Ivy handed the crumpled twenties Mrs. Grizzby had given her to the man behind the pawnshop’s counter. Her heart banged hard as he counted the money. The job with Mrs. Grizzby was done; it’d be hard to get so much money at once again. What if she was spending it wrong? What if the whole idea was dumb? She opened her mouth to say Wait, but the man was already shoving the drawer shut. He swaddled the camera in bubble wrap and poked it into a box that had once held Wint O Green Life Savers. He pushed the box and her change across the counter. “It’s all yours.”

Ivy drew the box close. The minute she wrapped her arms around it, her doubts evaporated.

She stood up straighter and waited for the man to congratulate her. This camera was something a film student in college might use. A guy who made TV commercials had raved about it online; an independent filmmaker said she’d shot her movie with a camera like this.

But the man just stabbed his copy of her receipt on a spindle by the register. “Enjoy.” He looked over her shoulder at the next customer, a skinny man in a sleeveless T-shirt cradling the kitchen blender.

• • •

Ivy began pedaling toward home, the camera box jammed into her book bag. It was heavy and bumped into her back every time she hit her left pedal, but she didn’t mind that. She did mind that she’d coast in under the carport at home and jiggle the front door lock and set the box on the couch and open it, all alone, and that would be that.

She thought of Jacob saying, Movies, yeah. He’d have understood how momentous this was. Too bad there was no way to find him. There was no way to find anyone. Prairie and Grammy were on a train somewhere in Maryland, if Ivy’d been keeping track right, and Mom and Dad Evers were in New Paltz, and busy.

Ivy pumped her bike pedals around a few more times. Then, without planning it, she took a right turn rather than a left at the corner of Broadway and Elm and headed across town.

• • •

“But what’ll you do with it?” Mrs. Grizzby’s mouth was turned down in puzzlement.

The candles Ivy had put out on the dining room table in holders she found in the back of a cupboard were almost out of sight behind a mound of newspapers. Ivy had hauled all the newspapers to the recycling bin right before she left, but Mrs. Grizzby must’ve limped outside on her crutches and somehow hauled them back in. Mrs. Grizzby put one hand on top of them, like she could hide them that way. “What story will you tell? Who’ll be the actors and all that?”

Ivy stared at her.

“Will you take a class, or get books from the library to figure it all out, or what?”

Ivy tugged her braid. Then she said, “Yes, I’ll get books,” like she’d thought of that already. “And I know a boy who loves movies who might be able to tell me some stuff about making one.”

Mrs. Grizzby raised her penciled brows.

“Plus, my friend Tate from school wants to help.”

Mrs. Grizzby’s face didn’t lose its doubtful, waiting look.

“And I’ll just, sort of, figure it out.”

“I see.” Mrs. Grizzby gnawed on her dark red lip. Ivy had a feeling she did see. She saw that Ivy didn’t have a clue what she was doing. They gazed at the camera. Its label said Canon GL1 MiniDV 3CCD Camcorder Pro Digital Video Camera. Mrs. Grizzby tapped the words cautiously. “How do you even turn it on?”

Ivy didn’t know. She rebundled the camera in the bubble wrap and set it back in the box. She smiled brightly. “I’m sure there are directions. I’ll have to read them and find out. Anyway, I better get home now.”

Mrs. Grizzby’s shoulders slumped.

Ivy stopped tucking the box’s flaps under each other. “I guess I’ll—see you sometime? If you ever need help with cleaning or anything, call me, okay?”

Mrs. Grizzby frowned. “Cleaning? I don’t need help with cleaning. It’s only because of Caroline coming that I had you help straighten things up a little. I could’ve done it all myself if it wasn’t for this darned cast, and the crutches and chair and all.”

“Oh, sure.” Ivy froze her smile in place so it wouldn’t look skeptical. “I know.” She picked up her camera box. “Well, good-bye, I guess, then.”

Mrs. Grizzby followed her to the door, her crutches thumping. She patted Ivy’s shoulder before Ivy stepped out onto the porch. “Good luck with that fancy-pants camera. Call me if you ever need an old lady in one of your movies.” She smiled that sudden, real smile, and Ivy impulsively wrapped her arms around her waist before she ran down the steps.

• • •

At home, Ivy put her camera box on her desk. She listened to the sounds the house made: a fan her mom had left running in her bedroom whirred; water from the kitchen faucet plopped into the basin. Ivy sighed, then dug the instructions from the box and began to read.

A few hours later she’d filmed everything in the house. Another hour after that, she’d documented Mrs. Phillips pulling crabgrass from her petunia bed. Her feeling of excitement grew. When Mrs. Phillips said she was tired of weeding, Ivy ran back inside and found Tate’s phone number. Ivy had asked her for it on the last day of school.

No one answered, but Ivy left a message. “So, um, hi. It’s Ivy—Ivy Blake, from school—calling for Tate. I wanted to tell you, I got my camera today! Well—you didn’t know about that, but I finally earned enough money for it. And now I’m figuring out how to use it and pretty soon I’m going to start working on a movie. I kind of hoped—you said if I ever made a movie—well, that you’d want to help. So I wanted to tell you. And see if you wanted to get together or something. Sometime. Yeah, so that’s all. Bye!”

Ivy slammed the phone down, her face warm with shyness. Then she ran back outside and started filming her walk to school, past the tiny park and the tattoo parlor and the pizza place. She adjusted the focus to get a sharper view of a postal box. Everything in the world suddenly seemed interesting and beautiful and new, like she’d never seen any of it before.