February 28, Thirty-One Days to Deadline
Dawn hopped over the fence and landed flat on her face. Her heart raced as she looked down at her palms, which were muddy and scratched up from the patches of thorny weeds in the big yard.
She felt wet dirt on her right cheek and swiped the back of her hand across it, smearing even more mud across the skin.
“Come on!” Georgia motioned to Dawn through her rolled-down window, revving the engine of her old, dark green Toyota Camry.
Dawn tried to focus but her head felt fuzzy and the dew drops sprinkled all over her skin were making her even more uncomfortable than the dirt. Dawn looked up at the window she’d crawled from, the shed just below it where she’d scraped her knee trying to land, the grass below the shed, and finally, the fence separating the house from the rest of the street. She tilted her head up to the second story of the painted white house with its wooden slats and rustic cream siding and windows so big she couldn’t imagine who needed to own a view of that much of the world.
Shaking out the leaves from her hair, she watched as a boy looked down out of the open window on the second floor at her splayed body, then looked quickly over his shoulder, then down at her again. Dawn raised her hand to wave goodbye, and just as it seemed the boy was going to wave back, he swung a fistful of her pink underwear out of the window, the crumpled fabric landing unceremoniously in the dirt next to her. The boy shut the window with an echoing snap that bounced off all the other big windows in the neighborhood of big houses.
Dawn propped herself up on her knees and bent her elbows until she was in a crouching position. Her skirt stopped mid-thigh and did nothing to protect her lower half from the chunks of mud now coating her legs. She reached across the wet grass to grab her underwear but after seeing the mud caking the soft pink cotton decided to abandon them in the yard.
“D, what are you doing? Hurry up! Edie has to be home soon.” Dawn looked into the backseat of Georgia’s car and saw Edie resting her forehead against the foggy glass. She knocked her head two times against the glass and tapped her index finger to her wrist as if to say time to leave! Time!
Dawn stood up and brushed the dirt off of the wet spots where her knees had touched the ground. She stumbled and leaned her tired body heavily against the white exterior of the Architectural Digest–ready home. The row of bushes separating the house from its neighbor rubbed against her and wet her clothes in odd, leaf-shaped patterns. Her knees ached from the fall but she tucked her tall frame beneath the bushes’ cover and ran across the side of the yard to the safety of Georgia’s car. She slipped into the passenger’s seat and Georgia pulled off into the thick heat of the evening.
Carly Rae Jepsen crooned about love through the dashboard speakers while Dawn stared down at her mud-caked palms. Edie and Georgia stayed quiet as the song went on, and just as Carly was bursting into the chorus, Dawn decided she should speak.
“This was the last time. I swear.”
“Uh huh.” Georgia rolled down her window and stared out at the suburban traffic beneath the just-setting sun. Hondas of all kinds and colors rumbled next to moms in oversized SUVs and eight-seater vans.
“Dawn, you have to stop meeting up with this guy,” Georgia lectured with quiet conviction.
“I know, I just said that.”
“But you’ve definitely said the same thing before and yet here we are in River Oaks again waiting behind a bunch of bushes to pick you up from another absolutely garbage situation.” Georgia gripped the steering wheel.
“He said his mom was home.” Dawn shrugged in defense and went quiet again.
“Right.” Georgia took a deep, heavy sigh and let her foot slowly rest on the gas as she came to a stop light. “Look, Dawn.” She reached up to the passenger seat side and flipped down the mirror hanging there. “Honestly, look at yourself. You are gorgeous. You are soft. You are an angel.” She paused and Dawn brushed her hair out of her face in the reflection, considering Georgia’s words. “You are also covered in mud because a stupid boy you, I assume, don’t even like that much told you to hop out of his literal window and jump over his six-foot fence into a mud pit like an episode of fucking American Ninja Warrior.”
Dawn stared at herself in the tiny reflection. Mud streaks, she realized, were smattered through her waist-length walnut-brown hair and a few flecks had even landed in her teeth.
“What Georgia is trying to say is,” Edie leaned forward from the backseat and rested her palms on Dawn and Georgia’s right and left shoulders, “you are better than this. A lot better.”
“Let me see your phone.” Georgia reached out and held her open palm under Dawn’s nose.“Um, no? You’re driving.”
“You are not about to kill me,” Edie chimed in from the back. “I did not survive seventeen years at my parents’ house to go out texting and driving PSA style.”
Georgia sighed again and craned her neck down the road, the lines of strip mall stores already turning off their flashing open signs.
“Just give it. I’ll wait till that stoplight down there.”
Dawn hesitantly pulled her phone out of her pocket, a small stripe of dirt streaked across its glass screen. She clicked it on, a picture of the beach scene from Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también flashing on her lockscreen before she unlocked it and rested it in Georgia’s open palm.
Georgia cruised to the stoplight and pulled up Dawn’s messages. At the top was a conversation with an unsaved number.
“This him?” Georgia turned the phone to Dawn.
Dawn bit her lip and looked out the window. She knew what had to be done for her own good. “Yeah. Yes, it is.”
Edie leaned in from the back so she could see the screen, her deep brown skin glistening from the ribbons of moonlight beaming through the windshield.
In her attempt to press the contact icon, Georgia’s thumb scrolled through the messages and landed on an image. “Not a dick pic, Dawn … not that.”
Edie yelped as she dramatically covered her eyes and collapsed into the backseat.
Dawn’s caramel cheeks went a dark red. “I didn’t even ask for that! He just sent it!”
