A static noise makes me look around. “Starship to Ruby, are you out there, Ruby?”
Josef ’s voice sounds exactly like a Starfleet commander over an intercom. It makes me laugh.
“Sorry, were you saying something?”
“I asked you on a date?”
“What?” My mouth drops.
“You don’t have to look so horrified. I was kidding.”
“Oh, sorry. I was thinking about something.”
“Uh-huh,” he says and glances over at Kaden at the other end of the table.
“What?” I say as innocently as possible, but a small smile creeps up the edges of my lips. Why can’t I control that evil little traitor smile? It always gives me away.
Rob comes to the rescue when he arrives and pulls out his PDA and starts tapping it with the stylus. “Let’s get started, people. I know several of us have the awards banquet at the Raphael Center, so let’s make this quick.”
And the meeting is quick. It establishes the team expectations, a schedule, and the announcement that the work weekend will be held at my house, which brings all eyes toward me.
I notice Kaden’s linger on me a long while as the group breaks up. I’ve avoided his eyes all through the meeting, knowing he glanced my way a number of times. And yet isn’t this the biggest indicator that there is something abnormal with all this forced and overemphasized normality?
As I bend under the table to retrieve a book that slid from my book bag, I hear, “Hey.”
I recognize that voice, though in all actuality, I haven’t heard it all that much. He sets a paper on the table that says “Top 100 Movies.”
“Always handing me papers,” I say and hope he doesn’t see my hands shaking. What’s come over me?
“Really? Oh yes, the film group flyer.” He smiles, and my eyes linger on his lips. “Yeah, I meant to e-mail it, but I went out of town for a while.”
“That’s okay,” I say as if I don’t care.
“I have to tell you, I don’t really talk much.”
“Okay.”
“I mean online or on the phone. So if that’s something you like, I’m just telling you now.”
I stare at him. What does that even mean?
“Okay.”
He’s kind of weird. So why do I like him so much?
Kaden motions to the paper.
Dang, he does have a Johnny Depp thing going on.
“I put stars by the movies I watched and gave them ratings. Five stars is highest.”
Looking at the paper, some of the movies have two to four stars. Only a few have five.
“Nice,” I say and find it enormously cute that he went to so much work. “I’ll be tempted to watch the five-star ones first.”
“Don’t give in to that temptation. Watch as many as possible and give them your own rating. After you watch about ten movies, let’s compare thoughts.”
“Okay,” I say, then wonder if that would be something like a date. Before I decide whether to jokingly ask this, his phone rings to a tune by Bon Jovi.
He looks at the number and says abruptly, “Guess I’ll see you this weekend then. Bye.”
And once again I’m watching Kaden walk away.
chapter twenty-three
Kate, are you okay?
I send the message not from my phone but by thought, out to the air, concentrating in the way she and I did when we were little and determined to be telepathic—or rather, I was determined, and Kate always went along with my wildly creative ideas. One of us would write down what she was thinking; then the other would press her fingers to her forehead and concentrate. I remember it worked only once, and that might have been because we were smelling Mom’s homemade pizza. When I guessed food and Kate had written down pizza, we believed we’d come far in our quest of ESP.
Kate, stop ignoring me!
I’ll ignore you if I want to.
My head perks up.
I’m worried about you.
You should be.
Are you okay?
Pizza.
This is when I wake up. Immediately I reach for my phone, and for about the tenth time send Kate a text. Immediately there’s a response:
Kate is unavailable at this time. Thank you. Kate's Mom
I stare out the balcony door where only a bit of light comes through. The fog must be thick and hiding even the streetlights. All week I’ve tried convincing Mom to call Kate’s mom and find out how they’re all doing. She says that’s nosy and will appear that she’s fishing for info. But she would be fishing for info! It’s a constant annoying itch for me not to know what’s happening or if Kate is okay. This is one of the worst things to happen to my friend. Is she heartbroken? Angry? Sad? Lonely?
My other friends aren’t giving me much information either. They’ve been consumed with prom planning and hardly any have seen or talked to Kate.
I might as well stick with telepathy.
On Friday when I arrive home from school, I walk in the door to a very clean house and voices I don’t recognize in the kitchen.
Cass and Darren Duke sit on bar stools around the island, eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking milk.
“Look what your mom made us,” Darren Duke says with a smile that makes me suddenly imagine him as an eight-year-old with freckles on his nose.
Mom is putting dishes into the dishwasher. “I made lasagna and salad—they’re in the fridge. There’s French bread, and I bought some snacks that are in the pantry. And yes, I made the lasagna, not Austin,” she clarifies to me.
“The last homemade lasagna I ate was when my grandmother was alive. My dad isn’t much of a cook,” Cass says as she dips her cookie in the milk. They both look strangely young and unsophisticated in my mother’s kitchen.
Darren Duke makes a long Mmm sound with another bite. “I swear this is the best cookie I’ve eaten in my life. I’ll just get all my belongings and move into the basement, if that’s okay?”
Mom laughs, and I’m still standing in the doorway with my bag weighing down my shoulder. I look from one to the other—Mom with Cass and Darren Duke. This scene is pretty weird.
