“You know how some people can just switch their brain off and feel calm?”
I nod. Odd way to describe it, but understandable nonetheless.
“That’s not me,” she explains. “I can’t turn my brain off, and to gain control of my brain is hard, but movies helped me a lot before my diagnosis. Just being able to focus on a storyline at a time made things easier for me.”
My eyes move to her arm, where her tattoo rests, and it makes sense. Why she’s so passionate about film. It was the only time she felt grounded, more at ease with herself. She gravitated towards film like a duck to water.
Where I was once stressed and uncomfortable with the mereideaof movies, she soaked it all in like a sponge to water. Should she skyrocket into fame—and I know she will, because it’s Carly—she can handle it.
Much better than I had, that’s certain.
“How come you never mentioned it before?” Carly seems like the type of person to joke about it, just to soften the trouble she’s gone through. “Your ADHD?”
“I try not to make it my entire personality. I shouldn’t be treated as lesser than because my brain is wired differently.”
My head bobs up and down like a freaking bobblehead.
“Now, I take Adderall for it, and I’m doing a lot better,” she concludes. “But that doesn’t make it easier. Talking to someone about it helps.”
Carly and I can’t be different from each other, from how we view the film industry to something so minuscule like how much butter should be on popcorn, but like opposite magnets, I can’t help but seem drawn to her. She used to be everything I avoided, but now she’s everything I want to be around.
Should I tell her? Would she run away or would she listen?
“Carly, you want to hear everything?”
“Yes.” Without hesitation, without pause. “Even if it’s the Cliff-notes version, I want to know all of you. Even the worst of it, Crew.”
And there lies my answer.
“Get some popcorn ready, then.”
17
Well...
Crew
When I told Carly to get some popcorn ready, I was joking.
Maybe I should have told her to cut a mango and grab some spoons—she probably would have reacted differently.
It's too late now, because the microwave timer makes a beeping sound, and Carly plops back onto the couch with a big green bowl of buttered popcorn on her lap and all her attention on me.
“What are you sitting around here for?” She tosses a piece of popcorn in her mouth, gesturing for me to begin.
This girl…
“So, I’ve been in the industry since birth,” I begin with. “If you asked me what my first project was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
“Wow,” she mouths.
“It was all I knew,” I continue. “For the first eighteen years of my life. My mom has been a part of it since she was my age, and when I was born, she took the first opportunity for a mother-son duo to appear on screen.”
And I tell her. From the time I was on that kid’s show to the first movie that made me a household name at thirteen years old—some of it, I’m certain she already knows, but she doesn’t interrupt me once—and even the last film set I ever stepped on.
The sun is already setting by the time I get to that part.
“It was a horror movie, and there were some very…” I trail off, trying to word it. “Gruesome stuff I wasn’t comfortable doing. But it was up to my parents, because I was under eighteen. I told her about it almost immediately, but she didn’t care.”
