Freeze Frame

by Heidi Ayarbe

  She pointed to the notebook I always carried around: the one with Scene Three. “What would Jason like to see you doing? Maybe you can write about it.”

  “Writing doesn’t help.”

  “What do you write about?”

  “That day. I need to figure out if I—” I stopped.

  “If you what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe you could write about other things.”

  I chewed on my lip. The edges of the notebook curled in. I had filled every page but one with that scene.

  “Just think about it, Kyle. What would Jason wish for you?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “I think it does.”

  I glared. “Why? Why would that matter?”

  “Because you were friends. I think you forget that sometimes.”

  I shook my head. “I never forget that Jason was my best friend.”

  “No. But you do forget that you were his.”

  36

  It was weird to be alive. Everything was under my control that night in the shed. I was even relieved. It made sense to me. I wanted to die.

  Then I didn’t.

  I had Chase. I had books and Mr. Cordoba. And I didn’t want to leave them. But I was stuck. I didn’t want to be Freeze Frame anymore. I didn’t want to live my life in Scene Three. But I didn’t know how to move forward, either. Jase had said, Shit happens. Maybe that was his way of telling me I hadn’t killed him on purpose. Jase would be the first to hold that against me if I had. He’d have probably found a way to haunt me, like in The Amityville Horror, or possess me like in The Exorcist, if that were true. And so far I hadn’t projectile-vomited green baby food.

  Over the weekend, most of the snow melted, leaving patchy spots of dirt and ice all over the graveyard. If I squinted, it almost looked like a winter quilt. I brushed a pile of slush from Jase’s marker.

  “Chase left me this great drawing.” I sat on the least snowy spot near Jason’s grave. “He might be an artist like you someday.” I pulled out the drawing. “See? He even drew the orange shoes.”

  I tucked the drawing into my pocket. “I guess I just wanted to tell you I’m still here. That’s pretty dumb, I know. If I weren’t, you’d probably be the first to know.” I tapped my fingers on his grave. “And, um, thanks, you know, for the message. I think I get it.”

  When I got up to go, I left a piece of apple pie on his grave, without the top crust. “I miss you, Jase,” I said.

  I returned to the library early Monday morning to start my in-house suspension.

  “Mr. Cordoba?” I peeked in the door.

  Cordoba sat reading the The Nevada Appeal, sipping his morning cup of coffee. “Nice to have you back, Mr. Caroll.”

  Relief flooded my body.

  “Well, get in and close the door.” He handed me a pile of worksheets and instructions from my teachers. “It looks like you’ll be busy.”

  “Yes, sir.” I picked up my assignments and took them to the table.

  “What happened to your hands?”

  “Just an accident.”

  Mr. Cordoba looked at my cast and bandaged hand, then back into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think I am.” I sat down and stared out the window. The buses pulled into the parking lot, spewing students out into the winter grayness. My notebook lay in front of me. One page left to fill—one director left to use. And then I’d need a title. I’d written fourteen different versions, from Tarantino to Iñárritu. None of them, though, had turned out quite right. I flipped through the pages, scene after scene, until I got to the last page. Blank.

  “You returned the book of poems,” Cordoba said.

  I nodded.

  “What did you think?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never really read poetry before.” I looked around the library. This was definitely not something any self-respecting fifteen-year-old guy would want people to know about him.

  “Most people don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Read poetry.”

  I nodded. “I can see why.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Caroll?”

  “Well, um. It’s kinda weird. Words missing. A little confusing. No connectors. Mrs. Beacham is big into connectors.”

  “Connectors?”

  “And. But. However. Whereas. You know.”

  “Were there any poems you liked?”

  I thought for a while. “I liked the one called ‘Suppose.’ I really liked the title.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned close to the radiator, warming up. “Because suppose means, I dunno, I guess it means there’re other possibilities.” I remembered the shed. Suppose I lived.

  Mr. Cordoba nodded.

  I got up and tossed my notebook into the garbage. Suppose. Suppose I forgot about it. All of it. Suppose it didn’t matter if I remembered.

  That afternoon, I crouched behind the Dumpsters and peeked around the corner, watching the kids trudge to the buses.

  “Hey Kyle. Pssst!” Chase stood in front of the Dumpster.

  “Chase! What’re you doing here?”

  “What happened to your hands? How come you’re wearing a cast?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did they do that to you?”

  “Who?”

  “The ones who hurt you before?”

  “No, Chase. I don’t think I have to worry about them anymore.”

  “Oh.” He let out a slow whistle. “Then what happened to your hands?”

  Unless I told him, he’d never quit asking, and we’d be out there all afternoon. Chase could go on for hours, and I had to get back to the library. “I punched the shed the other night. No big deal.”

  “Oh. That’s not a smart thing to do.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Is it scratchy?”

  “What?”

  “Your arm.”

  I knocked on the cast. “No. Not really.”

  “That’s good, then.” Chase looked relieved.

  “Anyway, thank you. For the card and the drawing.” The buses started to pull out of the lot. “You’re going to miss the bus, Chase.”