“Even more reason to do this.” Georgia tapped to the contact page and pressed the word block. The message thread disappeared. “It was for your own mental and physical health, really.”
Edie nodded her head in silent agreement in the rearview mirror.
“I know.” Dawn sunk into her seat and stared out the window at the approaching highway ramp. Georgia started to pull off again, the glowing phone still clutched in her free hand.
“Holy shit.” Georgia yelped, nearly dropping Dawn’s phone.
Dawn looked up into oncoming traffic, heart racing in fear. But all the cars around them were at a standstill.
“What the heck, Geo. What?” Dawn noticed Georgia wasn’t looking at traffic though, she was looking at the phone.
“Look. Look at the email that just came.” She shoved Dawn’s screen towards her face.
The email was so casual, Dawn almost didn’t notice her life was changing.
“The subject said submission update from the Austin Film Festival. See?”
Georgia reached over to zoom in on the screen as she drove, her baby blue acrylic nails making a tapping noise as she moved her hand. Her blunt-cut black hair swished against Dawn’s shoulder as she leaned over the dash to see the phone screen.
“Georgia!” Edie shrieked in panic from the backseat as the car in front of them screeched to a halt.
Dawn tried to keep her attention on the words as Georgia abruptly whipped into the far left lane.
“Oh my god. It says I’m through. I-I made it through to the second round with the excerpt I sent.”
Georgia gasped. “What does that mean? When is the rest of the film due?” She reached for the phone again, but Dawn moved her hand away.
“Wait wait wait. You’re driving. I’ll just read it out loud.” She focused intently on the words as they flashed across the screen.
Dear Dawn Salcedo,
It is with great pleasure that I notify you that your film THE QUEER GIRL IS GOING TO BE OKAY has been selected for the second round of judging in the 30th Annual Austin Film Festival. Out of thousands of submissions, your work impressed our primary round of judges and will now be subject to a final round before the awards ceremony this April. Please submit the entire film to the link below no later than March 31st by 11:59 p.m. CDT.
“March 31st?” Georgia exclaimed, swerving the car as she tilted over to try to see the screen. “That’s a month away, babes. That’s like three seconds from now. You better get on it.”
“Let me finish reading!” Dawn concentrated on the words again.
Once the entire film is received, it will be considered for competition in the Student Documentary Feature category along with any “Best of” nominations it receives from the Grand Jury, and you will have a chance to win a full scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin Radio, Television, and Film Department!
On behalf of the Selection Committee, congratulations to you and your team.
Dawn remembered when she’d first found out about the competition. It had been a Friday. Senior year was full of Fridays. Another week waiting to hear back from colleges, another week taking classes whose subject matter seemed to fade in relevance by the hour. The flyer was simple enough, a bright red sheet of paper hanging off the bulletin board outside of her homeroom class:
Austin Film Festival: Submit your student film today and win a full scholarship to UT Austin! Details below.
Dawn had snatched the poster off the board before she’d even finished reading. She was going to get that scholarship if it killed her.
Sitting in the passenger seat, she fell into shock. The city sped by as she tried to understand the words on her screen. She was going to be a filmmaker like she’d always wanted. The years of watching long, strange films in her bedroom on her perpetually broken laptop were going to lead to something. All the little videos she made of her friends, the odd angles and clear stylistic imitations of much more expensive, much more important movies, were for a reason.
“That’s huge, Dawn. I can’t believe you’re literally a famous filmmaker and my friend.” Georgia tried to reach over and hug Dawn as she exited the highway but Edie reached into the front seat and stopped her.
“Are you trying to kill us?” Edie cried from the back. “Congratulations.” She took a deep breath and settled back into the seat as Georgia refocused her attention on the road. “Oh, Georgia and I haven’t even done our interviews for it yet. Ben needs to do theirs too so I’ll remind them tonight.You still coming?”
Georgia pulled into her and Edie’s neighborhood and slowed down to a crawl. She braked at a stop sign as two kids crossed, hunched half over from the weight of their backpacks.
“To Ben’s birthday? Obviously,” Dawn said, still staring at the message on her phone with wide eyes. “They only reminded us about it thirty times this week on top of your four hundred.”
“We’re a persistent couple, what can I say?” Edie smirked and grabbed for the door as Georgia pulled up to her house.
“I’m about to throw up. Y’all are so gross.” Georgia pretended to hurl into the windshield as Edie slid out of the backseat and stood behind the car until Georgia popped the trunk with the lever by her feet.
“You know you love us.” Edie slammed the trunk closed and threw a smile towards Georgia through the rearview mirror. “Dawn, you’re coming on your own, right?”
Dawn replied, still distracted by her screen, “Yeah. I’ll meet you and Georgia at the party.”
Georgia pulled off as Edie disappeared into her house.
Dawn read the message then reread it. Even after Georgia had dropped her off at her house and she was alone on her front lawn with just the sound of her neighbors arguing through their kitchen window on the side of the house, she read it again. This was her opportunity to leave her home, to make her dream real. When she was a kid, curled into her mom watching VHS tapes of movies she wasn’t old enough for, her eyes glowed with the magic of the stories on screen. She’d always wanted to tell her own stories just like that. Love crossed over into obsession in middle school, long days holding a shaky phone camera in front of her friends’ faces and editing them together on whatever free software she could find at the library. Now, she had a project she was proud of, and it was going to win her a scholarship to study film. Now, it was finally real. She was so close.
She was going to win that scholarship.