“Not whenyoudo them.”
She burst out laughing and took the gloved hand I’d offered. She was wobbly, even with my support, so I took her other hand and skated backward in front of her. “There’s this thing called patience.”
“There’s this other thing called condescension.”
My mouth kicked up on one side. “I’m just saying you can’t be amazing at every new thing you try. Ice-skating takes practice.”
She squeezed my hands, and my heart rate sped up in response. “I just hate this beginning part, where I want to be so much better than I am. I want to be at the fun part, where I can decide I want to do something and my body is like, ‘oh yeah, we got this.’”
“What part of life is ever like that?”
“The movies.”
I rolled my eyes, but there was a smile on my face that softened the action. “I meant real life.”
“Movies can be more real than life. They’re life the way the filmmaker wants it to be, or life the way the filmmaker needs to show the world, or life the way the filmmaker is afraid it is. It’struelife, even if it isn’t exactly real.”
We glided to a stop, and my smile halted with us. “That’s how you should start your essay.”
Instead of responding, her gaze followed a little girl who looked barely out of diapers, skating past with a skill and confidence that she was clearly envious of.
“Jolene.” We were standing still, so I didn’t need to keep holding her hands, but I did. I kept my voice soft until her gaze returned to mine. “What you just said—that’s why you want to be a filmmaker. Write it.”
“I’ve tried,” she said, gently tugging first one hand free, then the other. “There’s a reason I want to be a director and not a screenwriter. Besides, apparently writers are the least important part of the movie. I mean, look at the one we saw last weekend. The script was awful, but it made like a jillion dollars.”
I completely ignored her baiting comment. “I’ll help you.”
Her arms lifted slightly, as though she wanted to wrap them around herself, but then she forced them back down. “I don’t want any help.”
This time I let my annoyance pinch the skin between my eyes as I glided back a step. Her hands immediately reached for me, and she steadied herself. “Letting other people help you doesn’t mean you’re weak or helpless. Sometimes it just means you’re smart enough to understand that you don’t have to do everything on your own.”
I offered her my hand again, just one, because the truth was that she didn’t need both.
She eyed my hand, then my face, and a second later she lifted her chin and skated past me.
We stayed for another hour and she kept falling, ignoring every attempt I made to help her up.
I should have felt better at home that night in my own room but I didn’t, not really. My body might have been lying on my own bed, but my mind was still in the city, with Jolene.
Why was she so stubborn? Was it so bad to let me help her? I’d heard her talk about movies before. We watched a lot of them together, and while we weren’t allowed to talk during the movies—Jolene had practically breathed fire at me the first time I’d made that mistake, when she’d showed meRabbit Hole—she’d pore over them afterward with me. She’d point out aspects of the story I hadn’t noticed or geek out about how certain scenes were shot to emphasize a specific emotion or mind-set of a character. She noticed all kinds of things I would have never picked up on, and more than noticing them, she had ideas about how she’d have shot different scenes.
I already knew her essay would be as passionate and insightful about films as she was, and if she needed a little help to smooth out a sentence here or there, how would that take anything away from what she’d done all on her own?
I reached for my phone a dozen times to tell her that, but I knew Jolene. If I pushed her, she’d push back no matter what I said.
With a sigh, I flopped back onto my bed and stared up at my moonlit ceiling.
It might have been an hour or three later when my phone buzzed.
Jolene:
Hey.
Adam:
Hey.
Jolene:
