Rachel had about a hundred hours of footage and absolutely no direction.
The problem was, she couldn’t get her vision right. The film needed to be perfect. Rachel could think of only one solution—reshoots. Again. This time with Sana—Rachel’s unfairly gorgeous mortal enemy—as the lead.
The universe could be cruel sometimes.
Rachel got up and began calibrating the camera she’d set up in front of one of the room’s desk chairs.
Sana was late.
Rachel should have anticipated that. Should have seen that Sana wouldn’t show. That she’d try to back out somehow.
But Rachel hadn’t.
She kept fiddling with her stupid camera in this stupid room hoping that the worst person on the planet would show up and do Rachel a solid. Nobody ever seemed to be able to show up when Rachel needed it the most. They just gave her verbal commitments that never went anywhere. Nods that meant basically nothing.
What had made Rachel think Sana would be any different from anyone else?
Rachel dialed the focus back in, despite knowing that she was tuning the camera for nothing. At least she had something to fiddle with, something to do with her hands while she waited.
Then the door swung open and a sweaty but somehow not disheveled Sana rushed through it. “So sorry, Coach K called me into her office because we’ve got to cheer for the JV game tonight even though that was not on the schedule at all. I mean, JV cheerleaders are supposed to cheer for JV games but they all got the same stomach flu or something and now we’re all up a creek unless the varsity squad takes over but those girls are probably all halfway home in five o’clock traffic as we speak,” she said, all in one breath.
Rachel stared. Holy hell did Sana pick up light well. They were both standing under fluorescents and Rachel knew only one of them had all of her expressions cleanly lit by the overheads. This must be what other directors felt like watching Diane Lane.
“Is something wrong?” Sana tilted her head.
Rachel ducked behind the camera, pretending to look through the viewfinder. “I skipped class in order to book this room and get my equipment set up, just to make sure I had everything ready in time, and now here you are. Late.”
“Oh.” Sana’s eyes dimmed a little.
Rachel tried to find a tone that was all business, all command. She shuffled through some papers, trying to regain her composure, then she handed Sana the page from the top. “Sit. Read this.”
“All right.” Sana grabbed the office chair and slid into it. Her eyes scanned back and forth, reading the pages.
“Out loud.” Rachel went back behind the camera so she could tape the reading and see what needed improvement on Sana’s end.
Sana coughed. “Should I start, or…?”
“Whenever you’re ready.” Rachel expected a complaint about the camera, but instead Sana opened her mouth and read the words loud and clear.
Rachel hadn’t noticed the resonant quality to Sana’s voice before. Of course, she’d have to have that, from cheering. But it surprised Rachel all the same. It was a voice you leaned in toward, a voice that made you listen. Sana was reading the Cassandra role. She was the tie that bound the story together. The narrative wasn’t a direct translation, but Cassandra was the same—the girl nobody listened to, just because she was a girl. The unheard prophet. The harbinger of what was to come. Sana saw to the heart of her—the core conflict of vengeance and pain. The darkness—that Rachel assumed Sana would have glossed over with her sweetness and light and a flick of that long, long ponytail—was beautifully highlighted by the timbral quality of Sana’s voice.
And then something glinted off of Sana’s nose as she tilted her head. Sana’s tiny gold nose ring. And rather than looking punk rock or vicious, the detail somehow made her look daintier, smaller, even more feminine. More vulnerable to the whims of the world. Especially through the lens of the camera. Sana tilted her head back, straightening, and the glint was gone. But Rachel couldn’t erase it from her mind.
Sana finished the monologue and looked up. Her eyes went wide and she looked suddenly self-conscious about what she’d done, about the camera on her, about being in the room alone with Rachel.
“Good. That was good.” Rachel shuffled through her stack of papers again. “Here, try this one.”
Sana took the offered pages that contained the other monologue. “The Odyssey? Really?”
