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Earl accompanied by Derrick 4 page

“I d , d do.”

“Stop your fucking crying, bitch-ass.”

“O, Ok kay.”

“Goddammit stop cryin.

“OK.”

Did I mention Maxwell was there for this? He was enjoying it. I am pretty sure his presence was making Earl more crazy and aggressive than he would have been normally.

“Now go on get the fuck outta here. I’m tired a lookin at your pussy ass. Crying and shit.”

I didn’t say anything or move. This caused Earl to get up in my face.

“God damn I’m sick and fucking tired a watchin you treat this girl like she some kind of, some kinda burden, when she the closest thing you fucking have to a motherfucking friend and she about to die on top of that. You know that, right? You dumb motherfucker. She home now cuz she about to die. That girl lyin there on her goddamn deathbed and you come to my house all whinin and cryin and shit about some irrelevant bullshit. I want . . . to kick your ass. You hear me? I want . . . to beat the fuck out of you right now.”

“Go for it.”

“You want me to?”

“I don’t ca , care.”

“Motherfucker, you want me to?”

I was in the middle of sarcastically but also tearfully saying, “Yeah, Earl, I fucking want you to,” when he punched me in the stomach.

So. There I was, for the second time in a month, lying in the Jackson front yard doubled over in pain, with a diminutive warlike kid standing over me. But this time at least it wasn’t a kid with a socially unacceptable word tattooed on his neck. He also wasn’t repeatedly slapping my face as I attempted to relearn how breathing works.

Instead, he was muttering things like, “Man, get up,” and “I ain’t even hit you for real.”

Maxwell chimed in a few times with “Yeah! Hit him again!” and “BUST HIS CANDY ASS.” But his heart wasn’t really in it. I think he was disappointed that our fight was so lame. In fairness to us, the notion that we would have an interesting fight is absurd. It was like expecting a good fight between a wolverine and, I dunno, an animal made out of marshmallows.

Eventually, Maxwell went inside and it was just the two of us out there, and if Earl was still angry, it didn’t seem to be at me.

“Goddamn, you a pussy. Get hit once in the gut, act like you dyin. Goddamn.”

“Unngh.”

“There you go. Walk it off, son.”

“Jesus.”

“Come on, let’s go to your place. Get to work.”

“Unnnh shit.”

“That’s right. Come on. I’ll help you.”


For Plan E we didn’t even use Dad’s camera. We used the low-quality camera on my laptop. We were inspired by YouTube. God help us.

Like whiny boring people all over the world, we decided that the best way of expressing ourselves was just to stare into the camera and talk. No script, no camera movement, no special lighting. We decided to strip all the effects away and see what was left.

Was this a terrible idea? Please stand by while I forward your question to the President of Yestonia.

INT. GREG’S ROOM — DAY

GREG

So. Rachel.

EARL

Sup Rachel.

GREG

We’ve tried, uh, a bunch of different ways of making a film for you, and uh, none of them have really turned out the way we wanted.



If you don’t script your dialogue, first of all, you’re going to pause and say “uh” at least a billion times. So for starters, you’re talking as though you’ve just suffered a semi-serious head injury.

EARL

We tried to do somethin with sock puppets, and it didn’t seem to be very relevant to your, uh, situation.

GREG

Uh, we had everyone at school say get-well wishes for the camera, but uh, you’ve already had a bunch of get-well cards, and we, uh, wanted to do something more uh personal than that.

EARL

We tried to do a documentary about you. Uhh

GREG

Uhhhhh

EARL

There was a shortage of material, to, uh, work with.

GREG

We tried this, uh, complicated stop-motion, uh, animation thing, to get you fired up about beating cancer, but, uh. It ended up just really goofy and, uh, not what we wanted.

EARL

So, now we’re, uh, trying this.

BOTH

[garbled]

GREG

You go.

EARL

Naw, you go.

GREG

Just go.

EARL

slowly, somehow painfully

Uh . . . All right. Uh. You probably don’t understand how grateful I am to have gotten to know you. Because first of all, the odds of that happening, normally, would be very low, because, speaking perfectly honestly, we don’t travel in the same circles, you and me. So it feels like . . . a blessing, to have had you in my life these past few weeks.

I admire a lot of things about you. I admire how smart you are, how perceptive, and observant. But, uh. What I’m just really in awe of, is your, uh, I don’t know how to put it. I guess, your patience. If it was me, I would be angry, and miserable, and, and hurtful, and just terrible to be around. And you’ve been so strong throughout, and so patient, even when things aren’t going right, and I’m in awe of that. And you’ve made me feel, uh, blessed.

finishing, husky-voiced

So, uh, yeah.

How the fuck was I supposed to follow that.

