This Book Is Not Yet Rated

by Peter Bognanni

  “On some level, I knew it was all incredibly fake. I knew the actors were the same boys that did chemistry experiments in their garage next door. But all of that faded away somehow in the backyard. The summer night was gone. The fireflies were gone. The chatter and laughter of the adults disappeared. And for a few minutes, I was transported from my neighborhood to the high seas. I was a Lost Boy, too.

  “When I finally went to sleep that night, I saw images from the movie in my head, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t wait until I was older and I could help them out with their next movie. Maybe something with spies, I was thinking. I already imagined myself as the star, decked out in a long trench coat.

  “But that never happened. Their father got a job at another college and soon after that I never saw the Porters again. Still, I told myself, if they had figured it out, I could, too. I could understand how the magic worked. Out of all the movies I saw when I was a kid, that’s the one that sticks with me because it was when I first realized that movies were made by actual people. They didn’t just show up on the screen from out of the blue. It took a group of determined fanatics to manifest them out of nothing.”

  I was quiet for a moment, imagining my father as a kid, feeling so inspired. Then I faced him again.

  “Did you ever want to be a director?”

  He took a long breath.

  “Maybe for a little while,” he said. “But eventually I just wanted to convert people to the flock. I didn’t need to be a god. Too much pressure.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “It’s enough just to love something,” he said.

  And then my mom came in with his breakfast.

  “Case in point,” he said, and smiled.

  “Gross,” I said, out of habit more than anything else.

  “Love is not gross,” my dad said.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “You’re talking about my deepest belief here!”

  “Okay,” I said. “Love is not gross. Just you and Mom.”

  “It’s time for you to go to school,” my mom said.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “To be continued,” said my dad, and took a deep breath.

  Those were the last words I heard from him.

  To be continued.

  I went to school a little late that day. I rode the bus. I solved for x. I ate a square of pizza and some soggy fries. And then in the afternoon, when I was listening to my government teacher talk about checks and balances, I was called out of class. And when I got to the phone in the office, the administrator who held it out, looked totally drained of life. But she didn’t say anything. She just handed me the phone, and when I pressed it to my ear, I heard my mom’s voice crystal clear, like she was standing next to me.

  “Something terrible has happened,” she said.

  26

  Raina sat next to me, staring at the walls of the basement. I was waiting for her to talk, but she wasn’t talking.

  “So why?” I finally asked.

  She looked at me, and I think she knew what I was asking, but she didn’t say anything. I was used to talking now, so I spoke again.

  “Why didn’t you get in touch?”

  She said nothing.

  “There has to be a reason,” I said. “Even if it’s a really shitty reason. I just want to hear it once. Were you scared? Did you just not care what happened to me anymore? Were you living a new famous life and you didn’t want to be bothered?”

  My voice was starting to shake so I stopped talking.

  “Listen,” she said finally. “Let me just start by saying that I should have called you. That’s what should have happened. And if I could find a way to do it all over again, that is what would happen. But I didn’t call you and it wasn’t for any of the reasons you just said.”

  “Okay,” I said softly. “Then why?”

  She slowly untangled a knot in her headphones, and then wrapped the cord around her little finger.

  “I was barely hanging on,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “About halfway into the shoot for the movie, I realized I didn’t want it.”

  “You didn’t want to star in a movie?”

  “I know. Just stay with me for a second. I tried to get out of it. I didn’t even tell my mom. I just contacted my agent, and said I wanted out.”

  I opened my mouth to say something again, but kept quiet this time.

  “It was too late,” she said. “If I backed out, I was going to have to pay back a ton of money. Some of it my mom had already spent. So, I was on the hook. There was no way to get out.”

  “Why did you want out, though?” I asked. “This was before you were famous, right? Before the creepy websites and everything?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So what was it?”

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “My dad got in touch with me.”

  That one knocked me back a second. It had been a long time since I’d heard Raina talk about her dad. I didn’t know much about him except what she had told me in passing. That he was only around until she was five. And he partied too much. She still remembered a night when he came home with a broken arm from doing flips off a trampoline at a pool party. There were other women, too. It was obvious. When he finally left, he disappeared completely for a few years, then he got back in touch to let them know he was sober, remarried, and a devout Baptist. Her mom had never actually divorced him.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “I’ll give you one guess,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “He didn’t ask right away. He just told me he’d heard about the movie and he was proud of me. And he told me that he felt bad for leaving, but it was the only way to deal with his demons. He said he wanted to visit me when I got back to the States. I could come to Memphis where he lived now, and we could eat barbecue and he could show me this youth center he was working on.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that sounded good. Because, honestly it did. I was lonely. I was in the middle of nowhere in Greenland. My mom was always talking to the director, giving him advice about me. And all the people working on the movie just asked if I needed anything. I didn’t have any friends.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He eventually asked me for enough money to get started building this Christian weightlifting place. It was his dream, he said, and it was going to do a lot of good in the community. So, I signed into my mom’s bank account and gave it to him.”