Rachel stood up from behind the camera. She leveled her best glare. “What? I can’t make a movie about myths and the classics? That’s only for bros who wanna make epic, ridiculous battle sequences?”
Sana rolled back in the chair, making space between herself and Rachel’s hostility. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“If only you could communicate what you meant.” Rachel snorted.
“I just—I hated The Odyssey. I guess I assumed you did, too.” Sana stretched her toe out and pulled herself slightly closer, back toward the camera.
“Because we’re so alike, you and I.” All Rachel could do was roll her eyes at that idea.
Sana cleared her throat, clearly unable to give in and admit she’d lost the argument. “Well, we’re both women and The Odyssey is overall pretty terrible to women.”
Oh. “That’s true. But there’s this great hidden story inside of so many Greek myths. I chose Cassandra. To tell the story from her point of view.”
Sana hummed noncommittally at that.
Fucking snob. Leave it to Sana to not see the brilliance of Rachel’s art. Rachel pointed back at the page. “That’s a different character, so don’t mistake them as the same. Read it to yourself. Then do the lines.” It had worked so well the first time, Rachel just gave her the exact same direction. She didn’t want to overly explain what was happening. Rachel wanted, for some reason, to know if Sana would get it, if Sana would see what was happening. She watched as Sana read, her eyes still scanning the page.
Sana’s mouth stopped moving for a moment to quirk upward. Rachel’s breath caught. Sana must have seen it, must have understood. Sana looked up and Rachel felt as though she’d been caught with her hand halfway into a cookie jar. Like she hadn’t gotten hold of the cookie, but she’d been caught wanting it all the same.
“Why do you hate Helen?” Sana wasn’t doing the dialogue.
Sana waited for Rachel to answer.
But in that moment Rachel couldn’t. She felt raw and exposed. More so than when she’d described what had made her so excited about the project.
After a moment, Sana shrugged and began reading. Her voice took on a scratchy and tense quality. The threat of her was evident. Sana was one of those people with annoyingly good posture. Probably the years of cheerleading and dance, now that Rachel thought about it. Dancers always stood up straight and never slouched in chairs. But reading these lines, Sana looked as though she sat straighter, somehow.
Before she’d read these lines, Rachel would have said Sana always had the look of someone with a stick up their ass. But she didn’t. Rachel could see that now. Sana had found the difference between good posture and ramrod straight. She’d found the difference between confidence and threat. Sometimes, when Sana went swishing through the hallways wearing her cheerleading uniform, Rachel forgot that there was a sharp, clever girl under all the hairspray and school spirit. A girl who took organic chemistry and taught underclassmen in labs after school.
Sana finished and Rachel quickly shut off the camera.
“That was good.” Rachel couldn’t think of anything else to say. Good didn’t quite cover what she’d just seen.
“You never answered my question.” Sana stared, so still and unmoving. “Why do you hate Helen? You’ve made her the villain.”
That awful tension was rising in Rachel’s chest again. “Isn’t she the villain of the whole war?”
“To the men she is. The bros.”
Rachel didn’t know why Sana wasn’t letting this go. “Whatever.”
“Whatever?” San
a’s eyes bugged out of her skull. “I’m the purveyor of benevolent sexism but hate for Helen of Troy is whatever?”
“Of course you’d take the pretty girl’s side.” Rachel folded her arms across her chest.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Sana took a deep inhale, then an audible exhale. Then she stood up, smoothed out her workout pants. “Pardon me.”
“Who the hell says ‘pardon me’ anymore?” Rachel watched as Sana tensed at the use of hell.
“Could you please try not to constantly wield curse words at me like a weapon?” Sana nodded.
“Excuse me.” It was the primness of that nod that was Rachel’s undoing. Rachel felt her ears were ringing. “Who the fuck says ‘pardon me’ anymore?”
Sana didn’t bristle this time. No, instead her eyes turned to molten earth. Like she could melt the floor beneath her. “I don’t know why I even bothered. I knew I should have quit when I came in, instead of reading. Instead of giving this a chance. I knew it.”
