Chapter Two. Clara
CHAPTER TWO
CLARA
NOW
TEN DAYS UNTIL LEGACY BANQUET
FILMING HIM ALWAYS FELT as easy as breathing.
But watching this footage of Reid now cuts my air clean off.
In the clip, the late-afternoon sun streams through the trees as he looks out over the mountain from my favorite trail.
Our trail. Only the soft ends of his dark hair peek out from under a beanie, curling at the nape of his neck.
He’s looking at me over the camera with a bright, unguarded light in his eyes.
Nothing like how he’d look at me now.
I should turn it off. If I don’t want to cry, I should definitely turn off this clip I accidentally opened.
But an overwhelming longing roots me to the spot.
The memory flooding as I watch it play out in real time on the screen of the laptop that I’ve indefinitely borrowed from Woodhurst High despite having graduated five months prior.
This must have been last spring, just before it got warm.
“Can I help you?” Reid asks.
It’s a shot straight through my solar plexus hearing his deep voice again.
I thought I remembered it well. I fall asleep replaying our conversations in my mind often enough.
But I forgot the subtle gruffness. The teasing nature that he reserved just for me.
I make it through the next moments of it fine until I hear myself say off-screen, “As usual, just ignore me.” My disembodied voice is lighter and happier than I’ve felt in months.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “As usual, that’s impossible.”
I can guess that off camera I’m rolling my eyes the way I always did when I tried to hide how he unraveled me. Because on camera he grins the way he always did when he knew that he had.
I want to reach for my phone to text him, call him—anything him. But I squeeze my eyes shut against the impulse. Against the familiar tidal wave of missing him. That was then.
As if ensuring I don’t do something reckless, the wail of the smoke alarm sounds overhead. I whip around at the scent of burnt popcorn and see the smoke streaming from the stovetop.
Perfect.
I rush to turn it off and use a dish towel to fan the smoke out the open window, willing the alarm to shut up.
I don’t need any of our neighbors, who are mostly my family, popping over to check on me like they do when Mom’s on overnights at the hospital.
Ever since Dad left for good last year, they’ve been hovering.
Within an hour, an exaggerated story about how my house almost burned down would be all over Woodhurst. This town is too small for its own good.
With a few more shakes of the towel, the alarm stops just as the front door opens.
“Clara?” Mitchell calls. “Whoa! What died in here?”
I slam the laptop shut and force my features into benign amusement by the time he reaches the kitchen. “Oh, just my dignity.”
I dump the burnt popcorn into the trash.
Mitchell’s blue eyes crinkle with his smile as he holds up a grease-stained bag. “This is why I bring the food and you choose the movie. We gotta stick to our strengths.”
I force a laugh and pull two plates down from the cabinet.
The whole purpose of this night isn’t to torture myself with old clips of when I used to be happy. It’s to torture myself by finally showing someone the new documentary I’ve been working on all summer.
Mitchell isn’t an expert, but he is my closest friend these days. It’s been just the two of us since most of our group graduated and moved away in August. He stayed because he’s a year younger and in his senior year.
I stayed because I lost my Legacy scholarship and couldn’t afford California Film Academy without it. Because I had no choice after my life was upended.
When I asked about deferring, CAFA informed me that they don’t allow it due to the number of applications they receive. I had missed the deadline for loans. I had no way to pay for college.
I simply had to give up my place at my dream school.
Now I have to start all over; either reapply to CAFA in a few weeks or find film festivals, competitions, and scholarship opportunities for the upcoming year. All the programs I’d ignored before since I had counted on Legacy.
Or I could just stop altogether, which honestly sounds the most appealing. But Mitchell basically demanded a screening of my new idea tonight, so I figured I might as well show him.
I trust that he’ll tell me the truth about it. Like Reid, the guy is incapable of lying. Must be a brother thing.
After we open all the windows and finish the burgers, we plant ourselves on the couch.
My finger hovers over the space bar, but I can’t bring myself to hit PLAY. I need to do my ritual to shake off these nerves. I press my hands into a prayer pose and hold them against my chin.
Mitchell groans, “Every time,” just as I launch into my best David Attenborough impression.
“What you are about to witness is nothing short of extraordinary. After two failures, several months, and a near-death experience, Throwing Shade, a Clara Suarez original documentary short, is complete.”
I look at Mitchell significantly, but he just stares back. I drop into my regular voice, shattering the illusion I so clearly drew. “Dude, you’re supposed to clap.”
