Viola in Reel Life, Page 3

  Mrs. Zidar drones on, using phrases like “separation anxiety,” “in loco parentis,” and “the golden rule” in a speech that now sounds more canned than the Boston baked beans I had with my black hot dog in the freezing-cold bun.

  Our earnest RA, Trish, stands by the side of the tent, watching us. She smiles and waves when I catch her staring. It’s been a long day, but Trish is still sparkly, like it’s morning. I think Mrs. Zidar planted her there to show us that we’ve got someone older to talk to when we have nervous breakdowns or when the incoming freshmen finally realize that we’re stuck here until next summer, which seems like a thousand years away.

  The sun sets, taking the last bit of September heat with it. The Indiana sky over our picnic tent turns deep blue with streaks of lavender and orange. Some stray clouds move toward the flat line of the horizon. It’s almost night and a chill goes up my spine.

  As Mrs. Zidar wraps up her speech, and the sun disappears, homesickness spreads through the tents like the mumps. Night is always worst for sadness of any kind. The dark just buries you and makes you feel worse. Also, night seems to drag on twice as long as the day, and therefore gives you twice the amount of time to be upset.

  Mrs. Zidar opens her arms wide. She smiles and says, “You will look back on these days with such affection. I know. I was in the Prefect Academy class of 1979.”

  “Did they have the same ice-cream maker?” I holler. Big laughter fills the tent.

  “Uh-huh,” Mrs. Zidar answers from the podium. “And I’ve got the triceps to prove it.”

  At last, Mrs. Zidar displays a sense of humor. As she gathers the cards from her speech, the freshman girls look around the tent, some check their phones (at last), some stand up, but most of us stay seated. It’s as if no one wants the night to end, as if we wish Mrs. Zidar had another stack of cards to read through. We don’t want to go back to our rooms and start our new lives; we want to go home, where we know who we are and what we like, where familiar might be boring, but boring is better than the unknown.

  Romy, Suzanne, Marisol, and I head back to Curley Kerner in a clump. Now I sort of feel bad that I briefly hated them this afternoon. I’ve always had my own room. I don’t like people peeping at my work, or having to worry if I put my shoes in the wrong place. They’re not making me feel bad; I’m doing that on my own. My roommates are basically okay, and I’ll take okay when I look around at some of the other freshmen who seem much worse than Marisol, Romy, and Suzanne. We don’t have a giggler, a brainiac, or a snob in our group, so I guess I should count my blessings, which right now I can count on one finger.

  When we pass the fountain, Marisol climbs up on the bench and runs around the circumference. Romy laughs as Suzanne follows. Suzanne pulls Romy up onto the bench after her. I snap off my lens cap and film my new roommates through the cascading water where little lights turn the water silver. It’s a dreamy effect. I like it.

  My desk has nails sticking up along the edge. I’ll have to tell Trish so she can get me a hammer to pound them in. That’ll give her something useful to do besides hovering over us like an older sister we didn’t ask for. This desk is so old I don’t know if it could even take the beating. It might end up as kindling for the next class bonfire.

  I snap the cartridge out of my camera and load it into my computer. When my parents were my age, they had to shoot on film stock, and later would cut the film into sequences the old-fashioned way, on a Steenbeck. My mom thinks that the current way is superior to the old, though she says that the new technology has not made for better filmmakers, just more of us. Dad says that just because anybody can pick up a camera doesn’t mean that they can play it like a Stradivarius. A filmmaker still needs a story worth telling from a particular point of view. We can shoot video for cheap, and swiftly edit on our computers, but that doesn’t mean we have a story for an audience. I always remember that when I’m shooting a subject. What am I trying to say? is the question I ask myself a lot. That, and when I get to The End, Is anybody going to watch?

  Marisol listens to her iPod as she lies in her bed flipping through a magazine. She wears new pajamas. I’m sure everybody will be wearing new pajamas tonight. I know I will. My mother got rid of my “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt and cupcake jam pants because they had holes in them. I’ll be mad at her until the day I die for that one. This is one thing all mothers have in common. When it comes to boarding school, or sleepaway camp, or a visit with the grand-p’s, a girl needs a new wardrobe from the underwear out.

