Chapter two

The game wraps up in what the local newspaper will undoubtedly call a humiliating defeat—we're well past being humiliated—and Corrine takes me home. Even though the porch light is on, there's no one inside. I haven't seen my dad since I was ten and he moved to New York without so much as a goodbye—there was a note, sure, but no manning up and doing the hard work of a face-to-face. Monday through Friday, my mom works as a night manager at the local Amazon fulfillment center, and my grandma, whose house this is, died five months and one day ago from a completely random heart attack that never should have happened because she was in her early sixties, jogged every day, and drank gross green smoothies. But it's cool; if my therapist I saw precisely one time asks, I'm moving on, everything is fine, I'mcoping, and I definitely don't need to pay my future lifesavings to sit in a stuffy office and say exactly that. Shit happens.

I could've taken Corrine up on her offer to hang out, but I have an early shift at the Penn State Harrisburg film department rental desk and I need to sleep. Hell hath no fury like film students on a deadline.

When I reach the front door, my backpack over my shoulders and my duffel bag in hand, I wave to Corrine, but I know she won't leave until I'm inside. I wave to the camera mounted by the porch light, knowing my mom's getting a video sent to her phone to show her I made it home, and unlock the door.

Bagel, aka Shame Bagel, aka Seamus Bagel when he's being bad, greets me in all his tan-and-white Pomeranian glory as I turn the living room lights on. He's named such because when my grandma found him digging through the trash a few years ago, it was for the remnants of a burned bagel. Next, I turn on the TV. I like feeling like I'm not alone, even when I am. Unless not feeling alone is because it feels like a stranger is in the house with me. My constant predicament.

I let Bagel out back to do his doggy deeds, a floodlight drenching the scene in yellow and shadows. I wave to the other security camera by the door before calling him back inside and heading to my room. I kiss my fingertips and press them against the mural my grandma painted on the living room wall of her, my mom, and me a few years ago. Some nights, when I can't sleep, I watch the time-lapse I took of her painting this. She was a brilliant artist, and each room in this house is a testament to that. She spent her days giving art lessons to amateurs (mostly little kids with a lot of energy) in our living room and dubbedherself the Easy Easel; she was a town favorite and was even asked to paint a mural on the steps of the capitol building before she died. My favorite of her work in the house—murals showing scenes from documentaries I love—fills the walls of my bedroom, where I go now and collapse face-first onto my bed.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me; the game was just the beginning. Tomorrow, I work an eight-hour shift at a school that I don't attend,or plan to attend, then I have to rent more equipment—another camera, microphones, lenses, everything—and make sure I'm ready for Sunday, when I start production on my very first documentary.

The butterflies in my stomach swirl to a new height.

I've been trying to keep my excitement to a minimum, because it feels like a betrayal to finally be doing this only now that my grandma, my biggest supporter, has passed, but I have no control over the timing. I've filmed this and that in the past, edited footage together in shorter narratives, but this is practically the big leagues, and it's not just for me and my friends to watch.

I pull my phone from the waistband of my skirt and open my emails to reread the words that are burned into my mind:

Dear Ms. Saine Sinclair,

Thank you for applying to the Fiona O'Malley Documentary Pilot Program at Temple University. We've received your primary application and eagerly await your portfolio, which should showcase your camerawork, directing, and knowledge of story structure, to besubmitted byDecember 16. We hope you'll be one of the fifteen applicants accepted into our exciting first year of this program! Please find a list of the documentary's requirements attached to this email.

I open the list and scan it for anything I may have missed, even though I know there's nothing. I have it memorized by now. The documentary must be self-shot, local, and at least forty minutes long. All footage must be original. Content warnings should accompany the film if necessary.

The littledingof a notification sounds when a new email from Yvette Lacey, my documentary subject, lands in my inbox. I had asked her if she could pick me up Sunday night because my mom has to work an extra shift and, therefore, will be taking the car. I could order a Lyft, but I've had my eye on a new external microphone for my camera and every dollar counts. In her email, Yvette says she will gladly give me a ride to and from the event—though she's sad she won't have a chance to reconnect with my mom. Since I'm basically asking to stalk her and use her personal life for my personal gain, I had already decided to be understanding if she couldn't. Even if it meant her own obligations got in the way of this potentially life-changing event of mine. Though it could be life-changing for her, too.

Admittedly, I worked a bit backward on this documentary so far. A smarter person would find an interesting subject and create a documentary around them, but instead I found an interestingplotand searched for a person to throw in it. As a rule, nothing exciting ever happens in central Pennsylvania, so I wasstressing over my documentary being too boring to stand out. But then my school did one of those alumni spotlight emails that are usually skim-worthy at best and highlighted James Heath, the young CEO of the virtual reality company, Vice and Virtual, who graduated almost ten years ago. The email said his company was just funded by some venture capitalist and was making the move to New York. To celebrate that move, Vice and Virtual announced the Create Your Own (Virtual) Reality contest.

Over the course of three video games "brought to life" into physical competitions, the contest offers one winner the Reality Now virtual reality headset prototype that convinced the VC to invest. The actual product isn't due to be released to the public for another year and is already rumored to cost over a grand. I'm not up to date with the latest technology outside of cameras and video editing software, so the "impressive" list of specs the Reality Now headset boasts reads more like an ingredient list for a recipe to burn down my house, but the tech community online is freaking out.

