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The Great American Whatever

Page 16

by Tim Federle


  “Open it,” Geoff says. “Happy fucking birthday.” He looks up like a little boy might. His mom wants to say “Language,” again, but she doesn’t.

  I reach for the envelope. My hands are shuddering. I am hungry or perhaps horny. I have never wondered what Geoff would look like naked, but now, suddenly, knowing that he has had sex makes me feel as if I’m meeting a celebrity.

  “Why?” I ask, when I open the envelope and my eyes scan the letter. I don’t even know what I mean, but that is the word. “Why?” I say again as I read the one-pager from the Los Angeles Society of Young Filmmakers.

  “Dear Mr. Roberts,” it says—as if I’m my dad. “Thank you for applying to the Los Angeles Society of Young Filmmakers summer lab!”

  “I didn’t apply to this lab,” I say. “I never finished the applic—what the hell is this?”

  “Keep reading,” Geoff says. His cheeks are stained a translucent white, either zit medication running from the tears or maybe just sunblock. No. Definitely sunblock. Geoff doesn’t need zit medication.

  “I’m going to get you boys a snack,” Geoff’s mom says, taking off. Leave it to a mom to solve any problem with a snack, and yet: They are always right about this.

  We are writing to inform you that your screenplay Double Digits has been chosen as a finalist for the

  X screenwriters

  __ directors

  division of the LASYF for this August.

  As you no doubt know, only 5 screenwriters and 5 directors are chosen each summer, out of submissions that number in the thousands. You were number one on the wait list, and due to a technical eligibility requirement not being met by a previous finalist, we are delighted to accept you into our upcoming lab.

  Please note the URGENT nature of the following:

  -If you wish to attend, we will need to hear from you by August 1 for an August 18 start in Los Angeles.

  -We are unable to supply housing or airfare.

  -Most vitally, we cannot accept incomplete screenplays; you must supply the final pages to us by August 1, the same date as the official opt-out, or we will have to ask you to reapply again in the future.

  Please reply at your earliest convenience, and congratulations again on the thrilling first draft of Double Digits. We look forward to pairing you with a student director in Los Angeles.

  Sincerely,

  Gloria Katz

  Chair, the LASYF

  Geoff’s mom reappears in the doorway with a tray. This breaks my heart. My poor mom would never think to serve something on a tray. The snack would never even make it out of the kitchen.

  “I don’t understand anything anymore,” I say to Geoff. “Annabeth and I didn’t apply to this. I don’t understand this.”

  Nobody has read that script except my sister, who found it “limited” and said it wasn’t my best work of all time and was going to be “impossible to direct.” That it could use professional guidance. That she wished Ricky Devlin were still around to mentor me—“or we could just apply to this,” she wrote, when she forwarded me the link to the lab in LA. I printed out the application that night, feeling smug for such an accomplishment, as if the damn thing would just fill out its own pages.

  “Annabeth and I applied for you,” Geoff says.

  (beat) (beat) (beat)

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I say. But I am so quiet that I scare myself. Geoff’s mom’s lips mouth the word “Language” but they don’t say it.

  “If your script wins at the end of the lab,” Geoff says, taking a baked pita chip from the tray, “Double Digits will get screened on some festival circuit.”

  I bounce a little, as if prepping to spring away to the moon, or even better, directly into the sun. “What are you—that is the, like, working title. That isn’t even—nobody was supposed to see that, except her. I specifically didn’t apply because the screenplay wasn’t ready.”

  “I know,” Geoff says, droll. “But Annabeth and I were tired of seeing you being so precious about every last little thing.”

  “Sweetie,” his mom says, and he snaps at her: “Give us some space, Mom.”

  Never mind. He doesn’t snap. I forgot that in some families, the men are able to ask for what they want without violence edging their voices like burnt paper.

  “I’ll be right upstairs,” his mom says. She’s forever working on her architecture plans, forever constructing buildings to behave just the way she wants them to. I get this completely.

  “It’s a huge opportunity, dude,” Geoff says, as if he’s Mrs. friggin’ Kelly in the cinder-block counselor’s room.

