One
At 6:43 p.m. on Football Friday, Corrine Baker is right on schedule for a pregame meltdown, and you bet your ass I have my camera ready for the freshman cheerleaders’ reactions. This is a moment they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Something they’ll want to cherish, look back on fondly—
“Macy, a doctor’s note means nothing to me,” Corrine says to the sophomore newcomer. “Your mother is a doctor. You getting a doctor’s note is as easy as a baby drooling on itself.”
Four perfectly red-lined mouths pop open, jaws on the dirty locker room floor.
I’d feel bad about Macy’s semipublic humiliation at the hands of Corrine, but Macy isn’t actually sick, she’s just hungover. We all know she was drinking last night, on a Thursday, because her Instagram stories didn’t end until about two in the morning or whenever she and her friends drained her father’s liquor cabinet dry. One or the other.
I zoom in to Macy’s face, her squad of freckles smothered under the blush creeping onto her cheeks. If Corrine makes her stand there any longer, Macy’ll probably throw up on Corrine’s perfectly white sneakers that she only wears for games, and then we’ll see how annoyed my best friend can really get.
Corrine snatches the paper out of Macy’s hand. “Get well soon.”
My other best friend, Kayla Kishbaugh, slides onto the bench next to me, her dark brown curls loose over her uniform. “Corrine’s being kind of a b-i-t-c-h, right?”
I turn my camera in her direction. She has no bad angles. “No, it’s just . . . a pregame ritual. We all have them. I dissociate, you miss that tiny patch of hair above your ankle when shaving, and Corrine makes someone cry.”
I get a whiff of her vanilla perfume when she pulls her leg onto the bench to check out her shave job. Sure enough, little specks of hair dot her brown skin in the curve of her calf. “How did you know?” she asks. “And more importantly, why did you never tell me? Have other people noticed?”
She’s so used to me shoving my camera in her face that she’s just now seeing that I have it pointed at her. She pushes it away with practiced gentleness—it was a gift from my mom and grandma for my seventeenth birthday. “Saine, don’t you dare show this to anyone.”
“Let’s get out there!” Corrine cheers to the buzzing room. Coach Hartl stands proudly behind her, arms crossed over her faded red polo. “We have losers to support.”
“Save the trash-talking for the other team, Corrine,” Coach Hartl says, motioning for the cheerleaders to leave the locker room with her.
The four girls Corrine stunned with her earlier dressing-down leap to their feet and fly out of the room. Kayla stands, catching Corrine’s Intense Eyes™.
“Kayla,” she says, marching up to us, “you’re going to fly in Macy’s spot tonight.”
Kayla gestures to me. “What, you expect Saine to hold me up by herself?”
“No,” she says. “I’ll be your base, too.”
“Please don’t let me die,” Kayla says to me with a groan in her voice.
“You’ll be fine,” Corrine says with a laugh. All the humor slides off her face when she turns my way. “You, on the other hand. What’s that on your mouth?”
“A smile?”
Her own cherry-red lips frown. “Black is not a cute or school-sanctioned lip color.” Lying is a waste of energy, she always says. Better to just get straight to the point.
“It’s one of our school colors, though.”
“She has a point,” Kayla says, pulling her hair into a sloppy but passable ponytail.
“We wear red lipstick and you know this,” Corrine says.
“She also has a point.” Now Kayla slides her school-sanctioned, cherry-red bow from around her wrist and over her hair tie. This conversation feels ominously reminiscent of the one we had when Corrine convinced me to become a cheerleader sophomore year. Resistance was futile, and not that I’d ever admit it to her, but I had been pretty excited to be part of a team anyway. She didn’t need to put in so much effort to make me join with her. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if she promised it would be a good time and I wouldn’t be alone.
Corrine crosses her arms. “Thank you.”
I’ve been trying to get black lipstick approved for two years now, but I guess this isn’t the year either. “It’s a lip stain. I’m sorry,” I say, “but this sucker’s not coming off until I’m cremated.”
“Better start scrubbing.” Corrine flips her strawberry-blonde ponytail over her shoulder and winks.
“Rude.”
“There’s lipstick in my bag if you need it!” she says before disappearing.