  Besides that, there won’t be time to shop for clothes or anything else because we’ll be too busy studying, and there aren’t any mothers around to run to the mall on a whim and pick up something we might have left behind. You have to have everything you need from day one. My stuff is all packed in Ziploc bags and marked by season. My mother is very methodical that way.

  Every once in a while, Marisol unconsciously sings a bar of music, which is irritating. If she keeps doing it, I’ll have to say something. People who sing aloud while wearing earpieces should be banned from group living.

  I slip on my headphones and listen to my voice-over, which I already recorded over the footage of my exile from Brooklyn. My mom films Andrew and me saying good-bye on the steps of our house in the neighborhood that I love.

  The car is packed and Dad is motioning for me to get into the rental car the color of a ripe tomato. Mom hands me the camera as she climbs into the front seat.

  I move the camera back to Andrew. He does this hilarious thing where he drapes himself on the wrought-iron fence in front of our house and pretends to sob like it’s going to kill him that I’m leaving. He looks like Buster Keaton in those old silents that Dad makes me watch. I keep the camera on Andrew’s histrionics as I climb into the car and shoot him out of the window until Dad makes the turn at the end of Austin Street, and Andrew ends up the size of a chocolate chip in the shot. Then, fade to black. Andrew Bozelli is gone. Or I’m the one who’s gone.

  I left Brooklyn two days ago with my parents. We drove through Pennsylvania, a bit of Ohio (staying the night in Sandusky), and then to Indiana, north to South Bend. It already seems like a hundred years ago. It’s been just eight hours since they unpacked and left me, and I really miss them. It’s only ever been the three of us, and I guess I thought it always would be. To be fair, my parents wanted to take me with them to Afghanistan. But they will be traveling with a news division filming a women’s solidarity group and there was no way that I could be homeschooled, as they would be on the move. It’s also dangerous—but I refuse to think about that.

  Mom spent a “wonderful” year at the Prefect Academy when she was in the eleventh grade and is still friends with the girls she met here. Her mom, Grand, is an actress who was touring with the national company (bus ’n’ truck they call it) of the Broadway musical Mame starring Angela Lansbury (who Grand adores). Grand was the understudy for the Vera Charles character, and there was just no way to take Mom on the road with her. Mom’s father had remarried and Mom didn’t want to live with his new family, so she wound up at the Prefect Academy.

  The footage of my parents from this afternoon jumps onto the screen. I must have been nervous because the camera moves in fits and starts, like it has the jitters.

  I first filmed my mom as she stood on the tree-lined avenue that leads to the fountain. Mom’s hair was a mess from the car trip. She gave herself highlights from a home kit the night before we left, and they look like strands of red yarn on brown velvet on this video. My dad joins her, putting his arm around her waist.

  My dad is losing his hair and has a strong profile, as sharp as a cartoon. He is handsome, my mom always says so. I don’t think daughters can give proper assessment of their father’s looks; he is just Dad to me.

  My parents are a team—they met in film school. They are great cameramen, though Mom is a far better editor than Dad, who my mom says can be indulgent. I don’t think that’s true. My dad just likes the emotions he captures on film and does
n’t quite know when to cut away and let the moment speak for itself. As I watch them onscreen, my eyes fill with tears. A year is a very long time to be without them. I wonder how I’ll get through it.

  I bet they won’t even miss me after a while. I’ve been Princess Snark lately. (That’s what Mom calls me when I’m just so over their badgering me about everything.) I can’t help it. I have zero patience. Really. Zero. I can hardly stand myself sometimes, much less other people. I think it comes from trying to be perfect. Although I can’t reach perfection, I drive myself crazy trying. Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me. If I keep worrying like this, I’ll grind my teeth down into flat nubs like my violin teacher, Mrs. Doughty. She has teeth so tiny, you’d think she’s part gerbil.

  My mom says Mrs. D lost all her teeth from grinding (!) and now wears dentures, which scared me to death, like that could happen to me and then what? Mrs. Doughty’s teeth issues were enough to motivate me to get a bite guard, but I don’t think I’ll wear it here. I don’t want to be blah beige bedding/bad picture/bite guard girl. Can you imagine that?

