Now a Major Motion Picture

by Cori McCarthy

  “You should talk to Shoshanna,” I said again, even though it was probably weird.

  “I bet she wants to be alone.”

  “Nope. She wants to be with you. A lot.” Part of me worried I was crossing a line, part of me didn’t care. Roxy went to work on my remaining elf ear, and I could see the faintest hint of a smile in the mirror. At least there was some silver lining in all this mud. But then, I didn’t want to jinx it with hope. That’s what always happened. I wanted something, and then the second I started to hope for it? Gone.

  Hope was the kiss of death.

  After I’d been de-elfed, I knocked on Cate’s door and wondered if this would be the first time she didn’t see me coming.

  “Come in, Iris,” she called out.

  I stepped inside and found her still wearing her sunglasses. There was a stillness to her posture that felt rather dangerous. “Can I help, Cate?”

  “We’re beyond that, girl. Unless you know where we can find a few hundred thousand dollars and a fan base that promises to buy tickets to this movie and the special edition DVD, instead of signing a petition to do precisely the opposite.”

  “They’re out there,” I muttered. “Maybe we can find a new way to reach them?”

  “It’s too late.”

  “What if I appealed to the Thornians?” I tried. “I’ll go on Eamon’s YouTube show. I’ll call each and every one of them on the phone! You can raffle off a date with me. Anything!”

  “It’s too late, Iris.”

  “I’ll give you the money. I have a trust fund,” I said, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t access it without my dad’s say-so. “Henrik said it’d be like an investment. When the movie is a huge hit, I’ll make it back threefold in book sales and merchandise.”

  “Iris! It’s too late.” Her shoulders folded in on her tiny frame. “Once we leave this location, the pieces of this production will fall apart fast. This time next week, no one will remember the production was filming. It isn’t personal, Iris. It happens all the time in Hollywood. At least we have valid reasons for shutting down. Some films don’t even get that much.”

  “What will happen to you?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m staying here in Ireland. I’ve been marked a failure. The blame falls on me”—she took a deep breath—“so I bear it. This was my adaptation from the start.”

  “So it is personal! The studio kept slashing your budget and hoping the movie would go away, and when you persisted, they said you were the problem.” She didn’t have to confirm my suspicions. The undercurrent had been clear from the moment that reporter had stepped foot on the set, which reminded me of her terrible Titanic metaphor. “You’re not going down with the ship, Cate. Movies need women like you. Girls everywhere need you. Look at me: I didn’t have a single adult to look up to before you.” Tears filled my eyes, and I scrubbed at them.

  Cate got up and hugged me. I held on tighter than I’d ever hugged my own mom. She couldn’t disappear now. She couldn’t be beaten down to nothing.

  “Great. Your life’s work is on fire, and you’re consoling me,” I said between sniffs.

  “Same continent, Iris Thorne. Same pain.”

  “Hollywood is full of goddamn miracles,” I whispered. “I hear about them all the time.”

  “The miracle is you,” she said. “And if we have to stay married to Grace Lee’s unoriginal Titanic metaphor, you are the unsinkable Molly Brown. You’re the one who comes out of this stronger.”

  Angry tears tumbled out. “Don’t be proud of me. That means it really is over.”

  Henrik entered, looking mightily disheveled. “Can you go comfort your boyfriend and brother, Iris? They’re taking the news hard.”

  “Shoshanna?” Cate asked.

  “Hulking out. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knocked the castle off the rock.”

  Somehow we all laughed the tiniest laugh. Everything seemed impossible. Everything felt doomed. But isn’t that the exact moment when fantasies get real?

  • • •

  When I left Cate’s trailer, I couldn’t find anyone. Not Ryder. Not Eamon. Not Shoshanna. I still had no response from my dad, and only one unread text from Julian:

  This blows. I was finally starting to dig my role.

  The news must have spread while I was talking with Cate, and almost everyone had gone into town to drown their disappointment in a pint. I went for Annie, grabbed her out of the case, and swung her strap across my chest. Guitar on my back like a rock star, I walked to the top of the rock, passing Irish crosses and headstones so old they’d been worn down to nubs. I thought about playing in the cemetery, but somewhere else caught my eye.

  Below the rock and behind our circle of production trailers, that cool, old stone abbey stood in the middle of a cow pasture. I hiked down to it, wondering if someone would appear and shout at me. They didn’t; I was alone.

  Inside the ruin, the lack of a roof meant my view of the sky was framed by ancient stonework. I turned in circles to take it all in, pulling Annie under my shoulder and securing my left hand to the frets.

  No notes came.

  I sat on the stone window seat and waited, holding myself right there. Right at the edge of this wretched moment.

  “What would you have done, Grandma Mae?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond. She wasn’t in my head like my dad. Like my doubts.

  “This blows,” I said, echoing Julian. That feeling was definitely a minor chord. D minor. The one that sounds as sour as if it’s bitten its own tongue. I struck it, and the reverberation off the stone walls caused a magpie to take flight with an angry squawk. “You better run!” I yelled.

  The next chords came easier. They started out agitated with a swift rhythm and then slammed into a looping progression. Suddenly I was all over the neck, not caring if it sounded good or not. I let my fingers spread into bar chords while my right hand did its best impression of a furious Ani DiFranco.

