Screen Play

by Chris Coppernoll

  “I was praying you’d find me.”

  Forty miles south of the island of Hawaii, we heard a sputter from the engine.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “We’re out of fuel. Hindsight being twenty–twenty, I should have kicked off the pontoons. The weight’s dragging us down, but I just couldn’t take the risk.”

  “Are we going to make it to Honolulu?”

  “Not likely.”

  The engine sputtered again, and I felt the airplane shimmy from side to side. A moment later a deafening silence fell upon us as the engine shut off.

  “We’re officially a glider now,” Hawthorne said.

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “For as long as we stay airborne.”

  I rushed to the cockpit. “And exactly how long is that?”

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll give you a rough, quasi-scientific guess. We’re at approximately fourteen thousand feet, traveling at a speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour, and descending rapidly. According to my calculations, adjusting for wind speed, which is at our backs, we’ll be a flying airplane for the next ten minutes.”

  “That’s not long enough,” I said.

  Hawthorne opened a communications channel on the radio.

  “Mayday, mayday. This is Cessna 4331J22 sending out a distress call. We are out of fuel, heading northeast and going down. We have pontoons so we can land safely, and we are carrying the missing pilot Luke McCafferty.”

  Hawthorne glanced back at me.

  “And also the lovely Hollywood actress Harper Gray. Any assistance by ship or by plane would be appreciated.”

  He switched off the radio and let out a sigh of surrender.

  “It’s out of my hands now, love. I’ve played all the cards I have.”

  “Thank you, Joel,” I said. “You’ve earned your fee today.”

  “After this, I’m going to have to raise my rates.”

  The plane continued falling as Hawthorne steered it left and right, keeping us airborne for as long as possible.

  “Mayday, mayday,” he repeated over the radio. “We are Cessna 4331J22 soon to make an emergency water landing about thirty miles southwest of Oahu. We have an injured man aboard, missing pilot Luke McCafferty. Requesting assistance.”

  I looked out the cockpit window at the endless ocean. We were about to land in the middle of it. I looked back at Luke, thanked God for allowing us to find him alive, and prayed fervently for our rescue.

  “Hold on, we’re going in,” Hawthorne said, pulling the headset off and tossing it on the floor of the plane.

  I went to the back of the plane and locked Luke down to the floor with the weight of my body. The impact of the pontoons skidding across the choppy waves shook the airplane violently. Bottles of water flew from my open bag and bounced around the floor. Hawthorne’s coffee cup smashed against his tool kit, and he let out a yell. Luke recoiled in pain from the brunt of impact, and I tried to calm him with my voice. Finally, the plane came to rest, bobbing up and down like a small boat tied to a dock.

  “You’re praying, right?” Hawthorne asked.

  “And believing,” I said, just seconds before the radio cleared.

  “Cessna 4331J22, this is the U.S. Coast Guard, do you copy? We are sending a rescue medical chopper. Expected ETA, thirty minutes.”

  ~ Epilogue ~

  “Harper, that’s the most amazing story I’ve ever heard. Maybe someone should turn your life into a movie.”

  I smiled at Entertainment Tonight producer Benton Stuart in my living room at the beach house. “I’m just glad you were willing to take a day to come over and hear it.”

  Benton set her Pellegrino glass down on the coffee table, next to the lunch plates we still hadn’t cleared. “And roll tape. As much fun as this has been for me, I think our viewers are going to love hearing this interview. Especially since your reviews for Winter Dreams are glowing, and sitting where I am across from you, I have to say you are too.”

  I looked down at my growing tummy and sighed.

  “It’s been quite a year since our adventure, which brings me to the announcement I told you about. I’ve decided to take the next year off—and maybe the next twenty.”

  The doors to the back deck slid open, and Luke stepped inside, bringing with him the sounds of the ocean. Benton turned to look at him.

  “Sorry,” Luke said. “I thought you might be done. I’ll come back.”

  “You’re fine,” I said. “We’re just finishing up.”

  “Harper,” Benton asked, “are you telling me you’re retiring? Rumor has it after the success of Winter Dreams you’re being offered more A-list scripts than you can read. One assumes these are worth a boatload of money. Even your good friend and Apartment 19 co-star, Avril LaCorria, just signed a two-picture deal worth millions. How can you just walk away when you’re being given everything Hollywood has to offer?”

  “I don’t think of it as walking away. It’s more like … running away to an island in the South Pacific. There’s an opportunity to help build a hospital on Tarajuro.”

  Luke sat next to me on the arm of the sofa, placing his hand on my stomach. I watched how the television lights made his wedding band sparkle. White gold, with the tender words I’d had engraved hidden inside.

