Listen. There are birds on the roof pecking at the gutter … a squeaky cart rolling through the grass … Chris kicking the woodpile … Jericho humming … I know that song. I swear I do. Chris whispering his lines … more humming … What’s the name of that song?
I press my forehead against the tree trunk and shut my eyes, as if I’m counting for hide and seek, but in my mind I’m forcing Rodney into a far corner and Norah into another, hoping they’ll stay put.
“Are you okay up there?” Chris asks from the ground beneath me.
“Shhh!” I shoo him with my hand.
Feel. I’m Norah now. I’m Norah. I’m with my brother and his friend and we’re going to build a crow’s nest. It’s going to be our escape from the world.
“I asked her to concentrate,” Terrance says. “Give her a minute.”
React. Forget the scripts: the blue, the pink, the yellow, the green. Toss them all away. Let them fly.
“Here we go. Let’s roll sound,” Terrance calls. “And we’re rolling, rolling!”
Ready or not, here I come.
I lift my head.
“Action!”
Up in my perch, I sway my foot back and forth and look through the bright leaves at the cloudless sky. Only a few inches below my red Converse, Chris is drilling the fifth wooden rung onto the tree trunk.
“I can’t believe you’re gonna have your own crow’s nest! Why didn’t we think of this before?” Jericho raises his voice over the electric drill. “This is genius.” I watch him carefully as he measures one piece of wood against another. Then he picks up the saw and cuts the new rung to size.
“All we’ll have to do is climb up here every morning, and we’ll be able to see right away how the waves are.” Chris steps back to check his work. I watch him, and I listen. I listen with everything I’ve got. “No more trekking our boards all the way down to the beach at six in the morning when the water’s flat,” he says.
Jericho pushes the saw with jerky, uneven strokes. “I’m gonna be over here every day!” Sawdust falls onto his left sneaker.
I roll my eyes. “You’re already over here every day,” I say. Then I test the newest rung with the tip of my toe. “We’ll never have to walk down to the shore again,” I say, looking down at the top of Chris’s sweaty head. “Except when we want to.”
Chris lifts the ladder from against the tree and leans it against the old speedboat that’s rotting along the side of the house. It’s the spot where Terrance told me to focus, and where I knew Norah hated me.
“Hey, Buzz, maybe three more rungs,” Chris says. “That should do it.”
“No. Do more!” I tell him. “The higher we get the better!”
Chris wipes his brow. “Four more.”
I smile.
“You got it.” Jericho wipes his brow.
I know I’m supposed to feel like Norah, but I’m thinking about her, not as her. I’m wondering which of my movies she’s seen and who she’d rather have playing her instead of me.
Standing and grasping the tree for balance, I crane my neck to peer through the branches. “Hey, we can even see up the road from up here!”
“A perfect lookout.” Chris nods.
“Genius,” Jericho says again.
“All’s we need now is a pair of binoculars,” I say. “Then we can see clear through to the lighthouse. Don’t you think?”
“We just might.” Chris lifts the drill and revs it up twice like a motorcycle before pushing a screw through the next rung. “I think I can scrounge us up a pair, somewhere.”
React. That’s what matters most. Just keep reacting and make it look like I’m feeling. I lift my hands and look through a pair of imaginary binoculars. “Or how about one of those old-timey pirate telescopes that stretch! You know the kind I mean?” I adjust my hands and pretend to pull one long scope. “If we get one of those, we’ll have it made. We’ll be the luckiest kids in Montauk.”
“TJ!” Rodney yells from inside the house. We all jump at the sound of his voice. “You dumbass, no-good…” He bursts out from the screen door, huffing and puffing. “You put that ladder against my boat!” The spit on his lips stretches and snaps. He grabs the ladder, and I pull my legs up just in time before he slams it against the tree.
“I didn’t scratch it or anything!” Chris takes two steps back. “I leaned it, that’s all.”
My heart is racing, remembering Rodney’s weight pressing against my chair.
Rodney holds the metal ladder in front of Chris and shakes it at him. “You piece of shit! How stupid can you be?”
I grasp my shoulders where Rodney touched me. I know how he smells and how dry and heavy his hands are.
“Rodney, the boat’s not even painted yet!” Jericho says.
