Reel Life Starring Us (12 page)

I push the Play button and watch Ross's video. He has
extremely straight teeth and this funny, crooked smile with one side of his mouth much higher than the other. He kind of looks like a miniature George Clooney. Well, not miniature. A younger, shorter George Clooney. A very cute miniature George Clooney.

After the video ends, I'm about to shut the camera off when I see that there's another video I haven't seen. And it's of me! When I open it, I see myself tripping in the doorway to social studies.

I guess Chelsea left the camera on by mistake. I quickly hit Delete to get rid of it. Good thing I saw it.

“We got our first actual good clip!” I tell Chelsea as soon as she arrives, ten minutes late.

“Who? What? Where?” She drops her bag and sits down and looks around like she's expecting someone else to be here. The faux fur on her coat is rubbing against her cheeks. They're all red, like she's been outside in the cold for hours.

“Ross.” I lift my hand for a high five, but she denies me. But I go on anyway. “He wanted me to tape him studying, and then he just went on this rant about chipping.”

She laughs. “You mean, being chipped? No one says
chipping.
”

“Oh. Well, yeah.”

She smears some sparkly lip gloss on her lips and takes off her coat. “Why was Ross here anyway?”

I shrug. “He wanted to be taped. Speaking of which, we gotta shoot some more. Come on.”

It takes Chelsea a few minutes to get ready and then agree to leave her stuff in the library. Fear of getting chipped, I guess. But Mr. Singer says he'll watch it, so we take off through the mostly empty halls.

“So weird that Ross came to be taped, right?” she asks.

“It's not that weird,” I say. “I mean, he does go to this school.”

We walk through the halls. It seems most people who are still around really do not want to be filmed.

“This is a violation of privacy!” one boy says. I don't know his name. I don't know anyone's name.

I don't mean to laugh at him, but I can't help it. “No, it's not! You'd be on the video for the big fiftieth-anniversary event.”

“Oh. No thanks.” He walks away with the group he's with.

“Who was that?” I ask Chelsea.

“Josh Kerms. He's one of those boys who watch the Cartoon Network all day,” she says. “I don't know why they are being so weird.”

“I know! I mean, it's their school. Wouldn't they want to be a part of it?”

“No, not them.” Chelsea looks down at her phone and
then puts it in the front pocket of her blazer. “Kendall and Molly, they're acting all sneaky and weird. They won't tell me where they are.”

I almost bring up the Facebook friend request thing, but then I realize it would sound lame to be so excited about friending on Facebook. Instead, I leave Chelsea to her texting and walk a little bit away from her, over to a group of kids hanging out by the vending machine. This video project is actually kind of a good thing for me. It gives me an excuse to just go up to people and be noticed.

The group looks down the hall at Chelsea, who's still texting. What else is new?

“What are you doing?” one of the girls asks me. “Why are you just filming me standing here drinking a soda?”

I laugh. “It's for the fiftieth anniversary. We're trying to get random shots of kids at school.”

“God, get people to sign a release form or something!” another girl huffs, and the group walks away.

I look around, trying to find someone else. I didn't think people would respond this way. It's as if everyone expects something horrible to happen. But it's not like we're broadcasting this on the local news or anything.

Chelsea yells from all the way down the hall, “I gotta go. Sorry. Will explain later.”

She's going to leave? Just like that? In the middle of our work?

I walk around more, getting some shots of kids playing basketball outside, some girls studying in the hallway, other kids getting extra help.

I even capture a chipping. I don't care that Chelsea says you can't call it that—I can call it what I want to call it. Some girl is walking down the hall, and then another girl just opens her backpack and pours out the crumbs all over her books.

Just like that.

“Oh my God!” the victim yells.

The other girl and her friends laugh and walk away.

“Did you just video that?” the victim asks me.

I nod. “It's for a project, though.”

“Well, delete it!” she yells. “I don't want other people to see it! I'll be the girl who got chipped on video.”

I don't say anything, and the girl walks closer to me. “This school stinks!” she yells, even louder now. “And that girl you're working with on this dumb video—it's her fault it stinks.”

“Chelsea?” I say. It occurs to me that I'm still taping this, and we're basically gossiping about Chelsea behind her back, but I can edit it all out later.

“Yeah, her and her friends. It's their fault. They're the reason we all feel like outsiders,” she says, and I realize now
is definitely not the time to reveal the fact that I don't know her name. That would surely make her feel even more like an outsider.

“Um … hmm,” is all I say. “I'll delete the video. Don't worry.”

She goes on and on about Chelsea, how she has the perfect life, how everyone loves her. But Chelsea isn't the one who just chipped her. How can this be Chelsea's fault?

And I know the truth—Chelsea doesn't have the perfect life. But I can't just come out and say that.

Is it so cheesy to want a place where all people are included and accepted? I mean, everyone doesn't have to be BFF with everyone else, but at least no one would feel like a loser.

My old school was kind of like that. I suppose it could happen here, too, but it doesn't seem possible at the moment.

