Close Ups and Mess Ups

by Natasha West

  As we got to safety, I stopped, and she released her grip, dropping off my back and onto the ground. I turned around to face her but then I wasn’t sure what to say. How do you comment on a piggyback? But Ashley didn’t have that problem. She said, ‘My hero. Thanks’ and walked off.

  I felt flushed and silly. Thank god she’d done a mic drop. I don’t know what I might have said otherwise.

  ‘OK, that’s all fine but the school say we need to leave’ Victor said, putting his phone away. ‘The set’s too dangerous now.’

  ‘But we’re missing a shot!’ I cried, anxiously. It was my worst fear about today, coming true. Not for the reasons I’d expected. It had sprung from somewhere I hadn’t seen coming at all. But I took that as yet another lesson. You can’t plan for everything.

  ‘Shall we pack up?’ Jonas asked. ‘The editor will have to try and use a few shortcuts…’

  I thought fast. We needed a hallway. And this place did have a second floor, I just needed a location that vaguely matched.

  ‘No, we need this shot. I just need ten minutes to scout a location match in the building.’

  Jonas looked doubtful. But then again, when didn’t he? ‘I don’t think there’s any point. We’re losing light.’

  ‘Then I’ll make it five’ I told him, dashing away. I ran down the empty dirty halls and up the stairs, flaking, filthy wallpaper and old cans and packets all around me. None were right, they were the wrong shape, the wrong colour. I kept running.

  I heard footsteps behind me and Ashley was suddenly with me. ‘Right, Boss. Let’s find this location match, shall we?’

  I grinned and we ran together, through filthy hallways and along dirty carpets and somewhere along the way, it became a chase. I was running after her and we laughed and panted, having fun somehow, amidst the chaos. And then we rounded a corner and bam. There it was. A match. Ashley held up her hand and said, ‘Don’t leave me hanging.’ I gave her a high five and then we ran back so we could shove our new location right in Jonas’s smug face.

  Later on, all the equipment was packed away, and we had full coverage, ready to hand over to our editor. Jonas looked unhappy, Victor looked relived. And Ashley, sitting in the back, her eyes visible in the rear-view mirror? She looked like something I couldn’t explain.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘And you’re happy with it, are you?

  The question was a trap, I was certain of that. But sitting in front of half the school, all my classmates on one end and my crew on the other, what could I really say?

  ‘Yes, I am happy’ I told Kim truthfully. We’d just watched the finished three minute short and it had been a thrill to see my work on a large cinema screen. I’d felt like a real filmmaker. If there were flaws in the movie, I wouldn’t have seen them. I was just too fucking proud of everyone who had come together to make this little film. Even Jonas.

  But now I was in Kim’s hands and if she wanted to tear the movie to pieces, she would. She’d done it to the first five, why should I expect different? All I could do was stand behind my work.

  ‘Well…’ Kim said and I got into the mental crash position, braced for the impact. ‘…You should be. It’s not bad at all. For your first attempt.’

  I almost fell over.

  ‘It cuts together very smoothly, and you got a convincing performance out of your actor. Good pacing in the edit, no spare fat.’

  I was about to give the thumbs up to my crew. And then Kim said, ‘If it fell down anywhere, I’d say it was the script.’

  Shit. Of all the criticisms we could have gotten.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what it was trying to say about the central character, what she wanted, why she went to that place at all.’

  My eyes searched the room for Cameron and I soon found her, sitting in the back, low in her seat, trying to shrink away. I wanted to kill Kim. She wasn’t even a writing tutor. Was she supposed to be doing this?

  The writing teacher stood up in the back, Dominic. He was a beardy guy with a Welsh accent who liked to wear cowboy boots and he was obviously something of a champion on his class’s behalf because he sprang quickly to Cameron’s defence. ‘Actually…’ he began and explained his interpretation of the story, turning to Cameron and asking, ‘Is that right?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what I’d intended, yes.’

  Kim raised an eyebrow an eyebrow at Dominic and replied, ‘I’m sure that if you worked closely alongside Cameron as she developed the script, it gives you insight. But we don’t have that. We need it on the page, on the screen. Or it’s not good.’

  I tensed up, sensing some school politics at play. Janey had told me about this, that Kim and Dominic tended to spar and they didn’t care about doing it in public. I was about to get a front row seat to the show but I didn’t want it. They were in charge but instead of guiding us, they were puffing themselves up at our expense.

  ‘I suppose that’s a matter of opinion’ Dominic replied, taking off his glasses, polishing them nonchalantly. ‘You can’t expect every member of your audience to understand your work, can you?’

  Kim gave a derisive snort. ‘Are you saying I’m the only one that sees a flaw?’

  Dominic shrugged.

  ‘Alright, that’s easily dealt with. Everyone! Hands up if you thought the script was weak?

  I watched in anguish as hands went up, slightly more than half of the room. Even Jonas, the bastard. I wanted to get the fuck out of that cinema right then. If the teachers wanted a measuring contest, I wished they’d do it in private.

  I looked up at Cameron and I knew she was dying. People were now voting over whether her work was good. And from what I knew of Cameron, she wouldn’t even see the hands that stayed down. She’d count only the hands in the air as the real truth.

