I have a conflict-free day at school, but not because I’m thinking of Dad’s suggestions. It’s just that nobody makes any insulting remarks. Nothing happens that bothers me. In science, it’s my turn to record the observations of Ecosystem Number 5. We had to start all over again after Derek and I dumped our eco-column on the floor, so there’s not much of interest to report. Derek, Zach, Elise, and I all agree that there are no visible changes since last week. In our notebook I faithfully record our discussion of this non-event, which is either that not enough time has passed for the guppies to have babies or the moss to spread—or that our ecosystem is already dying.

“Want to come over after school?” I ask Evan on the walk home. Maxie is skipping ahead of us.

“Sure,” Evan says.

“I feel like making set-ups with action figures,” I say, knowing that Evan is always game to do that.

“Me, too,” Evan says. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.” We say good-bye at his house.

Mom’s home, as usual. She checks in with Jake, makes sure Maxie eats something before he runs outside where he hopes to be able to play in the street soccer game again, and urges me to go outdoors.

“Evan’s coming over,” I say. “We’re going to play with figures. Maybe we’ll go out after.”

Then Mom runs upstairs to make her calls, and Evan is at the door. He’s carrying a grocery bag full of stuff—figures and scenery and props for space set-ups, underwater scenes, knights and castles, and modern-day soldiers. We spread out his stuff with mine in the computer room.

Evan and I make a great combination underwater-and-space universe and take turns playing the good guys and the bad guys. The bad guys want to invade and take over WaterSpace, a space/sea galaxy, otherwise known as my aquarium. The good guys have to repulse this attack on WaterSpace because the invasion will mean certain death for the beautiful and peaceful citizens of that galaxy, who cannot survive if alien beings invade their environment. The good guys also want to help save WaterSpace because if it is destroyed, its waters will flood the rest of the universe— meaning certain death for us all. Not that the bad guys care. They, and only they, have special space/sea suits and gear that will protect them.

Of course, we don’t actually touch the aquarium because we don’t want to upset the fish. But we have a great time.

“You know what would be so cool?” I say when we’ve finished our fifth battle. Bad guys lie lifeless all over the floor. The fish swim safely in their WaterSpace.

“What?” Evan says.

“If we made our own movie. Film the story of the defense of WaterSpace. WaterSpace: The Movie.”

“You’ve seen it on stage,” Evan announces dramatically. “You’ve seen the heroes in the toy store. Now see the story as you’ve never seen it before: on the big screen. The epic saga of the attack on the peace-loving galaxy of WaterSpace. The unbelievable bravery of those who defend the galaxy. The action, the beauty, the mystery—coming soon to a theater near you.”

“You know, if we had a video camera, we really could do it,” I say.

“Jeez, doesn’t your Dad have every type of electronic device known to mankind?” Evan asks. “I thought he gets all that stuff from his store.”

“He doesn’t work in a store,” I say. “It’s an office.”

“Oh, right,” Evan says. “He’s an office supply salesman.”

“He’s not a salesman in a store anyone can just walk into,” I say.

I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling so touchy. But now that I’ve started, I want to make sure Evan understands. “My dad sells stuff to big businesses and to the government. The computers and office machines they sell are kept in warehouses. Dad has an office and when he needs to, he goes to his customers. They don’t come to a store.”

“Okay, whatever,” Evan says. “So, as I was saying, I thought he gets all that electronic stuff from his office. He still sells the stuff out of his office, right?”

Is Evan putting down my dad because he’s a salesman? Evan’s mom and dad are both lawyers. But that’s not what Evan said, or even suggested, is it? I shake my head quickly like I’m trying to clear it of static. The static is Evan’s tone when he talks about my dad’s job. It’s my annoyance at having to explain that Dad doesn’t work in a store. It’s aggravation because our video camera broke and is beyond repair.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Evan continues. “We have a video camera. I’ll get it. Be right back.”

I close my eyes and try to float above the static. But that’s where the noise is, where the waves chop-chop-chop at me. So I dive instead, head down to where it’s quiet and dark and I can get away from the turbulence. By the time Evan returns, I’m actually calm. Maybe this stuff works.

Evan plugs the camera into the wall outlet, and we start shooting a scene. The camera focuses automatically, so we don’t have to worry about that. Instead, we can concentrate on zooming in for close-ups and zooming out for wide-angle views. Evan doesn’t have a tripod, so we rest the camera on the kitchen stepstool when we want it to be very steady.