Sana got up and grabbed her gym bag. The glare she gave Rachel could have sliced out a heart. “I’m not doing your stupid movie. Leave me alone or go back to yelling at me in the hallways. But don’t ask for my help.”
The door clicked shut behind Sana. It should have slammed. Doors were always slamming in Rachel’s face. But the door as Sana quit just swished gently and clicked in place. It was probably designed to do that, to prevent students from slamming doors through the hallways all day long. But it felt like Sana could do that—could shut a door in Rachel’s face in the most ladylike and insulting way possible. As though she wasn’t even worth a proper slam. She wasn’t even worth the appropriate amount of rage with the gesture.
For a moment, all Rachel could do was stare at the door in wonder and disbelief.
“Fuck,” said Rachel to nobody in particular, including herself.
Maybe the footage wasn’t as good as it looked on her monitor. Maybe it was her imagination, a trick of the light in the room, the glint in Sana’s eye as she approached. Maybe Sana didn’t understand her story better than anyone had before. Maybe Douga wouldn’t follow through on her threat and completely tank Rachel’s chances at NYU and scholarship money.
Rachel unhooked the camera and plugged the data card into a nearby computer. It took a moment for the footage to upload and render, but once she had it open in Final Cut, she watched it over again.
“Fuck,” she said, most particularly to herself.
Sana
Sana flexed her arms as she went through the motions of the cheer. She had to keep her arm ramrod straight. No bend, no curve. Just a clean fist pump in a line. Perfect, like usual.
Perfect Sana. Just like every perfect girl that she was supposed to be. That everyone was also meant to hate. Just like Perfect Helen of Troy. An ideal and a villain all at once.
Sana shook her head out. She had to focus. She had a cheer to get through.
The cheer started like this—clap, stomp, clap, stomp, pause. The rhythm of it built until the pace was frenetic, then the squad would move in unison, doing a bounce—shifting from left to right on the balls of their feet. As the chant built to a crescendo, Sana gave the rest of the squad a nod. They were going into formation, with Sana at the center. She was going to do a standard liberty, no more or less than she’d ever done for years. The girls on her base—Alexis and T—boosted her up, with another girl—Maddie—standing behind her, her arms around Sana’s waist, ready and willing to spot.
The first part of the trick went like clockwork—
boosted up one, two—
up in the air three, four.
Sana stood firm, holding her base leg straight as she took her free leg in hand. Everything was perfect because everything had to be perfect in order to stay safe. The movement was smooth, it had to be smooth. This smoothness never looked fast, but it was. In a moment she had her left foot at her ear, her smile wide, and her ponytail with its perfect ribbon still as can be. Sana’s ankle wobbled. She let go of the tautness in her body for less than half a second. She let go of the perfection for once in her life.
It was the snap when something started to go wrong.
The snap went one, two—
boost Sana into the air from a force applied at her ankles.
For less than a beat, Sana was weightless and untethered. Free.
Three, four—
Sana piked her body,
ready to be caught in a cradle made of arms.
Maddie’s arms locked underneath her armpits as Sana performed her controlled fall. But something went sideways at the base—it had to be the base, because even with wobbly ankles Sana could do this stunt in her sleep—because instead of them catching her in a cradle, she went down hard on her right ankle.
The fans on the benches gasped—parents, students, faculty alike. That’s how Sana knew it was bad. Not from the throbbing in her ankle. Not from the weakening, light-headed sensation pulsing through her mind. No, it was that gasp. She’d come down hard enough that everyone had stopped paying attention to the boys and instead had noticed the girls. Sana heard Maddie swear under her breath.
“I heard that,” said Sana.
“Come on,” said Maddie, shooting daggers out of her eyes at Alexis and T. Maddie must have decided it was their fault. “Loop your arm around my neck. They’re all still watching.”
