The Great American Whatever (9 page)

He wouldn't help me film the movies, himself. He was busy “re-revising” his screenplay—which was about this family whose house accidentally burns to the ground, and when it does, they discover a secret chamber in the basement that leads to an entirely other world where there's no such thing as fire. (Working title:
No Such Thing As Fire.
)

At the time I thought it was the best idea since, oh,
Star Wars
. I was Ricky's first fangirl.

“Get your big sister to shoot your little screenplays,” he suggested. “You guys can be a pint-size moviemaking team, like the Coen Brothers.”

That did it. I had found my “call to adventure.” I had bypassed “the refusal.” Hell, I was already on step four of my hero's journey; I loved the Coen Brothers, so that was all he had to say. Basically, when I was ten, I was obsessed with anything that had the f-word in it.

Annabeth always had better phones than I did; she was older. So that's how it started. She had a pretty good camera phone. And we had these endless summers—the kind of summers where you almost
want
school to start back up again—because we were the only kids whose parents didn't pay for camp at the Y. We just had us and our imaginations and a house with spotty air-conditioning.

My sister doesn't do anything half assed, so she went to the library and got out books on how to edit movies, and she started making me read my ten-page screenplays out loud to her, and only her. (After Annabeth and I teamed up, I never let anyone else see my first drafts. Too exposed. You can't trust most people.)

Then we went back to school that fall, and Annabeth started developing these bumps en route to boobs, and Ricky went away to Hollywood, became somebody, and never looked back. And never
came
back.

Somehow, he's still that golden guy to me, though, even now. The one who'd still bail me out today, if I really needed it.

Annabeth kept adding other skills to her repertoire that year, but not me. I'm not a particularly original thinker, I'm not, but I loved the order and formula and maybe even the safety of a script, with its margins and standards. So I stuck with it.

I just hate actually
filming
stuff, because immediately my vision gets crushed. You want a scene to take place on the sunniest, most beautiful day of the year, and suddenly a cloud passes over. Vision ruined.

So we'd get my miniscreenplays where we'd want them and I'd hand them off to Annabeth, and in her spare time she'd cast it and shoot it and edit it, and I'd see the final product and judge it and hate it and criticize it. But secretly I also loved it, because those were my words! People were saying my words!

Eventually, years into the whole thing, we even had an official company name: Q & A Productions. Nice, right? A fourth-tier art nerd at school even designed a pretty slick logo for us, and that was my identity: the silver
Q
of Q & A. You know, when
A
wasn't at Model U.N. or French Club or pep squad, or studying, or doing the hundred other things she seemed to get lost in, nearly as much as making our movies.

Anyway, you know what's a really stupid name? Q Productions. Just that. Because what is a
Q
without an
A
?

That's actually the most confusing part about being alive without knowing the end of your own hero's journey. You never know if it's time to go home or head into battle. You never know if you've already faced your biggest monster.

M
y three newest-looking T-shirts are spread out on my bed as if they're the finalists in a very low-stakes fashion competition. To give you a sense of my definition of “newest”: One of them has a hole in it in the shape of Florida. Regardless: New day, new me, ta-da.

“Not to be a mom,” Mom says, “but
please
be careful on the wooden roller coasters today. I don't trust them at all.”

Now I'm in the kitchen, downing a glass of water. A root beer would be so delicious right now, but this is not the day to be a burp monster.

“Of course, Mom. I'll avoid the wooden coasters entirely.”

Bald-faced lie. I chose Kennywood for my first group date with Amir so that if it goes terribly, I'll at least have the chance of making the news:
YOUNGER BROTHER OF GIFTED GIRL THROWN FROM BACKSEAT OF JACK RABBIT. CLICK FOR VIDEO.

“I'm gonna wait outside, Ma.”

She rocks herself up from the wicker lounger. “Give Geoffrey my best.”

“Will do, Ma! And guess what?”—I'm already halfway out the door—“He shaved off the mustache, just for you!”

Slam.

