Anywhere but Here (3 page)

“Just grab the rail and step, Mom,” the daughter was saying, a note of exasperation in her voice.

The mom put a toe forward toward the stair, tottered slightly, and slid her foot back to safety.

Before I'd even absorbed the situation, Lauren walked right up to that old lady, took her elbow, and stepped with her onto the escalator.

That's the kind of nice I mean.

But nice isn't everything.

“Remember last month when there was a partial eclipse, some sliver of the moon that wasn't going to look that way for another six centuries or something?”

Greg nods.

“Well, I borrowed the truck and I stuffed all the blankets from my bed into the back so we could lie there and look straight up. But when I got to Lauren's, she'd fallen asleep and she was too tired to go out.”

Greg stares at me blankly. I haven't explained things well enough.

“Wait. I have a better example. We watched a documentary
one night about child soldiers in Uganda, and I said I would love to go and make films about stuff like that. Lauren rolled her eyes and said, ‘We don't even know where Uganda is.' ”

I don't tell Greg what she said next: that I shouldn't make life plans during my time of grief. Who says that? What kind of person under the age of forty says “time of grief”?

Greg still doesn't get it.

“Listen, maybe I won't ever go to Uganda. Maybe I don't know exactly where it is in Africa. But I don't want my girlfriend assuming we can't get there. I want her to feel like we're going to go wherever the hell we want for the rest of our lives. Isn't that how it should be?”

By this time I'm yelling and a dog is barking nearby and Greg's agreeing with me, probably to make me shut up.

Things get sloppy after that. At one point I pin Greg on the grass and force him to tell me that I've made the right decision about breaking up with Lauren. Then I sling my arm around his shoulders on the way back to his house and tell him that he's the best damn guy in the whole town.

He drives me home.

“If you had to break up, you picked the right time,” he says as we wind through empty streets.

“Why's that?”

“Way I see it, this is going to be the best summer of our lives.
Next year we're getting ready to graduate. Everyone's going to be stressing over college applications, or getting jobs, or looking for jobs. We're facing serious stuff in one year, man. This is the last summer of freedom. The countdown's on.”

I think that's the most apocalyptic view of life I've ever heard. I would say so, if I were up to pronouncing “apocalyptic.”

“Besides,” Greg continues with a grin. “Hannah Deprez is hot for you.”

My face flushes in the darkness of the car. “Hannah? She is?”

Now that would be different. And different . . . it's a good thing, right? Greg can consider this his last summer of freedom if he wants to. I'm going to think of it as the first year of change.

I'm whistling as I unlock the basement door and chuck my pack into a corner, where it can stay for the next two months. My exams are finished, my report card's collected, and I have all summer to celebrate.

I yell a hello and head upstairs.

No one's home. I can tell Dad stopped here after work—his stuff upstairs is tossed around the same way mine is downstairs. He's gone out, though, and the house is cold and silent.

My mom was a quiet person, but the quiet when people are in the house together is different from the empty kind. As I make myself some peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches, I try to imagine she's here in the kitchen with me.

She always had to stand on her tiptoes to see over my shoulder.

“You eat that, you'll ruin your dinner,” she'd say. Since we both knew that I could eat a stack of sandwiches and every other scrap of food in the fridge and still be hungry, she'd say it as a what-moms-are-supposed-to-say sort of thing.

When I took the milk out of the fridge, she'd hand me a glass so I wouldn't drink out of the jug. Then I'd lean against the counter to eat and she'd stand nearby slicing onions on the plastic cutting board, looking at the knife and the onions but really paying attention to me.

“I'm going to work a few shifts at the cherry plant this summer,” I'd tell her. “I just finished exams. And I broke up with Lauren.”

“The cherry plant sounds good. Hard work, though. You and Lauren broke up?” Her voice would be neutral. She wasn't one of those people who would tell you there were other fish in the sea. And she wasn't someone who would list all the things she hated about your ex, as if that would make you feel better. She was smarter than that.

“You doing okay?” she'd ask, scraping the onions and some tomatoes into a pan.

“Yeah. I think Lauren's still upset.” Understatement. There was one enormously awkward phone call after the sex incident, and she hasn't spoken to me since.

It takes me a while to decide what advice this conjured mom of mine would give.

Maybe: “When you break up, you lose the person you tell things to—the person you talk to about your day, about a funny moment, or what makes you mad. It takes time to replace that.”

Then she'd pass me a spoon of something to try. Something good. Something better than peanut butter on stale bread.

It sounds stupid to say I miss my mom, like I'm some kid left at kindergarten for the first time. I'm almost ready to graduate and move out and then I wouldn't see her anyway, so what's the big difference? And what does she know about losing people? My dad and I are the ones who had to learn about that.

My eyes are watering, probably because of the imaginary onions.

When the phone rings, it's Greg, saying that everyone's going to Dallas's house. I figure I'd better grab the lifeline before I make up any more conversations and lose my mind altogether.

He says to pick him up at nine. I glance at the driveway to make sure Dad left the truck, and then I agree. It looks like I'm the designated driver for the evening, which I'm not thrilled about. House parties in Webster tend to be the same fifty kids you saw after school, except milling around someone's kitchen instead of standing at their lockers. It takes a beer or two to make it seem more interesting than that.

Pick up Greg at nine o'clock. There are still five hours to fill.

Bored, roaming through the silent house, I find myself in our wood-paneled downstairs rec room. I'm standing in front of the east wall, which is lined floor to ceiling and corner to corner with bookshelves. Mom was an English major. She was going to be a professor until she met Dad and became a high school teacher instead. If she were still around, she would have been my lit teacher next year. Having my mom lecture me about books would have been nothing new.

