Play Me

by Laura Ruby

  “That’s what I thought,” I say.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What are you going to do with your life?”

  “I’m already doing it,” I say, waggling my eyebrows at her.

  “I mean with the rest of your life.”

  I shrug. “I’m already doing that, too. I’m going to make movies.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. But I’ve been doing the movie thing since I was thirteen.”

  “Five whole years?” she says. “Wow.”

  “Cut it out. It’s a long time. Feels like a long time. I just want to get to the next step already. We’re doing well in the contest. Really well. And we even had a meeting with MTV.”

  “I know,” she says. “Joe told me.”

  “Joe? When did you talk to him?”

  “I talk to him every day, Eddy. He’s in my history class. You know that. Gina’s in my classes, too.”

  I knew this, but I didn’t think about Joe and Lucinda talking every day. Why would they have to talk every day? What would they talk about? And what would Gina tell her? “How come you didn’t say anything?”

  “About Joe being in my classes?”

  “About MTV.”

  “I figured you’d tell me about it when you wanted to tell me,” she says. She says all this like she found out I got good SAT scores or threw the winning basket at a game. The strawberry ice cream makes a slimy pool at the bottom of my bowl.

  “Well, it’s no big deal,” I say.

  “Joe says you think it’s a big deal.”

  “Again with Joe.”

  “What are you talking about?” she says. “You’re not jealous of Joe, are you?”

  “Do I have reason to be jealous of Joe?”

  She gets up from her chair and sits in my lap. “You’re really a romantic, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely not,” I say.

  She kisses me. “That’s so sweet.”

  Double Indemnity

  It’s funny which memories come to you and when, interrupting the flow of your life like weird, jarring flashbacks in a bad film. I’m sitting in my garage with Rory. Joe and Gina are AWOL. Normally I would be annoyed that they were late. Normally I would have a pile of scripts and I’d be in a big hurry to go over them. After five minutes I’d be calling their cells and if they didn’t answer texting: WHERE R U???

  But I’m not texting anyone. I’m remembering how we got our name. I remember a sheet of paper where we’d written 21-Inch Thumb, the Pirates of Destiny, Booty Call, Caffeine Dreams, Boys of Summer, and Three. Joe liked Three. Rory liked 21-Inch Thumb. I didn’t like any of them.

  “Well, then, let’s go with 21-Inch Thumb.”

  “I don’t think anyone will know what it means.”

  “Who cares?” Rory said.

  “Okay, I don’t know what it means,” I said.

  Rory said, “I don’t know what it means, either. That’s what’s cool about it.”

  My mom was washing the cookie trays in the sink while she listened to us. She dropped one of the trays and it made a loud noise as it hit the counter. We all jumped as if someone had just sprayed the room with BBs.

  My mom laughed. “What about the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine?”

  “The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine?” I said.

  “I read about it. It’s a disease kind of like Tourette’s. It causes people to have an excessive startle reflex. Also echolalia.”

  “Echolalia?”

  “Repeating every word that’s said to them.”

  My mom was good at that. Coming up with the fresh idea when all the other ones weren’t working. I thought I had that talent, but it turns out that I don’t. I don’t have any fresh ideas. I don’t have a script. I haven’t been able to write anything. Truth is, I don’t know what to do with Riot Grrl. I don’t know if she should become a tweaker like her addict brother or join the Russian secret police or discover psychic powers or get attacked by a genetically altered shark or take up voodoo or dye her hair blond and pledge a sorority. I don’t know what the right answer is, the ending that will get us the attention of Erin Loder and the rest of the people at MTV or, at the very least, the ending that will get us on The Producers.

  “I think you’re thinking too hard about this,” Rory says. “What’s your gut tell you?”

  “My gut’s a mess.”

  “I told you not to go to that stupid website and read all those comments. They’ve destroyed your brain cells. It’s just like in The Thing.”

  “Huh? What’s like in The Thing?”