It's a pitiful kind of poverty when, in the middle of a June heat wave, the pavement outside your house is cooler than your mattress is upstairs. We really
have
to get that AC installed. And maybe I really
should
get a job. I walk the square lines of cement, toe to heel, creating a dumb little game with childish rules (walk three steps, hop once) that may as well be called: “How to avoid thinking about making conversation with a guy who's in college.”

Well, there you go. I picture Amir Turani on the big screen of my brain and here goes my imagination.

EXT. PAVEMENT OUTSIDE QUINN'S HOUSE – DAY

Quinn, looking casually stylish in a solid red T-shirt layered on top of a faded black one with a hole in the shape of Florida, leans against his mom's mailbox.

At the top of the big hill leading down to his small house, a pair of headlights cut through the broiling waves rising off summer asphalt. Quinn perks up but plays it cool.

So cool his upper lip isn't even sweating.

A BLUE MINIVAN pulls up. It's blasting the song of the summer. Perfect. Quinn knows this one.

Geoff rolls down the window from the front passenger seat; CARLY is driving.

GEOFF

Hop in!

Quinn opens the sliding minivan door. His eyebrows crinkle:
Where's Amir?
And then, as if he's reading Quinn's mind:

AMIR

Back here.

Quinn cranes his neck to spy into the van's backseat. Smile.

GEOFF

Let's
go
! There's a corn dog with your name on it waiting for you at the greatest amusement park in Western Pennsylvania.

Quinn rolls his eyes at Amir, and the two share a laugh the way a young couple might have shared a milk shake in the fifties.

As Quinn gets in, the song switches over to something he doesn't recognize -- we see him get a bit panicked -- but Amir covers for him.

AMIR

So, you've been to Kennyland before?

Quinn giggles, but in a way that's sweet and also masculine.

QUINN

Kenny
wood
, yes. I practically grew up there. I know all the best rides, all the cleanest bathrooms, all the least-gross foods. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.

AMIR

I'm into that sort of thing. Though I get a little scared on roller coasters.

QUINN

Good to know.

Carly pulls onto the parkway, cranking up the music.

AMIR

So, like, you'll protect me?

QUINN

Duh.

CUT TO:

EXT. KENNYWOOD AMUSEMENT PARK – LATER

Quinn stumbles off a roller coaster, his face green, his eyes crossed. Amir couldn't be having a better time, but Quinn can barely handle the intensity of these rides. He's not a kid anymore. He looks like he's gonna hurl.

Carly and Geoff pop into respective bathrooms, leaving Quinn and Amir alone by a cotton candy vendor.

AMIR

Should we take a break?

QUINN

Nah. That's okay.

Amir takes Quinn's hand. A first.

AMIR

You sure?

QUINN

Uh . . . I
could
be persuaded to find a bench and have a Coke. . . .

Amir smiles and pulls Quinn under the awning of a corn dog hut. They look up at a menu.

AMIR

Pepsi okay?

QUINN

(sweetly)

Never.

Quinn leans in to kiss—

Honk
. Honnnk.

For some reason, I've got the neck band of one of my T-shirts in my mouth, and this is the moment—with a wet collar and stubbly hair that is probably already shiny with unconfident summer sweat—that a car pulls up to my mom's mailbox. Not a blue minivan, though—there never was a blue minivan in my world to begin with, only in my screenplay vision of this moment—but rather a beat-up silver Saturn. It looks like it hasn't been washed since, oh, the Gold Rush.

“Get in,” Geoff says from the front passenger seat. I squint. Carly isn't driving; Amir is. Carly's in the backseat. Why is
Carly
in the backseat?

Annabeth would know how to storyboard this sequence.

“Well, get
in
, babe,” I hear. Mom's behind us on our front stoop, making a rare appearance outside. “Geoffrey's been laying on the horn for twenty seconds!”

I reach for the hot-hot handle of Amir's Saturn, and when it won't budge, he calls out the window: “Oh, sorry, that door is busted. Get in on Carly's side.”

Okay, then. “Not a problem!” I say,
way
too agreeably, as if anyone would have a problem with this. Idiot.