“Shut up!” he screams at Jericho. Then he turns all his anger back to Chris. “I’ve been workin’ on that boat for a year!”
Chris sticks his chin out. “From the couch?”
Rodney flings the ladder across the backyard. It crashes and clangs onto the grass. “What did you say, you little turd?” he hisses.
I shrink against the tree.
“You heard me.” Chris stands tall; his chest rises and falls. I want him to back down, to run.
Rodney lunges forward, just as Chris dodges away. But Rodney grabs him by the back of his jeans. He lifts Chris off his feet and slams him against the boat.
“TJ!” I scream, and shake.
“Cut!” Terrance calls.
Terrance rubs his eyes and then clears his throat. “We’ll do it again. This time, just a beat faster between Chris and Rodney.” He holds his fingers up to measure a pinch. “Just a tad.” He looks at me and nods.
When he lets out a breath, so do I.
* * *
Back in tutoring, I’m supposed to be studying a history chapter on Egyptians. Damon is helping me preread the section questions and showing me how to find bold words in the chapter because those are usually the answers. But I can’t concentrate, not when my nerves are still worked up about Rodney and the fight scene keeps churning outside our window. The crew turned the camera around; it’s replaced me in the tree so it can film the fight from Norah’s point of view. Terrance won’t need me again for a long while. I wonder how Chris is doing.
“I’m afraid we’re not being very productive,” Damon whispers as we listen to Rodney yelling at Chris. “How about we take a break the next time Terrance calls cut?”
This is fine with me because I’m pretty sure “break” is code for “watch the fight scene.” Damon’s been sneaking peeks out the window almost as often as I have.
As soon as we get outside, I pick a snack from the craft service table—a package of shortbread cookies—then I sit in a chair behind Terrance and Peter Bustamante where they’re watching the monitors.
“Snack break?” Peter asks me.
“Yes.”
I want to ask Terrance how I was up in the tree, but the back of his head tells me he isn’t in a talking mood. I didn’t count how many takes we did, but do know I only messed up three times, maybe three and a half. That’s no more or less than the boys, so I think I did pretty okay, even though I felt more like myself than like Norah.
I always feel very professional when I sit in these tall director’s chairs. During my first movie, my chair even said TALLULAH LEIGH on the back. The Locals didn’t bother personalizing chairs. That’s how I can tell if a movie has a big budget or a small budget. This chair only says CAST, but I still like sitting in it.
Chris is inside the house while the camera is resetting. He’s probably working himself up to be upset, or maybe he already is. I wonder if he’s been using a trigger.
“Here we go. Let’s everyone get back into place. Back to one,” Terrance says, and that’s when Chris comes out with a hand over his face.
Jericho takes his mark in the middle of the grass, and Chris stands against the boat in front of Rodney, exactly where they stood when I was up in the tree.
“Rolling, rolling!” Terrance calls.
Rodney presses his hand right under Chris’s throat and shoves him up against the boat. Just as Chris starts to struggle, Terrance calls, “And … action!”
“Get off him!” Jericho jumps on Rodney’s back, but Rodney hurls him right off, elbowing Jericho in the temple.
“Listen to me, worthless beach rat.” Rodney holds his arm against Chris’s chest.
I cover my eyes but peer through my fingers.
“Mouth off to me again and I’ll send you and your sister away on a long, long journey, and your mama’s never gonna miss you. Hear me?” Rodney plants his big hand on the side of Chris’s head as if he’s gripping a football. Then he shoves Chris into the dirt. “Good-for-nothing runt.”
Chris spits and spurts on his hands and knees.
Terrance has turned his head. Now I can see the side of his face. He’s as still as can be, and the color’s gone from his skin.
Rodney plants one foot on the ground, the other against the tree, and starts ripping a rung off the trunk. He curses, struggling with the wooden plank, rocking it back and forth until it cracks and the screws rip from the tree. The bark tears away, leaving a splintered, naked wound.
Terrance hasn’t checked the lighting or even looked at the screen. He’s just staring. I knew it would be a tough day to play TJ. But now I realize that it’s also a tough day to be him.
On the monitor, I watch Chris sitting in the dirt with his knees up. He grips the back of his head with both hands and starts shaking, from his stomach to his chest to his shoulders. He looks up. The camera zooms in close. His face is a mess of dirty tears.