  “Then why are you crying?” I say, and he really is, his face running like Fallingwater again, an unlimited brook of tears.

  “Thousands of applicants, screenwriters and filmmakers, and you got in.”

  “We were on the wait list,” I say, folding the paper in half.

  “You got in.”

  “Then why,” I say, again, “are you crying?”

  “We sent in the first three-quarters of your screenplay, which wasn’t even allowed—it had to be a complete script”—(yes, I know; that’s why I didn’t apply)—“but you got in because you’re that fucking good. . . .”

  I unfold the page and look at it again:

  We are writing to inform you your screenplay Double Digits has been chosen as a finalist for the

  X screenwriters

  __ directors

  “But the thing is,” he goes, “Annabeth didn’t want . . . um.”

  But the way he says “um” makes me know this is not just an um. There’s always an and with Geoff.

  “What?” I say. “She didn’t want what?”

  “Annabeth didn’t want to check off the director’s box,” Geoff says, a thin film of saliva breaking across his mouth, like the giant bubbles we used to play with back in the summers, when everything was possible. “It would have been the easiest thing to do—to send in her reel and see if she’d get in too—but she was cool just letting this be your thing, Quinny.”

  “No. That doesn’t even sound like h—”

  “She always said your dialogue was what made the movies pop,” Geoff says—and strangely, right at the climax of the scene, right when John Williams would bring in the saddest, lowest horns, to make you cry, Geoff doesn’t keep crying. The tears stop and he offers a wounded smile, like a truce. “And she was obviously right.”

  I look at his mom’s vase. “So, wait—now you actually expect me to go to, like, Los Angeles and get paired with some anonymous person who isn’t your dead girlfriend? This is how you want me to celebrate my birthday?”

  Never mind. He’s crying again. Geoff’s Adam’s apple jumps up and down like the trampoline in our neighbor’s yard. He can’t speak. “Mhmm?” he finally manages to hum.

  I am all out of dialogue. I walk very slowly to the tray of food, and I pick up the whole thing and almost throw it against his perfect wallpapered wall—it would make for such a strong, complicated goodbye.

  But I am not going to be that guy.

  So all I do is set down the tray and tear the paper in half, and crumple it up, and throw it at Geoff.

  “She didn’t want this dream, Quinn,” he says, finally, when I’m putting the bowling shoes on again, with my back to him. “But you do. Or did.”

  I push through the French doors. I don’t even stop when Geoff’s mom tries to hug me by their kitchen island. And by the time I’m ten minutes out of the good part of town, I get this somewhat fucked-up idea for how to turn my birthday around. How to even the score with my best friend, with the universe. How to play catch-up with my sister.

  “What was that you said,” I text Amir, just as I’m getting to my neighborhood, “about getting me laid tonight?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  One shower later, I’m sitting outside on our crumbly front steps, picking at a scab on my knee that I didn’t even know had been scabbed. What I’m not doing is I’m not walking up the street and
waiting for Amir to pick me up there. I’m just letting him show up outside our house in plain sight. I suppose I’m coming out in twelve easy steps.

  It is 10:59 p.m. when I see his dirty Saturn peep up from the top of our hill.

  “No fair,” he goes, when he pulls up and I step in. “You got to clean up after my party.”

  “I have some CK One upstairs. You want me to run in and get you some?”

  But he doesn’t, and I don’t, and what we do is we drive back to the bowling lanes, so I can get my old Vans and give them back their bowling shoes and start to reset the world back to its old ways.

  “Hey,” he says, “buckle up,” just as we’re speeding past the high school.

  • • •

  Something about watching Amir drive stick shift is maybe the hottest thing ever, did I already say that? He is just so forceful with it.

  “So,” he says. Now we’re sitting in the parking lot of the bowling alley. It’s late, officially very much not my birthday. Officially next year. “I was kind of surprised to hear from you tonight. I mean, after.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, “I felt kind of embarrassed about running away from your boat and I wanted to apologize.” Lie. I want to get laid.