The basic problem was, Earl meant everything he said, and I couldn’t say the same stuff without lying. Because Earl is just a better person than me. I don’t want to sound like a melodramatic jackass, but that’s the truth. I was pretty sure I couldn’t say anything sensitive, and reassuring, and touching, without it being a lie.

EARL (CONT’D)

choked up and now sort of angry

Your turn.

Was Rachel inspiring to me? Did I really think she was smart, and perceptive, and patient, and everything else? No. I’m sorry. Look: I feel terrible. I wish that getting to know her had been this big inspiring life-improving thing. I really do. I know that’s what’s supposed to happen. But it didn’t.

EARL (CONT’D)

Dude. It’s your turn.

So what was I supposed to say? The truth?

EARL (CONT’D)

punching Greg in the arm

Your turn, jackass.

GREG

Right. Right right. Uh. The main reason we made this video is, uh. We want you to get better. And, uh. Look. The thing is: I know you can get better. I know you’re strong enough, and, uh. Yeah. I just wanted to tell you. Uh. I believe in you.

talking maybe a little too much now

And that’s, uh, I realize now, that’s why we wanted to make a film. To tell you that we believe in you.

just really driving the lie home at this point

And that’s why we, uh, made the film.

I spent an entire weekend listening to myself say “we believe in you,” and wanting to punch myself in the face. Because it was such an obvious lie. If we really believed in Rachel, we wouldn’t be rushing to make this film before she died. Plus, I mean, why the hell would we believe in her? She didn’t even believe in herself. She told me point-blank she thought she was going to die. She was stopping treatment and going home and waiting for the inevitable. Who were we to argue with that?

At the same time, there wasn’t really anything else to say.

Mom walked into the computer room late Sunday night.

“Honey.”

“Oh, hey.”

“Are you still working on the movie for Rachel?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s it going.”

“’Sgoing fine.”

“Oh honey. Shhhhh.”

“’Sfine.

“Shhhhhhhh.”

“h hurnk.”

“It’s hard to lose a friend.”

“Tha , at’s, snot it.”

“It’s hard, honey.”

“That’s not , n not , , it.”

“Shhhh.”


Rachel the Film (dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2011). This film, a loose homage to leukemia victim Rachel Kushner, is perhaps most noteworthy for its confusing mishmash of styles, incorporating documentary footage, confessionals, stop-motion animation, and puppetry in what can only be thought of as a huge mess. In fact, directors Gaines and Jackson begin the film with a grainy, pixilated apology to Rachel herself, admitting that the film is badly organized and basically incoherent. After that comes a pastiche of awkward well-wishes from high school students and teachers, sock puppets hitting each other, LEGO characters with incomprehensible accents, poorly scanned photos of Kushner’s childhood, and other absurdist one-offs with extremely limited relevance to the subject matter. The weepy, melodramatic conclusion, again featuring the directors, is frankly unwatchable. It is, however, a fitting end to what is almost certainly the worst film ever made.

The last time I talked to Rachel, she had seen Rachel the Film a few times, and I wasn’t sure how to talk to her about it. She was in bed, as usual, but not wearing her hat. She sounded the same as ever: kind of scraggly-voiced and congested in the nose. It occurred to me for the first time that that’s maybe what I sound like a little bit, too.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she said.

For some reason I wanted to go in for a fist pound, but I didn’t.

“I saw Rachel the Film,” she said.

“Mmmm.”

“I liked it.”

“You know you really don’t have to say that.”

“No, I did like it.”

“Uh, if you’re sure.”

“I mean, it’s probably not my favorite.

It was somehow a big relief that she was honest about it. I don’t know why this relieved me. I think I might have a disorder where your emotions frequently malfunction and a lot of the time you’re sitting there feeling something inappropriate. It should be called Emotional Moron Disorder.

“Yeah, if it was your favorite, that would mean you had kind of questionable taste, because it’s really not very good.”

“It’s good, it’s just not as good as some of the others.”

“No, seriously. I don’t know what happened. We worked insanely hard on it, and then, I don’t know. We just couldn’t do it.”

“You guys did fine.”

“No, we didn’t.”

I wanted to explain to her why things had gone so horribly wrong, but obviously I didn’t know why. I mean, Earl and I are not expert filmmakers, but at this point in our careers we should be creating something better than the sickening depressing chaos that is Rachel the Film.

“You’re funny,” she said. She had a bigger smile on her face than I had seen in a while.

“What?”

“You’re so hard on yourself. It’s funny.”

“I’m hard on myself because I’m a jackass.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, you have no idea.”

Maybe I couldn’t explain how we had made the Worst Film in the Entire World. But I could talk some trash on myself! I’m starting to realize that this is my favorite thing.

