Anywhere but Here (26 page)

“Lex is a nightmare,” Greg agrees.

“Are you kidding?” Hannah says. “She stuck up for Lauren this whole time. And she was the only one Lauren trusted with the truth.”

We're silent for a minute, considering this.

“I still think Lauren has room for new friends in her life,” I venture.

Greg nods thoughtfully.

“Why don't you check on her?” I say. “Maybe she's awake.”

“You think?”

Hannah leans her head on my shoulder as we watch Greg walk past the desk. It feels weird to have him checking on my ex, but it doesn't feel wrong. Not anymore. He loves her. Maybe he's loved her since second grade, in different ways at different times, just as I have. It seems like this whole hospital is a tangle of friends and ex-girlfriends and teachers and parents, wound together, all
waiting to care for whichever one of us breaks down next.

The idea doesn't seem as suffocating as it used to.

Actually, I'm kinda grateful.

•  •  •

Eventually, we all go home. I drop Greg off at his orange and stucco house, where his mom is waiting at the kitchen window. I drop Hannah at her mansion. The porch light is on, and when I pull into the driveway, her dad steps outside. He nods at me before he wraps his daughter in his arms.

Then I take myself home. The lights are on there too. It seems as if our families have been awake all night, waiting for us.

“You all right?” Dad asks from the recliner in the basement.

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep,” he says.

And when I go into my room, my sheets are turned down, the same way my mom used to do when I was a kid. Which makes me wonder if it was my mom after all. Do dads turn down sheets? Then, as my head sinks into the pillow, I smell the faintest trace of gardenias. And it doesn't even matter. It still feels like I'm home.

•  •  •

Five days later, I stare at my computer screen, drumming my fingers on the desk, while Britt jumps on the recliner.

“Is it ready yet?” she calls.

“Almost!”

Whenever I blink, I feel grit behind my eyelids. I haven't slept much. The morning after I got home from the hospital, the first thing I did was rip open my film school application package. I've been reediting ever since.

It's almost finished. Not quite, but almost. Today, Hannah, Greg, Dallas, and even Tracy and Ms. Gladwell are coming over for an advance screening. Hannah's already here, helping Sheri choose paint colors for the baby's room. Lauren's stuck at home. She's not allowed out of bed for a few more days, but I've promised to bring her a finished version.

A shadow falls across my keyboard. I glance up to see my dad, his bulk filling the doorway.

“Almost done,” I tell him. “I'll bring it upstairs.”

“It's not that,” he says. “I just wanted to say hello. See how you're doing.”

Since when does my dad stop by to chat? There's so much we haven't said, and so many things I haven't explained, it seems impossible to start now.

“I'm kinda busy,” I say. Although really, all I have to do now is watch the progress bar slide across the screen as the DVD burns.

Dad doesn't take the hint. He comes right into my room and sits on the bed. “I know things haven't been so great over the past year.”

I nod. Understatement's a beautiful thing.

“I guess I wasn't always . . . here. For you. You know what I mean?” he asks.

Suddenly I have an image of us in a Clint Eastwood western, decked out in leather holsters, facing each other across a dusty street.

“It's fine,” I say.

“Now that Sheri's here . . .” Dad trails off.

I look up. Is Sheri going to solve everything? Is that what he's come here to say? A few months ago, the idea would have filled me with rage. Now it just seems absurd. I want to grab him by the shoulders and say, “Look, we messed up. You screwed up, and I screwed up. Literally. Let's just put away the guns and walk our separate ways.”

In those westerns, they don't blab on about their deep inner emotions. It's fairly simple. If they like each other, they tip their hats. If they dislike each other, they shoot.

“Things are going to get better,” Dad says. “She's not your mom. I know that. Your mom, she was one of a kind.”

His voice cracks on that last word. Which is probably why gunslingers stick to tipping their hats. I find myself blinking, hard, as I stare at the progress bar.

“She'd be real proud of you.”

