Documentary (2 page)

Dylan nodded. He had been all over the
gossip websites recently for beating up another singer, Jeremy Bunyan, outside a nightclub in L.A. over music royalties, and there was a short cell phone video of the fight floating around the Internet, posted by someone anonymous. They were former band mates from a four-member group she remembered from her high school days called Evernight. Kai White was the one who had gotten into trouble with the law a few times. The group had split around her junior year, and after a two-year hiatus, Jeremy, the lead singer, had continued his career as a solo artist. She wasn’t a zealous fan of Jeremy’s, but she liked a few of his songs because they were impossible to escape while listening to a radio. Kai had recently started his solo career too, but his popularity had ballooned in other ways when he quit the music business. His social habits became more famous than his professional ones. He had spent years partying excessively and getting into fights occasionally. There was a betting website dedicated to picking the next female celebrities he would sleep with, and another website on how old he would be when he died, which dated back to his Evernight
days. Most people had their money on twenty-nine. Six more years to go. But she hadn’t heard much negativity about him in the news lately, except for the fight. He had released an album earlier in the year too. That was the extent of what she knew.

“His current manager is an old friend of mine. Kai is working on a few projects with the hopes of getting things back
under control
. Lava Energy Drink made him one of the focal points of a short film for their
Set the World Ablaze
campaign for several new drink flavors. Fashion photographer Jerry Armen is at the helm as director, and they were last filming on Maui, I heard,” Professor Jordan said as she plowed through the unstable towers of papers on her desk. She retrieved a single sheet and positioned it in front of her. “It’s the mother in me, but I’m conflicted about sharing this with you given that people are calling him ‘Kamikaze Kai’ now. I saw that fight video too. Yikes.”

Dylan laughed. “I can deal with temper tantrums. I have a younger sister, remember?” Beating another guy up was more than a temper tantrum, but her mouth watered at the thought of working with a real film crew. She was up for the task, no matter what it entailed. She would smile in the face of tedious intern drudgery. She didn’t mind if she had to carry equipment and get coffee or work fourteen hours a day. She
just wanted to be near it all… Suddenly, Dylan perked up, slamming her back against the cushioned chair. Had Jordan just mentioned
Hawaii
? She kicked her bag when it started to vibrate again.

“I’d love to,” Dylan blurted out. “Just let me know the internship start date and I’m there.”

Professor Jordan shook her head without looking up as she read over the document. “This isn’t an internship. It’s an actual job. The movie is premiering at a festival in late December and then showing again in January. His people want to put out a web series, so they’re looking for someone to film him while he’s on tour the weeks beforehand. You would be writing articles to go along with the videos, too. His manager kept the position really hush-hush to limit the number of candidates, so the press release about it hasn’t even gone out. The series would be on two websites: White’s, and Lava’s media page, where the page views hit the double digit thousands per day.”

Dylan shrank. Like a swollen balloon deflating, her exploding excitement suddenly careened back down. She fidgeted and twirled some of her hair around her fingers. All those rabid eyes on her work made her stomach clench almost unbearably. Anonymous commenters were unforgiving AND remorseless. There was a conundrum she dealt with daily when it came to her passion for film. She loved creating her work for public consumption, but it terrified her that people would actually be consuming it. What if she turned out to be a complete hack and a failure? What if she somehow ended up killing her own dream because she was terrible at it? She tried to play off the debilitating thoughts with a wavering smile for Professor Jordan, whose own enthusiasm was only intensifying.

“This job just sounds so wonderful! What’s your exam schedule like? Assignment starts a few days into December.”

“I have two finals early in the
first week of exams, and a paper and your take-home that aren’t due until the end of the first week, but I can probably get them done during Dead Week.”

“
Great! This job would mean spending all of Christmas break with him, and his schedule is hectic. You’d be in Lahaina the first week, I believe, then he’s all over the place, but you would have this to your name forever, if you don’t mind his being a bit controversial. After graduation, the industry would be begging you to let them pay you. What do you think?”

