by Julie Olivia
“So, how long are you staying?” I ask her. “And what brings you back here?”
She laughs. “You know why I’m here.”
“And I’m just making small talk, remember?” I say with a grin, internally hating all the repetition. Am I incapable of carrying on a conversation?
“I’m hoping to make my second movie,” she says. “I don’t know how long it’ll take, maybe the whole summer.”
“Lucky us.”
This whole thing feels both nostalgic and new all at once. I spent a lot of time with her over summers when we were younger. Once she turned sixteen, Asher convinced me to get her a job at the movie theater. At the time, I was a shift supervisor, and of course I would hire my best friend’s sister. When we worked together, we talked.
I might have been the only person who truly knew she had dreams of making documentaries. I might have been the only soul she told, all while we sat above the theater, just the two of us and the whirring projector.
It’s the same, yet not at all.
“Does everyone know?” she asks, and I sense a bit of unease at the thought, a faltering in her confidence, which has been solid thus far. There’s a crack in the facade, just a glimpse of the eighteen-year-old girl I once knew.
“You know this town—you’re the latest gossip.”
When I look back at her, she’s narrowing her eyes, staring at me. She makes it seem so natural while I know my stares would seem too…well, too something.
“You’re different,” she comments.
“Is that right?” I respond.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, so are you,” I say.
The more she stares at me, the more I realize that, while she may be here all summer, I can’t hang out with her—not if I’m going to feel like this.
Asher is my best friend. Violet is his sister. The last thing any of us needs is for the boat to get rocked after ten years.
“Hopefully I see you around,” she says. With a small smile, she moves toward the bar, and I steal a glance at her ass.
Goddammit.
Violet has no idea she’s about to drag my heart through the mud and the mess.
Two
Violet
Keaton is both identical and completely different from how I remember him, and I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing…though I think it’s safe to say it’s leaning toward being a very, very bad thing.
When I was eleven, just two days into my sixth-grade year, my brother brought home a quiet lanky boy he met in class. In our small town, you rarely see any new faces. The classmates in your kindergarten class are the same kids in sixth grade and eighth grade and twelfth, so when there’s a newcomer, they’re bound to be bombarded with questions and, most of all, nobody is exempt from my brother’s eager personality.
I remember Asher presenting this boy to our parents with pride, like he was a puppy slated for adoption. The boy simply smiled at my brother’s overenthusiasm, only speaking when spoken to and saying “Yes ma’am” or “No ma’am” to my mom whenever she asked him a question. She beamed at that while I, on the other hand, took one look at him and fled from the kitchen without a peep.
Even then, I knew Keaton wasn’t just some boy.
I took to sitting at the top of our staircase, wiping my thick-lensed glasses on my t-shirt, trying to take in the sight of Asher and Keaton sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. They were tapping on their game controllers with enough fervor to break the things. I never cared much about video games, but I did understand that something was different between how Asher played this game and how this new boy played.
Keaton was the calm presence to my brother’s wild energy. I’d hear Asher exclaim that he’d beaten him at the racing game for the third time, but Keaton would still remain quiet, nodding in agreement with a small smile, one small dimple on his left cheek deepening.
Up to that point, I’d had crushes before. One time at vacation bible school, I kissed Joey Nolan underneath the stairwell, but the butterflies were nothing—nothing like the weird flutters running through me looking at my brother’s new best friend. Keaton was unique, and I soaked him up like I’d never seen another boy in my life.
While my dad and brother kept their hair short and trimmed, Keaton’s wild brown hair curled at the nape of his neck. He tended to have a few Band-Aids on his elbows, knees, and ankles. I wore neat white Skechers; he wore untied Converses with laces brown from mud.
I watched my brother and Keaton every Saturday morning when they played video games, saying nothing. Silent as a mouse but sneaky like a fox, watching from afar. One Saturday, I leaned forward a bit too far on the top step and, in doing so, fell down the stairs, tumbling until I caught myself on the last stair, my knobby knees skinned with carpet burn and my face hot from embarrassment.
“Are you okay?” Keaton asked. After a month of coming by our house, those were the first words he said to me. I did not respond. Not only was I sprawled out in an embarrassing position, I had also lost my glasses in the fall and was left hopelessly blind. I was too scared to move, let alone pass my hand over the ground in front of me in some pathetic gesture reminiscent of Velma from Scooby-Doo.
I remember Keaton handing me my glasses, my hands fumbling to take them from him, and the first thing I saw clearly once my vision returned was his legs in front of me. They were strong, the legs of a kid who spent a lot of time outdoors.
Based on what I saw at First Stop last night, his legs are still just as strong. And, unfortunately, my stomach still flips at the sight of him. Though everything seems the same, it’s all so different as well. Keaton is more muscular than I remember. His biceps now look like mountains atop his arms, pulling his black shirt taut at every peak and letting the material settle in every valley. He’s traded his long brown hair for short locks and a rugged beard. He’s aged well, a walking cover model masquerading as your average Joe.
And I’m still just Asher’s little sister.
