Twisted Fate (14 page)

“Where’s your mom?” I asked.

He turned and pointed to a bench at the far end of the playground where a woman was reading next to a stroller.

“What’s up, kids?” Graham asked us, leaning back on the bench and folding his hands behind his head. “I suppose you have four hundred and twenty reasons you wanted to come to the park tonight?”

“Nah, we’re just chillin’,” Declan said.

“What are you up to?” I asked him.

“Making art,” Graham said. And at that moment I noticed the tiny camera he was holding. The same one he had tried to film me with the other day. It was so small, I had again completely missed it. “Making art and talking to my homeboy Brian.”

“What kind of art?” Declan asked.

“Cool stuff. If you want to come over I can show you.”

Declan and I looked at each other. The playground castle would have to wait . . . or we’d have to sneak out later at night. Whatever Graham was working on, we needed to see it.

We said good-bye to Brian and got in Graham’s car. Even though it was fall he had the top down. He drove fast through the winding shady roads that wound up the hill to our neighborhood. Declan sat in the front and I sat in the tiny backseat. Graham was a good driver. He took some of the hairpin turns a little fast, but it was fun and he definitely knew what he was doing. I imagined him driving all over country roads down south like some aristocratic hick, even though I knew he was from the suburbs.

When we parked in the driveway I saw Ally looking out our window at the three of us—but I ignored it and we quickly went inside.

It was one of those houses that was somehow even bigger on the inside. The whole place was painted white and had
high ceilings and perfect track lighting like in an art gallery. And there were huge canvases hanging on the walls. I mean huge. Like taking up most of the room.

“That looks like it belongs in a museum,” Declan said, pointing to a massive blue painting that looked like some kind of dangerous and mythological aquatic life.

Graham laughed. “It actually was in a museum for the past six months! Part of my stepmom’s show at LACMA.”

“What’s LACMA?” I asked. “It sounds like a disease you get if you can’t digest milk.”

“Los Angeles County Museum of Art.” Graham laughed. “Next week Kim will be sending it to a museum in Florence.”

And it was suddenly very easy to imagine all the boys at school who liked to hunt and fish and fix boats kicking Graham’s ass in the school parking lot. Maybe he knew this too and it was why he didn’t go to school.

The rest of the house was equally beautiful and weird. I guess Kim also decorated everything. Because things looked expensive and hard to find. A chandelier made from deer antlers hung above a long rectangular table in the dining room. The couch was upholstered in some kind of beautiful fabric that looked like trees and fire.

“The couch fabric looks like a forest fire,” Declan said.

“It is. It’s a screen print of the fires outside Oakland a few years ago.”

I couldn’t decide if this kid’s parents were a nightmare or
the coolest parents in town. There was a large photograph of things I could barely identify; it looked like silk fabric and knives and horses’ hooves all mixed together. Graham saw me looking at it and pointed to the signature in the corner.

“That’s an original Kate Steciw,” he said. “It’s worth half a million dollars. C’mon, let’s take the back stairs.” We followed him through the long hallway to the back of the house where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the woods and a yard that had a tall marble fountain in it. But it was not like a garden fountain, something that shot water or had stones or figures in it. It was shaped like a drinking fountain. A rectangular block of marble that was a complete replica with a little stream of water arcing and falling. You could imagine some giant leaning over to get a drink. It was a visual joke. A play on the idea of fountains.

“Let me guess,” I said, gesturing to it. “Kim.”

Graham nodded and laughed and then sprinted up the wide oak staircase, taking two steps at a time. We followed him until we reached the third floor of his house—the attic, I guess—but finished better than any attic I’d ever seen. We have the widow’s walk, which is cool, because you can see the whole harbor from there, but it’s a cold and desolate place to hang out. Here dark curtains hung down from the ceiling and there was a small row of seats like in a real movie theater facing a blank white wall.

“This is the screening room,” he said.

“Wow,” said Declan, “where did you get the movie theater seats?”

“At an architectural salvage warehouse,” Graham told us. “Have a seat.”

We watched him fiddle around with some kind of digital projector and then he turned off the lights and sat next to us. He was very excited and I could feel the kind of pent-up exuberant energy coming off him. He sat down between us, and his arm touched my arm. I could feel the warmth of his skin and I let my finger brush his wrist for a moment. It gave me goose bumps to touch him and to know he wanted me to touch him. He was shaking slightly, excited about showing us the movie, or nervous that I was there with Declan. The way his body seemed so receptive to everything beside me in the dark, it felt like he was on some kind of speed or maybe even Ecstasy. I pulled myself together and leaned the other way to feel my shoulder touching the solid shoulder of Declan. Then I took his hand.

Suddenly the wall in front of us was flooded with white light beaming from the projector. And then the images started. Stark and brilliantly full of color. There was a close-up of Becky’s lips while she was talking but no audio and the footage was slowed down. Smoke came out of her mouth and then the footage was reversed and it looked like she was sucking in a big cloud of gray smoke. Then there were shots of girls jumping rope and chasing each other but they looked like they were taken from old movies. Then
footage of a cat eating a mouse. A slow cruising shot of the whole neighborhood, the cheerleading squad practicing but shot from far away and it looked like from the top of a building or something. Then Becky’s lips again. Smiling, talking. We could clearly read her lips and she was saying, “Yeah, you should text me . . .” Declan nudged me.