I snort. I can't help it. “Yeah, as I run around getting into
bar fights and impregnating girls. I'm sure she'd be real proud.”

“Girls?” Dad asks. “There aren't any others, are there?”

“Figure of speech. There was only Lauren.”

“Well, I'm just saying, your mom'd be proud. You've handled things real well.”

Something inside me softens. It's like he's walked three-quarters across the dusty street to meet me. I could at least step off the boardwalk.

“I think you're right about things getting better,” I say. “And Sheri? She's okay. I like Britt.”

“They're both good people, Cole. They're happy to have us too,” he says.

He has a good smile, one that makes his eyes look brighter. I haven't seen him smile much, not for a long time.

I shake my head. You think as your world is heading to hell, some people are going to hold it together. The ones who are older than you, and bigger than you, and presumably smarter than you. When they climb into the handbasket too, it's seriously concerning. Who would have thought that a pregnant stripper would be the one to get my dad back on his feet?

Not even Hollywood could invent this stuff.

As Dad gets up from the bed, Britt barrels into the room.

“Aren't you ready yet?”

“Two minutes!”

The doorbell rings, and she runs for it. Dad follows more slowly.

“A documentary, eh?” he says from the doorway.

“Yeah.”

“I always did like movies about real stuff. There's no glitzing things up.”

Then he leaves, before I can agree.

Voices echo from the entranceway—Greg and Dallas. The bell rings again, and more footsteps cross the floor upstairs. I listen to muffled laughter and it feels good. It feels good to have them all here.

With a beep, the disc is finally finished. I grab it and head to the living room.

“And the award for director of the year goes to . . . Cole Owens,” Greg says in a deep announcer's voice. Dallas and Britt both cheer. Ms. Gladwell and Tracy smile, and Tracy gives me one of her bear hugs.

“All right, all right. Grab a seat,” I say.

I slide the disc into the machine and dim the lights. Butterflies the size of pterodactyls are doing acrobatics in my stomach. Is this how every director feels when people see his film for the first time? When Cameron Crowe screens a film in Cannes, are his palms sweating?

Behind me, Greg, Dallas, and Hannah are squashed together
on the couch. Tracy sits in the recliner and Ms. Gladwell perches on the arm of the chair. Britt sits cross-legged on the floor. My dad and Sheri both hover in the doorway to the kitchen.

The music starts. Then my face fills the screen.

“This is Webster,” I say. “It's a tiny place you've never heard of, filled with people you've never met.”

The scene changes to a view of Canyon Street, shoppers strolling between the stores.

“Around here,” my voice continues, “we call Webster ‘the Web.' And I used to think of it as a trap, like a giant spiderweb.”

Now the film cuts to Greg, in the darkened truck, asking me to believe him if he sees aliens.

On the couch, Greg groans.

The next scene is him again, in front of the bakery. I've left both our voices in the clip—me, asking if he feels trapped, and him, basically saying he's okay. He's a happy guy in front of a nice bakery.

Dallas is up next, also talking about the town in kind terms.

Then I'm narrating again, over top of a scene at the Burger Barn. I talk about how none of these people describe the Web in the way I expect. They don't seem to understand my idea of showing the irony of the name and the spiderweb nature of the town. “Oh, they admit there are a few problems,” I say into the camera. “Not everything's perfect.”

Now there's Hannah in the Nester bandstand.

In the living room, Greg lets out a low wolf whistle, and Hannah elbows him.

On-screen, she talks about how hard it is to find your place in a town where people already know each other so well.

Then her face fades, and mine replaces it. “For every new person struggling to fit in, there's another who finds the Web a place of refuge,” I narrate. My voice leads into the interview with Tracy, aglow with love and biodynamic blueberries.

And finally, Greg appears for a third time, clarifying his views on aliens and why it's so important that someone believe him.

The film ends with a sweeping view of the valley.

“I was wrong about Webster,” says my disembodied voice. “Oh, it's a web. But it's not a trap. Turns out, the tangled nature of this place, where everyone knows everyone and everyone's involved in everybody's business . . . that's what holds us all together.”

