Reel Life Starring Us

by Lisa Greenwald

  People remain quiet. I just look at Chelsea. I wonder how she feels after saying that. I wonder if she feels better. I wonder if everyone will see her differently now.

  Only a few people leave; most stay and wait for the interviews.

  Our first interviewee is a tall, lanky girl with long hair. I don’t know her, and obviously Chelsea has never spoken to this girl in her life.

  “So where should I start?” she asks.

  I have the camera in my hand, and I’m ready to hit Record. “Anywhere you want.”

  “Well, first of all, I can’t believe that you”—she looks at Chelsea—“would even care to hear what other people think of the school. I’m surprised you’re not just making this video of your own little friends.”

  Chelsea stays quiet. Was this girl not listening when Chelsea gave that whole speech a few minutes ago?

  “Delete that from the video,” the girl says. “I just had to get it off my chest.”

  I nod. “Let’s just start with your name and something interesting about yourself.”

  “Interesting? Something I find interesting or something you guys would find interesting?” She crosses and uncrosses her legs, and leans back in the chair.

  “Either,” I say.

  “Well, I’m Christine Whitmore. And, um, I collect Tshirts. I have over four hundred Tshirts.” She laughs. “But that’s probably not interesting. They’re not cool; no one here thinks they’re cool.”

  I keep recording, and she goes on and on. “No one likes me here. Can that be in the video? People treat me like I’m some kind of freak because I don’t play tennis and buy fancy clothes.” She goes on and on about all the ways she feels excluded and ostracized and then she says, “Happy anniversary, Rockwood Hills. This school’s awful.” She gets up and walks away.

  “She’s always been so crazy,” Chelsea says. “Now she’s even crazier! That was just a whole bunch of whining.”

  “I don’t know if she’s crazy,” I say. “But it was whining.”

  After that Kendall and Molly come skipping in, and they don’t even acknowledge me except to ask me if the camera’s on and if I’m ready to tape them.

  “We’re total stars,” Molly says. “You’re gonna thank us for making your video so awesome.”

  “Um, hmm,” I mumble. I can’t believe I wanted to be friends with these people so badly. Worse than that is that I can’t believe I still kind of do. But they’re happy. They like it here. So why wouldn’t I want to be a part of that?

  That’s what this is all about. That’s what being popular is. The popular people seem happy, and so everyone wants to be friends with them. But if Chelsea’s like the rest of them, it’s all an act. Maybe none of them are as happy as they seem.

  “Just go,” Chelsea says. I’ve never seen her act this way around them before. It’s like she doesn’t even care that they’re here. She’s not making eye contact with them. I wonder if they got into a fight.

  I tell them to say their names and an interesting fact about themselves, because after Christine the T-shirt hoarder, I think it’s a good way to get each clip started.

  “I’m Kendall. I love shopping.”

  Boring.

  “I’m Molly. I collect shoes.”

  Boring.

  They go on and on about how Rockwood Hills is so great, how they love each other and the school.

  But I don’t know if I buy it.

  And then after that it’s interview after interview after interview of whining.

  “Everyone thinks I’m a dork because I want to start a mathletes team,” this kid Keith says. “But I like math—that’s the interesting thing about myself. I actually like math.”

  Chelsea cracks up at that, which makes me crack up. I realize this is the exact opposite of how we’re supposed to respond to a comment like that. But it’s just funny, the way he says it.

  “My dad’s a pilot, for people’s private planes. And I’ve met tons of famous people. But yet I’m known as the bloody-nose kid, just because I got bloody noses in fourth grade,” this kid Jordan says.

  Sophia from my gym class goes on and on about how she likes to knit, and how in other places knitting is cool.

  Even the Acceptables come in. They said they didn’t want to be part of it, but I guess they do now.

  “The thing about this place is that everyone wants to be like everyone else,” Maura says, and I think she’s onto something. “That’s just how it is. So no one wants to stand out.”