So why would Temple find their heartstrings pulled by a documentary that barely meets the minimum requirements for submission? Because James is holding his events at the local businesses he worked at as a teen, to highlight the community and all that stuff—my grandma would've loved it. He's a hometown hero, bringing buzz and sales to family-owned stores around town like Repairisburg and Anderson's Gadgets. In an ideal world, James Heath would have been available to be the star of my documentary, but apparently, he's really busy. Ieven mentioned I go to the same high school he went to and yet my email still went unanswered.

It ended up being fine, though, because as people were entering their submissions—videos, graphics, vision boards, essays, et cetera showing what the person's perfect virtual reality game would be—my mom stumbled across a frantic Facebook post from her high school best friend's little sister, Yvette, asking for help in creating her own submission. On paper, Yvette doesn't seem like an ideal documentary subject—she's a twenty-seven-year-old divorcée with a teething child and a full-time job in data entry, and her favorite color is beige—but she's accessible, presents as an untraditional gamer, and is super-duper-sign-me-up-for-the-chalky-candy-hearts-on-Valentine's-Day in love with James Heath.

Despite not actually being into video games or able to come up with her own virtual reality game idea—I introduced her to Fiverr and all the affordable freelancers there to solve that problem—she has more heart than I could hope for. Her goal is to get as far in the contest as she can, just so she can talk to her childhood crush again. Impress him. Make him really see her.

A perfect underdog story.

I don't know if James Heath will see her, but I know Temple Admissions will. And when they see her, they'll see me.

My mom gets home from work the next morning around the time I'm finishing up a chocolate Pop-Tart and washing it down with a glass of water. It used to be a glass of whole milk, but then she stopped buying dairy to prolong our lives or something annoying like that, and milk substitutes just aren'tmilkyenough for me.

"I see you're still eating the devil's breakfast even though we have perfectly good bread and eggs here," she says, her eyes puffy with exhaustion. She slips out of her sneakers and takes the baking soda from the fridge, sprinkling some in each shoe.

"Whole-grain bread," I say with disgust. "You know, I have more of a chance of dying from undercooked eggs than a bag of pure sugar."

"I'd like to see the study on that."

I take my dishes to the dishwasher, practically tripping over Bagel as he begs for scraps, but can't find empty spaces to slotthem. By the time I'm done loading a detergent tab into the dishwasher, my mom has moved from guzzling a bottle of water by the refrigerator to lying down on the couch in the living room.

"No," I say, jiggling her foot. "Don't lie down. You'll fall asleep."

"What's wrong with that?" she mumbles into the cushion.

"You're not in bed." I grab her other foot—noticing that her socks don't match—and shake her a little more. "Up. Mom. Seriously."

"You're so bossy."

"It's darker in your bedroom anyway."

She shuffles to the bathroom and starts washing her face with the door open.

I lean against the frame. "Did you talk to your boss?"

Water drips down her face when she looks at me. "I'm next in line for a switch back to day shift, but unless someone leaves, I'm probably stuck for a while. No one will switch from days to nights."

"You did. For the pay raise. Aren't there any suckers you can strong-arm into it?"

She pats her face dry and loads her toothbrush with toothpaste. "No, sadly,Iwas the only sucker." With white foam dripping over her bottom lip, she asks, "It's not that bad, right? If I switch, I'll lose the shift-difference and the promotion. I'll probably have to get a part-time job, and I'll see you even less then."

Just before my grandma died, my mom switched from day tonight shift for a raise. At the time, I wasn't alone and taking care of myself; I had my grandma and the switch made sense financially. Without my grandma selling her paintings or teaching art classes, we don't have enough income to pay the bills... not without scraping the bottom of the barrel. So now we share a car, having sold my grandma's last month, and I see her when I'm rushing out the door to school or to work and she's just getting in. Sometimes I see her for a little while after school, if I don't have cheerleading practice or plans with my friends, but those days are rare.

"Once cheerleading is over, I'll look for another job, work after school." There's no reason she should be the only one making the whole-grain dough. I spend money, so I should earn money.

"No, Saine, you don't have to do that." She gargles some water and spits. "We're fine."

I push away from the door frame to let her pass, knowing I'll just have to bring this up again when she's not about to pass out. "Okay. I'll see you later. Car keys?"

She closes the blackout curtains in her room and the little dust motes floating in the air vanish. "On the hook. Where I expect them to be when you come home later."

"I don't know, I think throwing them on the counter so they get lost under bills is more fun."

She settles into bed, putting a mask over her eyes. "Oh yeah, especially when I'm running late."

"Love you," I say, closing the door gently.

"Love you," she says back, nearly asleep already.

In fairness, it's a little weird that I work at a college while still in high school. Also weird is that Holden's dad is the one who helped get me the job. I applied online and my application only made it through to the second round because apparently Mr. Michaels, professor of public relations, recognized my name—hard not to—and suggested they give me a shot. He probably felt pretty stupid telling them to hire me when I showed up like:Yeah, so, I can only work some weekends.

It ended up being fine, though, because none of the actual students wanted to work weekends, especially not the 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift Saturday mornings, and I can rent out the equipment to myself. I was never explicitly told that Icould, but to work here, I need a school ID, and to sign out the equipment, I need a school ID. I did the math.

Victor Okafor, a sophomore with flawless brown skin and a buzzed head, stomps down the steps leading to several computer labs and stops in front of my desk. "I need a camera."

I fight the urge to be prickly by rolling out my neck. "What kind?"

He leans against the desk. "One of the Panasonics."I