So Mom cleaned all day, brought out sleeping bags, baked a huge pile of her chocolate chip cookies and dinner for one night, and she welcomes the first film group arrivals like they’ve come for my tenth birthday party.
Mac’s voice drifts up from the basement, and I wonder who else is here. A few minutes later he and Kaden come walking up the stairs, chatting like old war buddies.
“Cool house. And cool little brother,” he says as they pass me, and Mac beams a wide smile and shrugs his shoulders.
A shiver of something goes through me as Kaden nearly brushes my shoulder. I’m not sure what the something is; it’s new and surprising and completely . . . well, disconcerting.
“Just wait till you get to know him,” I say in an awkward tone that doesn’t sound like me. “I’ve watched two of the movies on the list—”
“Hey, Mac.” Austin’s voice from upstairs interrupts me. He comes down the stairs, carrying a duffel bag in each hand and a toiletry bag under his arm. “Hey, Mac, come give me a hand. Hi there, Kaden.”
“I’ll help,” Kaden says.
He takes a duffel from Austin as Mac dramatically takes the small toiletry bag as if it weighs a hundred pounds. They head off to the apartment over the garage. I’m still standing there with my book bag on my shoulder.
An hour later Mom, Austin, and Mac are gone to meet Dad, and the equipment and team members are still coming in.
“Time to work.” Darren Duke opens his laptop bag on the coffee table.
Rob assesses the rooms, going down to the basement and back to where eight of us now wait. I’m surprised and relieved to find that Blair isn’t coming. Her part in the production is over.
Rob says, “We’ll make workstations here and in the basement. We’ve got food and drinks for tonight, and tomorrow we’ll get something delivered. We can get a lot done by staying f
ocused, everyone working hard. We shouldn’t have trouble getting this nearly done, then next week we’ll polish, and Thursday is the big day. So consider us locked in for now.”
Equipment is set up in the living room, and the basement is transformed into an editing room. Rob is pleased with the acoustics and layout of the basement.
The members settle into their places, and I corner Rob in the kitchen as he’s eating a cookie.
“I’m not even sure what to do. I don’t want to get in the way, but I definitely want to help.”
“Yeah, I was going to come talk to you—man, these are good cookies.” He takes another bite. “If you don’t mind just sort of roving to different people who need your help, since you’re still new to all this. We might do a few reshoots in the yard—that flower garden will be perfect. Try to gain as much knowledge as you can. It’ll be like a crash course in filmmaking.”
“Sounds great.”
For some reason I find myself avoiding Kaden. His presence is too unsettling. And so for most of the evening I sit with Sound Guy and learn about the different sound effects and intensities.
Frankie writes me as I’m doing dishes after dinner.
FRANKIE: Are you slaving away?
ME: Just call me Helper Girl.
FRANKIE: Would you pick me up some toothpaste and coffee creamer, Helper Girl?
ME: It would help if I had my driver's license.
FRANKIE: Yeah, it's like Batman without his cape.
ME: You mean Superman without his cape.
FRANKIE: Batman has a cape.
ME: But it's not really used for anything except looking cool when it swooshes around him.
FRANKIE: That's what I mean. Batman wouldn't be so cool without his swooshing cape. It's a necessary item for him.
ME: But Superman really needs his cape, to actually fly. Like I need a car to actually do the errands.
FRANKIE: Want me to bring my little Lexus cape and fly you around?
ME: I'm in the middle of dishes so guess I'm also Cleaning Girl.
FRANKIE: The oh so many sides of Ruby Blue. But I have a night out, so I'll leave you to your cleaning.
ME: BNNF
FRANKIE: You know I could come up with obscene things for every little abbreviation.
ME: BYE NOW, NOT FOREVER
FRANKIE: Got it. BNNFTGRZPXI
ME: I'm not even going to ask.
FRANKIE: Smart Girl.
Our film Solitude will be twenty minutes long. There are story-board images on a giant corkboard in the living room depicting the essential scenes. The night is like a mosaic of happenings, conversations, and little work groups that compose the larger image of our group at work to bring those scenes to life, to make the sound perfect and the colors vivid or muted depending on the effect, and to create something that enters the viewers’ eyes, to move through their heads and emotions and remain in their memories.
I love hearing the group talk about the different angles, tightening a scene, the technical words and directions that I don’t quite understand. And then just the chatter about movies that are loved, movie moments that shocked, scared, and inspired.
“When Bruce Willis discovers he’s dead in The Sixth Sense.”
“Kill Bill 2 when Uma rips out Darrel Hannah’s one remaining eye.”
“Tarantino is master.”
“Tarantino has some serious issues.”
“Amelie with the father getting postcards from his traveling gnome from around the world.”
Then someone asks, “Ruby, what’s one of your favorite movie moments?”
“The scene in Shawshank Redemption when Tim Robbins escapes prison and rises from the sewer into the rain.”
Everyone nods and says, “Ah, yes.” As if this moment is reverent.
“If we could get something of the buildup to that scene in Shawshank Redemption . . . Let’s look at the three scenes before the climax again,” Rob says, and they’re off into creation mode again. And it’s nice that twice now I’ve incited conversation from answering a film question, instead of ridicule.
