Mid-July
Because I am a glutton for punishment, or because the nineteen uses of the word “conscientious” on my report cards over the years are true, I don’t send Zach a text to say I’m dropping out of his movie. Yes, I want to keep my word. But I also imagine Zach’s disappointment, him scrambling to find a new Lindy, Raj sighing as he dons my nun costume, Kevin calling me abeeyotchfor abandoning them when they need me the most. I don’t have great reasons—the most convincing is that I’ve been having fun with them, feeling like I belong somewhere during this Katy-less summer—but they are enough to bring me back for the final two days. I won’t die from another ten to twelve hours of filming. And more importantly, I can’t fall any harder for Zach in that amount of time than I already have. Can I?
On Thursday after filming, I present Zach with the CD, and he plays it as we clean up for the day.
“This is fantastic!” Zach says, eyes wide. He reaches out and hugs me, a normal three-second thank-you hug that my body misinterprets as permission to get warm all over and tingle. When we pull apart, he’s beaming at me. And I realize right then that I was wrong—I can fall harder for Zach, and I won’t even need ten hours.
“I like a woman who can plaaaay,” Kevin says, wiggling his eyebrows as he helps Raj push the furniture back into place.
“Kev,” Zach sighs.
On Friday, our last day of filming, nostalgia hits. Raj asks if I want to keep the nun costume when we’re done or if I plan on “breaking the habit.” I tell him I do—plan to break the habit. Kevin asks if I’ll miss him when we aren’t spending hours in a basement together every day.
I feel a twinge of sadness. We are having a viewing party tomorrow—Zach is editing all the footage overnight—so it isn’t goodbye yet. But still, I wonder when I’ll get to see them,ifI’ll get to see them all again. We haven’t spent so much time together that Raj or even Kevin and I are friends. And Zach…well, it probably isn’t a good idea totryto be friends. But I hate the thought of not seeing him every day, even if he is just recommending a new slasher or we are washing his car or I am thrashing violently on the floor while he bends over me, filming every twitch, every tic. I’m not even self-conscious anymore.
And despite that awful talk with Zach, being around him still makes my cells shiver, tremble like the vibrato of my viola strings. A song too quiet for anyone but me to hear. Whenever it’s playing, I don’t feel like I’m sleepwalking.
Zach seems distant the whole time we are setting up. I wonder what he is thinking, if he is thinking the same thing I am.
And then, as he and Raj sit on the floor, putting together the camera equipment, he says, “Do you think we should send Lindsay the DVD?”
“Are youkidding?” Raj asks.
“It’s just,” Zach says, “she paid for half the ketchup.”
“So?” Raj says.
“She didn’t even give us the trampoline!” Kevin interjects.
“I didn’t ask her,” Zach says quietly. “Maybe she would have.”
Raj snorts. “She would not have.”
“Okay, but she’s seen every single one,” Zach continues.
I busy myself spreading sheets over the furniture, smoothing them out, tucking them in, smoothing them out again.
Raj gives the longest, heaviest sigh I’ve heard him give yet, and that is saying a lot. “It’s too weird, man. Give it up.”
“It’sweird?” Zach repeats, genuinely surprised.
“It’sfuckingweird!”
“Kevin.”
“Yes, it’s weird,” Raj confirms, then whirls around to face me. “Ask Addie. She’s objective. Is it weird?”
“Sending her a DVD?” I ask, as if I’ve only been casually listening. Oh, Katy should see my acting now. One week in the horrody genre and I am an ac-tor.
Raj nods, but Zach only watches me, gauging my expression with interest.
“If I was Lindsay,” I say slowly, measuring my words, “I’d call the police.”
Kevin giggles.
“You can’t send your ex a slasher in which a thinly veiled version of her is nearly decapitated. You just can’t,” I finish.
“Lindy isn’t—”Lindsay,Zach starts to say for the fiftieth time since we’ve started filming, but he stops himself. “She’s the only one who survives.”