Next shot was the inside of a medicine cabinet with rows of prescription bottles set up, waves crashing and rolling in and then the same footage backward. All of the sound was mismatched—the sound of the waves accompanied Becky smoking, and the sound of the girls playing went with the cruising shots of the neighborhood. The cheerleading squad had the sound of some kid talking about outer space while they did their drills. Then suddenly on the screen there was Allyson walking up the driveway with her backpack, going inside our house and shutting the door. It was also shot from above—and looked like it was directly above her head somehow. The last frame was of that kid Brian at the park—apparently today wasn’t the first time Graham had talked to him. He was holding a Wolverine action figure and making it jump around. There was an extreme close-up on the kid’s face, his big blue eyes and smile, and then he turned his head quickly as if he heard something—like he was startled and a little worried. Then there was Allyson again—sitting in Graham’s backyard looking up at him from the grass.

Graham stood up suddenly and stopped the projector.
“You get the idea,” he said. “There’s another hour of this or so . . . other random stuff.” He seemed a little flustered and I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t want us to see the footage of Ally, or because he felt weird that I was there with Declan, or maybe just his drugs were wearing off.

He turned the lights back on and we sat in the weird mini theater not saying anything. I’m sure Declan was thinking what I was thinking, which was that this kid was from another planet.

“It’s pretty good, man,” Declan said. “Pretty good. You really know how to use that camera. I don’t know how you got some of those shots. Wow. I mean, that’s . . . What the hell is it about?”

Graham shrugged. “It’s about—”

“No, wait! Wait!” Declan yelled, doing his typical Declan-nerd-boy thing where he thinks he’s figured everything out and wants to shout it out before anyone else can. He’s been doing this since third grade. “I know! I know, it’s about how everyone is in and of themselves a spectacle. Am I right? How every individual act is also kind of a performed act? That’s it! That’s it! Am I right? Except for Tate walking into her house. Right? Or maybe even that! Wow! That is awesome, actually.”

Graham looked disappointed. “Um, it’s kind of almost the opposite. It’s about how people are not quite real until they are observed or filmed. You know, like if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s there, does it make a sound?”

Declan said, “Huh. Sure . . . but—”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It looks really, really cool, but what does any of that even freaking mean? Of course people are real.”

Graham looked disappointed for a minute and then regained his usual hip, I-got-a-secret face and leaned back in his chair. “So you think all people are real?” he asked me, looking right into my eyes. “Aren’t there some people who aren’t?”

It scared me—really scared me for a second. “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

“Wait wait wait!” Declan interrupted us. “This is really interesting. So you’re filming people to make them real?”

“That’s right,” Graham said.

“Huh,” Declan said. “Okay, okay, I get where you might be coming from. As a history buff, you really believe that identity is reified by its documentation.”

“
What?
” Graham said, sounding genuinely confused and annoyed. “Speak English.”

“Have you shown these to anyone else?” I asked before Declan could go off on some weird tangent about who makes history and what it means. I could hear that one coming a mile away and already I was tired of being trapped between these two nerds.

Graham got a faraway look on his face. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Lots and lots of people have seen my films.” Then he started to look genuinely sad. “Some of them have sold
for five thousand dollars. And I think the people who buy them even know what they mean,” he said. “These movies make their life better.” He looked like he might start crying. “They get me,” he said. “They understand.”

W
e didn’t believe it at first. It looked like a normal Tumblr page. You opened it up and there were links to click on to watch his films. Harmless stuff for the most part. A little full of himself, but what seventeen-year-old boy isn’t?

When we looked closer we realized he had a hidden site—something that only members could access. The whole thing was under the name Copeland Productions—not a very sophisticated secret name. And the Amazon wish list was also under that name. And that list was long and extravagant. I’d say he’s been bought tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise by his “fans” in exchange for these films.

And the films. I can barely describe them to you . . . It makes me want to . . . It makes you sick to think that this is the world we live in. That all this was going on in this beautiful tree-lined neighborhood among these decent people.

O
nce we got out of Prince Charming’s weirdo castle, we walked back into the woods.

“That kid is not too bright,” Declan said. “I think he’s kinda dumb, actually, which I didn’t quite realize when I was showing him around school. But he’s come to some erroneous ideas about how the world works.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Oh well. He clearly knows how to frame a shot, I mean, that’s undeniable, he’s talented, but—”

“No! I mean you just think he’s
dumb
? That’s it?”

Declan nodded. “Yeah. Dumb and really materialistic,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “I guess I always think people like that are kinda dangerous.”

“Nah,” Declan said, shaking his head. “They’re mostly harmless, just annoying. At first I thought this guy was real
trouble too. But he’s just some geeked-out kid making art who doesn’t have the brains yet to know what it means or why he’s doing it. Maybe he really will be famous someday.”

“What about that thing he said about people buying his movies?” I asked.