From Twinkle, With Love(10)
I turned unsteadily toward her. “Um, was that whole interaction real?”
Her grin returned, wider this time. “Oh, it was real. And you know what this means?”
I shook my head silently, but inside I was thinking, Look, it’s already happening. Maddie stood me up yesterday, but one small encounter with Neil and we’re bonding again. Imagine if shiny, future Twinkle was Neil’s girlfriend? I wasn’t worried about that Twinkle being struck silent in his presence. Once I was her, I wouldn’t be intimidated by someone like Neil. By then I’d fit seamlessly into Maddie’s circle. And then it would be like this all the time.
“This movie you’re doing with Sahil?” Maddie continued. “Like I said before, the bonus is it’ll get you closer to the hotter brother. The one you’ve had a crush on forever?”
I felt a tug of discomfort. It wasn’t about “hot” versus “not hot.” It was about taking a hammer to my life and completely rehauling it. It was about breaking apart Invisible Twinkle and putting her together again, only as a shinier, impossible-to-miss version this time. “They’re twins, Maddie. They look the exact same, so Neil can’t possibly be the hotter brother.”
She waved a hand. “You know what I mean. Come on, Twinkle. This is your chance. Neil knows who you are now, and he thinks you’re pretty.” She shrugged. “You just need a chance to get in his vicinity, which you can one hundred percent do once you and Sahil become friends doing this whole movie thing.”
I felt a slow grin spreading across my face. “You’re right.”
This movie could be the answer to all my dreams. It could be how I finally shed that cloak of invisibility. God, I’m so ready.
Love,
Twinkle
Wednesday, June 3
Lunchtime, on the green
Dear Ava DuVernay,
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Five measly minutes and Sahil will be here. How do I know? you ask. Well, because I ran into him in the hallway and he said so. Apparently, he had to go update his blog. This might be the beginning of incredible things. The chance to show the world all the stories I have crammed inside me, just waiting to get out. Like in Supernatural, when those Leviathan things were in Castiel’s tummy and you could see them stretching the skin and stuff. I mean, ew, but also an illustrative way to show you what I mean.
Oh, crap, there he is. Sahil, I mean. Not Castiel (though how cool would that be?).
Wednesday, June 3
AP English
Dear Jane Campion,
Ms. Langford is showing us that movie The Crucible. It’s super cool because Arthur Miller adapted his own play into the screenplay for this movie. (Patrick O’Cleary and Caveman Callum don’t seem to care. They sit right in front of me and are doodling pictures of different kinds of boobs. They think they’re being all sneaky, BUT I HAVE EYES.) Imagine if I did that one day. Not the drawing boobs thing, but the writing plays thing. I could be a playwright and a director. Jane, your films were about sticking it to the man, snapping back at the patriarchy by showing strong female protagonists who didn’t conform to gender roles. I could be one of those protagonists. They’d call me Twinkle the Glass Ceiling Smasher, and the world would be engulfed in a veritable tsunami of movies and plays and stories by women.
That reminds me:
I’m going to be directing a real movie for Midsummer Night!
Sahil and I made it official at lunch.
I was sitting on the picnic tabletop when he came up to me and, grabbing my hand to shake it enthusiastically (even though I hadn’t offered it), said, “I like your T-shirt.”
It was my female filmmakers shirt, with a picture of you, Ava DuVernay, Sofia Coppola, and Haifaa al-Mansour. “Oh, yeah.” I looked up at him and smiled. “It’s my favorite. I like yours, too.”
He was wearing a vintage Night of the Living Dead T-shirt. When people love something so much it fuses with what they wear, I feel this instant connection to them. The melding of passion and fashion is the song of my people. Sahil pulled at the front of his shirt and turned pink. “Hey, thanks. So, um, you want to talk about the movie?”
“Sure.” I patted the tabletop beside me. “Hop on up.”
After the slightest pause, Sahil dropped his backpack on the ground and climbed up to sit beside me. You’d think close proximity to a boy would make me nervous, but I was way, way too excited to care. Pulling my notebook and pencil out, I scooted closer to him. “So, I’m super psyched about this. I think it could be great!” I was flinging my hands around (I like to talk with them), and the pencil flew out of my grasp and landed on Sahil’s lap.
“Oops, sorry,” I said, and without thinking about it, I reached over and grabbed the pencil. My hand brushed his thigh through the thin fabric of his shorts. His upper thigh.
We both froze.
“Um, so s-sorry,” I said, jerking my hand back like I’d accidentally touched the surface of the sun. “I just, um, the wood of the pencil …” I trailed off, horrified. Why was I talking about wood?? “I mean, um, it was slippery and—” Aaaahhh. Now his face looked all pink and sweaty, which I’m sure complemented my purple, sweaty one. TWINKLE. Stop talking. “Anyway. Um, movie?” I finished, apparently no longer able to speak in complete sentences.