Russel Middlebrook: Double Feature Part 14

"Leah?" said Gunnar.

I turned back toward him. "Wait. How did you know that? I haven't told anyone about her yet."

Gunnar had opened the box and was scrutinizing what was inside-a lens of some sort. "I could tell by the way you were talking with her on Sat.u.r.day. I overheard her name later that same day." He held the lens up to his eye. "Oh," I said. I hadn't noticed Gunnar noticing us. "Well, yes, I'm interested in her." I explained how we'd gone out a couple of times, and we'd had a really good time, with all kinds of things in common. "But she hasn't come out," I finished. "And she has no plans to come out.

Not until after she graduates from high school."

Gunnar looked up at me again. "Wow. After your whole thing with Terese, that must seem like a real red flag." "Yes," I said quietly. That was it, exactly. I didn't think he'd been listening, but he was. Moreover, he'd put it all together very fast.

"Hand me that tripod," he said.

"What?" I said.

He pointed. "The long blue box. On that shelf there?" 57 "Oh." I handed him the box. He opened the box and pulled out what was inside. As he was unfolding the black metal contraption, he said, "Maybe she'll change her mind."

"Who?" I said. "Leah? Oh, I really doubt it. It sounds like she's thought about this a lot."

"That is a tough one," he said thoughtfully. "What are you going to do?" I had no sense that Gunnar himself had an opinion on exactly what I should do. I think if I'd been talking to me, I would have had an opinion, a strong one. However, it was nice not to feel judged.

"Well," I said slowly. "I'm not sure. I really like her a lot. We have so much in common. And we have fun. I've never been with anyone quite like her. And she goes to a completely different school, with completely different friends. It was different with Terese, because we went to the same school, so we had to do the whole pretending thing."

"Uh-huh," said Gunnar, fiddling with the tripod but apparently still listening. "So it may not really affect you if Leah comes out or not."

"But isn't it an indication of something?" I said. "The kind of person she is? And what does it say about me? I really think people should be honest and open about who they are.

58 Sure, there are times when a person should be circ.u.mspect, like when it comes to physical safety. But it sounds like Leah just wants to have a 'fun' high school experience." "And you've only known her one week," he said. "If you already have questions about the kind of person she is, maybe she isn't the girl for you."

I had to acknowledge that Gunnar was pretty good at this. Maybe he didn't have a mild case of Asperger's syndrome after all. Maybe I'd just never before given him a chance to handle his own in a genuine heart-to-heart.

"I can't see her," I said. "I just can't. It contradicts everything I believe."

"Then maybe you shouldn't," said Gunnar. "I won't," I said firmly.

"Good," he said. He turned his attention back to the tripod. "Now what say we see how that high-definition Canon camcorder up front looks atop this tripod, shall we?"

The following Sat.u.r.day, we had another day of extra work on Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies. The earlymorning darkness was a big haze across my windshield. Once again, I arrived at the school parking lot at the same time as Kevin.

I accosted him by his car. "Kevin!" I said. "I still can't believe you're doing this."

"Doing what?" he asked. 59 "Stalking my best friend?" "I told you, I'm not stalking him!" he said. "I just wanted to . . ." He was suddenly very twitchy.

"What?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. Keep in touch."

"Yes," I said, "I know exactly what you want to touch!"

He glared at me. "Yeah, well, did you tell him you're the one who told me about Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies?"

"That is completely beside the-"

"Feeling a little guilty, huh?"

I scowled right back at him. "Look. I know I can't keep you away from him. This is a free country-more or less. But I just want you to know that I'm on to you."

"Fine. You're on to me." He smirked at me. I'm normally a very nonviolent person, but I suddenly wanted to punch him in the face.

At that moment, however, I saw that Kevin had a black eye. I hadn't noticed it before because of the dim morning light. Somebody had already punched him in the face. Did it have something to do with his coming out?

"What?" said Kevin, a little defensively. He sensed that I'd noticed his black eye, and turned his head to one side.

"Nothing," I said, but I suddenly felt a little guilty. Had 60 I been too hard on him? Even if his coming out was just part of a big scheme to get Russel back, and even if the school did now have openly gay kids, that didn't mean it had been easy.