  “You gave it to him?!”

  “What would you have done, Ethan, if it was your dad?”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “Just answer me.”

  I looked at her wide bloodshot eyes.

  “I would have given it to him,” I said.

  “Well, that’s what I did.”

  “Okay, so then what happened?”

  “Then my mom freaked out. She was so pissed that I would give a cent to someone who had left us like he did, and that I would go behind her back to do it. But it was my money. And when I told her that, she got even more pissed. And then I told her that I had tried to get out of making the movie, that I wanted to go home, and all hell broke loose.”

  The headphone cord was cutting off circulation to her finger now and the tip was bright red. Raina looked directly at me.

  “She took away the computer I had used to transfer the money to my dad. And she took away my phone. According to her it was a ‘technology’ cleanse, but I know why she did it. She didn’t want me talking to my agent again, or a bank, or even people from home. She wanted me to finish the film, and move back to LA where she had just found us a house. Anything else was a distraction. Which brings me to your
father . . .”

  “You didn’t know,” I said.

  She looked right into my eyes.

  “I didn’t know.”

  The thought had never occurred to me. I had sent so many messages, hoping each time for a response. I never even considered that she hadn’t read them, hadn’t been able to read them.

  “When did you find out?” I asked.

  “A few months later when I was done filming. Then I got my phone back, and I saw the e-mails you sent. The early ones, and then the ones you sent later asking where I was and why I wasn’t writing back?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I felt totally helpless at that point. It seemed like it was all over. Our friendship, and maybe my whole life here. It started to seem so far away. Like this thing I would never get back even if I wanted to.”

  “So you cut off all contact?” I said. “That’s so severe. Couldn’t you have at least said ‘Hey, sorry about your dad. Sorry I’ll never see you again.’ Would that have been so hard?”

  We sat on the couch now, uncomfortably close to each other.

  “I should have done that,” she said. “I should have done a lot of things differently. I’m sorry, Ethan. That’s all I can say.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what to feel. The details were all scattered in my mind, forming and re-forming in different patterns. What was I supposed to do with all the anger that I had carried around? Where was that supposed to go?

  “You’re really quiet,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  I leaned my head back until it touched the wall behind me. I looked up at the ceiling. All the house’s old plumbing was exposed in the rafters above, and I followed the path of water with my eyes.

  “At least we’re not at rock bottom anymore,” Raina said.

  I actually smiled this time.

  Because she was right. Things were bad. But they had been much worse, and somehow I made it through those days. Maybe I spent most of them in a dark room watching movies, forgetting the world existed, but still, I made it through. I had no idea what was going to happen with the Green Street or with Raina, but I didn’t feel complete despair. That was a good thing, I suppose.

  “I lied the last time I was over here,” I said.

  “About what?” she asked.

  I stood up and took a breath. I relaxed my shoulders and held my arms out.

  “I still remember our dance.”

  She didn’t smile, but I saw something flicker to life in her eyes. She hesitated a moment and then stood up too. She raised her arms.

  “I never went through with the play,” I said. “It . . . wasn’t the same.”

  “I know,” she said. “I heard.”

  She put an arm around my back, and I put a hand at her waist. We didn’t have any music, so Raina just started counting.

  “One, two, three. One, two, three.”

  She led as usual, and the steps came back, a bit clumsily at first. We went through the motions, moving in a circle around her basement, testing the boundaries of her cell. She looked me in the eye and I tried not to look away. It was really hard not to look away.

  “We need to bust you out of here,” I said.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Yes we do,” she said.

  ETHAN’S GLOSSARY OF FILM TERMS

  ENTRY #229

  ROAD MOVIE

  Okay, so you probably know that this is a movie that takes place on the road.

  Easy Rider. Thelma and Louise. Y Tu Mamá También.

  But why are there so many of them? Is it because we have endless wanderlust? Is it the excitement of a vehicle in motion? Or do we just like a character on a journey?

  Probably all of that stuff.

  But it might also be that feeling of being on the way somewhere. I’ve always liked being on the way even more than getting there.

  When you get there, you’re always going to be disappointed, at least a little bit. But when you’re on the way, everything is still perfect.

  27

  The hard part wasn’t getting out of the basement.

  It was getting out without being seen by the paparazzi.

