Now a Major Motion Picture

by Cori McCarthy

“What’s wrong?”

  “In a word? Everything.” Henrik closed his notebook and played with the short brim of his floppy hat. “New budget complications, and we’ve been getting bad press. And Cate talked on one of Eamon’s YouTube blogs about the lack of support from the studio. She’s not wrong, but Jesus, she can’t be honest like that without a backlash.”

  “Cate suffers no fools,” I said. “It’s what I like about her.”

  “She suffers, Iris. A lot.” He motioned to the reporter with a nod of his head. “The powers that be over at Vantage have sent her to pronounce the film dead. The sentencing will come out through the media, and then the producers can shut us down with a shrug. It helps them save face.” He looked at me. “It would have helped if you’d recorded that song. We would have been able to spin it as though your family was having a part in the production.”

  As if I couldn’t feel worse.

  Henrik looked like he might apologize, but shook his head and walked away instead. After a moment, I left, not realizing that Cate was stalking after me until I felt her hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I pushed you,” Cate said, surprising me so much I stopped walking.

  “You don’t seem like you apologize very often.”

  “I try not to do anything that requires an act of contrition.”

  I glanced back at the crew members and the most picturesque lake I’d ever seen. “What’s happening? They aren’t going to shut down the film, are they?”

  “Maybe. We’re over budget.” Cate stared and I thought I’d see the fire, brimstone, and mobster side of her again—at least that’s what I wanted. It was not, however, the side that was waiting. Her eyes drooped in the corners, her mouth doing something similar. “I won’t give up, Iris. I’ll die trying to get this right. I won’t give up or back down.”

  Henrik reappeared and put an arm around her waist. It looked friendly, but he took most of her weight. “Cate needs to eat, Iris. And drink water. And take a goddamn break before tonight. This is the most important scene in the movie, Cate. Remember?”

  She nodded, pushed Henrik’s arm away, and started walking toward her trailer. I watched Grace Lee’s eyes trail after her as though they were snapping paparazzi pictures.

  “Cate works every minute,” Henrik said, worry creeping into each word. “Sometimes she sends me off for the night, says we’re done, and then I wake to find she’s reworked all the dialogue and reprinted the sides.” He shook his head, and I could tell how much Henrik loved Cate. Her pain left him in pain, his expression creased. “You’d think the studio would applaud her for facing the budget constraints by taking on additional crew positions herself. Instead, they send spies to document her exhaustion and say she’s not strong enough.”

  “Would they say the same things if you were in charge?”

  Henrik knew what I meant; this was—at least in large part—because Cate had matching X chromosomes. He took off his hat and rubbed a hand through his thinning, dark hair. “If I were in charge, we wouldn’t be over budget, but the dailies would look cheap. She puts the art first. The story. It’s what makes her and this adaptation brilliant. If we can make it to the cutting room floor, it’ll all be worth it. If we can only make it…”

  “What can I do to help?” I asked, the words surprising but real. First, be honest.

  “Do you mean it?” he asked. I nodded. Henrik pointed to the reporter. “Will you talk to her? Say something optimistic. Anything. She doesn’t have photographic permission, so you don’t need to worry about your image being taken. I’ll set it up if you’re serious.”

  “I am, but…I can’t speak on behalf of the Thorne family.” I was already pulling back, already doubting my first step. “My dad will kill me.”

  “Why don’t you speak for yourself?”

  I actually laughed. When he frowned, I said, “That’s, uh, not something I’ve been encouraged to do before.”

  He scrutinized my face. “That’s crap, Iris. Believe it or not, people care what you think.”

  • • •

  I sat at a picnic table at the center of the production trailers, waiting for Henrik to bring over Grace Lee. It felt like I was inching forward on my own two feet for the first time in my life… Toward what kind of cliff, I had no idea.

  I texted Julian, replaying his talk about “my family’s fans.” I needed that to be real.

  Wish you were here. Things are getting worse.

  It was in the middle of the night in LA, but maybe I’d hear back. Julian was never away from his phone, but then maybe he was snuggled up with Elora. Maybe they’d sorted out their differences. I hoped so.