Rob has me shadow everyone at one time or another. It’s interesting seeing the many stages and intricate details. Rob encourages everyone to learn each part of the movie production.
When I sit with Kaden in the basement to see what he’s doing, that familiar nervousness flutters through me. Keep calm, Ruby, I keep telling myself.
“My job is to go through each scene from the storyboard,” Kaden says, showing me the sketches on the massive board that depict each scene. “I’m building the rough cut from the scenes, choosing the best takes if Rob hasn’t already, and sometimes changing the order of the best shots. From there we’ll work on the final cut, where we make sure all the shots flow smoothly into one seamless story. Sometimes just shaving off a few seconds or a bit of unnecessary dialogue can make a scene stronger. Did you ever see the movie Meet Joe Black with Brad Pitt?”
“Yeah, I liked that movie.”
“I did too, but not many people would agree. The editing wasn’t tight. The film dragged. If they’d have cut ten minutes off that film, the flow and tension would’ve been greatly heightened.”
“Interesting.”
“I’ll show you some examples.”
Kaden shows me two identical sections of the film. I can’t really see the difference, but I like the first one better for some reason. We watch the two versions several more times until I see it. He shortened part of the dialogue and cut a moment of camera sweeping over the landscape.
“I liked seeing the landscape though,” I say. “It was a beautiful shot of the city.”
“Yeah, I liked it too. But it’s better, cleaner, with that part gone. Film editing is similar to writing. We should ‘kill our darlings,’ as they say. If the story is best served without it, then it goes.”
“And this is better, though I don’t know why.”
“By taking out the clutter, the next scene becomes more precise. The viewer has fewer images in her head, and so the scene that is important, the image of the doorway to the courtyard with the boy standing there, impacts us more.”
“Less is more, as they say.”
“Exactly. Though sometimes clutter and ‘more’ is what the film needs—but this is rare.”
“Like when?”
“Um, well, let’s say there’s a man and woman, and a romantic tension is built between them. Like in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
There’s all this fighting and shooting; they destroy their house trying to kill each other. Then when they get close, suddenly they kiss. The intensity suddenly halts. So it’s like the opposite effect. High intensity and then a frozen moment. Or low building up into a cataclysmic climax—both of them can be very effective ways to complete a film.”
And then Kaden pauses, looking at me with such gentle intensity—a mixture of both methods he just talked about, and he doesn’t even realize the degree of his effect. It surprises even me.
I wake up thirsty, sitting in a chair at three in the morning, and find most of the crew asleep upright in chairs around me. Sound Guy is on the floor with his head on a duffel bag. Empty plates and half-empty cups cover the coffee table, and I have to step around sleeping bags, cords, and a giant bag of Doritos. As I walk up the stairs, the flash of the TV in the living room lights my way. Cass and Olivia are asleep on the couch and love seat.
In the kitchen, Kaden leans close to the computer screen with his fist curled and resting against his forehead. Black ear-buds, jeans, sweatshirt, dark hair slightly messed up, and six empty Red Bulls are lined up in front of him.
“Too wired to sleep?” I open the refrigerator and pull out the lasagna and a sparkling water and set them on the countertop.
“I like working at night actually.”
“Do you want to be left alone?”
“Naw, but I’ll have some cold lasagna.” He smiles.
I get two forks and we eat it from the pan. “How’s it going?” I ask, motioning to the co
mputer.
“I think I’m done with the timing and editing of the first two acts. But sometimes what I think after a late night of Red Bulls isn’t what I think in the light of morning. This house is peaceful at night. And you know, you have a really nice family.”
“Yeah, they’re okay.”
Kaden leans back in his chair and looks at me for a long time.
I shift awkwardly. What does he see when he looks at me? Does he like what he finds or notice my flaws like the small scar above my right eyebrow?
“It’s hard to be grateful for things that are normal to us,” he says.
I nod but don’t quite know what he means. “Yeah, that’s true.”
“I saw you at church once,” Kaden says, returning his eyes to the screen.
“We’re trying different ones. I didn’t see you.”
“Was late and left early. My mom used to be really involved in church.”
I wonder how one is related to the other.
“A few years ago my family was pretty involved at church,” I say. “My parents were children’s church coordinators.”
“So you aren’t so involved now because of the divorce?”
“Um, sort of, I guess. I still go to youth group and to church sometimes. Well, I did at home.”
“Do you blame your wavering faith on your parents’ divorce?”
“Who says I have wavering faith?”
“I thought you did.”
“I didn’t say that.” I go over what we’ve just said, and I know I didn’t say anything about my faith. What presumptions he makes. “Are you always this, this . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really, tell me.” He smiles slightly. “I want to know.”
“Confrontational. Abrupt.”
He’s smiling instead of being offended, and this wide smile is such an offset to his usual serious expression that it makes me smile as well. With my defenses down, I realize that Kaden is right even without my saying it. My faith has waned; it may only barely exist. Is that what he saw with his prodding eyes?
Ruby Unscripted Page 18