  We stacked a few folding chairs on top of the couch, and while the tower was a little wobbly, Raina was just able to pry the window open slowly enough that it didn’t make much noise. The problem was that the basement windows were all in the front of the house, facing the street, so any method of escape would put us in the sight lines of the vultures.

  Clearly, there was only one solution.

  I went upstairs and left the old-fashioned way, saying an innocent good-bye to Trinity and heading back outside. The photographers ignored me as usual as I made my way down the sidewalk toward their congregation. They had only looked up when the door opened, but they listened when I elbowed my way into their group and told them I had a story for them.

  “Want to know what really happened at the mall in California?” I said. “I’ve got all the details.”

  One of the guys looked up at me.

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, nobody. Just her best friend since third grade.”

  He looked me over, clearly skeptical that I would ever be in the same room as Raina. Which was totally fair.

  “Okay then. Lay it on us,” he said.

  “Fifty bucks,” I said.

  “C’mon, kid,” said one of them. “Give me a break.”

  “I know you’re going to sell it for more,” I said. “Fifty bucks and I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Goddamnit,” said another guy behind me. “I might have it.”

  “Wait a second,” said the guy I was talking to, “he told me first!”

  They started digging out their wallets. And while they were fumbling, trying to come up with the cash, I started cawing like a bird.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked another guy with a close-cropped head of gray hair.

  “Caw-caw!” I yelled.

  Then, another guy in a denim shirt whipped around and pointed across the lawn.

  “She’s on the move!” he said, trying to raise his camera to his eye.

  The shutters were clicking even before they got their cameras in position, but Raina was already in my car, gunning the engine. She had an old afghan from the couch wrapped around her head. The car backed up at approximately fifty miles an hour and the paparazzi scattered like ants. I opened a back door and dove onto the bench seat. I probably could have just gotten in the regular way, but it felt pretty good to dive.

  Raina let out a war whoop and peeled out, heading down her street, as her mom came running out on the lawn in her pajamas. Trinity didn’t scream or run after us the way I thought she might, though. She just watched, arms at her sides, the tie for her bathrobe brushing against the grass.

  * * *

  • • •

  A half hour later Raina was finishing her ice cream on the freeway.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked.

  She held her DQ cup close to her mouth and scooped out the last of her Blizzard. Both of her hands were off the wheel for a second.

  “You probably shouldn’t eat that while you drive,” I said.

  She completely ignored me, taking another bite and even closing her eyes.

  “Can you please not do that?” I asked.

  “I know it’s not technically ice cream,” she said, “but this is the food of the gods. I can’t believe you didn’t want anything.”

  “Eh,” I said. “It wasn’t a Brazier.”

  Raina rolled her eyes, but I saw just a hint of a smile.

  We were driving into the afternoon sun, and I could feel it scorching my right arm, which I’d propped out the window. A car passed alongside us with its stereo on blast; the b
ass rattling our dash.

  “Box Office Video,” she said.

  “No way!” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Box Office Video was one of the last truly great video stores in the area. It was also one of the last video stores, period, in the area. Staffed by a disaffected skeleton crew of art school dropouts, dudes with face tattoos, and film nerds even more pretentious than Lucas, it was stocked with mostly rare and foreign films. I had been known to spend hours there, stalking the aisles looking for the perfect fix.

  “I need to show you something,” she said.

  She gunned it around a slow-moving Oldsmobile.

  “Is it Last Tango in Paris?” I said. “Because I saw that once with my dad and the experience traumatized me deeply.”

  “It’s not,” she said.

  I watched her face to see if she was going to give me any other clues. I got nothing.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Proceed.”

  When we got to the store, we walked past a clerk I recognized who seemed to have piercings in every visible part of his face. He was watching Repo Man, and as we walked through the door, we were just in time to watch a police officer look into the trunk of the car, only to get vaporized by a flash of blinding light and leave behind a smoking pair of boots. The clerk laughed, taking a sip from a two liter of Mountain Dew.

  We kept walking through the store until we reached the enormous foreign section at the back. It was organized by country.

  “Iran, Ireland . . . Italy,” said Raina, walking past a long row of cases.

  “Just tell me what movie it is,” I said. “I’ve seen everything in this section.”

  “Ohhhhh,” she said. “Well then, Mr. Fancy, you must be so bored right now.”

  She finally settled on a tape, and plucked it off the shelf before I could see what it was. There were a lot of DVDs in the store, but they also had an impressive collection of VHS tapes, and even a VCR you could rent if, like most people, you’d sold yours years ago. Raina brought her selection up to the counter and the clerk started to scan the barcode.