Make the Fireflies Dance, page 5
He raises a finger to silence me and keeps reading, his concentration intense. After a moment, he flips the script shut and leans back in his seat.
“It’s a romance?”
I nod. “Romantic comedy, actually.”
He’s nodding with me, slowly. “So basically: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl, boy pulls off some over-the-top gesture and wins girl back? Does that about cover it?”
The muscles in my shoulders and neck tighten as he speaks. I take a deep breath so my irritation doesn’t show. “Actually,” I say, “I like to think it has a bit more to it than that. And there’s no big romantic gesture at the end of this one.”
“But, basically, I’m right?”
I huff. “Yeah, basically.”
Ezra holds up his hands, palms facing me in surrender. “Hey, I’m not knocking. You know I love a good rom-com.”
Without warning, I’m overwhelmed with memories of the two of us, sometimes with our parents and sometimes without, curled up on the couch watching movies. One summer we discovered my mom’s collection of romantic comedies and spent nearly every afternoon watching them. 13 Going on 30, Notting Hill, and Never Been Kissed were our favorites. We watched those three so many times I could probably still recite them.
“So, what’s the meet-cute?” Ezra asks, bringing me back to the present.
“What?”
He looks at me like I’ve sprouted a third arm. “You know, the meet-cute. The moment when your girl and your boy”—he looks back at the script briefly—“Sebastian and Adalyn meet in some ridiculously cute way. You can’t seriously have written a rom-com without a meet-cute!”
I roll my eyes. “Of course I didn’t. I know what a meet-cute is. I was just surprised that you did. They meet when Sebastian’s house-sitting for Adalyn’s neighbor. The pet parrot gets out, and he’s trying to catch it when Adalyn comes to see what’s going on.”
“And she helps him get the bird?”
“Naturally.” I may have stolen the story directly from how we met Hadley’s neighbor once. We came outside to find her standing on top of her Honda waving a piece of watermelon around at the tree branches.
“I like it,” Ezra says. “It’s weird.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say, but I smile to let him know I’m teasing. “Will you do it?”
He takes a huge bite of his burger—his first, I notice, while mine is almost gone already—and chews slowly. Then he takes a long drink of lemonade. He’s doing this to taunt me, isn’t he?
“Can I take this?” He picks the script up off the table and waves it in between us. “Maybe read the whole thing before I make a decision?”
“Yeah, sure, but can”—I wince when the corner of one of the pages gets dangerously close to the pile of pepper-laden ketchup Ezra has in front of him, and he laughs quietly—“oh my gosh, give that to me. I’ll email you a copy, okay?”
“Good to see some things never change,” he says. “You still can’t stand not being in control of things, can you?”
“Shut up,” I mutter. I slide the script safely to the edge of the table farthest from the food.
We finish our meals and I grab Ezra’s cell number and email address to send the script his way. When we leave, I have him drive me back to the Orpheum so I can finally pick up my car, still left from last night.
Hours later, I’m lying in bed, replaying the auditions in my head, when my phone beeps.
EZRA: fine. I’ll do it.
chapter Seven
I WAKE UP SUNDAY MORNING TO A FLURRY OF TEXT MESsages. The first is from Nana, confirming our 9:00 a.m. breakfast, as if I’d ever miss. We’ve been having breakfast every week since Mom died.
The rest of the messages are part of an epic group text with Hadley, Naoise, and Shyla. They’ve sent an ungodly number already this morning. Hadley’s up for church, I’m sure, but I’m surprised the twins aren’t still drooling on their pillows. I open the thread and scroll to the top.
HADLEY: So I was thinking and what if Ezra is your mystery kisser?
SHYLA: Ohhhh that’s very Dawson and Joey of them.
NAOISE: Yeah. I’d ship that.
HADLEY: Who are Dawson and Joey?
NAOISE: Are you serious? Don’t you ever Netflix?
HADLEY: It’s not like I’ve seen every show on there!
SHYLA: Anyway. Was he flirty at auditions Neesh?