It's after five when I walk out to the car to meet my mom. It's freezing and almost pitch-black out because the days are getting shorter. I want to walk around in a sleeping bag to keep warm. My phone makes the twinkling sound to alert me that I have a text message.

What does Chelsea think I wouldn't understand? That she
has friends and places to be and exciting things to do? In that case, she's probably right.

The question is, what do Chelsea and those people feel about this place? Do they know they make so many people upset?

The more time I spend with Chelsea, the more I realize she's not that bad. She's actually kind of nice. She bought me Peanut M&M's; she can't be that bad.

The thing is, people just assume things about others, even if they aren't true. I do it all the time. If I ever became friends with Chelsea and her friends, would I automatically make people miserable, too?

And are people ever really aware about how they affect others? Do they know their role here? That's what I need to find out.

Sasha Preston piece of advice: You'll be amazed
at how much you can accomplish when you
don't worry about who gets the credit.

A part of me knows
I shouldn't have bailed on Dina, but when I got a text from Molly saying that it was an emergency and they needed to talk to me, I had to go call her. It turns out it wasn't really an emergency; they just needed to ask me a question about Ross and the note he passed Dina, which I didn't know anything about anyway. They always jump to the word “emergency” really fast.

And they refused to tell me where they were, because they were scared Dina and I would come meet them. They were just at Starbucks, and it's not like I'd bring Dina to hang out with them.

I was kind of glad to get out of school, though. I felt kind of weird walking around trying to tape kids I've been in school
with since kindergarten. I never talk to them, so it's weird to just go up to them now. And library boy seems to have disappeared. I have no idea why my mind keeps flopping back to him when I'm in the library, but it does. I wonder if he moved away right after I noticed him. That would be just my luck these days.

My cell phone rings at nine thirty, and I dread answering it because I'm scared who will be on the other line: Dina, mad at me for bailing, or Kendall or Molly, saying something else about Ross that I will feel awkward about. When I look at my phone, I see that it's Dina.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Got her agent!”

“You did?” I guess she's not that mad at me for bailing.

“Yup! I just read about a million articles on Sasha Preston and found her manager's name, and then that led me to her agent.”

“Good job,” I tell her. I'm only half paying attention because I'm so nervous about everything else that's going on.

“So, we're going to call her agent and tell her that we go to her alma mater middle school and we want to interview her for this project,” she says. “I'm sure she'll say yes, because people always want to help kids out. And then we'll figure out when to go meet up with her. Okay?”

“It sounds good to me.” I actually mean that, and I'm actually excited about this—which makes me feel even worse
about what happened earlier. “Sorry I bailed before,” I admit, finally. “Did you get any footage?”

“I did,” she says, but she sounds uncertain. Another thing I've never heard from her. “I'm not sure it's right, though. It seems really, like, one-sided, I guess, and boring, which is why I really think we should just focus on the Sasha part, at least for now.”

“Oh. Okay.” I start to hear yelling coming from downstairs. This always happens at this time of night. It's like my parents' witching hour. I can't stay on the phone with this going on; it's impossible to concentrate. “I gotta go, though. My mom needs to show me something. Bye.” I hang up quickly, before Dina can say anything else.

“You're making me look bad. But that's not even the worst part!” I hear my mom scream. I wonder where Alexa is. Sometimes she'll run into my room during their fights. “You're making
yourself
look bad! How can you not even care?”

“You think I don't care?” my dad yells back. He can always yell louder, but my mom says the meaner stuff.

I wish they could just come up with a game plan. Like, if
this
happens, then we'll do
that
instead. It would make things so much easier, and then I'd know they had it all under control. I feel sad for them that things are unraveling. If I could fix everything, I would. But in the meantime, I just want to know that things won't get any worse.

During their fights, I always focus on the most random things. Like the ballerina figurine I got for my eighth birthday. Kendall found it in some fancy shop on Cape Cod. Her grandparents used to have a summer home there.

My cell phone starts ringing, and I answer it without looking who it is first. It's probably Dina calling again to complain since I basically cut her off twice in one day.

“Chelsea.” No, it's Molly. Even the way she says people's names sounds mean, even when they're supposed to be her best friends. “I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah?” I put a million pillows up against my door and lean back on them, hoping that the pillows will block out the sound of my parents' screaming. “Is this about Ross again? I know he spent, like, two minutes with Dina for the video. It's not that big of a deal.”

“It's not about that,” she says, and then she's quiet for a really long time. “It's about your dad.”

My heart starts pounding. Real, heavy pounding, like the bass at the loudest rock concert you've ever been to. And when I look down at my chest, I can see it thumping, almost popping out from my skin.

I've never felt this intense panic before. All I want is for the world to stop. I want to hang up and pretend she never said anything.

“What?” my voice comes out like a whisper. I can't believe we're having this discussion. Me and Molly. Molly with the four-car garage and the pool and the tennis court and the Burberry coat for each season. Mean Molly. Of course she'd be the one to find out and bring this up.