  “God’s already given me everything,” I told Benton. “There’s no counteroffer Hollywood can make.”

  My cell phone chimed on the table in front of me with an incoming message. I saw it was from Avril and opened it.

  can’t believe you talked me into a blind date.

  In sandy eggo! call me to tlk. i’m weirdly excited.

  I smiled.

  “You know, this is only going to make you more in demand,” Benton said, raising one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

  “They’ll have to find me first.”

  Benton cued the cameraman and he turned off the lights, returning the room to normal. It felt good to finally have their heat off me.

  “You’re warm,” Luke said. “Let me get you a glass of ice water.”

  “No, don’t go.”

  The baby kicked, and Luke and I felt it together, his hand still on my belly.

  “You see, she doesn’t want you to go either.”

  “Oh, it’s a girl. Do you have a name yet?” Benton asked.

  “We’re going to name her Bella.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Benton said.

  “That’s what Bella means, beautiful. It’s from Isabella, meaning ‘God’s promise.’”

  Luke leaned in, softly and sweetly planting a kiss on my cheek.

  “Kind of sums it all up, don’t you think?”

  … a little more …

  When a delightful concert comes to an end,

  the orchestra might offer an encore.

  When a fine meal comes to an end,

  it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.

  When a great story comes to an end,

  we think you may want to linger.

  And so, we offer ...

  AfterWords—just a little something more after you

  have finished a David C. Cook novel.

  We invite you to stay awhile in the story.

  Thanks for reading!

  Turn the page for ...

  • An Interview with the Author

  • Manhattan: Lonely Island

  • Which Character Would You Like to See in a Sequel?

  An Interview with the Author

  In Screen Play, Harper and Luke get to know each other long distance through the online dating site, LoveSetMatch.com, text messaging, and emails. In the spirit of Screen Play, best-selling author Christa Parrish (Home Another Way, Watch Over Me
) and Chris Coppernoll dialogued with one another through email on the themes, message, and meaning found in Screen Play.

  CP: Screen Play is your third work of fiction. Why is this novel so important to you?

  CC: Screen Play is important because it comprises all the themes that inhabit my novels: isolation, singleness, sudden and unexpected fame, and God’s mysterious hand working on our behalf. I like this story. I love how Harper’s this beautiful, young woman who, at the time she finds herself crossing the line from her twenties to her thirties, goes through a bewildering series of circumstances that leave her friendless in Chicago. Her acting roles have dried up. Her best friend, Avril, is gone, and her boyfriend, Sam, abandons her for his new life without her in Los Angeles. The story basically opens with Harper emerging from an unsettling year alone. An acquaintance we never meet in the story, Bella, has invited Harper to a mission outreach church in the city, and she’s given her life to “the Rescuer.” In God’s perfect timing, Harper’s phone finally rings, and she’s invited to join the cast of a Broadway revival in New York. For me, that could be the entire story, but I wanted to tell a story about how quickly God can change our circumstances, and everything can change for the good.

  CP: Chris, did you find it difficult to write Screen Play from a woman’s perspective? What were some of the challenges? Some of the surprises?

  CC: Yes. The biggest surprise was that I did it. J I think Screen Play had to be written from Harper’s viewpoint because we need to hear her tell the story. I wanted readers to sit on those hard subway seats and feel the emotions Harper feels at the Carney Theatre and everywhere else her journey takes her. Harper is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever written. Writing in her voice was the most challenging part of the novel and the decision I questioned most (because it was a stretch), but it was the truest way to tell the story. I think God gives most novelists an affinity for understanding people, the way an attentive actor watches someone famous and then imitates their character on screen. I worried about whether readers could accept Harper’s voice, knowing it came from a man, or if they’d be distracted. I had to trust that readers could be swept up in the story and it wouldn’t be an issue.

  CP: At one point, Harper writes to Luke, “It’s part of bigger story God’s telling in my life. Sometimes I feel as much a spectator as a participant.” Why did you choose to write that? Do you ever feel this way?

  CC: Sometimes life feels just that way. We say, “What will be will be,” or “If it’s meant to happen, it will happen.” Writing Screen Play occurred at the same time I was experiencing changes in my personal life that felt God-orchestrated, like God was involving me directly in His plans. Some of my personal experiences influenced Harper’s story because there’s a parallel.

  CP: Harper remembers the loss in James’s life and thinks, “I wondered if he felt like God had suddenly realized He’d dealt him too many blessing cards and decided to take one back.” What would you say to someone who also felt this way when his or her life has been touched by pain?

  CC: It’s easy to write pat answers when life deals a difficult blow, but all of us go through challenging times. I’ll simply tell you what my experience has been. Everything painful in my life has come from one of three sources: someone’s sin against me; the consequence of my own sinful choices; or God’s providential decision to change me through trying circumstances. Whatever life challenges we face, God can reveal the goodness inside when we turn to Him.