This is made even more apparent when I wake up in my old bedroom, startled awake by the sound of my mom rummaging around in her bathroom. Every single sound can be heard through the old home’s thin walls, but it’s always been this way. Let’s just say I didn’t sneak many guys into my bedroom in high school.
I roll over, resting my arm under my head and glancing around the room. Stuffed toys from my childhood are lumped together pyramid-style courtesy of my mom’s organization. There’s my ancient writing desk stacked with a mess of papers, no doubt used as a makeshift junk landing zone during my absence. The bookcase is filled with crochet tutorial magazines; those are not mine either.
The walls are the only areas unclaimed by my mom since I graduated and moved across the country. They serve as an archival collage of my life journey thus far. The wallpaper, barely visible behind papers and posters, is a pastel rainbow I pasted on at the age of seven when I was sure without a doubt that the Lisa Frank trend would never die. On top of that are doodles based off of Disney classics, likely traced over VHS covers, but those are covered with the top-most layer of promotional movie posters from documentary directors like Scorsese and Kopple.
These directors are prolific, and I’ve created one smash hit.
That’s it.
The name ‘Violet Ellis’ in big letters…on one poster about education reform.
I roll away from the posters only to be greeted by more on the other wall. The faces on them taunt me. Why haven’t you made more awesome movies like me, Violet?
I bury my head in the pillows, attempting to hide from my shame.
One idea. That’s all I got.
I came home to find something, anything, to inspire a new movie. Plus, my parents offered to house me while I live off the royalties from my first film.
Let’s call it a sabbatical. A working sabbatical.
While I produced the first movie on a budget, I now have more involvement and interest—interest that comes in the form of deadlin
es that are not self-imposed.
The buzzing of my phone next to me reminds me of exactly this.
I pick it up, seeing an email from my new backers, Sean Townsie and Dean Fratesi. Yes, those are their real names.
I quickly learned after attempting to get in touch with the two of them that Sean and Dean do not text. Their only method of communication is email. Always email. But, there’s never a greeting or signature. It’s just the message as abbreviated as possible—almost like a text, if you can imagine it.
The email reads: time 4 a call?
It’s early here, which means it could still qualify as a ‘late night’ from their time zone. Funnily enough, I’m not surprised. They once asked me to join them on a morning jog at four a.m. And, yes, I reluctantly went, because when in L.A., you run at four a.m. for work meetings.
I sit up, corralling my hair into a halfway presentable bun before dialing one of their numbers and calling. It doesn’t matter who it is; they will be together.
When the monotone ringing stops, I’m greeted by two men sitting on a couch, as expected. They’re shoulder to shoulder, which is not uncommon, seemingly stuck together as if they’re conjoined twins. They’re not even related.
Fact number two about Sean and Dean: They do not chat. They video-call. There are no exceptions.
“Vi!” Dean calls out. I only know it’s him from the side-swept bangs.
“Ellis!” Sean yells. He prefers the shaved head and backward ballcap look, as well as the backward way of addressing anyone. I don’t think he’s ever called me by my first name.
“Hi, guys,” I say, giving a small wave into the camera.
“How are you settling in out there?” Sean asks.
“Experiencing the small-town life?” Dean follows up.
“How’re the chickens?”
“Or cows?”
Sean and Dean are like the personification of when someone asks if you’ve actually ever seen two specific people in the same room, as if to imply they might be the same person—except I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sean and Dean more than three or four feet apart at any given time, and I still struggle to think they’re not from the same egg.
They go back and forth with guessing at the intricacies of “small-town life” until there’s enough of a pause for me to pop in.
“I’m settling in fine,” I say. “Just getting things unpacked.”
“Great, we have news,” they continue on, breezing past any other niceties. “We’re still talking to a few others, but I think we’re gonna have a really good crew for you.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great!” A crew. I can’t even imagine having my own crew. That was the first thing they hooked me with when they proposed backing with me funds for my next documentary. It was a one-man project the first time around, and I have no desire to go through that again.
“We’ll keep you posted,” Sean says.
Dean shifts into frame. “How’s another meeting in two weeks or so, huh? Maybe get the creative juices flowing and send us what you have.”
My heart sinks. “Sure thing.”
“We trust you,” Sean says.
Dean nods. “Yeah, get that brain pumping, and we’ll talk to you later.”
“Sounds great.”
No, it doesn’t.
I flop back on my bed and wish for nothing more than to melt into it. It takes a bit more rolling around, kicking the covers, and eventually losing them to the floor before I grab my laptop and open a new document.
My fingers hover over the keys for what might be five, ten, or thirty minutes.
Nothing. I got nothing.
I hop out of bed and decide to go to the one place that might give me some inspiration. After tossing on some high-waisted jeans and a black crop top, throwing my blonde hair in a slightly neater top knot, and grabbing a light jacket, I head down the stairs, stopping to see a scribbled note on the foyer table.
Vi,
Left you the van. Have fun, and remember: You’re an Ellis. The Ellis family are winners.
Love,
Daddy
Well at least he has faith in my directorial skills.