“It’s just her pregame ritual,” Kayla whispers before following Corrine out.
After some intense scrubbing and reapplying, I fix my long, dark hair into a higher ponytail and head toward the Cedar Heights High School football field, cursing Corrine’s name. I’m a firm believer that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that, so I can’t fault her too much. I knew she wouldn’t let it fly.
The wind whips at my bare legs, goose bumps appearing after one blow as I jog through the packed parking lot. To get to the front of the bleachers, I have to hustle around a bunch of people just standing around in useless clusters. The scent of fresh fries wafts toward me, stalling my progress just long enough for my stomach to growl—I had half a peanut butter and banana sandwich before the game, and it was filling enough, but it wasn’t fries.
I’m about to swing onto the track where the rest of my team cheers on our very unsuccessful football players as they enter the field, but there’s a lanky pain in the ass in my way. I’m late, and not in the mood, but Holden Michaels, Corrine’s ex-boyfriend as of about four months ago, either doesn’t feel me tap him on the shoulder, or he doesn’t care. Probably the latter.
I clear my throat.
“Oh, hi, Saine,” he says in a bored voice, his face scrunched up behind his DSLR as he snaps at the players running in front of him. “I exist today?”
“You’re in my way and I was trying to politely hint at that.” And it’s true, this is about as polite as I get with Holden since I don’t have to be around him for Corrine’s sake anymore.
We occasionally spoke when they dated, with Corrine as a referee, but since the breakup, our communication has practically been on mute, and for good reason. Corrine never explicitly said she broke up with him because he was cheating, but when she said there was another girl, I put two and two together myself.
“Oh, of course. You just needed something from me.” He drops his hands so I can see his face: red, wind-thrashed cheeks; bushy black eyebrows over icy blue eyes; deep pink lips in the shade of “First Kiss” forming an annoying, heartbreaking smirk. “That makes more sense.”
Coach Hartl calls my name, so I shove past him. Despite his light coat, he still radiates heat, and I hate him for it as another ten thousand goose bumps invade my skin.
“What, no funny business?” he taunts. “Ran out of witty comebacks?”
I walk backward so I can face him when I say, “Sorry, but I can’t always be your source of amusement. Maybe invest in a mirror.” I snap. “Look at that. I guess I didn’t run out.”
No amount of rah-rah-rass, kick ’em in the ass could encourage the Cedar Heights Hawks to complete any successful plays. We’re speeding toward another loss when Corrine can sense I’m itching to film the team. She allows me to, as long as I capture her good side, which, like Kayla, is every side. She’d have at least seven good sides even if she were two-dimensional.
I run up the metal bleacher stairs to film the team front and center, but just as I’m positioning myself behind the guardrail, Holden appears and nudges me off-center.
“I’m taking photos for the yearbook,” he says by way of explanation, not even bothering to look at me.
“I’m taking video for the yearbook.” I try to nudge him back, but he’s like a wall. A lean, skin-and-clothes-covered wall. I miss when he was shorter than me in elementary school.
“The digital yearbook. TikTok counts as the digital yearbook as long as you use the right hashtag. This is for the real yearbook.” He lifts his camera, poised to take a photo of the girls mid-toe-touch, but I place my hand in front of the lens.
“I was here first.”
He faces me. “Why aren’t you down there with the other cheerleaders? I think there are some pom-poms missing your hands right about now.”
“Well, they’ll just have to wait so I can do this.” I flick him off with a tight smile. “Don’t think the girl who dumped you gave you permission to photograph her.”
“Oh, please.” He snaps a picture of me, my vision exploding into orbs and negatives. “Corrine loves having her picture taken.” I, on the other hand, do not. “And this is a public, school event.”
I reach for his camera, already imagining the terrible things he could do with a double-chinned photo of me in Photoshop. “Delete that.”
He pulls a face at the display screen. “Don’t worry. I will.” He faces the field again and snaps a few photos in quick succession, each crunch of the shutter increasing my chances of a headache.
I film what I can, getting really dramatic close-ups and shifting the focus from girls in the front row to the whole way in the back, but my shots are fucking off-center, just because he’s taller than me with bonier elbows. How does he expect me to get a filming gig one day with off-center footage in my reel?