“No, you don’t have to live inside my head. For every, just, insanely stupid thing I do or say, there are like fifty even worse ones that I just barely avoid doing or saying, just out of dumb luck.”

“Greg.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m happy we became friends again.”

“Oh yeah? I mean, yeah. I mean, me, too.”

And then we sat and didn’t say anything for a while. You’re probably hoping that I was sitting there overflowing with love and tenderness. Maybe you should think about switching to a different book. Even to, like, an owner’s manual to a refrigerator or something. That would be more heartwarming than this.

Because mostly I was feeling resentful and annoyed. I was resentful at Rachel for deciding to die. How stupid does that sound? There’s a decent chance that I’m not even a human being. Anyway, yeah, I was pissed that she was just going to go die. And I was maybe even more pissed that I had felt manipulated into pretending, in Rachel the Film, like I thought she wasn’t. I had looked into the camera and said, “I know you can get better,” and “I believe in you.” You could even see in my stupid eyes that I didn’t believe what I was saying. There was no way to edit that to make it look any other way. And obviously I’m a colossal jackass, but it was also Rachel who put me in that stupid position, by giving up on her entire life and leaving everyone else to pretend that it wasn’t happening.

Maybe Rachel sensed that I was thinking about the film, because she brought it up again.

“It was really nice of you to do that film.”

“Well, it sucked, but we had to do it. There’s no good reason why it’s not better.”

“You didn’t have to do it!”

Rachel was sort of wide-eyed.

“Yeah, we did.”

“No.”

“You’re literally our only fan. We had to make something for you.”

“Well, actually, there is something I want you do for me.”

This was so unexpected that I was able to make a joke.

“But we already made you a film! Is there no end to your demands, tyrant. TYRANT WOMAN.”

There was some weak snorting and giggling. Then it seemed like she had to compose herself before talking again.

“I went through that college book.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. And I found some film schools in there.”

It took me a surprisingly long time to get the point of what she was talking about.

“I also found some other colleges with good film programs,” she said.

I was nodding my head stupidly. I knew I couldn’t argue with any of this.

“I want you to take your films and apply to them. Earl, too.”

“Uh, OK.”

“That’s the only thing I want you to do.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do that?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You promise.”

“Yeah, I promise.”


So. I’m finally getting to the part where my life gets ruined by Mom, and also Earl’s life. Go get some popcorn! This is gonna be awesome. I’ll wait right here.

Mmmm. Buttery, salty popcorn.

Actually, I’m gonna go make some popcorn, too. Hang on.

Fuck, this is the diet kind. This is disgusting. This tastes like the inside of a couch.

Fuckburglar.

So in the making of Rachel the Film, I fell behind on schoolwork sort of a lot. I already kind of told you about that, but during Rachel the Film, things reached sort of an embarrassing point. Basically, I was getting gangbanger-level grades, and teachers were starting to take me aside after class to tell me that I was destroying my own life. And finally, the day after I delivered the one copy of Rachel the Film to Rachel, Mr. McCarthy staged an intervention. He went to Mom and Dad, and the three of them agreed that Mr. McCarthy was allowed to keep me after school every day for hours to prevent me from failing my classes.

Did this happen to Earl? No. Earl takes classes where you don’t fail, period. It doesn’t matter what work you do or how often you show up. You could staple a dead animal to your homework and you wouldn’t fail. You could show up one day and pelt your teacher with bags of narcotics and poop. They’d probably just send you to the vice principal’s office or something.

So suddenly I was doing schoolwork all the time, under the watchful, quietly insane eye of Mr. McCarthy. I guess I was actually sort of grateful that someone else was taking over my life. I mean, I’m obviously pretty terrible at managing my own life, so it was nice to know that it was in good hands. But also it was nice to have all these concrete tasks to do and be sort of distracted and consumed by them. It kept me from thinking about every depressing weird thing that was going on at that time.

Unfortunately, it also prevented me from noticing that Mom was suddenly behaving abnormally.

Normally, when I’m home, she likes to do some annoying check-in at least every hour. There is no end to the reasons moms can use for annoying check-ins.

• Just seeing how things are going

• Just seeing if you need any help with anything

• Just wanted to say it’s a beautiful day outside and maybe you should think about getting some exercise

• Just letting you know that I’m going to spin class

• Just letting you know I’m back from spin class

• Just letting you know that Gretchen is being A Little Difficult Right Now so please don’t aggravate her

• Just wondering if you want beef tips for dinner or do you eat lamb because I was heading out to Whole Foods but I forget if you eat lamb

• Just had a question for you but now I forget what it is, so I’ll just ask you later, unless you might know what the question was, but you probably don’t, so I’ll just come back later, so things are going OK? They are? Honey, you need to turn some lights on in here or you’ll destroy your eyes

For a few days, this came to an unprecedented halt. I wasn’t home as much, and then when I was home, there were no check-ins. In hindsight, I really should have suspected something was up. But I was busy, and also, I was probably unconsciously grateful for the temporary lack of annoying check-ins, and unwilling to risk re-triggering them.