HADLEY: Aren’t you two together? Why don’t you just ask her?
SHYLA: Um that would mean I have to get out of bed and no thanks.
NAOISE: Plus then you and Q wouldn’t get this awesome play-by-play of our convo.
NAOISE: Anyway he wasn’t flirty. Like not at all that I saw.
SHYLA: Bummer.
They’ve been quiet for a few minutes, so I tap out a quick message telling them what’s been in the back of my mind since Friday night.
ME: I really think it was Tyler y’all.
SHYLA: That’s your massive crush speaking.
ME: No really. It makes sense. Nobody else makes sense.
NAOISE: I don’t know. There were a lot of other guys there.
HADLEY: Maybe it was Marcus and he got embarrassed and that’s why he didn’t come to auditions.
She has a point. I hadn’t even considered that maybe he bailed because he didn’t want to see me after Friday night. But he seemed totally normal when I saw him later on Friday. Didn’t he?
SHYLA: But isn’t Marcus asexual? He wouldn’t go kissing random girls, right?
HADLEY: He is?! I had no idea. Is he Neesh?
NAOISE: It’s not like we have a club where we learn the secret handshake. How would I know?
HADLEY: Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.
I set my phone on my bed and pad down the hallway to the bathroom. This chain will be going back and forth for a while and won’t miss me while I shower.
It’s almost time to leave when I get back to my room, so I get dressed and set to work doing my hair and makeup as fast as I can. Breakfast at Nana’s really means breakfast at the café in her condo complex, where the residents are always dressed to the nines and tend to ask me if I’m feeling well if I don’t have on a full face of makeup.
I scrunch some gel into my hair and twist it up in a loose French roll, letting a few curls fall free. I’m stabbing bobby pins in when my phone trills with an incoming video chat.
When I answer, it’s to a split screen, Naoise and Shyla sharing one view with Hadley in the other. I recognize Hadley’s dad’s office at the church behind her.
“Hey,” Shyla says, “you stopped texting.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say around the bobby pin I’m holding between my lips. I move the phone to lean against the wall by my floor-to-ceiling mirror. There isn’t room in here for a vanity, so I do my makeup sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“You’ll have to watch me do my makeup. I gotta leave for Nana’s in ten.”
“What color today?” Naoise asks, and I know she’s asking about my glasses. My collection of colored acrylic frames is legendary. Okay, maybe not legendary, but it is impressive.
“I was thinking of going simple and sticking with clear,” I say. I set to work filling my brows. “So to what do I owe this privilege of a video call?” I let sarcasm lace my words. There’s no way they would all three call me if they weren’t cooking up some scheme I’m not going to like.
“Well, we were thinking,” Hadley begins.
“That we are gonna set you up on a date!” Naoise yells over her.
“A date?”
Shyla leans closer to the camera, blocking Naoise’s face from view. “More like five dates, actually.”
I drop my mascara onto my lap, where it leaves a black streak across my bare inner thigh. “Five dates?! With who?”
“Whom,” Shyla says.
I laugh, one short sound. “Yeah because that’s the important part here. Who am I going on all these dates with exactly?”
Naoise elbows Shyla out of the way. Their screen shakes and spins as she grabs the phone and pulls it to her. She takes up the whole screen and is so close I can’t even see to the top of her forehead.
“Here’s the thing,” she says. “I’ve been thinking. There’s only one way to figure out who kissed you Friday night, and that’s to get you out on dates with all the possible guys so you can find out. Genius, right?”
I’m not sure genius is the word I would use. “Well, I went to dinner with Ezra last night, and I’m pretty sure it’s not him.”
“But how can you know,” Hadley asks, “if you didn’t kiss him? You didn’t kiss him last night, did you?”
“No!” I yell, probably too fast. Listening to make sure Dad isn’t coming to check on me, I lower my voice and say, “I didn’t kiss him. But I didn’t get that vibe from him at all.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Naoise says. “It wasn’t a date. That’s why you need to go on dates with them, so you can feel them out—”
“And kiss them! You gotta kiss them!” Shyla yells from somewhere in the background.
