Smooth

by Matt Burns

  “This year we’ll explore, dissect, and analyze stories of all forms. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a rap song, a recipe, or a shoe.”

  Veronica Wesson raised her hand. “How can a shoe be a story?”

  “Who made the shoe?” said Mr. Meyer. “Why did they make the shoe? Why did they decide to put the laces there and color the sole the way they did? Did the final product succeed or fail? What’s the narrative arc?”

  “Oh-kay,” Veronica said. “What if I just found the shoe in a trash can?”

  “Who put it in the trash can?”

  “Okay, fine. I get it.”

  I don’t think she did. I think she just wanted Mr. Meyer to stop talking. I think only a couple of us got what Mr. Meyer was saying. It seemed cool to me.

  “Stories can help us,” he said. “They teach us how to communicate and give us examples of what to do and what not to do. I want you all to be able to identify why a story works for you, so that when you leave this classroom next May you’ll be able to seek out ones that will enrich your life. Think about it this way.” He drew a circle on the whiteboard and then made a small pie slice in it. “I think it’s fair to say that about ninety-five percent of stuff — movies, books, songs — is pretty bad, right? This little five percent slice is what I think is really great. But someone else’s five percent would be over here.” He drew a wedge opposite his. “Meaning that all the things I love and cherish, this person thinks are complete garbage. It goes on and on, with billions of people on the planet, and everyone has a different slice of what they like.” He set the marker down and turned to us. “So let’s talk about the books you read in school last year. Who here loved Nineteen Eighty-Four?”

  Five kids shot their hands up.

  “Who hated it?”

  A few kids’ hands went up. Meyer pointed to Todd Lancaster. “Why’d you hate it?”

  “All that stuff about new words, like ‘doubleplusgood,’ is, like, legitimately a better way to talk, but whoever wrote it was talking about it like it was a dumb idea, and that made no sense to me.”

  “Okay, sure,” Meyer said. “Someone else, name any book you love.”

  Heather Derington said, “The Lord of the Rings,” and Todd Lancaster groaned.

  Meyer laughed a little. “See? One person’s favorite is someone else’s least. Todd, is it?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “What is it about Lord of the Rings you don’t like?”

  “Hobbits are just gross little guys, you know? Nasty freaks and everything.”

  “But can you understand why someone else might enjoy it?”

  “No.”

  “All right, let me put it this way. If you knew J.R.R. Tolkien when he was writing it, and you knew that in the future millions of people around the world would love his book and the movies based on it, even though you wouldn’t, would you tell him to stop writing?”

  “Definitely,” Todd said, like a lawyer presenting the final piece of uncontestable evidence. “If I was back in time with J.R.R., or anyone, really, I’d tell them to stop whatever dumb stuff they were doing and head to the stock market to put it all on Apple.”

  Meyer narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly, smirking at Todd the same way I was. “Well, I can’t argue with Todd’s investment advice. But let’s steer back to storytelling. So what’s the point, right? Seems pretty depressing to think that the vast majority of the planet thinks your favorite things are stupid. We’ve got to realize we all have different tastes, and that’s okay. It’s great. It’s liberating. It means that when you’re creating a story, or doing anything creative or productive, it just doesn’t make any sense to care what anyone else thinks. Being creative isn’t like playing in a golf tournament. It’s like playing golf by yourself, over and over, trying just to beat your own score. Figure out the story you want to tell and make it better until you love it.”

  He folded his arms over his stomach and straightened his back. “I’m assigning you all a yearlong project with one goal: next May you’ll tell us a story. That’s it. You can work by yourself, or you can do it in a group, however many people in each group you want. Start thinking or talking about what kinds of stories you like and how you like them told.”

  Everyone shuffled their desks around to push them into little groups. I was already sitting next to Luke and Will, so we turned our desks to face one another. This assignment wasn’t mentioned anywhere on Meyer’s syllabus. He’d thrown us a curveball, but I felt excited in a way I never did at school. It was perfect for us.

  “Movie?” I said. They both nodded. We’d been making movies together since middle school, but nothing longer than ten minutes. Goofy little horror movies with bad fake-blood special effects that never worked. They all sucked, to be honest, but I always thought if we actually put in effort, we could make something good. “Let’s make this one, like, a real movie,” I said. “If we have all year to work on it, we could make an actual ninety-minute slasher movie.”

  They both shrugged. Neither of them displayed the enthusiasm required to produce a feature film.

  “Yeah, sure,” Will said.

  “What about football tryouts?” said Luke. “They’re next week.”

  “So?” I said.

  “We join the football team,” Luke said. “That could be our story.”

  “And then we make a movie about it?” I said.

  “No, like, not a movie,” said Luke. “We actually join the team.”

  “We don’t know how to play football,” I said.

  “We’ve played pickup games,” said Luke. “I play with the neighbor kids all the time in the cul-de-sac. Me and Will crushed them last weekend.”

  “That’s not, like, real football. Where guys who aren’t nine years old tackle you.”

  “That would be hilarious. Getting tackled by football dudes who take it seriously. They’d be all intense and pissed off and we wouldn’t care. We’d just laugh at everything.”