  Later, after the argument had abated and we’d checked out everyone’s efforts, at last, we were released.

  As we bundled out of the screen room, I tried to catch up with Cameron. But there was a lot of people between us and she kept getting further away. When I eventually cleared the crowd, I couldn’t catch sight of her. She’d done a bolt. I didn’t want to worry about her, we were all in the same boat. But I did anyway. She was just so bloody delicate. I wasn’t usually one to indulge a superwoman complex, she didn’t need me to save her from harsh words, but I guess I just wanted to let her know that she wasn’t alone in it. That I’d felt that feeling of worthless. I’d been bathing in it from day one. I’d had a good day today, my first. It was a fucking terrible coincidence that it had smacked into a bad day for Cameron.

  And then I saw her through the doors, heading off campus. I ran, panting as I got within a few feet of her. ‘Cameron!’

  She didn’t turn. In fact, I could have sworn she quickened her pace. She was trying to get away from me! ‘Cameron, just bloody stop, would you?’

  Outside the school entrance, out on the main street, she finally stopped and turned, throwing surprise onto her features. ‘Oh, Allie-’

  ‘I know you heard me’ I told her gently. I wasn’t trying to shame her but she was obviously hurting and I wasn’t about to talk around that.

  Cameron threw her hand up. ‘I didn’t! I was just in such a hurry.’

  I smiled indulgently and said, ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I don’t…’ she started and then she looked away from me for a moment. When she looked back, there was a fresh sincerity in her face. ‘I just can’t pretend to be alright for anyone right this minute, alright?’

  ‘You think that’s why I chased you across the school? To force you to pretend to be fine?’

  Cameron seemed flummoxed. ‘I don’t really know what you want.’

  ‘I want to tell you that they’re wrong!’ I cried, shocked at my own sudden passion. But it was how I really felt. I thought what she’d written was good and I didn’t care what Kim or Jonas or half the school thought. ‘I loved your story and I’ll fight anyone who says different. I’d argue them down with my last breath’ I told he
r.

  She smiled. Not her nervous defensive expression, a real one. ‘You’re willing to use your final moments to argue for a three-minute horror script?’ she asked, mockingly.

  ‘It’d be worth it as far as I’m concerned’ I told her with a cheeky grin. ‘Those fuckers are philistines anyway. Did you hear them oohing and awing over Jonny’s movie?’

  Cameron giggled. ‘Yeah, Tate wrote that one.’

  ‘I don’t know who the hell Tate is but he’s a bloody derivative hack, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  Cameron laughed, shocked. ‘I thought it was just me that thought that. Everyone is always kissing his arse in my class.’

  ‘A coming-of-age story about a twelve-year-old’s first kiss? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘I think everyone was impressed because it was between two boys.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give him fair play for that’ I admitted. ‘But there wasn’t one original thing about it other than the junk of the leads matching.’

  Cameron was grinning ear to ear and I felt good, like I’d broken some seal with her.

  ‘Is Tate even gay?’ I asked.

  Indignation slipped into Cameron’s eyes. ‘You know what? No, he’s not. Actually’ she said with a hushed whisper, ‘That kind of pissed me off. I feel like he was trying to steal some minority cred when he’s as cis-het-white-male as they come.’

  ‘Fucking faker!’ I exploded. ‘Some of us have to come by our gay credibility the hard way and then Tate comes in to nick it and everyone goes bananas for it, hails him as ‘Brave’. Classic privilege.’

  Cameron’s smile slipped for a second and then she asked shyly, ‘You have that credibility, then? Earned?’

  ‘Very much so. Been clocking the hours, doing overtime, coming in at the weekends. I’m fully accredited.’

  ‘Hmm, that so?’ Cameron asked and then I understood with a shock that we were flirting. But I couldn’t help myself. I pushed it.

  ‘How about you? Do you have certification?’

  ‘I might’ she said.

  This was it. We weren’t mentioning our orientations casually. This was going somewhere. The question was, would I let it?

  ‘It’s been a long day’ Cameron said quietly. ‘I could do with a drink. How about you?’

  ‘Sure’ I said. I had to. Cameron needed cheering up. My work wasn’t done here. I wasn’t looking to take it to the next level. We could just flirt a little, make each other feel better, give each other a little ego boost. My chastity belt was still locked up tight. I wasn’t going to do anything about this. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t.

  Later, we were sat in a bar, about a mile from the school. We’d travelled that far for a reason. Anything closer might attract our schoolmates. We never said that to each other, she just suggested this place, that it was a little walk but a nice bar, and I think we both got it. We didn’t want to do the school chatter thing with people we only semi knew. We both needed a break from the place, Cameron more than me. And we needed to bitch. Not hatefully, we just needed to take some power out of BSF, the place that filled our waking hours and our dreams too, always wanting more of us, like an energy sponge. So the first few drinks, we ripped it out of numerous teachers and many, many students. Even the woman on reception wasn’t immune to the bitch session.