“Sounds cool.” Dylan swept her fingers through her hair, contemplating the promise of the words. “Sounds amazing, actually. Thanks.”

Professor Jordan’s brow creased. “Okay, I know the job isn’t yours
yet
, and I wasn’t expecting you to destroy my office in celebration of being a finalist but, at least, I thought it would warrant a smile...maybe a gasp…” Professor Jordan smiled. “…Some sign of life.” Dylan gave her a weak smile, feeling a pulse of sadness in her chest that she had become very familiar with the past several months.

“I hope you’re not doubting your abilities because you know I’m using your final project from the Intermediate class as required viewing for my Independent Study students!”

Dylan chuckled then uncrossed and re-crossed her legs. “I know…and I’m honored. I’m nervous about taking on a huge project like this, but it also just feels so bittersweet…not being able to share this news with him.” Professor Jordan would know exactly what she meant. She walked to the other side of the desk and leaned against the edge.

“How have you been, Dylan? I mean,
really.
Your mom sent a thank you card for the flowers I had delivered to the funeral home.”

“Just adjusting, Professor J,” she said, unable, or maybe unwilling, to meet her eyes right away. “I’ll tell my mom you got it.”

Professor Jordan scribbled something quickly on a sheet of paper and handed it to her. “This is the information on the interview timeslots and the email address of the contact. Let her know either way, even though I want to insist that you go. I’m not saying your grade in the class depends on it, but…” She winked at her. Dylan laughed and relaxed a little as she raised her bag to her lap. Her excitement started to bubble up again as she read the document. It wasn’t just the information on the contact; it was the actual email from the contact announcing that she had been picked. Nina Sanchez, Kai’s manager and publicist, had stated that she was thoroughly impressed by Dylan. Dylan read back through the chain of emails until she found the actual job posting about filming Kai on the part of his multi-city tour preceding the Wintervention Music and Arts Festival in Fort Lauderdale and Miami where the film would screen. Professor Jordan was right. This was the door to her future she had been working so hard for. Now was the time to be confident and ambitious, not timid and worried. 

“Okay, I’m in!”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Professor Jordan said with an enthusiastic clap. Dylan stood as she watched her beckon a student inside the office. She gave him a polite nod when she walked out and mouthed a thank you over his head. Outside, she ran back across the quad toward where she and her friends were supposed to meet. Winslow’s free time was over, but she would still be able to catch Kate before her class. As she neared the campus coffee shop at the student union, her phone buzzed and she answered it completely out of breath.

“Why are you breathing so hard? A little afternoon delight?” Kate said after a short gasp, and Dylan laughed through the tightening pain of exertion in her chest.

“I was running! I started up again, like, a week ago, so I’m totally out of shape.”

Kate giggled.
“I know. I can see you. You should’ve heard me going up the stairs in Evans the week the elevators were broken. I sounded like a freaking donkey.”

Dylan swiveled around and spotted her friend’s flailing hand over a bench. Golden sunlight saturated the outdoors, and many students had fled the buildings. It was a nice day out, a
relatively warm fall day in San Francisco. It was still boots and jacket weather—that was the city nearly year round, it seemed—but it was comfortable.

Dylan ended the call and strolled over to Kate, who was waiting with a steaming
Grande Mocha for her. Kate had to clear the bench of a few of her books to make room for Dylan. Textbooks were always within reach of Kate due to her heavy double major course load.

Kate freed her wild brown curls from the enormous bun she so frequently kept them in. “We should do the pub crawl this weekend,” she said as she handed the
cup to Dylan.

“We
’re not twenty-one,” Dylan said, tilting the cup to her lips.

Kate scoffed. “When did that ever stop us? I was thinking you could wear those really cute red pumps…
Remember the first time you wore them freshman year and we got lost in the city? We were freezing and our feet were hurting. You didn’t wear them again for months. That was a fun night though.” She aimed a big grin at Dylan.