  And we ask them how we can make the school better, what we could do, what everyone could do.

  “If everybody could just be who they are and not worry about it, it would be better,” this girl Abby Howard says. “Maybe that’s cheesy and lame, but it’s true.”

  Finally, we’re done with all the interviews. I’m tired and overwhelmed. Chelsea looks the same way. Her head’s down on the table.

  “I guess it’s up to us to figure out what to do with all of this, how to turn it into something good,” I say. “We can’t just show this raw footage.”

  Chelsea sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  I text Ross to tell him I’ll be over soon to study, and Chelsea reads the text over my shoulder.

  “You’re hanging out with Ross again?” she asks, sounding more sad than angry.

  “We’re just studying.”

  Chelsea and I walk out to the parking lot together. “I’ll probably spend the whole time thinking about how to get this video done, anyway,” I say.

  I say good-bye to Chelsea and find my dad’s car. He was working from home today, so he’s going to drop me off at Ross’s house.

  “Who’s this Ross kid?” he asks.

  “Just a person.” I smile.

  “Just a person?” my dad mimics. “A little more info, please.”

  “I don’t know!” I yell. “He’s a kid in my grade, Dad. What?”

  He shakes his head. “Fine, don’t tell me anything.”

  I get to Ross’s house and his housekeeper lets me in. I feel really bad that I’ve forgotten her name, but I was only at his house one other time. I just smile and say hello.

  “Ross is upstairs,” she says.

  Did he not hear the doorbell ring? Now I have to walk all the way up the twisty staircase by myself. And I don’t know where his room is up there. I could be wandering around lost for a while—his house is really big.

  He should be here to greet me.

  And I’m not sure that I want to be alone with him in his room.

  I tiptoe up the spiral staircase, but I don’t know why I’m tiptoeing. It’s late afternoon, not three in the morning or something.

  I hear a door open as I’m walking up. Oh, please don’t let it be his mom. Or his dad. That would be even worse.

  “Dina?” I hear. It’s Ross. “I thought I heard something.”

  He’s already changed out of what he was wearing at school—dark fancy jeans with a gray thermal. He’s the only boy I know who can make a thermal look dressed up. Now he’s wearing blue shorts and a Yankees T-shirt.

  I wonder if I should tell him now or later that I’m a Red Sox fan. I wonder if he’ll care that we’re supposed to be big rivals.

  “Come in, I’m typing up a study sheet,” he says.

  I’m not sure if I’m ready to be alone in a boy’s room. That may be pathetic since I’m in eighth grade, but I can’t help it. It makes me nervous.

  He sits on his bed, and I sit in the swivel desk chair. His room is really neat—way too neat for a boy’s. Not that I’ve ever been in a boy’s room before.

  “Tell me about the New Deal,” he says.

  So I do. I tell him all about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and how he wanted to get things back on track during the Great Depression and how he started the fireside chats and all the new programs. I tell him that FDR is my favorite president.

  “You have a favorite president?” he says, like I just told him I had a favorite brand of garbage bags, somet
hing no one would care about.

  “Yeah. Don’t you?”

  “No. Never thought about it.” He laughs.

  He keeps quizzing me on history, and I’m surprising myself with how much I know. I haven’t even really started studying yet. I figured I’d officially start this weekend. If the Acceptables haven’t started yet, then I didn’t need to, either. That’s what I told myself.

  We finish the end of the study sheet, and we pretty much covered everything.

  “So, what are you doing this weekend?” he asks me.

  I wonder if I should lie. Saying I’m hanging out with Maura, Katherine, and Trisha probably seems kind of sad to someone like Ross.

  “Just hanging out,” I say.

  “Cool. Do you need any more interviews for the video, by the way?”

  “Maybe. I mean, we need as much footage as we can get. And what we have—well, we can’t use all of it.”

  He gives me a confused look. “Why not?”

  “It’s a lot of whining,” I say. “I don’t really love the school or anything, but we can’t just show people complaining. No one likes that.”

