“You’re annoying,” I told him.
“Yep,” Ace beamed.
“Anyway, shut up. I have to finish this,” I said. I turned back to my screen and looked at the images on it, the row of still images all along the bottom indicating the clips I had imported into the sequence.
A love letter?
Really?
I dragged the slider back to the beginning and pressed play. Olly’s voice started to speak into my ears through my headphones:My name is Oliver Harvey, and I’m a football player at Crowhill Cove College…
I watched each scene play out, one after the other. One thing Ace had said was right. I hadn’t realized exactly how many close-ups I’d put in. Close-ups of his face, zooms on his eyes and even his mouth. His hands as he gestured with them. The shot lingered on a broad smile of his even after the content of the interview had stopped, waiting to transition to the next scene until his smile had faded.
And Ace was also right about the cuts I had made, even though I wouldn’t admit it. I’d cut out a couple of scenes because the angle I’d shot at wasn’t very flattering. A few times, Olly had paused or not really known what to say in response to my questions, and I’d cut those parts out because I didn’t want him to look stupid. Or, more like, I didn’t want him to feel like he was stupid when he watched the project back after it was done.
I’d cut out every stumble or fumble he made in practice. Everything right up to the bad tackle. I made him look like the most competent football player on earth, someone who never made a single mistake.
Was Ace right?
Had I filmed a love letter?
My phone buzzed on the table and I looked down, then swore. It was a text from Olly reminding me to meet him at the sports center so we could film his meeting with the physio. I’d already run out of time to finish working on the edits today. I saved my project to the cloud and quit the system, logging out of the college’s editing suite of computers, and grabbed my borrowed video camera and my bag.
“See you,” I shot over to Ace.
“Give him a kiss from me,” Ace replied sardonically.
I rushed off with a shake of my head. I would have to deal with Ace later.
Although, a little traitorous voice in my head reminded me – it wasn’t as though we hadn’t kissed.
I was supposed to be putting that out of my head.
I rushed over to the field as quickly as I could. The physio’s room was down the hall from the Coach’s office, according to what Olly had told me. I thanked whoever had planned the layout of the place that I didn’t have to go right through the locker room to get there. I’d had just about enough encounters with that place, and I wasn’t interested in ever going in there on my own, without Olly to at least protect me.
The thought nearly made me stumble as I rushed along. Was that how I thought of him now?
Instead of being one of the bullies, was he now my protector?
I tried to shake that thought off, along with every single other thing, as I knocked on the door of the physio and then stepped inside at their invitation.
It was pretty hard to shake them off, however, when I was faced with the very person who was triggering them all.
Olly was sitting on a physio table to the side of the room, hands on his knees, waiting expectantly. His crutches were beside him and his ankle was unwrapped – it almost looked strange to me now. I was so used to seeing in wrapped in bandages for the last month or so.
“Ah, you’re our budding filmmaker?” the man who I presumed to be the physio asked. He was older, with greying hair, but was very obviously fit and athletic. He was tall, too. I swallowed and nodded.
“Hi,” I said. “Um, if it’s okay, I was just going to set up in the corner. You can just pretend I’m not here.”
The physio gave me a fatherly smile and nodded. “You go right ahead,” he said. “And if you need to ask me anything, just fire away.”
I nodded gratefully. It was fine to pretend that I was nervous about filming.
At least then no one would guess that I was actually nervous just about being in Olly’s presence.
I quickly set up the camera on the tripod and opened up the viewfinder, checking the screen before I hit record. I had Olly framed in the center of the shot, his leg swinging slightly against the side of the table as he waited for the physio to check him over. He looked tense. Like he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to hear at the end of this.
I didn’t blame him. So much was riding on this. I held my breath as the physio touched his ankle and then started moving his foot around, testing it in various different ways.