“Yeah, it was. Just not this weekend, Katie.” Dylan sometimes referred to her by the nickname she had gone by freshman year. “But you guys should totally go,” Dylan said, letting her gaze drop. “I have a lot to do. My film project partner isn’t a major
, and he has a pretty heavy workload, so we’re going to try to get as much done as possible this weekend.”

“Okay. Low won’t sell the ticket until Friday night or even Saturday.” Her smile was smaller and full of disappointment. “Just in case.” She squeezed Dylan’s arm to reiterate the point before turning back
to her work, but her offer had hinted at something more, even if Kate would never say it out loud. It had been five months since Dylan’s brother, Mac, had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and Dylan had come back to school this year as a version of herself her friends would have to adjust to.

Going out had become something she often declined, giving the excuse of having a lot of homework or wanting to get a jumpstart on it. It wasn’t a lie, Dylan had always been a hard worker, but the sudden, ardent dedication to academia came in the aftermath of seeing her twenty-two-year-old brother in a casket, the epitome of life being too short. He was
the smart and funny and focused one. It felt so unfair sometimes, given that even when he was well, he was the one who didn’t spend as much time partying or thinking about prom and homecoming or being angry because he couldn’t hang out with friends. Or all the countless things in college she had spent the last two years being so involved in. She missed doing them, but they felt so insignificant now. While he was dying, he had still been contemplating what good was left to do in the world, as if he’d had every tomorrow ahead of him to start. He didn’t; he had so few.

Dylan was left wondering why
him
. Something had been peeled away from her after his death, and she knew she was re-building it with something artificial. School and filming, she loved, but in a way, they had become a barrier around her, her new way of life, sloppily stitched together for survival.

“So,” Kate said when she looked up, “Low says she plans to axe you in your sleep. Where were you?”

Dylan rolled her eyes and took another sip of her coffee. “She’ll axe herself when she hears what I have to say.” As Dylan relayed her earlier conversation to Kate, she watched her friend’s jaw nearly unhinge.

Kate used her phone’s web browser to look up Kai White through Google. “Released a solo album. He’s made a ton of money from songwriting and producing.
Cool endorsements here and there. He lost some after the fight. He worked on a clothing line with a rapper friend of his. He likes to surf, too. Ew, he threw up on stage once
during
a concert. He’s gotten into tons of fights after concerts. Sounds like a winner,” Kate mused out loud as they read through sites. She pulled up Google Images next and made complimentary noises when the screen filled with photos of him: some old magazine covers, some of him performing and a few of him in a wetsuit. He was gorgeous, and exactly what Dylan was attracted to: dark wavy hair that hung wildly, almost to his shoulders, ever-present facial hair, and blue eyes.

When Kate came to a shirtless picture, she enlarged the sheet of tan muscle that stretched down his torso, scrolling to check out the muscular indentation at his hi
ps that Winslow often referred to as “the panty droppers.” And if the celebrity gossip websites were true—and sometimes they were—plenty of panties had been dropped. In an instant, Dylan’s whole body felt like she was sitting in a sauna.

But Kate made a disgusted face when she lowered her phone. “Cute or not, he seems like a disaster, and not the kind where you’re both tolerable train wrecks, and in the midst of the fucked-up-ness, it just sort of works out due to some sort of cosmic fuckery.”

Dylan held her gaze on her friend in silence before she laughed. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Like you and Ryan?”

“Exactly,” Kate said with pointed emphasis and a nod. “You totally get it. Kai just seems
crazy
crazy.”

Dylan laughed. “The fighting makes things a little iffy, but I’m definitely going to the interview. I might as well.” Her tone probably came off as deceivingly nonchalant, but her hopefulness was mounting. This
was
the chance of a lifetime. Even though she was interested in full-length documentaries, she would be directing her own web series with a famous subject, as a college student. She wanted this, much like she had wanted to be in Professor Jordan’s class two years ago. Another thing driving her was the aspect of losing her brother that had hurt her as much as his actual death. They had been unable to complete the bucket list they had created together for him. They were five short, including the one about seeing his sister’s major directorial debut.