  Will shrugged. “I’m always looking for something to do.”

  I said, “Playing football sarcastically can’t be a story.”

  “He just said anything can be a story,” said Luke.

  “Yeah, but not that.” I turned to Will. “It’s dumb, right?”

  He shrugged again. “I’ll try out. Got nothing else to do. But the movie idea is cool, too.”

  “Our story can’t be playing high-school football and also a horror movie.”

  Mr. Meyer walked by and asked us how we were doing. “We’re fine,” I said. “We’re making a movie.”

  “Excellent!” Meyer said. “You know, I volunteer as a jury member of the Goose Creek Film Festival. It’s based in South Carolina, but they accept entries from anywhere. We screen features and shorts. We could enter yours.”

  “Whoa, seriously? That’s awesome.” I saw myself onstage accepting an award as Alex — the girl from the waiting room — smiles at me from the audience.

  I shook myself back to reality and looked to Luke and Will. They seemed into the idea.

  “Oh, and it’s not a short,” I said. “We’re gonna do a full movie. Since we have all year.”

  “Even better,” Meyer said. “What genre?”

  “Horror. Definitely horror.”

  Meyer smiled. “Like Sam Raimi and his friends making Evil Dead. You guys could be next.”

  Holy shit. Yeah. We totally could.

  “We’re also joining the football team,” Luke butted in.

  Meyer looked confused. “Anything’s a story. Can’t wait to see how it all turns out.” He moved on to the next group.

  “Just come to tryouts, dude,” said Luke. “Maybe you could be a kicker or something. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Seriously?” I said. “If, through some accident, we make the team, then what? We played football. That’s our story? No one cares about football. It’s not interesting.”

  “Okay,” said Luke.

  “Okay, you want to do the s
lasher movie?”

  Luke laughed. “Jesus. Calm down. We have a year to do this project. Football’s only in the fall. Why are you freaking out about it now?”

  “Good point,” Will said.

  “Do either of you realize how much work it’s gonna be to make something that isn’t a total piece of shit? If we get our movie in that festival and people see it, we could actually get jobs and, like, make movies for real. This could be a big deal for us.”

  “Yeah, okay, cool,” Will said, clearly not understanding the gravity of what I was saying at all.

  “Just . . . Fine. You guys can go waste your time not making it onto the football team. I’ll get started on the movie.”

  The bell rang and I walked out before they’d packed up their stuff. I was glad they weren’t in my math class.

  I took a desk in the back corner of the room. Mrs. Jenkins gave us a long worksheet to do while she sat at her computer doing a crossword puzzle. I did the first three problems to prove I could do them and then got out my notebook and worked on ideas for the movie.

  I wrote down the horror ideas we’d all talked about at sleepovers and never followed through with. I mapped out a timeline over the entire year, blocking off sections for writing and editing the script, then figuring out the props and costumes and locations, making special effects that didn’t suck, finding people to be in it, filming it in the spring, when my face would be clear and I’d actually want to be in front of the camera for the first time in years, and then editing and music. It was going to be a ton of work, but if we stopped bullshitting for five minutes and put some effort in, we definitely had enough time to do it.

  My mind drifted to Luke and Will playing football. Imagining them making the idiots on the team laugh. Finding some weird niche they’re naturals at, like being the guy who holds the ball up for the kicker. Gaining forty pounds of muscle. Chowing down on massive turkey legs all day long. Being carried off the field every Friday night on the shoulders of their adoring teammates, who deposit them at some diner, where they don’t have to pay and all the waitresses wink at them and squeeze their shoulders when they bring out the food.

  I didn’t make much progress on the movie outline.

  The final bell rang and after I got my stuff out of my locker, I went straight to the carpool line to find Mom waiting for me. She moved to the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel.

  She asked me how the first day was. I told her it was fine. Pretty standard. Many syllabi.

  She said something seemed off and I was being quiet, which only made me want to talk even less. I told her everything was normal and I was just tired. There was no point in telling her about Luke and Will’s stupid plan to try out for football. Nothing was going to come from it, and there was no reason to stress her out and get her involved in our meaningless argument.

  We always sleep over at Luke’s house the first Friday of every school year. When Will and I stepped inside his kitchen, Luke and his parents were sitting at the table with four pepperoni pizzas spread open in front of them. Every pepperoni was a little grease bowl waiting to fertilize a new pimple.

  “Kevin, Will, how’s it hanging?” Mr. Rossi said. Luke’s parents treated me and Will like we were their kids. I nodded at him and reached for the slice that had the fewest pepperonis. I wanted to take a napkin and blot the grease off the top of it, but I knew everyone would think it was weird and ask me why I was doing it, so I ate an oily slice I didn’t want.

  “I’m so happy you guys are in almost all the same classes,” Mrs. Rossi said. “Shame about math, huh, Kevin?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe the break will be good for you guys,” said Mr. Rossi. “Who knows, Kevin? Maybe you can meet a girl in that class, since you won’t have these two clowns embarrassing you.”

  I forced a laugh. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “How are your parents?” said Mrs. Rossi.

  “They’re good.” I shrugged, unsure what else to add.