  The anger shot out like Sevyn’s lightning. Why had I been against this movie for so long? If I hadn’t been an idiot, I could have been flirting with Eamon from the first day. I could have given an awesome interview instead of that stilted one, then maybe the boycott wouldn’t have started and the studio execs would have stayed in Lotus Land where they belonged.

  Flying home tomorrow was a sudden, sharp grief, and my chords turned pretty. Sadness, after all, was rather beautiful. Especially when Grandma Mae wrote it. The pain swelled into mountains like two continental plates shoved together, reaching for the sky with desperate peaks. Everyone else got to read Elementia and discover something about the world or themselves. Not me. I’d read her story and began drowning in a loss I’d never known was mine.

  My grandmother was a brilliant author—and I’d never read her books because of my dad.

  My grandmother was a great woman—and I’d never get to know her.

  Tears fell on my hands and strings. None of this was fair. Not to me. To Cate. To Ryder, Eamon, Shoshanna. None of it to anyone.

  Fair is fantasy, Cate’s voice slipped in.

  Then what’s real? I asked—but I knew the answer. Reality came with a bite, a pinch, a kiss. Longing, loss, resentment, and the most impossible of all, passion. Passion was real. It wasn’t an obsession with the thing you couldn’t get better at, like my dad had coldly told me long ago. It was the only thing you could get better at.

  Without passion, there could be no growth.

  I threw my head back while the stone abbey wrapped my song around me, surrendering to all the ragged notes inside that wanted to turn into one strong melody. Maybe that’s what Elementia was for Grandma Mae—an abandoned, dying continent she created to house her grief for her daughter, an entire fictional world to make sense of her broken one.

  The words came in a rush. I took out my notebook and scribbled. I gave each fee
ling a bittersweet chord, each line its own heartache, and I let the rhythm build like sadness, reaching a whole mountain range of empty hands toward the untouchable sky.

  I played forever, the sunset turning the roofless place into a spread of orange. My eyes mostly closed, my heart as wide open as a well-loved book.

  When I finished writing the last verse, I looked up to find Shoshanna sitting on the stone altar. I had no idea how long she’d been watching.

  “There were feelings in that,” she said. “Strong ones.”

  I nodded, wanting to put away my notebook and guitar in a rush, but she stopped me.

  “You feel naked?”

  I glanced around. “Yeah.”

  “I always feel like someone stole my clothes when I give myself to a scene.” She jumped down and stepped closer. “You’ll get used to feeling like you’re on display. Somewhat.”

  “I don’t think I want to get used to it.” I was shaking hard enough to prove my point.

  She shrugged. “That’s what it means to be an artist. You’ve got to be courageous to snag the high of creation, but if you want to make this world a little more decent, you’ve got to turn around and give it away. That’s where the bravery comes in. And the nudity.”

  I stared at my notebook, the words I’d blindly written. “This is about my grandmother.”

  “I picked up on that.”

  “But I never knew her. How can you miss someone you never even knew? How can I want to be like her when I can’t even know her?”

  “You read her book, Iris,” Eamon said from the crumbling doorway, startling me.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked. Shoshanna was not lying about that naked business. I had the sudden urge to cover myself.

  “We heard you playing from all the way up at the trailers,” Shoshanna volunteered. “Your boyfriend was afraid if you saw him you’d stop, so he hid.”

  “He’s right,” I admitted.

  His smile only lifted one side of his face. “That song had lightning in it, Iris.”

  “Maybe.” I stood, resting Annie against the wall. The sadness inside that had shifted into sharp mountains was suddenly less like stone, more like water—and I wanted to pour it out. “You guys are saying you…liked that song.”

  “Yes,” Eamon said, while Shoshanna added an eloquent, “Duh.”

  “What if we recorded it?” I faced Eamon. “Do you have your camera?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled it out.

  “What are you thinking?” Shoshanna’s expression had gone fiery. “You saying you’d let the world have that? The Thornians would lose their minds. It’s got all that Elementia crap in it.”

  I held Eamon’s eyes. Did he know how terrifying this was? How truly horrible it felt to have to trust that the world could take something I’d made without tearing it—and therefore me—apart. Each pound of my heart was hard, threatening, but I kept going.

  “Will you sing it with me, Eamon?”

  HOPE IS FANTASY, OR MAYBE IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND

  I suppose if you have to record a song in the ruins of a roofless Cistercian monastery at dusk, it’s best to do it with two actors who are used to reshooting. Again and again.

  My fingers grew thick and slow on the chords. Teaching Eamon the words felt like having sex with him—at least I think so, having little experience on the subject. It was awkward and wonderful, and our harmonizing was in all the wrong places at all the wrong moments. Until it wasn’t. Until we’d figured out how to sing together without stepping on each other’s voices.

  On the last take, the one that reached the very limit of my fretting strength, I ended the last chord hard and had to suck on my fingers.

  Eamon took my hand and kissed each of my throbbing, swollen fingertips.

  “Cut.” Shoshanna looked over the camera with the widest eyes. “If that doesn’t make you two sweethearts internet sensations, then I’ll never trust the world of prying eyes again.”