  Chase shook his head. “I’m going to Mike’s today. He’s over there keeping watch.” I peered around the corner. Mike was on his hands and knees staring at something in the grass with a magnifying glass. Great lookout.

  Chase opened his backpack and pulled out some duct tape. “We noticed you could use this.”

  “For what?”

  Chase pointed to my shoes. “The sole is coming off. And neither of us are cobblers. But we saw on the FX Channel that duct tape is great for everything.”

  “You’re allowed to watch FX?”

  “Mike’s family has DISH, and his big brother let us watch it the other day. We watched The Man Show. It was quite informative.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  Chase pulled out some scissors, and the two of us taped the sole of my left shoe back together. He stood back and admired the patch job. “That stuff is really great.” He eyed the tape I held in my hands.

  “Why don’t you keep it? If I need more, I’ll borrow it.”

  He grinned. “Good idea. I think I’m more organized than you, anyway.” He looked down at my shoes. “I’ve been thinking you need a bodyguard name,” he said. “Like…Orange Dragon.”

  “Orange Dragon, huh?” It sounded like a superhero Jase would’ve drawn. “I like it.”

  “Me, too,” said Chase. “Very scary.”

  A car pulled into the parking lot. Mike whistled three times, then hooted like an owl. Chase hooted back. “That’s our signal.”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Listen closely. Mills Park. Saturday. Noon. Fly kites.”

  “On the sly?”

  He nodded. “It’s BYOK.”

  “BYOK?”

  “Bring your own kite.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  Mike hooted again and Chase left.

/>   37

  One morning, Mr. Cordoba was busy in his office. I wandered around the library, browsing the shelves, looking for other books Jason had checked out. I’d already read The Catcher in the Rye twice but didn’t want to let it go just yet.

  The back windows of the library faced the track. The cheerleaders were practicing some pyramid thing. Mel’s cheeks were flushed in the chilly December wind, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. I didn’t see Brooke anywhere.

  Kohana walked by with his camera hanging around his neck, his black hair sticking out of the bottom of a stocking cap, green jacket flapping in the wind. He had his hands shoved into the pockets of his baggy jeans. He’d stop and stare at something for a while, fidget with his camera, then snap a picture. After a while, he made his way to the flagpole and sat at its base.

  The radiator clicked on, its heat fogging the windows. I leaned against the pane, icy glass cool against my forehead. I returned to the tables and started on the day’s assignments.

  “It looks like you need a new notebook, Mr. Caroll.” Cordoba held my notebook in his hands. “I found this in the garbage.”

  It was like the damned scene was chasing me. “Did you read it?” I grabbed it from him.

  “No.”

  I sighed, relieved.

  “I noticed that you write a lot.”

  “This? It’s just, um, director’s notes.” How lame did that sound?

  “Director’s notes?”

  “Yeah. It’s a dumb thing I started to do. Writing out a scene from my life, but trying to figure out how some of my favorite directors would direct the same scene.”

  “So that entire notebook is just one scene from your life?”

  I flipped through the pages. “Yeah.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Not really.”

  “How many directors did you use?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Is it finished?”

  “No. I still have room for one more director.”

  “And?”

  “Couldn’t think of one.” I moved to throw the notebook back in the garbage and hesitated. “Besides, no director can edit the past. These directors can’t even remember it.”

  Mr. Cordoba took a sip of coffee. “Why don’t you just set it aside?”

  I walked to the garbage can. “That’s what I tried to do until you took it out of the garbage.”

  “I see. You’re throwing away the past.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Mr. Cordoba went back to his desk and opened up a book to read.

  “What?”

  He looked up from the book. “What, what, Mr. Caroll?”

  “Aren’t you going to come at me with one of your philosophies? About making peace with the past?”

  “What would you like me to say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Cordoba closed his book. “Will the past make sense if you throw it away?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I chucked the notebook in the garbage.

  Mr. Cordoba’s fingers slid over the bumpy scar. He went back to his office and returned with a notebook. He handed it to me.

  “I can’t write that scene anymore, Mr. Cordoba.”

  “Then don’t. New notebook. New scenes.” He returned to his book.

  What scenes? I was already a master of forgetting, not even counting the shed. It was like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, when a guy gets his memories erased. One by one, and no matter how hard he tries to hold on to them, his memories disappear.

  That had started to happen to me. I was forgetting what Jason looked like. His face got blurry in my mind, like in those old family photos. You knew who the people are, but they aren’t in focus. Same with his voice. I tried to remember how he sounded when he laughed. I didn’t think I’d ever get his voice back.

  It made me so sad to see that Jase was fading away. Fade out. Jason.

  Mr. Cordoba had put his book on the desk. He watched me and motioned to the notebook in the garbage. “Can I hold it for you? If by the end of the year you don’t want it, you can throw it away.”

  “Whatever.” Cordoba could be really weird sometimes, fishing old notebooks out of the garbage. I flipped through the blank pages of the new notebook. “So which director should I use for the new scenes?” I asked aloud, kind of to myself.

