  “I’ll patch it together and render it for tomorrow,” said Elliot. “Can’t believe we’re all done.”

  I shook my head and sank my teeth into the cream cheese icing.

  “So who called you? Someone working for the fuzz?” said Elliot.

  My eyebrows shot up and I made an alarmed sound. “I forgot to look!”

  So I did.

  When I saw, the giddiness drained and glacier water slid through me.

  COLE STONE

  Missed Call

  He called me?

  A text accompanied it.

  I blinked. That was the most communicative he’d been in … ever. But in the time he took to write that text, he could have also answered my question. That wasn’t good.

  And he pocket-dialed me. Okay. But that only happens when you pull up someone’s text thread … to read it again … and accidentally hit the call button. Was Cole pulling up our thread and reading it over and over? I don’t think he really had a lot going on. I think he had a lot he didn’t want to deal with.

  “Who was it?” said Elliot.

  “Cole.”

  “Damn. What did he say?”

  “He said he’ll text me later. And that a lot has been going on.”

  Elliot smiled. “See? I told you. It’ll be fine.”

  The set of my mouth exposed my doubt. You can bet the only reason Cole texted me was because he knew I’d see his accidental call. Otherwise he would have kept avoiding.

  “He’s a decent guy,” said Elliot. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to ghost.”

  “How do you know he’s a decent guy?”

  “I mean, I don’t know him that well, but we had Latin together. And I saw that Beauty and the Beast play when it was going.”

  I wanted Elliot to convince me that Cole was a nice guy. I wanted to believe him. Right this second more than ever.