“See you later, Mrs. R.!” Geoff shouts, and I slide onto Carly's side into a car that's whirring with air-conditioning, and something that sounds different from the song of the summer: the sound of anticipation.

Carly hands me a pair of eyeglasses: thick-rimmed, 1960s spectacles that look like something Gary Busey would have worn in
The Buddy Holly Story
. (1978 semiclassic. You can skip it.)

I give Carly a “What the hell?” look, but she just stares unblinkingly at me until I slide them on. They don't have a prescription. They are fashion glasses. Carly is decorating me for my date.

“Buckle
up
,” she goes.

“Roller coasters, here we come,” I say back, and then nobody else adds much of anything for the rest of the ride. But the song of the summer comes on twice—that happens—and at least I recognize it, almost like I'm a first-tier boy who knows what's what.

K
ennywood amusement park is one of only two in the country that are registered as National Historic Landmarks, which is to say: These rides are old as fuck. And made out of wood. When was the last time anything wooden lasted a long time, other than trees? Wood
breaks
and
splinters
in the weather. And Pittsburgh has a lot of weather.

That makes the Jack Rabbit especially dangerous, because it's not just a wooden roller coaster but also one that has a famous double dip that nearly throws people from the last row. Mom never let us ride in the last row.

“Remember the rumor in third grade that a student from West Mifflin was thrown from the last row?” Geoff says when he and I pull down the safety bar—in the last row. Amir and Carly are riding in front of us, which is good by me. Can't come on too strong too early. Also, I caught Amir checking out my butt in the ticket line, so my confidence is good for at least twenty minutes, ha.

“Have you ever been on a wooden roller coaster?” I try to shout up to him, but the wind and the general clanking kind of drown out my voice, and I'm immediately glad for this, because what kind of an idiot tries to flirt on a roller coaster with somebody in a different row. (ANSWER: the last American virgin, that kind of idiot.)

We hit the one stride of smooth coasting on the Rabbit, and Geoff points to where glasses would sit on his face, if he wore them.

“Looks good,” he mouths, just as we hit the infamous double dip and both of us throw our arms in the air. Laughter. But also fear. I grab the bar with a psycho grip. A first. My eyes are squeezed closed now. I wish I had my new helmet on.

“Jeez, Louise,” Geoff says, which he always says when I act like a big girl. (I'm a feminist, by the way, so no offense!)

We pull back into the station and Amir whips his head around and goes: “Well, that was something.”

“You ain't seen nothing yet,” I say, convincingly enough, and we all lift our lap bars and try to walk in a straight line out of the station—but the thing about wooden coasters is: They will screw up your equilibrium and make you all unsure on your feet, which is (theory alert) secretly why we love them so much; there's nothing better than not quite feeling like yourself. I mean, at least if you're me.

“Potato Patch?” Carly says, and Geoff flicks her arm and goes, “Calm down, carb hoarder. It's like eleven a.m.”

“Okay,” I say, “we're going on the Racer, next, now.”

“Whoa-ho-ho, pulling out all the big guns,” Geoff goes. He's right. The Racer is in my top three rides at Kennywood.

“So,
le
next roller coaster
, s'il vous plaît
?” Amir says in this goofy French accent, and I lead the way with what can only be described as a bounce in my step. LIFE HACK: Memorize anything, from amusement park shortcuts to how to make a decent plate of spaghetti, and you, too, can appear to be an expert about something for a good four hours. It's always the fifth hour when things get tricky.

“Get ready to have your ass whooped,” Geoff says to Amir, pausing as our group parts around some pretty adorable toddlers all tied together by their wrists and drooling en masse.

“Um,” Amir says.

“Geoff sucks at context and setup,” I say, jumping in as we pass a frozen lemonade stand, and getting an odd boner. “What he means to say is: The Racer is another wooden coaster, but there's two tracks on this one, side by side. And one group is in one train and the other is in the, like, other, and it's totally random which train is going to win.” I pause. “And my car has never lost, like, ever.”