I nodded to his car. "By the way. You left your headlights on." Makeup and wardrobe turned me into a cheerleader again. They also gave my face a yellow tint, which I hoped just meant that we students had somehow started turning into zombies, and not that the makeup artist was horribly racist.

Back at the hospitality suite, I saw that Leah had also been dressed like a cheerleader. In fact, she was sitting with a couple of the other "cheerleaders" again. I didn't ignore her-I waved and sort of smiled-but I joined Russel, Gunnar, and Em, not her. I sensed Leah watching me from that other table, but she didn't come over. Clearly, she got the message I was transmitting.

A production a.s.sistant informed us they were dividing the extras into two groups.

"That'll be first and second unit," said Gunnar to Russel, Em, and me.

"What?" I said. Gunnar was back to making no sense.

He explained how half of us would be working with the director and stars, and the other half would be shooting backgrounds and exteriors with an a.s.sistant director. 61 I didn't care which group I ended up in-I just didn't want to be in the same one as Leah. It was awkward enough seeing her; I didn't want to have to actually talk to her too.

The production a.s.sistant split us into the two groups. Gunnar and I were in one group; Russel, Kevin, Em, and Leah were in the other one. I was genuinely surprised by how relieved I felt. It was almost like I was afraid to spend time next to Leah.

"All right!" said the production a.s.sistant. "Let's move out!"

Suddenly Russel stepped up next to me.

"Do you mind if we switch groups?" he asked.

"What?" I said. "Why?" This was terrible! It meant I'd have to be with Leah after all.

Russel leaned closer. "I'm trying to avoid Kevin."

I confess that at that moment, I was very, very annoyed with Russel.

"I don't think that's okay with the producers," I said. "Switching, I mean." The production a.s.sistant had said something about how important it was to stay in our groups.

Russel shook his head. "No, it's okay. I just asked."

"But-"

"What?"

I desperately tried to think of some reason to turn Russel 62 down, but nothing came to mind. He didn't even know about Leah yet, and it was far too complicated to explain now. Besides, it was my fault that Kevin was there in the first place, so it made sense that I should be the one to make the sacrifice.

"Well, then," I said. "Okay."

"Thanks, Min," he said.

I forced out a smile and soldiered my way over to join Leah in the other group. It's impossible to avoid someone when you've been a.s.signed to be in the same group-but that doesn't mean I didn't try. As the production a.s.sistants led us to where we were supposed to go, I did my best to stay on the other side of the cl.u.s.ter of extras. Em was in my group too, also dressed like a cheerleader.

"What's up?" she asked me.

"Huh?" I said. "Oh, not much."

"I think we're turning into zombies."

"What?"

Em pointed to her face. "The yellow makeup? I think the transformation has begun." Only now did I realize that the faces of all us teenage extras had been given a yellow tint, not just mine. I'd been too distracted before by Leah to notice.

"Oh, right," I said. "That makes sense." 63 A few minutes later, we reached the school gymnasium. It was an old-style gym, with dingy paint and a bruised and battered hardwood floor. It smelled like an antique shop, a mix of moisture and crusty old varnish. The camera had already been set up, and once again it looked like a typical gymnasium in front of the camera, and a hi-tech catastrophe behind it. A swarm of a.s.sistants buzzed around the director, which told me that I'd been chosen for the first unit, the one with the actual actors.

"You," said a production a.s.sistant to Leah. "Get together with the other cheerleaders."

Of course he wanted Leah to stand next to Em and me. Leah hesitated, but I knew she had no choice but to do what the a.s.sistant had said.

"Hi," she said, not looking me in the eye.

"Hi," I said. Since she wasn't looking me in the eye, I saw no reason to keep looking her in the eye. In a minute, I knew they'd start rolling, so maybe I wouldn't have to talk to her after all. If this scene was like all the others, however, I knew there'd be lots of waiting around between takes.

A production a.s.sistant pointed out our "marks," which was where we extras were supposed to stand during the filming. A group of jocks in gym shorts, one of whom was 64 Kevin, was pretending to play basketball.

"Okay," said the production a.s.sistant to us three cheerleaders. "Just act like you're practicing a cheer."

"Practicing a cheer?" I said dubiously.