“I dunno, y’all,” I say.
“Don’t you want to find out who it was?” Hadley asks.
Immediately, I’m transported back to the dark theater. Hand in my hair, arm around my waist. Lips on my mouth, my neck, my shoulder. My stomach flutters, warmth filling my chest. I get a jolt just remembering. Hadley’s right. I need to know who it was.
“Yeah, I do, but I’m not sure letting y’all set me up on a bunch of dates is the best way to find out.”
“That’s because you don’t want to let someone else take control,” Shyla says. She’s wrestling the phone back from Naoise, so I can see her again. She’s not wrong. I like having a plan and knowing I can control a situation. Letting my three best friends plan not just one, but five dates for me seems like a quick way to lose control of my life completely.
When I don’t answer for a beat too long, Naoise sighs loudly. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll make the dress.”
“What?”
“The dress,” she repeats. “That one from I Love Lucy that you want so bad? Let us set you up on these dates, and I’ll make you the dress for prom.”
“Really?” I squeak, excitement raising my voice about two octaves.
“Really,” she says seriously.
“Okay,” I agree. Anything for that dress, I swear. “I’ll do it.”
What did I get myself into?
chapter Eight
THE WEEK PASSES IN A BLUR, AND FRIDAY IS HERE BEFORE I know it. When film class ends, I move to a table at the back of the room. I’m supposed to have study hall in the library last period, but Mr. Welles lets me stay in his room to work as long as he doesn’t need the extra space for his Intro to Video Production class. I settle in with my printed copy of the Maybe, Probably script and a shiny pink pen. It’s what I’ve used to make notes for as long as I can remember—a habit I picked up from Mom.
Now that we have the cast set, I’ve been combing through the screenplay and tweaking it to make it work better with the actors’ strengths. I’m reading over the notes I made on my last read-through when a shadow falls across the page. I look up to find Kenyon standing over me.
“Want some help with that?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I snap. It’s bad enough he’s in my group, but I don’t need his help on my own script.
“Whoa,” he says, taking a step back. “Stand down, soldier. I was simply wondering if you wanted to go over it together. Get ready for Monday and all that.”
Suppressing a groan, I push the chair next to me away from the workbench. He’s right; we need to get ready to start filming next week. We may as well go over this now rather than later. We have a very short filming window, so we need to be efficient with our time. The more prep work we do up front, the more ready we’ll be for the first day of shooting.
Kenyon accepts my silent invitation and sits next to me.
We jump right in, going over his notes on the script, as well as the ones I made for myself. It’s hard, but I’ve tried to leave final camera decisions up to Kenyon. He’s acting as director of photography, and as much as he irritates me, I know he’s talented enough to make this film gorgeous. Plus, Mr. Welles was very clear that this needed to be a full group effort if I was going to give up doing this as a solo project.
As Kenyon talks, I can see his excitement build as he describes the shots he plans to catch with the Blackmagic. We’ll use my Canon as our secondary camera so each scene can have two angles to work with. The Canon was a seventeenth birthday present to me from Nana, and I’ve filmed everything I possibly could on it for the past year. The Blackmagic will be a huge step up for us. Having it also means we won’t have to check out a school camera, so we don’t have to worry about the other groups’ schedules when we plan our shoots.
“When do you think you’ll have rewrites done?” Kenyon asks.
“In a couple of days,” I say. “I’ve already sent changes to the actors as I’ve written them, and I only have a few scenes left to tweak. We’re shooting only Adalyn and Sebastian first anyway, so everyone else will have time to learn their new lines.” I’ve been working nonstop on rewrites and edits ever since the auditions, and now I’m wondering if I should’ve looped in the rest of my team beforehand. This has been so firmly my movie from the start that I often forget I have three other people whose grades also depend on this project.
“Cool, cool.” He leans back in his chair. “Any big plans for the weekend?”