The hammer fell during eighth period.

One great thing about eighth-period lunch is that pep rallies are always scheduled for eighth period, so Earl and I never have to go to them. However, at least in theory, they’re mandatory attendance for the whole school, and for some reason Mr. McCarthy was a jerk about this one.

“Sorry, guys,” he said, standing in the doorway as his ninth-grade history class milled around outside like disoriented toddlers. “I’d get in big trouble if anyone found you here during the pep rally.”

So we left our lunches on his desk and tagged along with the ninth graders to the auditorium.

For most pep rallies, the marching band’s drum section is onstage, pounding out some repetitive beat, and maybe some of the bolder athletes grab a microphone and try to freestyle over it, until they get too sexually explicit or accidentally say the F- or N-word, at which point a vice principal shuts them down. However, there was just a massive projector screen onstage, and no drummers; just Principal Stewart. We were among the last classes to arrive, and so we had barely sat down among the ninth graders when Principal Stewart took the microphone and spoke.

Principal Stewart is a giant, terrifying black man. There’s no other way to put it. He is extremely authoritative, and his default facial expression, like Earl’s, is Pissed. I had never been directly addressed by him, and I was hoping to keep it that way until graduation.

His speaking style is hard to describe. There’s sort of an angry undercurrent to everything he says, even when the words aren’t angry at all, and there are a lot of pauses. He definitely sounded pissed at the pep rally.

“Students and teachers. Of Benson High School. Welcome to this pep rally. We are here. To cheer the Trojans. To certain victory over Allderdice. Tonight on the football field.”

Cheering and hollering that Principal Stewart, glaring at all of us, brought to an abrupt end.

“However. It is for a greater purpose. That I have assembled everyone. Here on this afternoon. I will make my words brief. On this subject.”

Major pause.

“A member of the Benson family. Is in the fight of her life. Against cancer. You may know her personally. And if not you have certainly heard. Her name. Her name is Rachel Kushner. We have all. At one time or another. Sent our prayers. Out to her and her family. They are needed.”

The anger sort of made this sound ironic, which made me sort of giggle quietly. And then Principal Stewart was staring right at me, and I had this dumb smile frozen on my face, and words cannot describe to you the terror I felt at that moment.

“But two students. Have gone further. Much further. They have spent countless hours. Creating a film.”

Next to me, I heard Earl make a strangled noise.

“A film to lift Rachel’s spirits. A film to give her company. And hope. And love. A film to make her laugh. And feel cherished.”

For every word that Principal Stewart was saying, I wanted to punch myself in the face.

“They did not intend. For anyone but Rachel. To see this film. They did this for her. And her alone. However, gestures of love. Of this quality. Are surely worth seeing. And appreciating. And applauding.”

A new feeling came over me. I wanted to punch myself in the junk.

“Gregory Gaines. Earl Jackson. Please come to the stage.”

My legs felt weak. I couldn’t stand up. The back of my throat tasted like barf. Earl had a look on his face like a dead man. I was trying to black out on command. I wasn’t quite able to do it.

What had happened was, Denise had found the film. Rachel had put it on and then fallen asleep. And Denise walked into the room, found it, and watched it. And then Denise shared it with Mom. And Mom told Denise about how Earl and I never let anyone see anything. And Denise and Mom decided that everyone should see this film. And without letting us know, they went to some teachers at the school. And the teachers saw it. And Principal Stewart saw it. And now everyone was about to see it.

Onstage, as people halfheartedly applauded, Principal Stewart clapped his giant hands on our shoulders, glared at us as though he was about to eat our flesh, and said quietly, “I am very moved. By what you boys have done. You are a credit to this school.” Then the three of us sat in chairs off to one side, and Earl’s giant head and my somehow even gianter head appeared on the screen, and for twenty-eight minutes, everyone at Benson sat through Rachel the Film.


So. If this was some normal fictional young-adult book, this is the part of the story where after the film, the entire high school would rise to their feet and applaud, and Earl and I would find True Acceptance and begin to Truly Believe in Ourselves, and Rachel would somehow miraculously make a recovery, or maybe she would die but we would Always Have Her to Thank for Making Us Discover Our Inner Talent, and Madison would become my girlfriend and I would get to nuzzle her boobs like an affectionate panda cub whenever I wanted.

That is why fiction sucks. None of that happened. Instead, pretty much everything happened that I was afraid of, except worse.


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 693


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