  I fast-forward to the footage of the buildings of the Prefect Academy. The gold letters on the sign came through clearly as I grabbed the late-afternoon light on the wood. Nice effect. I open the shot up wide and fill the screen with the slow pan of the fields. My hand is much steadier on this sequence.

  Then I see a very weird thing. There’s something on the screen that I didn’t notice when I was filming the field outside.

  In the distance, beyond the field, on the far property line of the school, I see something red move. A bird? I slow down the speed and look closely. It’s not a bird. It’s a woman. Strange. I don’t remember a woman in the shot, and I don’t remember anything red. She moves into the shot in full.

  The woman wears a drop-waist red dress and a black velvet cloche hat. Her blond sausage curls bounce on the tops of her shoulders. She has matching red lips and tucks a small clutch purse under her arm. She wears black gloves with tiny bows on the wrists. She lights a cigarette and, turning away from the camera, puffs. She looks up into the sky, just as I did when filming the Indiana clouds.

  “Whatcha doing?” Romy leans over my shoulder and looks at the screen.

  I almost jump out of my skin.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I interrupted. You were concentrating.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, but I say it in a way that she knows it’s not. “Romy, don’t take this wrong, but I sort of need privacy when I’m editing.”

  Romy slinks away, her feelings hurt. I will make it up to her later. Right now, I can’t worry about Romy because something crazy is going on here. I shot this footage this afternoon, and at that time there was no lady in the field. And here, on my screen, she walks in daylight. How did I miss her? What is going on?

  I minimize the shot and save it. I’m too frazzled to figure this out right now.

  Marisol looks up from her magazine. “Everything okay over there?” she says to me.

  “Yeah,” I lie.

  I turn the computer off. I look around at my roommates. For a moment, I consider telling them about what I’ve seen but they’d think I was nuts. And there’s one thing I know after day one at the Prefect Academy—don’t give anybody a reason to label you because whatever happens on the first day sticks. Just ask Harlowe Jenkins from Quad 3, who is now known as Throw-up Girl because she hurled in the bushes outside the picnic tent after she tried mango chutney for the first time on her hot dog. I bet she wishes she’d have stuck with ketchup.

  THREE

  WHEN I’M HOME IN BROOKLYN AND HAVING A CRISIS, I call Andrew and he either comes over to my house or I go over to his. But he’s a million miles away, so I text him.

  Me: Are you there? Mayday.

  AB: What’s up?

  Me: I HATE IT HERE ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  AB: LaGuardia sucks without you.

  Me: Thanks.

  AB: I got Roemer for math, Kleineck for English, and a new guy Portmondo for film (major suckage).

  Me: I get my class assignments tomorrow.

  AB: How are your roommates?

  Me: Natural beauty, prepster, and Latina.

  AB: Intense.

  Me: I know. I’d jump out the window but our room is on the second floor, which means I’d only break my neck and then be stuck here in traction for, like, a million years.

  AB: So stay put.

  Me: Not funny.

  AB: Sorry.

  Me: I’ll never last here.

  AB: Maybe it will go by fast.

  Me: Maybe. Footage of you on the fence was high-larious.

  AB: I stayed in character until you made it around the corner.

  Me: Totally.

  AB: Send it to me.

  Me: I will. I also shot the school so you can check out the prison that is my life. It’s not all bleak. I like Marisol a lot.

  AB: Bright spot.

  Me: I guess. Something really weird happened today.

  AB: What?

  Me: Got back and loaded the Avid and was cutting the footage of the school to show you, and a lady showed up on film who wasn’t there when I was filming.

  AB: Weird.

  Me: Very.

  AB: Maybe you missed her?

  Me: Maybe.

  AB: Gotta go. It’s my night to do the dishes.

  Me: BFFAA.

  AB: Yeah.

  The shared bathroom on our floor is tiled white from floor to ceiling. Trish told us to always wear flip-flops on the tile because barefoot, it just gets too slick and we’ll wipe out and break an arm or something. So far, this is the brand of good advice that the resident advisor shares with us. Priceless.