Next to the note is a car key. I loop it on my fob and walk out the front door onto the porch, where my mom sits in her Adirondack chair. Her coffee cup rests on the chair’s arm, and her glasses are slid to the end of her nose so she can concentrate on the phone only a couple inches from her face.
“Look at you! Up and at ’em even on your first day back,” she says, putting the phone in her lap and picking up the coffee cup adorned with mums, which I truly believe she bought with an intended pun in mind. “I thought you would sleep in.”
“Have I ever been one to sleep much past when the birds wake up?” I ask, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “This movie isn’t gonna make itself.”
I internally cringe at myself.
“That’s my girl. Dad left you the van,” she says, motioning her cup toward the side driveway where my dad’s old navy blue van is parked. “Washed it and filled up the tank for you. He’s riding his Harley today.”
“Is he hitting his midlife crisis?”
“Hit, hitting, about to hit…it’s all blending together at this point,” she says with a wave of her hand.
I hold up the key with a smile. “Well, I’ll thank him when he gets home.”
“What’s on the agenda today?”
“Research,” I say.
“Do you think you could be home in time for dinner?” she asks. “I think Asher wants to take you to the bonfire tonight.”
“The bonfire?” I ask.
“Over at Kayla’s?” she says, blinking. “I thought Asher would have told you. That boy…”
Asher did not tell me, but I don’t need to have Kayla’s Friday night bonfire explained—I’m sure it’s the same as it ever was. Bonfire and beers at Kayla’s was a post-football-game tradition where Asher and his friends—and me tagging along—would sneak alcoholic drinks and we’d all get a small buzz. I think what I do need explained is why every person I went to high school with is still out here making bonfires on a Friday night when we don’t go to football games anymore.
“Kayla still does those?” I ask.
“Oh, you know that girl,” she says, as if that’s all that needs to be said on the subject. I don’t press further.
“Well, sure, I’ll be back for dinner.” What else would I be doing? I just woke up in my childhood bedroom and I’m talking about a high school football party.
“Good. Have a nice day, dear.” With a nod, Mom pulls her phone back up and her glasses dip down to the edge of her button nose once more. I imagine Sheryl Ellis is two cups of coffee away from tending to her garden in the back and relocating to the kitchen for morning dishes. This is my mom’s usual schedule, and I bet it hasn’t changed in the past decade. She likes her routine, and she likes it completed early.
I drive down the road in my dad’s old van, flipping through the radio stations. It’s the same car I drove in high school, and it still doesn’t have a Bluetooth connector or an auxiliary cord, just local radio playing Top 40 hits. It’s the same music that blares in every department store, and I recognize some of the pop songs from my tenure in retail. Even four years later, they are the same songs that pounded in my head as I plotted out my first movie on receipts between ringing up customers.
The van rumbles into the empty public parking lot on Main Street ten minutes later, scarce traffic to be seen and stoplights still blinking red with no residents around to abide by them. It’s too early for even the intersections to function, though it does seem emptier than I remember. It’s a bit eerie.
I step out into the cool morning air, rubbing my arms and walking down the familiar alley behind the shops toward the local movie theater. I reach the back door, turn the rusted handle, and smile when it still clicks without any resistance, creaking outward as I pull the door toward me.
The lock has been broken for this long, and I’m somehow n
ot surprised.
Sliding in, I let the door close behind me. The lights are off, but I hear sounds coming down the hallway from Viewing Room 1—one of two, to be exact. I had expected to load up a movie on my own, but when I pull the door open, there’s already a black and white film on the big screen, and illuminated in the crowd is another person.
My stomach drops, and for a second I consider turning and leaving. I wonder if this is considered trespassing. I’ve always seen the local theater as my home away from home, but it’s been ten years since I left. Who is the owner now? Are they the kind of small-town hero to instantly call the cops, or are they forgiving?
I slowly shift my foot backward, but before I can turn, the door behind me shuts and the silhouetted person gives a shudder before twisting in my direction. My heart pounds and I will it to stop, but once I realize exactly who it is watching movies at close to eight in the morning, my heart only beats harder. The projector light shines on the familiar jawline and newly muscular arms that are even more enticing when cast in such a harsh shadow.
“I should have known,” Keaton calls. “One day here and you’re already breaking in.”
His voice carries across the theater like an echo. It’s not louder than the voices on screen, but the sound still rumbles in my chest more than the classic score coming through the speakers.
“You never fixed the lock.”
He chuckles in response as I walk down the aisle toward the chair next to him and then he pats the seat in a welcoming gesture. “If I fixed the lock, how would I watch movies first thing in the morning?”
“Fair,” I say, sitting down. Being so close to him is odd, but also a welcome sensation. Keaton always smelled like the outdoors with tones of bark and sweat, but now the scent seems more artificial, as if he finally found a cologne that took all the comforting flavors of nature and eliminated the boyish notes of childhood adventure.
He’s the same boy and yet…now a man. I shift in my seat, trying to find some form of comfort. He glances at me, a smile tugging at the side of his mouth.