  “You know the part where the guy’s head falls off and grows spider legs? Kind of scuttles around? That’s you. You’re a head with spider legs scuttling around.”

  “Vivid,” I say.

  “Accurate,” says Rory.

  “You’re a big freaking help.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Maybe you can find the Tin Man and blow up his computer.”

  Rory shakes his head. “Dude,” he says. “It’s just some pathetic slob who has no life and absolutely no sex and spends his time trolling the internet.”

  “You’re describing yourself.”

  “Funny. Not. You have to let the work speak for you.”

  “What work? We don’t have any work; that’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “We will.”

  “He knows me, Rory.”

  “He just thinks he does.”

  And that gives me an idea. I can’t even believe it. It just pops, like it’s been sitting there for years. I’m thinking of Gina, who started out as just another drama nerd. “Wait a minute. What if Riot Grrl wasn’t really Riot Grrl?”

  “What do you mean? Who is she?”

  “She’s actually a…a…a…twenty-six-year-old woman who has been hired to pose as Riot Grrl. Like Kim Novak in Vertigo.”

  “Okay, Vertigo. The mysterious woman. The guy with the fear of heights. Jimmy Stewart as the whiniest man in history. Totally overrated. Connection?”

  “Look, the drug-addict brother’s been gone for years, right? While he was away, he got in with the wrong people. The mob. Like, the Sopranos. We already hinted about that in earlier episodes, right? So, he doesn’t have any idea where his family is or even what they look like.”

  “This is your brain on drugs,” Rory says.

  “Right. We can call the mob the Sopranos—or maybe we can call them something weird or funny, the Pianos, maybe…”

  “The Pacinos…”

  “The Tarantinos. So the Tarantinos hire these people to live in his childhood home and act like his family, including this wild girl who’s supposed to be his sister. Her job is to get close to him, find out where he’s hidden, I don’t know, money? Drugs? Drugs and money? Diamonds?”

  “What about a statue with some microfilm in it?”

  “And then when she finds out where the statue is, she whacks him.”

  “Riot Grrl is a hit woman.”

  Rory’s grinning so hard he’s going to split his face in half.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” I say, nearly as hopeful as I was when I was standing in Lucinda’s bedroom. “Tell me it’s great.”

  “It’s totally awesome. It freaking ROCKS!” He does his horrible white guy dance all around the garage.

  “Where the hell are Gina and Joe?” I say.

  We both leap for our cell phones.

  We spend the rest of the week working on the two-part finale. Gina dyes her bobbed hair jet black and cuts the bangs high on her head. During the climatic chase scene through dark streets slick and glinting with rain, she wears a short tight dress with heels. She looks both sweet and deadly, a gorgeous assassin straight out of a French film. We film the whole chase in one long shot, following her on the Segway.

  Joe is the best drug-addicted dupe in the history of drug-addicted dupes, his face drawn and gray and hollowed out. He’s a scarecrow. He’s
a tortured jack-o’-lantern. He digs into the part like he’ll never have another acting role in his life. During the scene in which he’s about to die, he ad-libs the dialogue, telling the story of the prodigal son from the Bible, crying and slobbering the whole time he’s telling it.

  “A man has two sons. The younger son demands his share of his inheritance while his dad’s still alive. The kid takes the money and goes off and wastes all his money doing whatever, you know, partying and whatnot, and eventually has to take a job tending pigs. There he comes to his senses, so he returns home to his father. But when he gets home, his dad isn’t mad at all. He celebrates the kid’s return. When the older brother gets pissed off about it, the father tells him that he’s just happy his son came home safe. You see? We all sin. Just living is the constant weighing of sin. Like always picking the lesser of two evils every minute of every day.”

  Riot Grrl cocks her head like a weapon. We catch it from above, where Rory and I are perched in one car of the Ferris wheel filming through the grate and Riot Grrl and her drug-addicted brother swing in the car below.

