“You have one month,” he tells me before disconnecting.

* * *

I relay our conversation to Diane. I want to quit this assignment. It used to stimulate me; now it makes me uneasy.

She lies on her bed, painting her toenails a funky neon shade of green. With her Rutgers sweater still on, she looks like a Christmas decoration.

“You have to keep going,” she says.

But it doesn’t seem that simple anymore. I keep picturing Huxley by the water fountain, that forced smile plastered on her face while her supposed friends gossip about her demise mere feet away. None of them care that she’s busting her butt to make this SDA show spectacular. How will it be once she and Steve are kaput? That’s all people will talk about until finals. It’s not like other couples where the dumper and dumpee can mend in relative obscurity. That forced smile will become a required part of her wardrobe.

Diane senses my confusion. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for this girl?”

I throw myself onto the bed, making Diane smear a green streak across her foot. This is why I hate getting involved in my subjects’ lives. I need distance to perform a break-up. You don’t see hit men sharing family albums with their targets.

“I mean, we’re kinda-sorta-maybe, on some level, approaching the near vicinity of being friends again,” I say, though I know we’re a bit closer than that.

“Of course you are. Who else does she have to turn to?”

“Exactly.”

“This is all part of the plan, but it’s not real. Not for either of you.” Diane blows on her feet. “You’re a spare-tire friend.”

I fold my arms over my stomach.

“No, not that spare tire. You’re a temporary replacement. If you stop your plan and Huxley and Steve patch everything up, do you think she’ll still want to be friends with you? Her lemmings will come running back to her, and you’re going to get ditched. She won’t need you anymore.” Diane shrugs her shoulders. I didn’t come to her for a sugarcoated answer. “She’s done it to you before. Don’t let history repeat itself, B.”

I was blinded by her popularity, by the choice lunch table. But Diane’s right. She’s so right. We’re not real friends. Real friends don’t treat you like a social pariah to hide the fact they were ever friends with you. I am her spare tire. That’s what happened with Diane’s friends, too. When Sankresh dumped her, they stopped calling the house after a few weeks. They put in a little effort to show they weren’t completely heartless. Then it was back to their more-significant-than-Diane others.

And Val. I don’t let myself think of what will happen if things pick up between her and Ezra.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say with firmness in my voice. I know what I have to do.

* * *

Ashland High is way too trusting. The faculty can’t be dumb enough to actually believe that students will use the bathroom pass to go to the bathroom. But still, nobody stops me as I walk out of school and into the parking lot. Nobody’s around to raise an eyebrow as I pull a wire hanger from under my zip-up fleece. And nobody approaches me when I squat down next to Steve’s car. It’s almost as if they think we’re responsible adults here.

I unwind the hanger and slide the stick of metal down the passenger-side window of his used Jetta. I keep one eye on the school, and the other on the hanger. I jangle it around until it finds the car lock. I lift up slowly and...click. I can’t believe that worked. Thank you, internet.

I crack open the door. My bathroom pass sticks out of my back pocket. The freezing wind of bipolar April isn’t doing me any favors. No slow moves, I tell myself. Just do it and walk away.

I inhale a gust of the icy air and pull the condom wrapper and half-used tube of Ladybug lipstick from my front pocket. I place them under the seat, where they will wait patiently for Huxley’s foot.

I can’t help but smile. Maybe it’s nerves or adrenaline or the sheer ridiculousness of my current situation, but I am loving my job right now. I find reserves of energy, a renewed purpose.

“Becca, you’re freezing,” Ms. Hardwick says when I come back to class.

“The heater in the girl’s room isn’t working. I’d bring a coat next time.”

I shoot Huxley a Steve-sized smile on the way back to my seat.

23

“No, don’t push it like a broom.”

“But it is a broom.”

Huxley demonstrates for Steve how to maneuver a curling broom. She shuffles down the court with it in front of her. Ezra films it all from the bleachers.

“Can we cut for a second?” Huxley asks him.

I sit behind Ezra watching through his viewer screen. I agreed to help him with the SDA shoots tonight, even if it meant staying later. Huxley wanted a team member to shadow him to ensure that SDA’s vision (aka hers) comes through on-screen. Apparently, one year the video director reedited the footage to make it seem as if SDA was a lesbian cult. Ezra asked me to be the boom operator, which sounded cool, until I found out I have to stand the whole time and dangle a humongous microphone over Huxley’s and Steve’s heads. Ezra said he’d give me an associate-producer credit, whatever that means.