  “I’m really sorry that Carly broke the news about Geoff and your sister,” Amir goes. “It was seriously uncool of her. For the record, I had no ide—”

  “Carly lives on gossip. It’s just Carly being Carly.”

  A bird spins itself in nervous circles right above Amir’s windshield. It must be lost. It’s too late for a bird to be away from its tree.

  “Should we go back to my place?” He’s already turning the car back on, and my heart starts to go faster than I want it to. I don’t like not being in control, and it feels as if a riverboat is in my chest, churning against my stomach.

  “Sure thing,” I say, practically like I mean it.

  • • •

  It takes a three-floor trek upstairs to an apartment covered in boxes for it to actually hit me that Amir really is going. He is not out of breath, but I am.

  “Okay, hang out on the couch,” he goes, “and flip the AC on, for the love of God. I’m hopping in the shower.” I look up to see this perfect shirtless boy, his boxers puffed out the top of his shorts like a muffin, a small scar on his stomach existing only to show, in stark contrast, how flawless the rest of him is.

  When he’s gone, I take my own shirt off and hold my phone out far and look at myself in the reverse camera and oh my God I hope he likes truly skinny guys.

  The shower cheep-cheeps off. I put my shirt back on. I debate about running for it.

  “Should I put some music on?” he calls out, and I go, “Mhmm, okay,” and he returns in mesh shorts and a tank top and this Texas ball cap that makes me want to eat him, it is so cute.

  Mesh shorts on guys are my weakness, by the way. Mesh shorts are the “coming attractions” of the hot-boy clothing world.

  He sits on the sofa and hands me his laptop, and goes: “You have to pick what you want to listen to,” so I take Amir’s laptop and though I guess I’m supposed to be picking out make-out music, instead I multitask and say: “Morning Pages, what’s Morning Pages?”—looking at the only file on his desktop.

  Amir reaches across and takes the laptop out of my lap faster than you can say calm down.

  “Nothing,” he goes.

  “Well, it’s something,” I go, and he rolls his eyes and goes: “It’s kind of like a journal. I wake up every day and write three tangential pages back to back.”

  I smile my best sly smile. I’ve practiced it in the mirror for years. “Okay,” I say. “And yet you’re going to school for business and not writing?”

  He lies back on the couch and digs his feet underneath my butt, and it is very sweet.

  “You should read me some of these Morning Pages,” I say, and he laughs and goes, “Oh, I so should not do that.”

  I reach my arm back to lay it across the couch, and my elbow grazes a picture frame, which tips over and lands with a solid clack. I worry that maybe I’ve cracked the glass, but when I set it up again, it is not broken. It is a perfect unharmed photo of two guys—Amir, next to somebody Dad-age.

  “Who’s that?” I say, and the way Amir goes, “Oh, that’s Evan,” I know it’s over.

  “How long were you together?” I’m not doing the flirty-mouth thing anymore.

  “Well, that’s presumptuous,” Amir says. He wiggles his toes and it tickles my butt. I squirm, but I don’t laugh. This night has no clear ending; it’s all middle.

  I pick up the photo and launch an investigation. Clue number one: Evan is holding Amir’s waist.

  “A year and a half,” Amir says finally, and then: “Until he fucking cheated on me with one of his students.”

  The AC clicks off. “Where is he now?”

  “Back in Texas,” he says, and I go, “Back in Texas,” because I like when dialogue echoes, except not this time.

  I am in a brain fog when Amir opens his laptop back up and turns on some music that sounds familiar—something rousing and orchestral and more cinematic, somehow, than straightforward trumpets usually are—and I know it I know it I know it, and finally I go: “Wait, don’t tell me,” and Amir smiles and goes, “I wasn’t going to.”

  He gets up close to my face and kisses my forehead. Chug-chug-chug, the riverboat is back in my chest.

  “Read something to me,” I say, because suddenly I’m back to being unsure if I’m ready to have sex.

  “What do you mean?” he goes.

  “Read me some of your work. Out loud.”