  After the fourth drink, I wasn’t feeling quite as strong as I had been before intoxicants had entered my system. My chastity belt was starting to feel a bit heavy and I wondered if I might take it off, just for a little while. It wasn’t just the booze though. Cameron was loosening up with me. Now that she was relaxing, I was seeing a different side to her. She wasn’t the twitchy girl who’d foxed me with her incredible cheekbones anymore. She was talkative, funny, dry. She was good company. And she still had those cheekbones.

  ‘So…’ I said, feeling dangerously relaxed. ‘That night when you turned up at my house? What did you really come for?’

  Cameron’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, I’m not answering that.’

  ‘Why not?’ I demanded.

  ‘On the grounds that my answer might incriminate me’ she said with one raised eyebrow. And then she looked away.

  Interesting. This was a bit next level. It was getting into the confessional stage of drunkenness and this was where it could really tip, if we let it. I was still arguing with myself for remaining celibate. But my sensible voice, she was starting to get a bit quieter, less insistent. She was giving up.

  ‘I live around the corner and I’ve got some vodka in my room’ Cameron suddenly said, in a rushing sentence, as though she were afraid that she might wimp out if she didn’t get through it quickly enough.

  ‘Is that an invitation or just several unrelated facts?’ I asked her, feeling like a cat with a mouse.

  Cameron rolled her eyes. ‘Are you coming or not?’

  Outside the pub, we were shocked to see the sun had set.

  ‘When the hell did that happen?’ I asked the sky.

  ‘Dark is good’ Cameron told me, slipping her fingers into mine, a new boldness in her tone. ‘Dark is nice. Romantic.’

  I let her pull me and we walked hand in hand for a minute, reaching her house. It was a bit further than ‘Around the corner’ but I was in no mood to poke holes in her story.

  We crept up the stairs, trying not to alert her housemates. We were at her door before we realised the house was empty.

  ‘Do you share with school people?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yep. A sound guy and an editor’ she told me. ‘They’re probably in the school bar, that’s practically where they both live. I don’t know how they do it. I wouldn’t get anything done.’

  ‘Are you telling me you can’t function drunk?’ I asked. We were inching toward her bedroom.

  ‘I guess I can probably manage some things’ she said, her hand on the doorknob.

  We still hadn’t crossed a line yet, not really. It was all talk. It wasn’t too late to stop.

  And then her door was open and she walked in and turned to me. I stood at the threshold, at the border, on the cusp, at a boundary, a crossroads and many other words that flew through my tipsy mind as I debated whether to go in. But it wasn’t a real debate. It was just me trying to pretend I was still in charge of my decisions, that Little Allie had not taken full command, that there was a possibility that I was about to go anywhere else but into that room.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Cameron called out to me from the dark room.

  I walked in. Cameron sat on the edge of her single bed and I stood in front of her, looking down at her upturned face. And then she grabbed my hand and pulled me downward. I was glad. I was tired of intellectualising this. I needed Cameron to take charge and I was surprised to find that she took it easily. Sometimes the adages really are true. Cameron was a kitten on the street and… Well, you get the idea.

  As she placed me on my back and began to undress me, I felt a relief. I’d been holding myself back since I’d come to BSF, dividing myself up into the useful bits and the bits I thought would hold me back. I’d classified a need for sexual release as the latter and thusly, placed it away in a drawer, to be collected at the end of the school year. But now, as I watched Cameron take her own clothes off, I wondered why I’d done that. She was lean and skinny, in that angular, hot way. She was all ribs and pale skin. I wanted to consume her. But it was too late, she’d already decided to do that to me and I watched as she drew a route down my body with her mouth, headed south for the winter. It had been a long, cold season and I was ready for that warmth. And as she took me into her mouth with little moans and sighs, it was clear that I’d needed this more than I wanted to admit to myself. I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow and I didn’t care, for once. I was just here, now, feeling good, feeling drunk, feeling Cameron.

  And when I came, it was like a steam vent letting off some pressure. It was just what I’d needed, whether I’d known it or not.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Nnng.’

>   That was the noise I made as I woke up, my head sore. I had a classic hangover headache. But that was the only fact I knew. The rest came as a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t in my bedroom. It didn’t take me long to remember where I was, I hadn’t been totally smashed last night, there was no blackout. I was in Cameron’s bed. I’d fallen asleep soon after we’d ravished each other. There had been no discussion of whether I was to leave now that the dirty stuff was done. Cameron simply spooned herself around my back and I passed out, but not before I heard Cameron snoring lightly.

  And now I was awake, most of the alcohol gone from my system. Cameron was still out, pressed close in the cramped single bed. I looked at my watch. It was 6.17. It was a Friday, so there was still school to contend with today. I wanted to go home, get a shower, some fresh clothes. But I couldn’t just leave, it was rude. As I’d slept over, there was kind of a social contract in place. I was supposed to wait until Cameron woke up, and then we could have some manner of little chat, awkward allusions to the night before, possibly a discussion of whether it was a one-off or an open ended casual arrangement or in some instances, if things were really kicking off, a next ‘Date’ arranged. She might offer me breakfast and if she did, I was supposed to accept. I knew what the rules of not being shitty were.