  “When I stepped foot on this set, I was told that under no circumstances would I be allowed to talk to you or your brother. Care to discuss what’s changed?”

  I looked up at Grace Lee. “Excuse me?”

  “Your family has refused to comment on the adaptation of Elementia from day one, and now you’d like to make a statement? I find I’m more curious about your change of heart than I am about your opinion.”

  Holy shit.

  “Where’s Henrik?”

  “Busy. The camera crane sunk six inches into the mud and nearly toppled into the lake.”

  “Oh no.”

  Grace wrote in her small notebook before clicking on an audio recording app on her phone. “Do you mind if I record you?”

  “No, that’s good.” This way she couldn’t claim I said something I didn’t, right?

  She saw how spooked I was and smiled. She had a good smile. Maybe she wasn’t here to eat me alive. “Let’s start with a different topic. Can you describe your relationship with your grandmother, M. E. Thorne, in a few words?”

  “Nonexistent,” I said.

  Grace squinted, and I remembered I was supposed to be helping the production.

  “My father and my grandmother were not on speaking terms during my lifetime. I only met her once.”

  “Do you remember that?”

  I shook my head, unwilling to share that snapshot of a memory with her for anything.

  “How do you think she’d feel about a film adaptation of her deeply personal and effecting story? A story written about the untimely death of her own daughter?”

  I gargled air. It sounded horrible, and Grace looked way too excited by such an emotional reaction.

  Start with honesty, Iris, Cate Collins said, matter-of-fact and calm in my thoughts.

  “My dad told me she wouldn’t have been pleased about an adaptation,” I admitted. “She wasn’t a fan of Hollywood, although I think that’s his opinion and not hers. The truth is that I came on this set with daydreams about shutting down the production. Now I’m willing to break my family’s cardinal rule about talking to the press to save it.”

  Grace’s smile deepened, and she wrote in her notebook. “Tell me what’s changed.”

  “The people. At first I thought they were all brainwashed by the fandom, but everyone is working hard. Every time something goes wrong, everyone steps up. It’s inspiring, and Cate’s giving her all.”

  “How so?” Grace asked too fast.

  “She can handle everything. She knows every detail, and she works endless hours.”

  “You’re saying she’s micromanaging the production?”

  “What? No, no.” I pinched my leg and pushed forward. “The actors are…great. Shoshanna Reyes and Julian Young and Eamon O’Brien. All great.”

  “I’ve been told O’Brien hasn’t filmed yet.”

  “Yeah, but he’s still great. Like as a human.” Say something other than great, Iris. “Terrific.”

  Terrific?

  “Do you have a comment about the rumor that Shoshanna Reyes will be pulling out of the production?”

  “That’s bull crap,” I snapped. Grace’s smirk tightened as she scribbled; I�
�d been played. Again. “She’s committed to the film from what I’ve seen.”

  “And how do you feel about a self-identified pansexual girl playing the lead in your grandmother’s story? Do you think your grandmother would have had a problem with that?”

  I did not take the bait this time, but I felt my ears rush hot. “Shoshanna is incredibly talented.” I wanted to point out what Shoshanna had told me only that morning that her life was riddled with double standards. Complications and inequality. She knew Sevyn’s struggle better than anyone I could imagine, but I couldn’t quite put myself behind the words. “She is Sevyn,” I managed. “My grandmother would have loved her.”

  “I thought you didn’t know your grandmother.”

  “Are all reporters this impossible to talk with?”

  Now I’d gotten her. Grace closed her notebook but didn’t turn off her recording app. I took advantage and kept talking. “Look, I’m not into fantasy. Not even my grandmother’s story, but the people here believe in this adaptation with their whole hearts and that comes through in each take.”

  I was proud of myself, even prouder when I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Henrik. “Everything going all right?” he asked.

  “You have had quite the sway on this young lady,” Grace said. “She’s a firecracker.”

  “Iris reminds Cate of herself as a teen. She’s said so several times.”