  “Only if you do,” he goes, and he plops back onto the sofa.

  “No way,” I go. “My stuff is junk and I don’t have any of it on me.”

  “You don’t back it up in the cloud?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  He puts his laptop on my lap. Spotify is minimized. The trumpets continue to blat and cry.

  “I’ll read you the first page of my terrible novel if you read me the first page of your terrible screenplay.”

  “No,” I go, “but I’ll pull up some Vimeos of my old films with Annabeth and leave the room for fifteen minutes and you can watch whatever you want. Films are meant to be seen, not read.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” he goes, and that is getting old faster than hot milk.

  He takes the laptop back from me. “I’ve already watched all your films,” he goes, just like that, and I go, “Wait, wh—,” and he goes, “After that Celebrity game-night thing, I was all, ‘Who is that guy?’ and Carly was all, ‘You have to see his movies.’ ”

  I stare at a crack across the blank wall of his apartment and expect it to open up and swallow me into a portal. Those weren’t my movies. Those were our movies.

  Change the scene. Switch the topic. Take control of the narrative.

  It comes to me: “Elmer Bernstein,” I say.

  It’s just, Elmer Bernstein has a very distinctive cinematic underscoring style, and his music is drowning out this conversation on Amir’s couch. (Thank you, Mr. Bernstein.)

  “Correct.” Amir smiles. “You are good.” He double-clicks and then double-clicks again, and then: “I’ve never done this.”

  “Um . . .”

  “Read my work out loud.”

  Oh! This is kind of fun. I can be the loyal guy Evan never was, and this will convince Amir to stay here. I will move in with him next year. I will work at Carnegie Library and watch DVDs all day. We will have brown babies because we will use his DNA.

  “I’m waiting,” I say, pointing to the computer.

  He turns the volume down on Elmer Bernstein and clears his throat and he puts his feet on my lap, and they smell just faintly faintly faintly like boy feet and something about that is very wonderful. Maybe I do want to have sex. It seems like I only want to have sex when I’m not thinking about it, and I only don’t want to have sex when I am.

  “Okay, so . . . ,” Amir goes, and I g
o, “Stalling!” and he goes, “No, wait,” and his eyes are scanning page one—just like mine always did right before I would read my first drafts for Annabeth—and he goes, “I’m not sure about this,” and I go, “Come on, isn’t this the novel that got you into this prestigious program?” and when I say it out loud, I’m thinking about what it would be like for me to go to LA and be paired with some anonymous new director, and that’s just one big fat no, right there.

  The Wachowskis. The Ephron sisters. The Nolans. Q & A.

  I’ve been alive for seventeen years; how is some brand-new director going to be able to decode all the nuances and jokes and not-jokes in my work?

  “So . . . okay,” Amir says. He takes his feet off my lap and turns around so that his back is totally facing me.

  “What are you doing?” I go.

  “I just said I couldn’t read it out loud if I was facing you.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” I lie. The AC clicks itself off again. The Elmer Bernstein continues on a loop from Amir’s computer, the same song on repeat. Trumpet, trumpet, trumpet.

  “Chapter one,” Amir says, “page one only.” He faux-coughs twice and goes, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and I go, “That’s a compelling first line,” and he goes, “Quinn,” and I shut up.

  “Marleek Tabasian,” Amir says, his voice small, “awakened earlier than she had in months because the heat was eating her from the inside out. This was unusual even for Lindandia, which was carved into the earth two thousand years after the Great Lindandian fall. . . .”

  I hold my breath. His work is possibly . . . terrible, yes, that’s the word, terrible, and so I put my feet against his back so that he feels he has my support. It’s amazing how much you can fake, physically. Just ask Marlon Brando, who literally couldn’t really speak and was the best actor of all time.

  “Marleek’s spirit mother, Tasia Tabasian,” he continues, getting louder and unfortunately more confident, “was already in the study, looking over the day’s agenda. She startled at the sight of her spirit daughter, unclothed and floating.”

  Oh, dear. I pull my feet away. Even my feet can’t fake it in the face of this hokum.

 

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