  “Has your dad sold any houses lately?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. He doesn’t really talk about work. He just does it all the time.”

  Luke’s mom laughed in a way that felt real, a way my parents had never laughed at anything I’d ever said. “What’s your mom been up to?”

  “Uh, she’s good. I don’t know. Driving around. Doing mom stuff.”

  She smiled and turned to Will and asked, “How’s your mom?”

  “Carol’s killing it,” said Will. “Her hydrangeas are off the charts this year.”

  That was a good specific detail. I wondered if he’d planned it. I’d forgotten to talk to Mrs. Rossi in my head before I came over, and now I was paying the price. Mrs. Rossi laughed. “Tell both your moms to come over here sometime for lunch so we can catch up.”

  Will and I nodded and Mr. Rossi said, “Hey, Kevin. Seen anything good lately? Besides Slasher Massacre 8 and all the other trash you guys usually watch?”

  “Oh, um, actually, yeah. The Royal Tenenbaums? It was good.”

  “Ah, then you should grab Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

  “On that note,” said Luke, standing up and closing one of the pizza boxes, “we will take this one to go.”

  We walked down into Luke’s basement, where three huge couches formed a U in front of their giant TV and surround-sound system. Mr. Rossi’s office was behind the couch. He worked from home, allegedly as some kind of “consultant,” whatever that means. The coolest thing about him, though, was he used to own a movie rental store. It shut down a couple years ago, but Mr. Rossi kept pretty much all the DVDs and old VHS tapes and just moved the entire store into their basement.

  I set my half-eaten pizza slice down on the coffee table, then went straight to the shelves and put Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine in my backpack to watch by myself later. Then I went to the horror section and said, “We should watch some new stuff tonight to help us think about our movie.” We’d already seen most of the horror movies in Luke’s basement — Slaughter High, Class Reunion Massacre, Final Exam, Sleepaway Camp, the Halloweens, Elm Streets, Final Destinations, and Friday the 13ths — but there were always more extremely disturbing covers and titles to check out. I took Chooper and Slumber Party Massacre.

  Luke picked up a football off the floor and tossed it to Will. They passed it back and forth for a while, saying clichéd football terms like “Hut, hut, hike,” and “Blue forty-two.” They ran around the basement, throwing the ball back and forth, and when I came over, Luke threw the ball at me. I dropped all the movies on the table and caught it, then tossed it to Will.

  “Let’s watch this first,” I said, holding up the Slumber Party Massacre tape. It was an eighties slasher about high-school girls. “It was written and directed by women and was actually, like, this feminist thing, almost like a parody of the whole genre. Maybe we could do something kind of similar in our movie.”

  Luke threw the football back to Will and leaned in toward the cover. “This is a feminist thing? Four babes with their boobs out staring up at some dude holding a big drill like it’s his dick?”

  “I mean . . . yeah . . . it is,” I said. “Well, the woman who wrote it didn’t, like, make the poster. There was this whole conflict between her and the producers, and — just watch it.” I’d spent hours reading websites and forums analyzing the movie, and I understood its context but didn’t feel like explaining it all to them.

  I put the movie in and hit play, but Luke and Will kept passing the ball to each other and talking about how dumb and hilarious they’d look in football pads and uniforms at tryouts. Even ten minutes into the movie, they wouldn’t shut up. I just sat there silently, staring at the screen like I was trying to shatter it with my mind. Eventually they started watching and making jokes about the movie, but I still didn’t really say anything.

  I’d planned to make a pitch to them about all my ideas and the deadlines we’d have to hit for the first draft of the script, but i
t seemed like a lost cause. They were in the mood to dangle their pizza crusts through their shorts zippers and slap them into each other. Luke and Will can both be legitimately funny, but sometimes they act like little kids and it’s just not funny at all. There’s a fine line between penis-related satirical prank calls designed to confuse and frustrate employees of major corporations and penis-related lame childish antics, and it was kind of depressing that they didn’t seem to know the difference.

  The movie ended and I went to the bathroom with my Ziploc bag full of skin care supplies to take my Accutane pill and wash my face and put on my salicylic acid. My cheeks were just as red and greasy as they’d ever been. Maybe even worse. Mounds of new lumpy whiteheads had sprouted all over my jaw and temples, and I smothered them in benzoyl peroxide cream that stung. My lips were a dusty, whitish purple, like dried-out old sticks of gum. I’d read that people usually get a bad breakout and their skin turns crazy dry as soon as they start taking Accutane, so hopefully my repulsive symptoms meant it was starting to work.

  Luke found some dumb high-school comedy about prom and put it on to make fun of it. I’d called the big couch, so I lay there while Luke and Will sat on the floor. I didn’t want my face to touch the leather because then Luke’s old farts would get into my pores and make me break out, so I stayed on my back and kept my head upright and stiff like a mannequin. I imagined Alex sitting there next to me, telling me about the other music and movies she liked, things that were much more introspective and interesting than the dumb high-school movie Luke had put on.

  There’s a natural coating of grime that sticks to the human body during sleepovers, some signal in the morning that you need to have your mom pick you up immediately so you can begin the sanitization process. I told Luke and Will my mom was on the way and I needed a shower.