  Cate thinks I am like her? For real?

  “Tell me that crane broke, Henrik,” Grace said, leaning forward with a slick smile.

  “No, it did not.” He motioned for me to leave with a hook of his thumb.

  I walked away, fists tight. I thought I’d done all right, and I looked for Eamon, wanting to speak up some more. To try and explain why I’d frozen up in the recording studio. But he was nowhere in sight. I looked for Shoshanna next, planning to ask if Grace’s rumor was real, but everyone was busy getting ready to film.

  Even Ryder was helping Mr. Donato plan a dessert surprise for after Eamon’s big scene. The best scene in the book, according to several people, although my reading in the studio yesterday had left me wondering what I was still missing when it came to M. E. Thorne’s Elementia.

  THE POINT IN THE STORY WHERE EVERYTHING HAS GOT TO CHANGE

  Killykeen was transformed with the sunset. The crew came together in a rush of activity that felt nearly seamless. I hoped Grace Lee was still poking around to witness the success, but she’d already left.

  Ryder and I sat on twin canvas chairs in the video village—the sectioned-off area of monitors where Cate and Henrik and a few other people watched the filming. We were filming at dusk, the so-called magic hour, which I was surprised to learn was a film term, not a fantasy one. I watched the sun linger warmly at the horizon, while the sky ached blue and yellow.

  Azure and goldenrod…

  “Picture’s up!” Cate hollered, making everyone snap into place. Shoshanna drew all eyes, standing farther down the shore by herself, wearing the same getup she’d worn during the burning of the tree. If I remembered my Elementia, Sevyn was coming here after running miles and miles from the fire she’d started. I glanced behind us. The crowd of crew members behind the cameras was larger than usual—more people were watching this than Maedina’s burning tree—and the atmosphere was charged with strange emotion. High expectations, maybe? Hope?

  Cate raised her hand and shushed the crowd. Even the animals of Killykeen seemed to heed her. She looked showered, refreshed, invincible again, her buzzed grey hair like steel. I remembered Henrik’s talk about how much she was sacrificing for this movie. What was it like to give your all like that? Could I learn to do that with my music? If so, where did I start?

  Cate called, “Action!”

  Shoshanna sprang into her role, and I couldn’t help looking for Eamon. Shouldn’t he be here? Ready to step into the scene?

  Shoshanna ran up the shore, toward us, out of breath and devastated, slipping into the water, scuffing against roots. She collapsed on the shore near the mighty tree that Cate had been inspecting earlier. Shoshanna—Sevyn—drank from the water and ate berries from the weeds.

  She fell into a twisting, terrible sleep. Sevyn thrashed, burning with fever, dreaming about her brother getting gnawed upon. From the scene I’d read, I knew she could see through his eyes, feel his pain—and do nothing. I shivered.

  Cate called, “Cut!”

  She gave Shoshanna notes, and Shoshanna went back to her mark. They taped it again and again. In between two takes, Ryder put his foam fantasy axe on my arm and I looked down to find it was actually his hand. He was still, focused.

  “Are you scared?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” His voice didn’t sound afraid; he was deep in thought.

  “Ry,” I started, “does this scene make you think of Moss?”

  “It makes me think about that nightmare I have. The one where you don’t stop him, and he drives away with me.”

  I knew about his recurring dream. His therapist had marched the whole family in to talk about it without Ryder present, although my brother had never spoken to me about it before. His therapist had gotten a few details about the dream out of him, but not the whole truth, which is what had worried her. I leaned closer and brushed the side of his face where the very last of his sweet, fine baby hair was blending into dark locks. I don’t know what came over me—perhaps it was the urgency of only having a few breaths between takes, but I pushed forward. “What happens in your dream after the van drives off?”

  “I wake up,” he said.

  I sat back in my chair, taking in the way his eyes narrowed on Shoshanna, his tone mature and matter-of-fact. He was lying, keeping his pain secret.

  The real Thorne legacy.

  “Sevyn saves Evyn, doesn’t she?” I asked, desperate to help my brother with his pain, even if only through the roles we resembled in our grandma’s book. “In the end, she saves him.”