  “We can’t put that mushy stuff with the song!” I said.

  “Why not? You two are a real couple, aren’t you? It’s not propaganda. Don’t make me get Julian on the phone to confirm the media value here.” Shoshanna packed up her stuff. We’d lost the twilight glow some time ago and filmed by the light of iPhone flashlights. How would it look in the old stone abbey? Dumb? Magical?

  We hiked to the trailers; Shoshanna was trekking fast. “We’re going to get this online ASAP. Eamon, how many followers do you have on your YouTube channel?”

  “Only about thirty thousand,” he said. “I lost a fair few during the boycott.”

  She frowned. “That’ll have to do.”

  When we got to my trailer, Ryder sat up in bed, looking like he’d cried himself to sleep. He rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re scheming.” I plunked on the edge of his bed, pulling an arm around him.

  “Good schemes?”

  “Great ones,” Shoshanna said, pulling out Eamon’s laptop. She wasted no time in plugging the camera into the computer. “What’s the name of this song, Iris?”

  “‘The Height of the Fall,’” I said. “Or is that too cheesy?”

  Eamon sat on my bed. “It’s a touch fantasy, but that is what we’re going for.”

  Ryder was trying to worm his way over to Shoshanna to see what was happening. I let him go and slid next to Eamon. He put an arm around my waist and I buried my face in his neck. I thought Shoshanna was opening the file, but when I looked at the screen, she was already uploading it. “Wait! We have to watch it first.”

  “No way. You’ll chicken out,” she said. “And…done.”

  I shot up and started pacing. “Oh crap. Take it down. Oh my God, my dad might see it!”

  Eamon grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. “It’s grand, Iris. Watch.”

  Shoshanna played the video, and I watched it as though I were seeing a movie. It was intriguing. Shoshanna would make a decent director, and the stone walls helped the music sound full. Eamon’s voice was what killed me though, so sweet, and the moment he kissed my fingers…

  “Should we write the lyrics in the information box?” Shoshanna asked.

  “No, out of context, lyrics always look awkward,” I said. “Like poetry that’s too proud of itself.”

  “Look.” Eamon pointed at the screen. “Sixty views already. That’s good.”

  I yanked out my phone and dialed. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this huge.” I tapped speakerphone.

  “Hey, Ire…” Julian paused. “Iss. Your name doesn’t shorten, does it?”

  “Neither does mine!” Shoshanna hollered.

  “Julian, we need you to repost something. Maybe send it to your famous friends too.”

  • • •

  When I woke up, curled against Eamon in the tiny trailer bed, I was smiling. We’d stayed up until we were delirious, cracking jokes and watching the view count on our video crawl up past one thousand and then five thousand.

  My face was pressed to Eamon’s shoulder, breathing his warm, unique smell, while I dreamt about staying together. After all, our feelings were too big. Too important. I might be leaving, but we weren’t going to vanish from each other’s lives. “We’re going to make it work,” he’d murmured sleepily into my hair when we were the last to drift off.

  I felt good, and I even dared to hope something could change with the movie. Perhaps I’d find our side stuck on the door like usual. I slipped out from under the covers, passing Ryder with his baby snores, and Shoshanna asleep on the couch, her curly hair like a nest for her face. I grabbed my jacket and stepped outside. After I’d closed the door, I counted to three, calling all the good energy to this place, and turned around.

  No side.

  I glanced at the other trailers. No sides on any of them.
No lights either. I slumped on the nearest picnic table, closed my eyes, and sunk my head into my hands.

  A door opened and closed, followed by Eamon’s arms wrapping around me. “You’re not regretting what we did last night, are you?” he asked in a quiet, careful voice.

  “Doesn’t matter. It didn’t work. The Thornians probably hated the video.”

  How could I think they’d like it? Of course they wouldn’t want me standing in for my grandma with my simple melody, asking them to support this movie. I pictured all the thumbs-downs and ugly comments, matching what they wrote on my dad’s Goodreads page. Hack. Amateur. Heartless. Guess the apple fell pretty far from the Thorne tree.

  “Whatever you’re thinking right now is abuse.”

  My eyes popped open, and I stared at Eamon’s rather serious face. “What?”

  “When you do that—go all inner demon—I can feel it. Whatever you’re saying in your mind is not right. You’re abusing yourself.”

  He was earnest. Like there was some other way to be.

  “But I don’t…” A tear trickled out of one eye, and I squashed it with my palm. “I don’t mean to. The voices in my head are vicious.”

  “The voices in your head are you. Tell them what to do.”

  I almost laughed; it could not be that simple. “Tell myself I’m wrong?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And say something nice while you’re at it.”

  “Out loud?”

  “If you want. Or just think something that doesn’t make your whole body collapse with despair. Something hopeful.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “But isn’t hope ‘the exhausted remains of dreams’?”

  His arms pulled me tight, his body still as warm as our bed. “As much as I appreciate you quoting Elementia, I think your grandmother was wrong about that one. Hope isn’t desperate.”

  Could he be right?

  “I’m serious, Iris Mae Ellen. Say something nice and hopeful.”