Back to the close-up of my face. “I still want to leave,” I say. “There are other places to see, and I have things I want to accomplish. I can do that knowing Webster is here supporting me. It's like a giant-size safety net, woven from the threads of community.”

The credits roll. The whole room breaks into applause.

I am horrified to find tears on my cheeks. To cover, I grab Britt from the floor and toss her into the air a few times.

“Did you like it?” I ask.

“I loved it!” she says. She's not the most critical of critics, but when I risk a glance around the room, it looks as if everyone else loved it too.

“You left out the dead deer,” Greg says after he's slapped me on the back a few times.

Hannah stares at him as if he's lost his mind.

“I hated to leave such a great shot unused,” I say with a smirk. That dead deer was the final scene of my first edit. There was just no way to include it in the second version—not without taking all the focus away from the living people.

“You guys can help me think of a title,” I say. “I was considering
Entangled
.”

Hannah shakes her head. “Too Disney.”

“Call it
Little Green Men
,” Dallas offers.

“Shut up,” Greg tells him.

“You know,” Sheri says from the kitchen door. “You all got a bond here that a lot of people would love to have. And that web you're talking about, it's important. I think you should call it
Life in the Web
.”

This is possibly the first time I've ever heard Sheri say something meaningful. It would be easier to absorb if her hand weren't toying with the nape of my dad's neck. But still . . .

“
Life in the Web
. I like it,” Dad says.

The rest of them are nodding too.

As they haul themselves off the couch and the floor and go in search of snacks, Hannah gives me one more hug.

“You did a fantastic job.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. “I'm proud to be part of the Web with you.”

I smile back at her. For the first time in my life, I'm proud to be part of the Web too. Which is a little ironic since I hope to be leaving in a few months. But maybe . . . maybe you have to know where you come from, and what you are, before you run away to become something new.

I let out a long, slow breath, happy to have this first screening over with and relieved that it went so well. Then I kiss Hannah. I kiss her the way movie stars kiss in the final scene, when they've navigated all the roadblocks that the screenwriter dropped in their paths and they finally understand where they're supposed to be. Then fireworks paint the sky behind them.

“I still have a lot to figure out,” I tell her, once we've caught our breath.

“We'll get there,” she says.

•  •  •

The next morning, before I slide the disc into the package to send to the admissions office, I watch the film one last time.

I find myself pressing pause as the camera pans through
Burger Barn. The customers sprinkled among the tables, most young, some not, are living their own rom-coms, or action flicks, or family-friendly movies. Maybe one or two are in the midst of some dark, heavy documentary filled with seemingly unsolvable problems. Some of them are probably acting, following scripts and instructions, but maybe a few have realized that they're actually the directors. They're sitting in the chair, making the big decisions.

If I could tweak the focus, see their eyes, maybe I could tell what kind of film they're living. Or maybe not, even then. Sometimes you don't understand what those around you are going through, even if you eat cereal with them every morning or pass by their locker every afternoon.

“Breakfast!” Sheri's voice trills down the stairs.

I hear Britt's pattering steps and Dad's heavy ones. It won't be a normal breakfast. It will be frittata or eggs Florentine or some other dish that takes ridiculous amounts of effort at this hour of the morning. But Dad will sit lapping it up and Sheri will beam at him.

This last day or so, I've felt a flicker. It's as if an old-fashioned projector reel has hummed to life inside me. A week ago, everything seemed to be ending. And now—now I think this might be a new beginning. A new opening scene.

I can guess at what's coming next, but there's no way to
know for sure. And there's no way to know how this film ends or when. Could be a spiderwebbed windshield. Could be a falling leaf, seen from a palliative-care bed on the third floor.

I suppose that's the whole point of being the director. You have to call the shots. If you end up living in Webster with your lesbian lover, or changing the oil on the fifth Ford pickup of the day, or lost in the crowds of some big city—whatever happens, at least know that you chose that scene.