  “Eyeball,” he whispered because they were about to start filming again. “You have to read it to find out!”

  I grabbed his hand, which wasn’t small anymore and yet still little-kid sticky.

  “Action!” Cate called.

  Shoshanna went through her routine once more. She was tired and cold at this point, and I think a few of her stumbles weren’t fake. When she collapsed on the tree and shivered, her head thrown back on the gnarled roots, I believed she was witnessing something horrible in her mind. That her whole life was coming to some crucial breaking point.

  I believed her because I had been there—sitting on the edge of the sandbox with Moss’s blood under my nails, answering the cops’ questions, my dad still missing. He’d turned off his phone to finish a chapter, and by the time he’d pulled up to the playground and listened to the police officer’s message, we’d been at the hospital for more than an hour.

  Shoshanna turned her face into the tree and started crying, which I’m pretty sure Cate hadn’t told her to do. But it felt right.

  And everything changed.

  One minute, Shoshanna was shaking in her fantasy garb, the next she was Sevyn, a girl who’d never been touched by anyone. A cursed girl who’d lost the only person who had ever been there for her: her brother. And now she knew he was in pain, but she couldn’t reach him.

  I swear I could hear the harp solo from “Cosmic Love” and Florence singing of misery and light, and then the lights ebbed a tiny bit brighter, signaling that the CGI moon had come out, throwing silver brilliance over the whole scene.

  Nolan leaned from the side of the tree as though he’d stepped from the bark—and he wasn’t Eamon. He was tan skinned, his ears blended into his short hairstyle. His whole arrow-sharp body was on show but for some shorts that looked like they’d been stitched from leaves. He crouched near Sevyn, watching her violent fever with an intensity that held the light.

  And
then he bent down and swept her into his arms, carrying her to the lake.

  I’m not sure anyone was breathing. I wasn’t.

  Nolan walked until he was waist deep. He lowered her into the water, and she gasped from the cool shock. From the view screen beside me, I could see the crane cam’s close up on Sevyn’s face…the moment she woke, finding herself wrapped in someone’s arms. Her fear came naturally, wonderfully. She reached up and placed a hand on Nolan’s chest. There were no bolts of lightning. No sizzles from the storm inside.

  Just touch.

  Sevyn’s eyes closed again, not in pain this time, but in the kind of release that only comes after a lifetime of imprisonment.

  “Cut,” Cate whispered, and no one spoke.

  Ryder sniffed beside me, and I found tears lining my eyes as well. Henrik and Cate leaned close to the monitors. She murmured, “Check the gate.”

  Shoshanna and Eamon trudged out of the lake in silence.

  Cate’s face was hidden in the playback for a minute. Another minute. The magic hour was definitely gone now, the sky black. Had we gotten the shot?

  When Cate stood, everyone seemed to lean back. She walked to Eamon, clasped his face with both hands and pulled his forehead to hers. “You are a goddamn star, my boy.”

  A riotous bolt of excitement rattled through the set. Henrik was quick to ask Cate to shoot it again, but she shook her head. “We got it exactly the way I wanted. I won’t let it get stale.”

  I stood up because everyone was standing, and a crew member beside me joked, “Time to take out shares in Eamon O’Brien. He’s going to shoot through the roof.” I knew what he meant; Eamon had been amazing. One shot and he’d nailed it, even though he’d been scared and doubting himself for weeks. I found myself torn between pride and burning jealousy.

  • • •

  Everyone slapped hands and hugged. Ryder danced his way to help Mr. Donato present the celebratory ice cream bar.

  I grabbed Shoshanna as she tried to storm by. “You were great. Both of you. Amazing.”

  “Thanks.” She cast a look back at where everyone had piled around Eamon, a halo of gushing fans. “All the boys have to do is show up, am I right?” Her face crashed with a wince. “I’m tired. He was great. Way better than I thought he’d be after run-through.” Shoshanna shivered, crossed her arms tighter. “I’ve got to go warm up before I get pneumonia.”