Mischief flashes through his eyes as he launches himself up off the couch to clap furiously. “Wooooo! Go, Clara!”
His floppy brown curls fall in his eyes as he does this for a solid ten seconds.
I stare at him, unamused. “A sarcastic standing ovation is hardly supportive. This is art.”
He closes one eye like he disagrees and holds up his fingers to make air quotes. “‘Art.’”
When he plops back beside me, I elbow him hard, and he laughs.
“You’re a bad friend.”
“Pretty sure you mispronounced ‘amazing,’” he retorts.
As I’m about to hit PLAY, both our phones vibrate on the cushions between us. That’s weird. Who would be texting both of us anymore?
Mitchell gasps. “Oh my god. Oh my GOD.”
“What?”
“It’s Kenji. In RUN FORREST RUN.”
My heart drops. RUN FORREST RUN. The name of our group chat that withered and died a few months ago after everything went down.
My face feels weird, my head too hot. I mentally run through the list of everyone on the chat. Me, Mitchell, Kenji, Delaney.
Reid.
“‘Guess who’s coming home for Legacy Weekend, B-words!’” Mitchell reads aloud. “A full two months at college and Kenji still doesn’t cuss.”
Mitchell types back right away, and I pick up my phone when it vibrates again. HELL YEAH CAN’T WAIT!!!! When will you all be here?
I’ve been willfully ignoring the fact that it’s Legacy Weekend next week. It’s not like I can avoid the buzz around town—the banners strung across the town square and the signs in every shop window.
But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for it.
Legacy Weekend is when all Woodhurst High alumni, most notably the five most recent Legacies, come back to Woodhurst for a three-day spectacle to celebrate them and the program.
It’s bigger than homecoming, bigger than Thanksgiving break if you ask a local, and everyone who left for college comes back home for it.
I’ve been dreading it all summer.
But why is Kenji resuscitating the group chat? Is he trying to be chaotic?
A selfie of him shirtless at the beach baring a wide, relaxed smile comes through then with no other context. Guess that answers that.
His black hair is longer, his olive skin sun-kissed. Formerly short and scrawny, he’s like the poster child for a post–high school glow-up.
I sneak a glance at Mitchell. “How mad are you that he got cuter?”
Though most people don’t know yet, I’m not the sole person Mitchell’s out to. But I am definitely the only person who knows how he really feels about his best friend.
The flush that seems to appear only when he talks about Kenji dusts Mitchell’s cheeks. He makes a dramatic gagging sound before he says, “So embarrassing.”
Mitchell gives Kenji’s photo a thumbs-down on the group chat, which is basically admitting to his crush then and there. Not that Kenji would ever notice.
When no one else responds right away, Mitchell shrugs and puts down his phone before unceremoniously slapping the space bar to start the doc.
“Hey!” I exclaim.
“Shhhh—it’s art.”
The establishing shot is of the trail Reid and I first hiked together—where we shared so many firsts—and my chest hurts the way it always does when I walk that path now.
I try to tell myself that seeing him again couldn’t possibly make it hurt worse.
We watch the doc in silence. It’s not very long, since I started it only this summer.
As the final scene ends, I blink back to the present, having bitten my pinkie nail down to a painful nub.
I sit up a little straighter and wait for Mitchell to say something.
Anything. Well, not anything. I’m definitely waiting for him to say something along the lines of “Perfect, no notes. You’re not a total fuckup. ”
It’s the slight purse to his lips that tells me a second too late that I don’t want to hear what he thinks after all.
“Okay … I was willing to let the Great Depression sweatpants go, but this”—he waves his hand over the laptop—“is a problem.”
I search his face for the joke, only to realize he’s being serious. Looking down at my legs, I ask, “What’s wrong with my sweatpants?”
“They’re symptomatic.” Mitchell turns, jutting his knee into the back of the couch. Beside it, a small tear has formed in the green plaid cushion. “Your movies are obviously breathtaking, Clara. The look of them. But this is—a lot of thoughts at once. A lot of sad, miserable, depressing thoughts.”
“It’s not that bad—”
“You basically said the earth is on fire and it’s all our fault and there’s nothing we can do so we might as well give up. This whole thing just doesn’t feel like … you.”
I close the laptop quickly. As if shutting it down will stop the river of embarrassment now flowing through me. I started this doc because I thought this was what the film festivals would want. What CAFA would want. Something that they would take seriously.