  While I’m brushing my teeth, Trish pushes the bathroom door open and comes in, carrying her clipboard. “How’s it going?” Trish leans against the sink and looks at me in the reflection of the mirror.

  “Great.” I spit my toothpaste into the sink.

  “Tomorrow morning after breakfast, I’m going to take you guys over to Geier-Kirshenbaum Hall to pick up your class skeds.”

  I nod. Trish shaves the ends off of some words (sked for schedule) as though it takes too much of her overwhelming energy to finish them in a normal fashion.

  “Coo?” Trish smiles broadly as she does it again, dropping the L off the end of “cool” as though it’s done everyday. Her Invisalign braces give her teeth a hermetically sealed look, like cream cheese in plastic wrap.

  “Cool.” I force a smile on the L sound on the end of the word like I did when I used phonics flash cards when learning how to read. I don’t think Trish picks up on it though.

  “Viola, I know you’d requested a single room. I found out that one may open up, but it’s not on our floor.” Trish makes a big, fake frown. “Do you still want it if it becomes available?”

  “Absolutely!” I tell her.

  “But I wouldn’t be your RA.”

  “I know. But I’m sure you’d get somebody nice in Quad 11 to replace me.”

  “Okay.” Trish seems sad that I would choose to leave her floor. “I recommend you give it a few days before you move. We may grow on you.”

  Trish leaves the bathroom and I look into the mirror. You will never grow on me, Trish. Nor will this group living thing. Not ever. Never.

  When I return to my room, Suzanne is already in bed (points for beauty sleep!). Romy is carefully folding her giant daisy comforter into a rectangle at the foot of her bunk. I guess she wants to keep it new-looking for as long as possible. Marisol is at her computer.

  “Day one: Viola Chesterton held hostage,” I tell them. They laugh.

  I climb into my bed, which after a long day of saying good-bye, meeting new people, and that god-awful picnic is actually comfortable. I pull the blanket up over me.

  “You may not hate this place so much in the morning,” Romy chirps.

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Breakfast should be good. They have pancakes in the dining hall,” Mari
sol says. “You can add stuff to them—raisins, chocolate chips, like, whatever you want.”

  I lie back and stare at the ceiling. “I’m stoked.”

  “You know, attitude is everything,” Suzanne says from the bottom bunk.

  Romy pipes up. “Viola, Suzanne is right. It’s a hard adjustment for everybody. Your attitude will make the difference in whether you succeed or fail here.”

  “I’m sorry. Nothing against you guys. But I just love Brooklyn. I loved my school and my room and my friends. I didn’t want a new school. I liked what I had.” I turn over in my bed, hoping that this will signal an end to our discussion.

  “You may end up liking this more,” Romy reasons.

  “Romy, I’ve only known you for one day, and already, you’re way too upbeat for me.”

  She laughs. “So I’m told.”

  I drift off to sleep. At some point I wake up and check the clock. It’s 1:15 in the morning, and I’m still here. I turn over and fold the pillow under my head. I close my eyes. I hear Suzanne blow her nose. I can’t get back to sleep. For a moment, I think I might get up and turn on the computer and email Andrew. Sometimes I do that when I can’t sleep. But I hear someone crying. It’s Suzanne. She turns over in her bottom bunk and faces the wall. Evidently, I’m not the only miserable girl at the Prefect Academy.

  The morning sun fills the alcove in our quad with bright white light. I push the covers off my face. For a moment, I’ve forgotten where I am. My bedroom in Brooklyn faces a brick wall and I never get much light, so waking up in boarding school is like waking up in a bus station. I feel totally public. I look around. I’m alone. The bunk beds are made. I look to the other single bed. Marisol’s tacky quilt is smoothed over it. “Marisol?” I call out. No answer. I jump out of my bed and check the clock. It’s only eight a.m. Where are they?

  I go to my dresser and pull out a pair of cigarette jeans, a Bob Marley T-shirt, a sky-blue bandanna folded thick around my neck, and my jean jacket, because it’s cold in here. I jump into my clothes, slip into my yellow patent leather flats, and grab my backpack.