This Book Is Not Yet Rated

by Peter Bognanni

  We were quiet on the way out, but when we got there, Mom started talking as we hoofed it over the gravel path to his spot.

  “No tattoos,” she said.

  I looked around the empty cemetery, and then back at Mom.

  “When you’re in LA,” she said. “I don’t want you coming back with any tattoos. Or face piercings. And don’t do any adult films, even if someone offers you a lot of money.”

  “Mom,” I said. “Believe me. I am not qualified to work in adult films. In any way.”

  “You never know. People go out there, and all kinds of crazy things happen. This girl I went to college with was on one episode of a soap opera and then she got addicted to Quaaludes.”

  “I don’t think anyone takes those anymore.”

  She was walking briskly, holding on to a Tupperware container of eggplant and cashew salad with fresh basil. I’d spent most of the morning helping her prepare it, and I even managed a decent chiffonade on the basil, which earned an impressed smile. Now she had the container tucked under her arm like a football. I was barely keeping up with her when she came to a stop.

  “Okay,” she said, squinting into the sun. “I’m sorry, but I’m allowed to worry. I don’t have your dad anymore, and so if you go out there and get caught up in something, I’ll be all alone. And that is not a possibility I’m willing to think about.”

  “I’m not staying, Mom. And I promise I won’t get involved in erotic films or Quaaludes.”

  She took a few deep breaths. She got allergies this time of year, and her eyes were a little red. Dad’s grave was in sight now, and she peered over at it before looking back at me.

  “Your dad always said I should leave you alone more often. That you’d find your way. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  “He told me you were smart and you weren’t boring. So you’d find something interesting to do with your life. It might take a little while, but eventually you’d find your thing. He wasn’t worried.”

  “Well,” I said, “things haven’t been boring. He was right about that, I guess.”

  “He was right about a lot of things,” she said.

  We both walked to the foot of the hill and looked up. His stone was at the top, in a row with a few others. Some of them were already there when he died. There were a couple new additions.

  “But not everything,” she said.

  I looked up at the stone.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He thought he’d have time to do it all, Ethan. Every little thing he wanted to do. Go on a trip to Europe to see all the locations in his favorite foreign films. Write one more book. Take some filmmaking classes. He was sure he’d have time to make it all happen. It was another thing he never doubted.”

  She opened the container of salad and plucked a piece of cubed eggplant off the top. She put it in her mouth and chewed.

  “But we don’t have all the time in the world,” she said.

  She put a hand on the back of my neck. Then she walked up the hill and made us a picnic by Dad’s spot. We ate some salad and sat in the cool air and the warm sun. I wasn’t in the habit of talking to graves, so I just left Dad his gifts in a moment by myself, and then I made my way to the car, so Mom could drive me to the airport. Before she dropped me off with my new rolling suitcase, we sat there looking at the place.

  “I can’t remember the last time I left here,” I said.

  “It’s been a while,” she said. “You were married to that theater.”

  I nodded.

  “It was my place,” I said.

  She looked at me, and then stared out the windshield at the planes taking off. Then she laughed.

  “What?” I said.

  “People get more than one,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “I guess,” I said.

  It was time to get out of the car. I only had an hour or so to make it through security. Mom walked around and got my suitcase for me. Then she made sure I had my boarding pass. I hugged her, and even though I was coming back soon, I could tell this was just the practice round. Soon enough I’d probably be headed somewhere else, and probably for longer than a week.

  I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, but I waited to look at it until I was stuck in the security line.

  “I’m taking you hiking,” it said.

  There was a picture of a trail that went right below the Holly-wood sign. Raina’s arm was in the shot, flexing into a muscle.

  “Hmmm,” I wrote back. “Is there an indoor version?”

  There was no response for a moment. I expected an ironic “ha-ha,” maybe a frowning emoji at my subpar joke. Instead I got: “I’ve really missed you.”

  I looked at the words.

  We had been texting a lot since she left, more than I expected. And for the last few nights, she had been counting down the days until my arrival. Texting me nothing but the number before she went to bed. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And now predictably, a zero came through, enclosed in its little text bubble.