  “Well, did you get different opinions and angles and stuff?”

  “I guess. The cool part is that we had each kid say something interesting about themselves at the beginning. Everyone does really unique and cool stuff that no one even knows about.”

  “So show that,” he says, rubbing his thumb against the pages in the textbook.

  That’s an idea, actually. That shows our differences, our unique qualities. It shows we’re all different and all have something to offer and should all be accepted.

  “I think you just solved the problem! And if I know what we’re doing, I can get started on what I’m most excited about—the editing. That’s my specialty.”

  “Really.” He says it like a statement, like he doesn’t believe me.

  “What?” I smile. “I’m telling the truth.”

  “iMovie or Final Cut?” he asks, like he still doesn’t believe me.

  “Final Cut,” I tell him.

  “I’m amazing at iMovie,” he says. “But I’d love to learn Final Cut. Maybe I could help?”

  “Really?” I smile. “You’re, like, into this stuff?”

  “Totally.” He pats his bed to get me to come sit next to him. It’s a little embarrassing—that’s how you’d get a dog to come over to you. But I don’t think about it too much. He opens his laptop and starts playing some clips.

  “You shot these?” I ask. I’m sitting so close to him now, too close. I finally understand that expression too close for comfort. I want to inch away, but then I won’t be able to see the clips.

  He nods. They’re just random shots of places around Rockwood Hills, but they have a cool, artsy look to them. They zoom in on simple details, and the shots of people are all really emotional and expressive. And he put all this music in the background that fits with the shots perfectly.

  “You just do this for fun?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything sooner? I mean, we have so much in common, and you knew Chelsea and I were working on this film project …”

  “Chelsea and I …” His voice sort of trails off. “We don’t really get along that great anymore.”

  “Yeah. What’s up with that?” I ask. I know I’m being nosy. I know it’s not really my business. But I am sitting with Ross Grunner, on his bed, on his green-and-beige plaid comforter with his Yankee prints all over the wall. When you get that close to someone—like, in their space—maybe things like that do become your business.

  “She thought I liked her.” He keeps fiddling with his computer. It’s like he can’t look at me.

  “And?”

  “I do like her. Just not like that.”

  “Oh.” Now I can’t look at him, either.

  “Dina,” he says.

  “Yeah.” I still can’t look at him.

  “It’s because I like you.”

  I feel his eyes on me, and I finally look up and every bit of excitement I felt about Ross before is now suddenly gone. All I feel is scared. More scared than I’ve been in my entire life.

  “That’s cool,” I say, and laugh. I shouldn’t laugh. It seems like I’m laughing at him, which I’m not. But it seems that way anyway, and I can’t stop.

  “That’s cool?” he repeats, like he’s shocked at my response.

  “No one likes me here, so it’s cool.” I laugh again. I’m not the kind of person who always makes fun of herself. But for some reason it seems like it’s the only normal way for me to act right now.

  “Riiiiggghhht. Now you’re the one whining.” He raises his eyebrows, and then closes his computer. “Actually, I’m supposed to meet some of my boys for basketball, so I kind of have to go.”

  That can’t be true. It has to be a lie to get me out of his house. Otherwise, he would have told me about the basketball sooner. I know I did something wrong. I should have said I liked him, too. But I’m not sure. I like that he likes me, though. Isn’t that enough?

  “Okay. Well, I can walk home from here,” I tell him.

  “Cool.”

  He walks me out, and I say thanks, and he tells me he thinks I’ll do great on the test.

  “I’ll see you before the test,” I remind him.

  “Yeah, but, whatever. Just a vote of confidence.”

  I walk outside, and he closes the door behind me. I call Ali on my walk home, but she doesn’t answer.

  I feel like I messed up. But I don’t even know what I wanted to happen. Or what I want to happen now.

  But I really do want to work on the editing with him. I hope that offer still stands.