  “That’s a sweet story,” Riot Grrl says. “Too bad you’re the lesser evil.” And then she pushes him out of the Ferris wheel car.

  When we watched the completed episode, we actually cheered.

  At the tennis courts Lucinda has a present for me. From the trunk of her car she drags a huge box wrapped in silver foil.

  “I don’t remember telling you that I played the guitar,” I say, tearing the wrapping paper off.

  “You deserve a reward for finishing Riot Grrl.”

  “I thought you said it was too violent.”

  “Movies aren’t my thing,” she says. “What do I know?”

  In the box is a new tennis racket that she put in an oversize box. I hold up the racket, toss it from one hand to the other. “Hey, this is pretty nice.”

  “Isn’t it? I thought you’d play better with a new one.”

  The last match we played, the score was 7–6, 6–4, the best I’d ever played against her. “You want me to play better?”

  “Sure I do,” she says. “I can always use the competition. I’ll even let you take some practice serves before we play so you can get used to the racket.”

  “Nice of you,” I say.

  “It is, isn’t it? And I figure it might keep your mind off the whole voting thing.”

  “For a while, anyway.” This round, MTV doesn’t let you see the vote counts until the official winner is announced. People can still comment, but the results are up in the air. If I wasn’t so sure that we killed it with the finale, I’d be out of my mind. Right now, the only thing that’s driving me out of my mind is Lucinda in her tennis dress.

  I practice serving for about five minutes, and then I’m ready. We flip for first serve and she wins the toss. She flounces back to the service line and bounces the ball three times. That’s her ritual, three bounces, then the toss, then the snap of the racket on the ball. I know because I watched the video of her playing. I watched it over and over again, loving the way her arm muscles bulged and striated at the moment of contact. Something you can barely see in person, only on video. Press Play, and Lucinda is a ballerina. Press Pause, and she’s a warrior.

  She serves out wide, but I’m already there. I smack it down the line. Her eyes widen in surprise, then she smiles. “See? You’re better already.”

  Her next serve is straight up the middle. This one I get my racket on, but not as solidly as I’d like. She rushes up to the net and puts it away.

  “Hey, we’re tied,” I say.

  “15–15,” she says, bouncing on her toes.

  An hour later we really are tied, with a set apiece and three games each. She’s not fooling around anymore. She’s not grinning or flashing the short shorts under her skirt. She wants to win. And the more she wants to win, the more I want to win.

  She whips a ball past me. I can only stand there and watch it. “Out!” I say. “Game.”

  “What?” she says. “That was in.”

  “No, it was like a mile outside the baseline,” I say. It was a mile outside the baseline.

  “Come on,” she says. “That was my point.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I say.

  “Eddy! I’ve been playing this game since I was three.”

  “So?” I say. “That doesn’t mean your ball wasn’t out.”

  She has her hands on her hips, her racket tucked underneath one arm, the handle sticking out from her body. Her brows are furrowed, her face and neck are flushed and blotchy, and she taps her foot in annoyance. Then she grabs the racket handle and swings at the air. “Fine. Your point.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll play the point over.”

  “No, let’s just move on. Your game. 4–3.”

  “Serve it up, Lucinda. I want to play the point over. Maybe I didn’t see it right.”

  “You said you did.”

  “So, maybe I was wrong.”

  “You said you weren’t.”

  I don’t know why she seems so mad. We’re just fooling around anyway. “I don’t want to fight about this.”

  “Neither do I. So let’s finish, okay?” She crouches and waits for me to serve. Finally I do. She plays even more ferociously, if that’s possible, but I’ve broken her serve and the match is pretty much over anyway. The last two games go by in about ten minutes. 6–4, 4–6, 6–4.

  “Well,” she says when she comes to the net. “I guess that racket was a mistake.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I feel weird. I want to forget about the match.

  I want her to forget about it.

  I know how to make her forget.

  “So, how about coming over to my house? Dad has to work today.”