Evan tells me about a magazine article he read about “stop-action” videography. It’s a way to make figures and other objects appear to move by themselves in a video. First you set up the scene. You put a good guy crawling on his belly on the floor, say. The idea is that he’s sneaking up on the bad guys. They’re a few feet away, huddled together planning a battle. You press the “record” button on the camera, just long enough to film the scene for a few seconds. You keep the camera in exactly the same position—in our case, on the kitchen stepstool—and you move the characters ever so slightly. So the guy on his belly advances a centimeter or two, the guys in the huddle maybe shift their feet or arms. Then you film again for a few seconds. You move the belly guy and the huddle guys again, just slightly. Film for a few seconds. And on and on, until the scene is done—the good guy ambushes the bad guys, or whatever.

What a pain! Nobody ever said making movies was easy. But it’s basically the same thing as making a flipbook, only instead of stapling the pictures together in a book and flipping them to see the drawings move, you push a button and—ta-dah!—you have a movie.

This is just the greatest. I can’t believe we’ve never thought to do this before. You need lots of patience to film a scene this way. But it’s worth the effort. The camera has playback, so we can review what we’ve just filmed. Our first attempts are kind of rough and shaky, but we improve as we practice.

“Okay,” I say after we’ve taped about twenty seconds of a scene that takes place on the floor, “now let’s try a space scene.” While we were taping the first scene, I’d been thinking about how to film guys moving through the air. It’s a challenge. You don’t want to move them around with your hands like you do when you’re playing, because then you’d have your hands in the movie. I’m thinking we might use string, very thin string—thread. Tie the thread on the guys or spaceships or whatever and move them around. I explain my idea to Evan and run into the kitchen where Mom keeps the sewing stuff in a box in one of the drawers.

“I have white thread and light blue thread,” I say. “We’ll see which one blends into the background better.”

We tie both kinds of thread onto a spaceship and onto a guy who is outfitted with a jet-propelling device on his back. I’m the cameraman for this take; Evan is in charge of moving the actors and making sounds.

“B-b-r-r-r-w-w-w.” He blows air through his flapping lips, making a sound that’s supposed to be a motor. At the same time he lifts the suspended spaceship and space guy an inch or so off the ground. I record the action. I think he’s moved them too fast.

“Hold them where they are!” I call out after I stop recording. “Next time, move them slower and smoother. One, two, three, action!” I push the record button again. Evan repeats his noises and actions.

“Stop!” I yell and stop recording. “Don’t move them so much, okay? Ready? One, two, three, action!” I push the record button. Evan does his thing. This time it looks like he moves the figures two inches higher.

“If you keep doing it that way, it’ll look all jerky in the movie,” I complain. “Remember how slowly we moved the stuff on the floor?”

“Hey, you try holding these things in mid-air for a while,” Evan says. “My arms are starting to hurt. Anyway, we should look at playback to see whether your thread idea works.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to tell yet,” I say. “A few more shots.”

“No, man, I want to know if it’s worth it,” Evan says. “My muscles are twitching.”

“We won’t be able to tell yet,” I repeat. “Come on, don’t be a wimp.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Evan says. “You’re bossing me around like you think you’re Steven Spielberg or something.”

“Can I help it if I want to do this right?” I say. “Listen. Three more shots is all I ask.”

While we’ve been talking, Evan has relaxed his arms to rest the spaceship and space guy on the floor. “Oh, all right,” he says.

But he doesn’t end up in the same position he was in when we were first filming. Plus, for each of the three filming takes, he lifts the figures up too fast and too high.

“That’s it,” he says after the third take. He lets the toys clatter to the floor. “All that work, and we don’t even know whether it looks right.”

“Well, we’ll see right now,” I say.

We look at the playback. The movement is just like I thought—very jerky and unnatural-looking. Also, for the last three takes Evan forgot to make the motor noises so all you can hear on the tape is me breathing.

I look at Evan. Before I can say anything, he says, “You can see the strings. You can see the white ones and the blue ones. I knew it wouldn’t work. What did you think? They’d magically become invisible?”

“I didn’t hear you suggest a better idea,” I say.

“I didn’t have a chance. You rushed us into this. I think we should spread a blue blanket on the floor and put it over a chair and use it as a space background. Then we could move the figures and stuff around normally, without all these stupid threads, and it would look like it was happening in space because of the background. Instead we wasted forty-five minutes on a dumb puppet show.”

“No,” I say, “it wasn’t a dumb puppet show. The problem isn’t that you can see the threads a tiny bit—it’s that the action was all jerky. And we know whose fault that is.”

“The only jerky thing around here is you!” Evan says. “Give me my camera! I’m outta here.” He puts everything in his box and heads for the front door

“Yeah, I don’t know why I thought we could do a movie together,” I yell after him. “You’ll never have any good ideas.”

“And you’ll never have any friends,” he hisses.

Then the door slams.