“Nah,” I say. “Just work tomorrow and writing. Exciting life, I know.” It’s strange, this easiness between us. All our animosity seems to melt away as we talk about filming locations and camera angles, and now we’re chatting easily, almost like friends. I start to pack my stuff into my backpack when I feel my phone buzz in the outer pocket. I reach in and bring the screen to life, careful to keep it out of view. Mr. Welles hates phones in class—even if I’m not actually part of the class. It’s a message from Naoise.
“Um, how about you?” I ask as I tap the message open.
NAOISE: You have a date tonight! Operation Mystery Kisser is officially underway.
“You okay?” Kenyon asks, startling me. I’ve been staring into my bag at my phone for an impossibly long time.
“Oh, yeah, sorry! What did you say?”
He looks at me like he can’t quite figure me out and then chuckles. “I said Tanner is hellbent on setting me up, so I guess I’m going on a blind date tonight. Should be interesting.” His cheeks flush deep, and he flips his hair off his forehead.
I freeze, my bag’s zipper pulled halfway closed. My fingertips are turning white with the pressure of squeezing them around the zipper pull. Kenyon has a blind date tonight, and Naoise just messaged saying I have a date too. There’s no way this is a coincidence.
Kenyon was at Nana’s party, after all. Could it have been him in the theater? I’m not sure how I feel about that. Kenyon’s been little more than an annoyance to me since he moved here. Can I even imagine kissing him? Oh, wait. Yup, I can. Flutters well up in my stomach at the idea, and suddenly I kind of want to run my hands through his unruly hair.
My goodness, what did that kiss do to me?
I manage to gather myself, and we finish packing up before walking out together. Kenyon follows me all the way to my locker before peeling off and heading to his own.
“See ya later, Quincy,” he says, and I wave.
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other much sooner than he thinks.
chapter Nine
I STARE ACROSS THE PARKING LOT TOWARD THE RESTAUrant. It looks nice. I’d never even heard of Pier 23 before Naoise’s text telling me to meet my date there at 5:30 p.m. The restaurant is in a gorgeous old building, obviously a converted house, overlooking the ICW. Twinkle lights spiral around the pillars on the front porch, and from my angle at the side of the building, I can see strings of swooping lights crisscrossing the patio out back. I wish Mom were here to see this. She would’ve loved this place.
I wish my mom were here for a lot of reasons tonight.
When I feel like I’ve sat in the car long enough to calm my nerves (they haven’t calmed at all), I climb out and smooth my dress with my hands, working the seatbelt lines from the fabric. I put on one of my favorites tonight. It’s another from my mom’s collection: flirty with a swishy mid-thigh skirt and spaghetti straps. The fabric has the tiniest multicolored floral pattern, and I wear it over a fitted white T-shirt. I’ve paired it with my favorite Doc Martens, and I have a jean jacket in case I get cold later.
There’s a picture in Dad’s office of Mom wearing this exact outfit. The photo was taken by one of her friends in high school. In it, Mom’s sitting on the top of a picnic table, her legs stretched out in front of her. One foot is propped up on the bench, her knee bent, and the other hangs off the edge. She’s leaning back on her elbows, and she has her head thrown back in laughter, her wavy hair spilling onto the table.
It’s my favorite picture of her.
A sudden burst of sound draws my attention back to the restaurant as a middle-aged couple makes their way out the front door. I can’t put this off any longer. It’s time.
Inside, the restaurant is every bit as charming. Tables are scattered throughout the rooms, which are still separated from when the building was a house, with glass French doors opening from section to section. No two tables are the same. They are all different colors, expertly painted and distressed, and none has a matching set of chairs. The place looks like it was furnished at the chicest flea market imaginable. I’ve never been any place like this, and I love it already.
Behind an antique drafting table, a pretty girl with wild blonde curls piled on the top of her head smiles at me.
“How many tonight?” she asks.
“Oh, um…” I twist my fingers in the fabric of my dress. “I’m actually meeting someone. Except, I’m not sure—”
“Oh! You’re here for a blind date? That is the cutest thing. He’s already waiting out back. Come on, I’ll take you.”