  “0”

  I closed my eyes a moment then opened them again.

  “I’ve missed you too,” I wrote.

  The line in front of me was moving faster now. A family up ahead was fumbling with their devices, emptying their pockets of all the little things they carried around to make it through a day. Soon it would be my turn.

  “It’s weird,” she wrote, “but I feel kind of nervous.”

  It was like she read my mind. My heart slowed just to hear her acknowledge it.

  “Why?” I wrote. “It’s just me.”

  There was no response.

  “Maybe this whole ‘hiking’ thing is too much pressure,” I said. “We should probably do something more low-key like eat tacos in a dark room.”

  I was just filling space. Typing to keep the message going. I was almost to the front of the line.

  “Don’t say it like that,” she wrote.

  “Say what like what?”

  “Just you.”

  “But it is just me.”

  Another pause. I stood in front of a conveyer belt. It wanted to swallow my phone. I pulled off my shoes and then looked down at the screen one last time.

  “That’s enough,” it said.

  I read the words a couple times. Then I darkened the screen and tossed the phone in a bin. I watched it roll down the conveyer.

  An hour disappeared and the next thing I knew, I was stuck in this seat. I was a little uneasy at first. I hadn’t been on a plane in a few years. Luckily, I remembered my computer. I opened it up and stared at a file on my desktop. A week after the demolition, Lucas had sent everyone a huge zip file. It was all his footage from the Green Street edited into eight individual episodes. The file was called: This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

  In the last few weeks, I had fallen behind on my film viewing. It was a four-hour flight, and this would probably get me all the way there. The plane was moving now, and I was about to hit play, when suddenly my finger stopped in midair. It must have looked kind of silly, but I couldn’t press play. Instead I closed my laptop. Maybe I’d watch it later if I got bored. For now, I looked out the window as the plane picked up speed. I tried to focus on the world blurring past.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once upon a time, in an uncertain world without Netflix, I had a job at a little campus movie theater in Minneapolis called the Oak Street Cinema. We showed indie films, classics, foreign films, and the occasional trashy horror flick. It was a beautiful little community of nerds and weirdos and if I had never been a part of it, I would not have written this book. Sadly, it no longer exists, but my treasured memories of stale Dots and obscure Icelandic comedies live on.

  And without my father, Sal Bognanni, and his contagious love of cinema,
I might not have fallen in love with movies the way I did. I think we saw forty matinees of Return of the Jedi, and you never complained. You showed me there was no better way to spend an afternoon. And Kathy Bognanni made sure I was always reading books, too. For that I am forever grateful. I think books and movies made up at least 50 percent of my childhood, and I have you two to thank for that.

  Thank you, as always, to my family. Junita, who still says encouraging things no matter how many times I’m convinced that a book is no good. You believe in me more than I believe in me. Thank you to Roman who is now old enough to ask me, when I’m alternately laughing and frowning at the computer, “Are you writing, Dada?” And to Nico, who was just born, for sleeping sometimes, and smiling at me. I can’t wait to take you to the movies.

  Thank you to Namrata Tripathi for vastly improving this book. I wish you the best of luck on your new journey. It was a true privilege to work with you. Thank you to Jessica Dandino Garrison for bringing it all home with such insight and enthusiasm.

  And to everyone else at Dial who seem to exist only to do nice things for my books.

  Thanks to Kirby Kim, the man, the legend, for always going above and beyond, and to Brenna English-Loeb and the rest of the crew at Janklow & Nesbit. And thanks to Macalester College for letting me talk about stories all day with the best colleagues and students in the world.

  Finally, since I have a tiny soapbox: go see independent films at your neighborhood movie theater! It will grow your soul and give you an excuse to eat a box of Sour Patch Kids.

  PETER BOGNANNI is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the LA Times award for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and has been adapted into a feature film. His first book for teens, Things I’m Seeing Without You, was hailed as “required reading,” “compelling,” “original,” and “hilarious” by critics and peers. Peter teaches creative writing at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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