  She bends and pours water over her hair. As she’s toweling off, she says, “I can’t today, Eddy. I’ve got a history project I have to do.”

  “You can’t be serious. Graduation is next week!”

  “Yeah, but I still have to do this project. It’s a group project and I said I would meet someone later this afternoon.”

  I don’t like the way she says someone. “Someone?”

  “Someone.”

  “Who?”

  She sighs. “Joe.”

  “You’re meeting Joe for a project. What kind of project?”

  “We’re making a porno,” she says.

  “Ha,” I say. “That’s hilarious.”

  “I already told you, Eddy. It’s for history.”

  “So why were you keeping it a secret?”

  “I was not keeping it a secret. It’s just that I know how jealous you get if I mention Joe’s name. So I didn’t feel like mentioning it.”

  “I don’t get jealous.”

  She rolls her eyes. In the bright sunlight they look nearly colorless.

  “Do you have to meet him today?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “It’s the only time we both had free.” She smiles a little, reaches out, and slaps me with the damp towel. “If it makes you feel better, it’s not a sexy project. We’re doing the Bible. Well, not really. Mary Magdalene. We have to do a PowerPoint presentation on it. Music, voice-over, pictures, the works. We almost weren’t allowed to do it. One of the other kids said it was against separation of church and state.” She laughs. “Joe took care of him.”

  “Great,” I say.

  “Eddy—”

  “No, I mean it. That’s great. I’m glad my friends get along.” When I say the word friends, I spit a little.

  She stares at me. Then she stands on her tiptoes to kiss me. “Thanks. I’ll call you later?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I love…”

  But before I can get it out, she’s already gone.

  I get home and find a brush, a screwdriver, a can of white paint, and a tarp on the kitchen table. Taped to the paint is a note: Make yourself useful. Paint the garage. Dad didn’t sign it.

  I don’t bother showering. I drag the stuff outside. I try to pry the can open, but the s
crewdriver keeps slipping in my hand. “Bitch,” I say. Next door, Mrs. Winston is pruning her bushes with a pair of gardening shears big enough to take out a redwood. She glares at me.

  “Not you, Mrs. Winston,” I say. “The can. I can’t get it open.”

  She shakes her head and lops off a branch with one snap of the shears. I almost say, “Actually, Mrs. Winston, I was talking about you,” but I don’t. I don’t care about Mrs. Winston. I don’t care about anyone except for Lucinda, and she’s off reading the Bible with some bug-eyed pumpkin head who’s supposedly my friend. What’s up with this? She’s already gotten into college, she doesn’t need the grade anymore, so why would she choose to spend time with Joe over me? I slap the paint on the garage, spraying it all over my arms and T-shirt. Joe was hot for her even before we started going out. He tried to talk me out of being with her. Maybe he’s still mad about it, still trying to get her.

  I keep painting, the sun beating down on me, burning the back of my neck. I try to think about movies. My favorite shots, my favorite scenes, my favorite lines of dialogue. Fight Club: “First rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club.” Clerks: “There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?” Rear Window: “Why would Thorwald want to kill a little dog? Because it knew too much?” But all I keep seeing is Joe touching Lucinda, Lucinda touching Joe. Joe saying something sensitive and caring and creepy like, “I really respect women,” or, “I think players get what they deserve,” or, “The Bible says that women and men were both created in God’s image,” and then unzipping her dress. I blink hard to erase the visuals, but I can’t.

  The phone rings inside. Nobody but telemarketers call on the house phone. Nobody except…I drop the paintbrush in the bucket of paint and run inside.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “I’m looking for Ed Rochester.”

  “This is Ed,” I say.

  “Ed! Erin Loder here. How are you?”

  “Good! Great!”

  “So, listen. We watched the finale of Riot Grrl 16 and I have to say, that was some brilliant work. Totally surprising and yet totally logical. Joe and Gina were amazing. We loved it. We really loved it.”