While Steve may be a novice with a curling broom, Ezra is a whiz with the camera. He’s found creative ways to get different shots. He placed the camera on the basketball hoop to shoot overhead. He carefully stepped down the bleachers diagonally as he zoomed in on Huxley and Steve, creating this sweeping shot. He took Huxley’s trite dialogue and made it halfway funny. What started as some mundane scene has morphed into a piece of art. It’s inspiring and hypnotic watching someone totally in his element. Even now, he squats beneath Huxley and Steve, and frames the next shot through his thumb and index fingers, ignoring the sweat raining from his head. I wish I had a skill I could throw myself into so passionately. Unless you count break-upping, I don’t.

“Then you say, ‘Wow! The floor looks super clean now,’ and give the camera a thumbs-up,” Huxley says. “How does that sound, Ezra?”

Ezra stays mum, though I assume that he didn’t write this brilliant script.

“I don’t know—it sounds kind of lame,” Steve says.

Huxley whips her head around. She grips the broom tight. “I think it sounds cute. Lighthearted.”

“But not funny.”

I steady myself behind my boom pole, in case Huxley begins breathing fire.

“What do you think?” she asks Ezra.

“Um...” Ezra searches for the right word. Well, the right word is unfunny, but he thinks harder. “We can tweak it if you want.”

“So you hate it, too?” Huxley crosses her arms, ready to take her frustration out on him.

“No, I don’t,” Ezra stutters. Huxley doesn’t back down.

“I think you two can sell it,” I say. Heads swivel to face me. “I think if you say the lines like you’re dead serious and take out the thumbs-up, then the audience will crack up.”

“I like it,” Huxley says.

Steve nods. “Let’s do it.” He motions for Ezra to get into position.

Ezra places his hand on my lower back. “You’re a lifesaver,” he whispers. His lips brush my ear for a second, and I get more goose bumps than an R. L. Stine fan club.

I hoist the boom mic over my shoulder. Ezra calls, “Action.”

Instead of saying his lines, though, Steve grabs Huxley from behind and spins her around a few times, a mischievous grin on his face. She screams from shock then, because she actually finds it exhilarating. He then spins her upside down. Her hair splays out in all directions and she’s giggling and I don’t recognize her. Huxley isn’t Huxley for a second. She’s just a girl having way too much fun with her boyfriend.

* * *

Filming goes for another hour before Huxley calls it a night. She and Steve head home while I help Ezra pack up his equipment.

I rub my shoulders. Holding a giant pole above my head for three hours is exhausting. But thanks to nonstop SDA practices, my body holds up better than expected.

“I think that went well,” I say.

“Define well,” Ezra says. “That’s why they invented editing.”

Steve and Huxley may put on a great show in the halls, but an Oscar is not in their future. He spoke in a monotone, visibly nervous around the camera. Huxley overacted every line like she was in charge of a pep rally. Ezra will have his work cut out for him. Still, they were sort of cute together, the way they sneaked smiles at each other. They knew how to play that up for the camera.

“But directors like Kevin Smith and Gus Van Sant used nonprofessional actors and it worked out well,” he says.

“Right!”

“You have no idea who they are.” He wraps a cord around his fist and secures it with a rubber band.

I shake my head no.

His mind is like a film encyclopedia; it’s incredible. It’s rare that you get to talk to an expert about something he loves. And Val finds this tiring why?

“How did you get so into film?”

“I don’t know. I just did.”

“That’s not an answer. You know pretty much everything about film, and you’re like a kid in a candy store behind the camera. You don’t just fall into that.”

“I just did,” he says firmly. This is not up for discussion.

“I didn’t mean to pry. I was just curious.” I’ve never seen Ezra clam up like that. He’s always so open. I disassemble the boom mic in silence and place the pieces in the case.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He sits on the bleachers. His hazel eyes darken like the sky before a thunderstorm. He loads the camera into his bag. He gives me this look like he’s ready to tell me something serious, but it’s uncharted territory for two sorta friends like us.