  CP: “It struck me how in a city the size of New York, those I was getting to know best I was connecting with through a computer screen,” Harper thinks. How do you see technology playing a role in the fellowship of believers? Are you ever concerned it can be a replacement for true community?

  CC: As icky as the two words sound when used together, community and technology can work together. I’m thinking of the Twitter community—a Web site that allows people you’ve selected from anywhere in the world to exchange their brief thoughts online––and how friends where I live in Nashville were recently able to mobilize hundreds of believers to pray for someone in an emergency. Social networking sites like Facebook work like a small-town newspaper. They provide only the news our community chooses to post whether they are the community next door or a community far from home.

  CP: In Screen Play, we see the ups and downs of trying to find “the one,” from Harper’s relationship with Luke to Avril’s relationship with Jon. As someone involved in singles’ ministry, what advice would you give to the millions of people navigating the world as single people but desiring to have a partner in life?

  CC: Wait upon the Lord. Should God have someone for you, He will make it clear to the both of you.

  Manhattan: Lonely Island

  An Essay on Community

  I began work on Screen Play with a poignant image in my mind, a picture of Harper surviving in the empty Chicago apartment, then relocating to another lonely place, the crowded island of Manhattan. And still feeling degrees of separation.

  In my other life as a speaker and teacher, I often give talks on the importance of living in a fulfilling and sustainable community. It’s something I believe is God’s intentional design for us, and I encourage others to join their lives in community. But what exactly is it?

  A group of singles was chatting on Facebook, posting comments that tried to answer that question about what it means to be a part of community. “Community,” one wrote, “is my network of family and friends.” “Community is a place where I feel accepted.” “Community is where I belong.”

  How can something be defined that looks so different to each of us? Something that can mean everything from the clubs we join, to the friends we have, to people living in cooperatives and our grandparents’ nostalgic neighborhoods from a half-century ago?

  Wherever and however we find community isn’t as important as what happens to us when we’re engaged in it. As we encounter a true experience of community, we recognize its perfect shape for filling that vacant space in our lives. In meaningful community, a social DNA exchange takes place among us. When we gather with those who love us and whom we love, community bestows to us its resources—things absent from a life lived alone. Community is where we receive the gifts of profound and fulfilling fellowship, and where we practice our own God-given spiritual gifts.

  Community happens everywhere, and forms anywhere and forms quickly, but surprisingly, it doesn’t happen every time a group of people get together or even when Christians meet.

  For example, in high school I sang with five guys in a vocal harmony group called Northshore. We experienced real community and remain friends today. However, when I worked in a “Christian” company for three years, an environment where you’d expect a certain degree of spiritual community, community never happened.

  Pastors understand the importance of community and therefore encourage their flocks to meld into close community. Small groups are formed with the best of intentions, meeting to study God’s Word, share a meal together, and fellowship with one another. But following months of study and discussion, regular meetings, and coffee cake, some groups may have yet to experience even a spark of community. Why?

  In his groundbreaking book The Search to Belong, author Joe Myers says communities need to flow together spontaneously, not be pulled together by the force of their being simply “a good idea.”

  If Myers is right, churches that insist on small groups as the critical model for bringing about spiritual growth and connectedness may become frustrated even as they multiply their numbers, because they still fall short on building authentic community.

  My favorite community Facebook post read simply, “We can’t live without each other, and we cannot live without God!” As Christians, we’re called to live in unity with God, made possible through Jesus Christ, and in unity with one another. Inside the sphere of community is the access point to the beauty and riches
God has enclosed in the skins of His people. It’s the place where we can experience the truest expression of ourselves. In community, we engage in active relationship with one another. We live out Jesus’ calling to be one as He and the Father are One (John 17:22).

  Which Character Would You Like to See in a Sequel?

  Readers often tell me when they’ve enjoyed one of my characters. Sometimes they say they’ve enjoyed them so much, they’d like to see that character return in a sequel. Have you ever felt that way? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. Take a look at the list below of some of the most popular characters from my first three novels. Send me your favorite pick for a sequel at chris@providencebook.com, and who knows? Your vote may just lead to an all-new story! I look forward to hearing from you.

  Providence

  A Beautiful Fall

  Screen Play

  Jack Clayton

  Emma Madison

  Harper Gray

  Jenny Cameron

  Noel Conner

  Avril LaCorria

  Erin Taylor

  Michael Evans

  Helen Payne

  Peter Brenner

  Janette Kerr

  Ben Hughes

  Arthur Reed

  Christina Herry

  Luke McCafferty