Crew members circle the welcome party, and I notice others, like Sora, have joined us on the balcony above the fray—another B-cam operator and a sound guy. The welcome party is in full swing, with contestants chatting and mingling—mostly sticking to their own respective genders, but afew men have bravely started to infiltrate the smaller groups of women to introduce themselves.
Sora glances at me and frowns as if in concern. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Do you want me to get you something? A glass of water?”
I shake my head and manage to choke out, “I’m fine, thanks.”
But I’m far from fine.
The last time I had seen Molly I was twenty-one, sitting next to her on an oversized leather couch in the plush office of Colin Wakelin—one of the greatest documentarians of our time. Wakelin was hailed as a prodigy; lauded for his ability to connect with cultures across language barriers and tell stories that touched the deepest parts of humanity.
When our alma mater announced he would be guest-lecturing a class, limited to a select few film students, Molly and I both jumped at the chance to take it. He had taught several years ago, but stopped when he got too busy, and this would be his last time teaching. One class, that was it. I knew my ass needed to be in one of those seats. I already owned heavily annotated copies of both his books:The Secret to Uncovering Secrets: The Interviewer’s BibleandBad Doc(umentarian): A Memoir. I even had his TED Talk memorized. He was my hero.
Molly just thought he was hot.
To our surprise and delight, we were both selected—out of hundreds of film school students—to enroll in the class. It was a chance to not only learn from the best, but an unbelievable opportunity to get a foot in the door.
And, by the end of the semester, I’d done both. His reference letter had been the linchpin in landing me an internship at Netflix, once again beating out a significant number of my peers. At the time, Netflix was just getting into producing docs, and Colin had made a call to a friend of his who worked there to help me snag the position.
I was on cloud nine.
Nothingcould bring me down.
That is, until Colin threw a binder—stuffed with loose pages of our final project—onto his desk in front of us and said a single, terse word: “Explain.”
I didn’t know what he meant at first. I couldn’t figure it out. Explain what? How much time and effort Molly and I had poured into our project? The assignment had been to prep a documentary as if we would be shooting it the day we graduated, and we had done that—and more.
We crafted an in-depth treatment—writing and refining it over and over—about the long-standing drug supply problem that had plagued our hometown for decades (an issue that still hasn’t been covered to this day, I might add). I spent countless hours storyboarding and working through a complicated shot list, creating budgets, and pricing out equipment. Molly developed the narrative, identified interviewees, and compiled a huge amount of research, some of which she had to literally sleuthundercoverto get.
It was the best work we had ever done.
Not only was I intensely proud of it, I wanted to produce it the minute we graduated.
So, I sat there, bewildered. Because what was there to explain?
But as I turned toward Molly, to see if she had the same confused expression that I did, I spotted a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“Explain to me how you got your hands on this work,” he demanded.
“It’sourwork,” I replied, confident in my conviction. But I couldn’t tear my gaze from Molly. Colin just scoffed and shifted his gaze to her.
“Molly?”
I looked at Molly pleadingly, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. A few tense seconds passed, and I couldn’t wait anymore. I spoke up. “Sir, this is our work, Ipromise?—”
Colin waved his hand at me dismissively, then leaned back in his chair, as if having a conversation about the weather. But his gaze was sharp, disdainful.
“Someof this is original…the storyboards, I recognize as your handiwork, Chloe,” he offered, opening the binder and sifting through pages. “The shot list is original…but I recognize most of the treatment and its supporting documents from a final submission for one of my classes a few years ago.”
“How is that even possible?” I nearly laughed, but he silenced me with another cutting look before closing the binder and throwing it back on the desk.
“Chloe, I don’t doubt that you’re a good student. A good filmmaker, even. But you’ve an interesting taste in friends…I would have expected you to pair up with a classmate just as passionate as you, someone who actually cares about the caliber of work they put out into this world. Someone with ethics. Morals. But I suppose it’s hard to say no to your friends.”
My cheeks immediately began to flush, and I saw Molly’s face shift into an icy mask as she wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Say something!I wanted to scream.Tell him he’s got it all wrong!
But she just sat there, silent.
“So…what does this mean? My work was original. Even if…therestof it wasn’t.”