  “Why not you? You could direct your own memories.” Cordoba looked at the clock. “It’s time to get to work, Mr. Caroll.”

  I worked through my day’s assignments. The new notebook lay on the desk, hundreds of blank pages before me. I had a lot of scenes to write.

  My pajama pants stuck to my ankles. I crouched down to squeeze out the dew. I did that only to catch my breath. I’d never seen a gun before.

  “New notebook,” I whispered, crossing out what I wrote. “New scenes.” Now I just had to remember.

  38

  In-house suspension were some of the best weeks I’d had. I finished my work early, then read. Sometimes I’d practice remembering. Something—anything—about Jase that didn’t have to do with the shed. But all the memories got mixed up, out of order—just like that guy in Memento. He had to write notes all over his body to remember, and he still got it wrong in the end.

  Leaving the library one afternoon, I ran into Kohana sitting at the base of the flagpole. “Miss the bus?”

  He nodded, cleaning the lens of his camera.

  “How long do you have to wait?”

  He pulled out his watch. “Just a few more minutes. Then my grandma will be here.”

  We sat for a minute in silence. I messed with my bike gears.

  “You still stuck at the library with Scarface? I heard what happened with Alex and those guys.”

  I leaned my head against the flagpole. “I’m not suspended anymore, but I go to the library a lot.”

  “Does Scarface ever talk to you?” Kohana asked.

  “Cordoba? Sometimes. I don’t think he likes to talk, though.”

  Kohana wasn’t big on talking, either. He looked at my cast. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I, um, punched our shed.”

  “Shitty day?” He put his camera away.

  “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

  “So how do you ride your bike?”

  I smirked and showed him how I managed to balance and steer with my cast while using my bandaged hand for brakes.

  “Impressive.” He nodded. “Very Cirque du Soleil.”

  “So”—I motioned to his camera—“what do you take pictures of?”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Everything. Some might say nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I take pictures of things—things most people don’t pay attention to. Objects tell stories, you know.” He shrugged. “You probably don’t get it.”

  “Yeah, I do.” I touched the Dimex in my pocket.

  “Maybe your shed has stories,” he said.

  The metal from the flag clinked against the pole. “Too many.”

  He zipped up his backpack. “You get it.”

  “So, um, who started calling you Clock?” I asked, just to get away from the shed’s stories.

  He smirked. “I did.”

  I must’ve looked pretty shocked, because he laughed aloud. “Irony, man. Irony. You’re the only one at school who calls me by my name.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re the only one who knows it.”

  “Why?”

  “No one else ever asked.” Kohana shivered and leaned against the flagpole. I sat next to him and picked at the tape on my shoe.

  His grandma pulled up in an old two-tone Dodge Dart. She had long black hair clipped behind her ears, and black eyes. She wore tight jeans and a tighter sweater. Kohana’s grandma was hot.

  “Dude, that’s your grandma?”

  Kohana nodded. “It kinda sucks to have a grandma better-looking than me. Like, she’s way out of my league.”
<
br />   I cracked up. “And I thought a cheerleader for a sister was bad.”

  “Yeah, Melanie’s pretty sweet-lookin’.”

  I cringed.

  “Well, you’re the one checking out my gram.”

  Then we both laughed.

  Kohana’s grandma leaned her head out of the car. “Kohana, are you ready?” she asked.

  He turned to me. “Gotta go. Thanks for the company.”

  I was biking off when Kohana shouted, “Wait! Just a sec.” I pedaled over to him. He pulled out his camera, lay on the asphalt, and snapped a picture.

  “What’d you take the picture of?” I asked, looking on the ground.

  “Another story,” he said, getting in the car. “Maybe someday you’ll tell it to me.”

  I looked under the bike and all around.

  “See you tomorrow, Kyle.” He waved.

  “See you.”

  39

  I held Jason’s Dimex in my hand, just one of the many things he had left behind—one of the many stories. I liked how Kohana thought about objects.

  The planet set on the ceiling told a story—like the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! and Frank Miller posters, my orange shoes, a ton of things I hadn’t thought about. I scanned my bedroom and saw the pieces of paper sticking out from the pages of the R volume in the encyclopedia set my parents were so excited to get me for my thirteenth birthday—now with one volume missing. All I wanted was the original poster from Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie that Jase and I saw on eBay. That or a dog. Hell, even a T-shirt would’ve been okay. But Mom and Dad had gone on a better-my-mind-and-purge-it-of-popular-culture kick. Probably because I had gotten four Cs the first semester. I pulled the pieces of paper from the encyclopedia and smiled.

  Only Jase could turn a disastrous thirteenth birthday into something cool.

  I brought out the notebook and wrote.

  UNTITLED: SCENE ONE—PTBP Syndrome (Post-Traumatic Birthday Present Syndrome) A blazing cake glows through the window. A family gathers around the table singing “Happy Birthday.”

  CLOSE-UP: Kyle has his eyes closed.

  CUT TO: scene in Kyle’s head: He’s hanging up Silent Movie next to his Blazing Saddles poster to complete the Mel Brooks movie poster collection.