With less than four minutes on the clock in the last quarter and no need for going into overtime, I abandon my shitty spot and deliver an acidic smile to Holden. “I hope all your files are corrupt when you transfer them.”
“The ones with you in them will be,” he says in the same sarcastic tone.
It’s so weird to think we were ever friends. Like before he and Corrine got together. I was a naive seven-year-old and he was just the first kid to laugh at my extremely hilarious joke: A guy walks into a bar. Ouch. (My grandma taught me this crowd-pleaser.) He was also the only kid to even get it, so you have to understand that the bar was set pretty low. No pun intended.
But despite being inseparable until sixth grade, when we tried to maintain a friendship after starting different middle schools, an unspeakable and embarrassing spin the bottle mishap caused those five years of inseparable best friendship to dissolve like my hopes of wearing black lipstick to football games as soon as I laid eyes on Corrine Baker. I knew I needed to be her best friend. Sorry not sorry, Holden. He just didn’t laugh as much or make his own tie-dyed T-shirts and banana nut muffins, didn’t like happy music, didn’t write me notes about each teacher that read like villain origin stories explaining why they chose to teach the subject they taught.
Holden Michaels simply could not compare to Corrine Baker.
The game wraps up in what the local newspaper will undoubtedly call a humiliating defeat—we’re well past being humiliated—and Corrine takes me home. Even though the porch light is on, there’s no one inside. I haven’t seen my dad since I was ten and he moved to New York without so much as a goodbye—there was a note, sure, but no manning up and doing the hard work of a face-to-face. Monday through Friday, my mom works as a night manager at the local Amazon fulfillment center, and my grandma, whose house this is, died five months and one day ago from a completely random heart attack that never should have happened because she was in her early sixties, jogged every day, and drank gross green smoothies. But it’s cool; if my therapist I saw precisely one time asks, I’m moving on, everything is fine, I’m coping, and I definitely don’t need to pay my future life savings to sit in a stuffy office and say exactly that. Shit happens.
I could’ve taken Corrine up on her offer to hang out, but I have an early shift at the Penn State Harrisburg film department rental desk and I need to sleep. Hell hath no fury like film students on a deadline.
When I reach the front door, my backpack over my shoulders and my duffel bag in hand, I wave to Corrine, but I know she won’t leave until I’m inside. I wave to the camera mounted by
the porch light, knowing my mom’s getting a video sent to her phone to show her I made it home, and unlock the door.
Bagel, aka Shame Bagel, aka Seamus Bagel when he’s being bad, greets me in all his tan-and-white Pomeranian glory as I turn the living room lights on. He’s named such because when my grandma found him digging through the trash a few years ago, it was for the remnants of a burned bagel. Next, I turn on the TV. I like feeling like I’m not alone, even when I am. Unless not feeling alone is because it feels like a stranger is in the house with me. My constant predicament.
I let Bagel out back to do his doggy deeds, a floodlight drenching the scene in yellow and shadows. I wave to the other security camera by the door before calling him back inside and heading to my room. I kiss my fingertips and press them against the mural my grandma painted on the living room wall of her, my mom, and me a few years ago. Some nights, when I can’t sleep, I watch the time-lapse I took of her painting this. She was a brilliant artist, and each room in this house is a testament to that. She spent her days giving art lessons to amateurs (mostly little kids with a lot of energy) in our living room and dubbed herself the Easy Easel; she was a town favorite and was even asked to paint a mural on the steps of the capitol building before she died. My favorite of her work in the house—murals showing scenes from documentaries I love—fills the walls of my bedroom, where I go now and collapse face-first onto my bed.
I have a busy weekend ahead of me; the game was just the beginning. Tomorrow, I work an eight-hour shift at a school that I don’t attend, or plan to attend, then I have to rent more equipment—another camera, microphones, lenses, everything—and make sure I’m ready for Sunday, when I start production on my very first documentary.
The butterflies in my stomach swirl to a new height.