Alexis was making apologies that Sana couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears. T had her hand over her mouth. And as Sana looped her arm around Maddie’s neck and began to limp off, she heard the faint clapping of hands echo around the gym. She’d walked it off. She hadn’t passed out. She’d made it to the bench, and this provided at least the crowd in the bleachers with some level of comfort, though it was hardly any at all for Sana.
“How are you doing?” Maddie didn’t keep her hair back with a ponytail. Instead she braided the front of her hair off of her face, with the rest of her curls let loose in a crowning halo around her face. It gave her the look of a rescuing brown angel right now.
“Ice,” said Sana. “Just get me some ice, please.”
Maddie set Sana down on the bench, next to a couple of the boys who were either helping out with water or were perennial benchwarmers, before rushing off to grab some ice. The other girls had managed to get back in formation and do some cheers. But they were all eyeing her as she sat on the bench. All warily waiting to see what the damage would be.
“That can’t be good,” said a rumbling voice beside her. Diesel stood, his hand reaching out casually as he leaned against the bench. There was a touch of concern in his voice. Something about Diesel reminded Sana of an overgrown golden retriever, all limbs and eagerness.
“I’m hoping it’s just a sprain.” She hadn’t heard a snap, so she was praying it wasn’t a break. But she’d never had an injury pulse like this. Sana strained her neck, looking up at his towering figure.
“Here’s to hoping.” Diesel snagged a water bottle and handed it to her. “If you’ve broken it, there’s no way you’ll win a fight with Rachel Recht next time you knock her over. I’d put all my money on her. What’s going on with you and her, anyway?”
“Same as always.” Sana gritted her teeth through the throbbing. She didn’t want to think about Rachel when her defenses were down. She’d already spent the past three days thinking too much about Rachel. She could feel her foot in the temples of her head. She needed some ice or she might actually swoon.
Sana did not swoon. She was going to be a surgeon, for heaven’s sake. She’d watched medical videos in her feed countess times. But apparently what she could take visually was different from what she could take in her own body.
“No, it’s not the same. I can tell.” Diesel couldn’t let up once he’d gotten hold of an idea. “Do you owe her money?”
“No.” Sana never wanted to think about Rachel Recht and her stupid movie ever again. She wanted Diesel to shut up and stand still, if he wasn’t going to go help Maddie get some ice.
&
nbsp; “Does she owe you money?” Diesel raised his eyebrows like he really had it this time. Like he knew what was up.
Diesel had to have been the only person on planet Earth who had ever guessed without being told first that Sana liked girls. Everyone else had had to be told, and half the time they never brought it back up again. Diesel was different from most people, though. That’s why Sana wanted him to drop the subject immediately and back away from it forever and ever. Diesel wasn’t stupid, the way people thought—the way he wanted people to think. He wasn’t only an affable lug of meat. He could read people better than anyone Sana knew.
Sana tried to get down a swig of water, but tilting her head back made the throbbing sensation develop an unfortunate spinning quality. She set the bottle onto the bench. “No. She does not owe me money.”
“Wait. You two didn’t…” Diesel made a flapping hand gesture that ought to have been beyond human comprehension.
Sana understood what he meant pretty immediately.
“No. No no no no no. Definitely not. No.” Nope, nope, nope. Sana blocked out every image that was flashing in front of her because thinking about Rachel in that way only made Sana’s brain short circuit. It was like a bug in a video game, where once she jump-started the glitch, her mind would loop images over and over again until she would go out and do something incredibly stupid, like buy her own bottle of pineapple shampoo. Not safe for any situation. Particularly not school.
Diesel raised an eyebrow. “So that’s a no, then? I definitely don’t need to meet her or check out if she’s cool behind your back or anything?”
Sana hissed. She was in too much pain to process her responses properly. “Yes. No. Please do not try to check up on her behind my back. Accept whatever answer that means that we’ve never had beef the way you have with half the theater girls.”
Not for any lack of trying.
Tell Me How You Really Feel Page 5