The production a.s.sistant must have heard the note of panic in my voice, because she said, "It's okay if it looks awkward. You're turning into zombies, remember?" She demonstrated what she wanted us to do-clearly the very simplest of cheerleading moves. "Just like this," she said. "Over and over again. You can make sounds, but it'll all be rerecorded later anyway."

"Well," I said. "Okay."

"All right!" called the director, "let's try a rehearsal! Rolling! And action!"

Leah and I stood on our marks with Em. Pom-poms in hand, I tried to act the way the production a.s.sistant had showed us.

"No, no!" said the director. "You there!"

He was pointing right at me.

"Huh?" I said.

"Not that out of synch!" he said. "You're not a zombie yet!"

I buried my face in my pom-poms. "Oh, my G.o.d, I'm so bad I don't even make a good zombie-cheerleader," I moaned. 65 Leah heard me. "You'll be fine," she said gently. "Here, do it like this."

I looked up, and she demonstrated the cheerleader move again, very slowly.

"Wow," I said, forgetting to be uncomfortable around her. "You're good at this."

I tried my best to imitate her, and I guess I did okay, because at least the director didn't single me out for utter humiliation again.

Soon the real actors materialized on the set, and we began filming. The actors had some dialogue about their cla.s.smates, how worried they were about whatever was happening to us, zombie-wise.

There's a funny thing about acting, however: if you act a certain way, you start to feel a certain way. By acting like a cheerleader, even a part-zombie-cheerleader, I couldn't help feeling happy. Feeling happy, meanwhile, reminded me how I had felt around Leah that first night out.

After a couple of takes, the director had to talk with the actors, so we extras had some time to ourselves.

Leah stepped in close to me. Between her pom-poms and my pom-poms, it felt like we were all alone somewhere in a thicket of bushes.

66 "Look," she said quietly. "I've been thinking about what we talked about at that movie. About coming out? I think I sounded a little casual. Believe me, this isn't casual to me. I have thought about coming out. A lot."

"You have?" I said.

"Yeah. It's just . . . complicated. Up until now, I thought I'd made the right decision. But I can see it's bothering you, and I want you to know that I don't know what's going to be right for me a few months from now."

"Really?"

"Really," said Leah. "But for the time being, I just want to wait and see."

"That makes sense," I said. "I wouldn't want you to come out for my sake anyway. It's got to be because you want to do it."

I hadn't been expecting Leah to bring up what we'd talked about on Wednesday. Still, I appreciated her attempt to clear the air. Moreover, what she had said really did make sense.

"Places, everyone!" called the director, interrupting us. "Let's do another take!"

That afternoon, we shot some scenes in the school hallway. First the camera just zoomed in on the door of the princ.i.p.al's office while we yellow-skinned extras walked awk wardly back and forth in front of it. I think it was supposed 67 to be ominous. Next we did the same thing to the door of the nurse's office and the janitor's storeroom.

They hadn't told us much about the actual plot of Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies. Most of what I knew was what I'd been able to deduce from the scenes where I'd been in the background as an extra. It starts when a teenager named Brad moves to a new town. On the first day at his new high school, he sees all the other students cl.u.s.tered in tight little cliques, viciously attacking anyone new or different. On that first day, he also meets Christy, who is drop-dead gorgeous, but who the other students reject because she wears her hair in a ponytail. The point here, I'm sure, was to suggest that most of the teenagers in town were already mindless zombies of some sort. Leah may not have liked that the movie had a point, but at least it was one that I could wholeheartedly agree with.

As the days go by, Brad and Christy quickly discern that the other students in their school are turning more zombielike every day-stumbling around stiffly, becoming decreasingly verbal. It's almost as if something is sucking out their very souls. The question is, who is sucking the souls out, how, and why? The suspects are apparently the fat, bald princ.i.p.al, the buxom Playboy-centerfold-turned 68 school-nurse, and the macho school janitor.

Despite knowing all this, however, I was no closer to learning what a "brain zombie" is.

"Hey," said Leah to me between takes, "you want to get dinner again tonight after the shoot?"

"Dinner?" I said.

"Yeah, we can talk some more about, well, what we were talking about before. Besides, you owe me."

I narrowed my eyes. "For what?"

"For teaching you how to not look like an idiot with the pom-poms!"

I couldn't deny it. The truth is, I felt much better about Leah now. It was what she had said before, about how meeting me had started her pondering about coming out.