  Sasha Preston piece of advice: To ease brain

  freeze, hold your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

  Kendall and Molly e-mailed me that we should meet at Starbucks and talk, face-to-face, about everything that’s happened.

  I’m just glad to be talking to them again. I’ve still been sitting with them at lunch, but at the end of the table, and I haven’t been talking that much.

  It’s unseasonably warm for December, and we’re sitting at one of the outside tables drinking lemonade iced tea.

  “I guess I was just really upset that you didn’t tell us,” Kendall says, starting the conversation. I believe her—that she really was upset, and probably for the right reasons. Kendall sometimes makes me nervous, but underneath all of that, she does care.

  “I felt like I couldn’t,” I say, shifting in my chair. “I knew it would make things weird between us, and it did.”

  “Because you didn’t tell us,” Molly jumps in, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you by keeping it from you,” I admit. “That wasn’t my plan. I was just feeling really bad about a million things.”

  They nod. “We hope you know we’re here for you now,” Molly says, and as the words are coming out of her mouth, I’m still not sure if I believe her. I guess I should try to, at least this time.

  “But you guys acted so mean about the Dina thing,” I say, and I’m proud of myself for being so honest. “I was just assigned to work with her, and I admit I wasn’t happy about it at first, but you didn’t need to be mean. You didn’t need to accuse me of having a new friend and then leaving you guys, and you didn’t need to post that video.”

  “We’re sorry,” Kendall says. “Honestly.”

  Molly nods as she’s sipping her drink. “But we did take down the video.”

  “And for the record: I don’t like Ross. I’m sorry to say that, but I don’t. I wanted to, because it seemed like it would be the best thing, and you guys wanted me to like him. But I just don’t.”

  I feel like I’m on some kind of reality show where the camera’s on me and I have to make all these confessions, but it feels good to be doing this, to open up and be honest about everything for the first time.

  They nod like they understand, but don’t reall
y know what to say to that.

  I get a text, and since it’s obviously not from Kendall or Molly, I look at my phone, excited to see who it’s from.

  Dina.

  I wonder what she means.

  “Well, I guess the new girl doesn’t like him, either. Did you hear about what happened between her and Ross?” Molly asks. She was probably reading the text over my shoulder. Either that or she just read my mind. But she knows her name is Dina—obviously she does, because she was instrumental in posting that video. Why can’t she just say her name? After that whole conversation we just had, she should be able to say her name.

  “No. What happened?” I ask after a brain-freeze-causing sip of my half-lemonade-half-iced-tea.

  “She rejected him.”

  “Huh?” I ask. I find myself chewing on the end of my straw. It grosses me out when I do that, but sometimes I can’t help it.

  “Apparently, he was all, like, I like you and stuff, and then she was, like, cool.”

  Kendall takes over the story. “And Ross is actually bummed. Or whatever. I mean, that’s what Marcus said. So weird, right?”

  “Maybe she didn’t hear what he said,” I tell them.

  “Is she hard of hearing?” Kendall laughs. “Maybe she just doesn’t like him. Maybe he can finally know what it’s like to have someone not like him.”

  “She’s not hard of hearing.” I roll my eyes. “But she’s, I don’t know, like, innocent in that way. But really kind of cool.”

  “Cool how?” Molly asks. “Maybe if you’d just tell us, we’d understand, and we wouldn’t feel so rejected. You hang out with her a lot. So just tell us what’s so cool about her.”

  I try to think of the best way to explain this. “I don’t know. Like, alternative? But not in like the hippie way. Like, a free-thinker? I can’t explain it.”

  I hate when I can’t explain things. And I hate when I say “like” a million times. Even I think I sound stupid.

  “Well, it’s gotta be something. Otherwise, Ross wouldn’t like her.” No one says anything after that, and I don’t, either. We slurp our drinks, and I try not to think about Dina anymore. I want to call her right away and hear about the solution for the project, but I feel like it would be rude to just get up and call her and leave Molly and Kendall after our little heart-to-heart.