I’ve been trying to keep my excitement to a minimum, because it feels like a betrayal to finally be doing this only now that my grandma, my biggest supporter, has passed, but I have no control over the timing. I’ve filmed this and that in the past, edited footage together in shorter narratives, but this is practically the big leagues, and it’s not just for me and my friends to watch.
I pull my phone from the waistband of my skirt and open my emails to reread the words that are burned into my mind:
Dear Ms. Saine Sinclair,
Thank you for applying to the Fiona O’Malley Documentary Pilot Program at Temple University. We’ve received your primary application and eagerly await your portfolio, which should showcase your camerawork, directing, and knowledge of story structure, to be submitted by December 16. We hope you’ll be one of
of this program! Please find a list of the documentary’s requirements attached to this email.
I open the list and scan it for anything I may have missed, even though I know there’s nothing. I have it memorized by now. The documentary must be self-shot, local, and at least forty minutes long. All footage must be original. Content warnings should accompany the film if necessary.
The little ding of a notification sounds when a new email from Yvette Lacey, my documentary subject, lands in my inbox. I had asked her if she could pick me up Sunday night because my mom has to work an extra shift and, therefore, will be taking the car. I could order a Lyft, but I’ve had my eye on a new external microphone for my camera and every dollar counts. In her email, Yvette says she will gladly give me a ride to and from the event—though she’s sad she won’t have a chance to reconnect with my mom. Since I’m basically asking to stalk her and use her personal life for my personal gain, I had already decided to be understanding if she couldn’t. Even if it meant her own obligations got in the way of this potentially life-changing event of mine. Though it could be life-changing for her, too.
Admittedly, I worked a bit backward on this documentary so far. A smarter person would find an interesting subject and create a documentary around them, but instead I found an interesting plot and searched for a person to throw in it. As a rule, nothing exciting ever happens in central Pennsylvania, so I was stressing over my documentary being too boring to stand out. But then my school did one of those alumni spotlight emails that are usually skim-worthy at best and highlighted James Heath, the young CEO of the virtual reality company, Vice and Virtual, who graduated almost ten years ago. The email said his company was just funded by some venture capitalist and was making the move to New York. To celebrate that move, Vice and Virtual announced the Create Your Own (Virtual) Reality contest.
Over the course of three video games “brought to life” into physical competitions, the contest offers one winner the Reality Now virtual reality headset prototype that convinced the VC to invest. The actual product isn’t due to be released to the public for another year and is already rumored to cost over a grand. I’m not up to date with the latest technology outside of cameras and video editing software, so the “impressive” list of specs the Reality Now headset boasts reads more like an ingredient list for a recipe to burn down my house, but the tech community online is freaking out.
So why would Temple find their heartstrings pulled by a documentary that barely meets the minimum requirements for submission? Because James is holding his events at the local businesses he worked at as a teen, to highlight the community and all that stuff—my grandma would’ve loved it. He’s a hometown hero, bringing buzz and sales to family-owned stores around town like Repairisburg and Anderson’s Gadgets. In an ideal world, James Heath would have been available to be the star of my documentary, but apparently, he’s really busy.
I even mentioned I go to the same high school he went to and yet my email still went unanswered.
It ended up being fine, though, because as people were entering their submissions—videos, graphics, vision boards, essays, et cetera showing what the person’s perfect virtual reality game would be—my mom stumbled across a frantic Facebook post from her high school best friend’s little sister, Yvette, asking for help in creating her own submission. On paper, Yvette doesn’t seem like an ideal documentary subject—she’s a twenty-seven-year-old divorcée with a teething child and a full-time job in data entry, and her favorite color is beige—but she’s accessible, presents as an untraditional gamer, and is super-duper-sign-me-up-for-the-chalky-candy-hearts-on-Valentine’s-Day in love with James Heath.
Despite not actually being into video games or able to come up with her own virtual reality game idea—I introduced her to Fiverr and all the affordable freelancers there to solve that problem—she has more heart than I could hope for. Her goal is to get as far in the contest as she can, just so she can talk to her childhood crush again. Impress him. Make him really see her.
A perfect underdog story.
I don’t know if James Heath will see her, but I know Temple Admissions will. And when they see her, they’ll see me.
the fifteen applicants accepted into our exciting first year
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