“TV rots your brain,” she used to nag, taking away the remote control and plunking a book in my hand.

I wonder how she'd feel now that my movies and my film books have taken over a few of her shelves. Randomly, I pull out the
Project Grizzly
disc and pop it into the machine.

Project Grizzly.

It's the first documentary I can remember watching. When I was seven, or maybe eight, I walked into the living room and found Dad focused on the screen. There was a man on TV dressed in the strangest armor I'd ever laid eyes on.

“Come over here. Have a look at this idiot,” Dad said.

So I sat cross-legged on the carpet below his chair and we watched as the armored man got smacked with a flying log. He was trying to create a bear-proof suit that would allow him to safely stalk a grizzly. It looked like an astronaut costume, and
he could barely walk in it. He couldn't even get in or out of it without his friends' help.

“What kind of idiot . . . ?” my dad kept saying, but with a little admiration in his voice.

Even my mom got drawn in after a while, and all three of us sat there shaking our heads in unison.

In the years since that first viewing, I've learned that the National Film Board made
Project Grizzly
. Apparently, it's a personal favorite of Quentin Tarantino—which proves how twisted it is.

I turn it off, finally, when my stomach starts growling. As the microwave spins my pizza, I'm still thinking about the bear-obsessed man and all the guys helping him out. Did they really have nothing better to do than watch their friend try to kill himself?

I do my dishes. In case the spirit of my mom's still lingering around, cutting onions, I even wipe the counters. That's when I spot the brochure Ms. Gladwell gave me. It has somehow migrated to the stack of papers beside the microwave.

VANCOUVER FILM STUDIO

A PREMIER ENTERTAINMENT ARTS INSTITUTION

The cover is black matte with a makeup artist's rendition of a monster along one side.

It stares at me. I flip it over.

Do you have a vision? A need to tell stories? A distinctive way of looking at the world? Your time at the studio will help you explore your talents with an eye to becoming an industry-ready filmmaker. It's time to realize your unique creative voice.

Unique creative voice. I could have one of those. Maybe.

I've heard of the studio before, of course. Quite a few famous directors and actors have studied there. I've even glanced at the school's website before. But now I get a churning feeling in my gut when I think about the place. Because it could be real. One year from today, I could be blowing town and heading to Vancouver.

It's the year of change, right?

Maybe I should call it the year of escape.

I grab a handful of cookies from the cupboard and head downstairs to the computer. The studio's home page features the same image as the brochure. I click on the tab for admissions information.

Step 1: Application. Forms available for download.
Deadline for early admission is January 15.

Step 2: Financial Aid.
I won't need a loan, mainly because of Mom's life-insurance settlement. Thanks, Mom.

Step 3: Portfolio.

What the heck's a portfolio? When I click on that third
item, a list of options drops down. Then cookie crumbs spray from my mouth onto the keyboard.

The phone rings—Greg again. He's ready early.

“What kind of high school student has a portfolio?” I mutter, half to Greg and half to myself.

“A what?” Greg says.

“For film school. It says I have to send a portfolio.”

“A what?”

“Exactly.” I skim through the suggested materials. “It says I can send clips of myself onstage . . . acting in or directing a school play . . . my makeup work . . . a short . . .”

“Stop there,” Greg says. “I'd go for the short one.”

“They mean a short film.”

“Well, you could do that,” he says, as if the matter's settled. “You're always filming crap anyway.”

“Not anything interesting.”

“Come pick me up, and we'll brainstorm.”

Sure, we'll brainstorm. But unless Greg can storm up some way to make my life a million times more interesting or arrange to have a major event occur in my vicinity—preferably while I happen to be holding my camera—I'm in trouble.

The whole season of change is in trouble.

On the way to Dallas's house, I scan the side streets and storefronts as if ideas might leap out at me. I already know that if I make a short, it'll be a doc. I love all movies, but I've always pictured myself making films about real events. Something set in a war zone with bullets flying as I piece together the truth of what's happening, broadcasting it to the world. Or maybe a hard-hitting investigation of corporate corruption.

It's possible I've seen too many Peter Snow and Michael Moore interviews.

Webster has a distinct lack of war zones and corporate offices, and Greg's not helping me concentrate. Whooping and hollering tunelessly to the blaring stereo, he begs me to spin a
doughnut in the grocery store parking lot just so we can cruise Canyon Street one more time before going to the party. As if you can spin in a four-wheel-drive pickup. As if we might discover something new. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that film topics are as likely to appear as werewolves or vampires.

“Let's just go to Dallas's place,” I yell over the bass.

Dallas's name isn't really Dallas, it's Mark. But there were already a dozen Marks in school when he moved here a couple years ago, and his Texas accent was such a novelty, he got pegged with “Dallas” before he had a choice.

The parties are always at his house these days, hosted by either him or his older brother or both. His mom's still in Texas for some reason, and his dad works out of town half the time. Plus, the house is such a wreck that a party or two doesn't seem to make a difference.

Tonight, when Greg and I walk in, the crowd in the kitchen falls suddenly silent and Greg's beer opens with a pop that seems loud and obscene. Everyone's staring at me.

Then the volume rises again.

“Hear you're back on the prowl,” a guy says, going for a high five.

So that's it. They've heard about the breakup. I'm surprised it took this long. Maybe Lauren thought she could keep it quiet, we'd get back together, and no one would know the difference.

There are a few more elbows and wisecracks from the guys in the kitchen. Two girls in the corner roll their eyes and slide from the room. Eventually, I make it through the gauntlet and flop onto Dallas's sagging tweed couch. I've barely flipped open my video camera—for the sake of practice—when a waft of something like cinnamon and flowers floats over me. A curtain of hair swings into the viewfinder, followed by the rest of Hannah Deprez.