Dreaming of Cheers (Standing Up to Life Book 3)

Chapter 35:

FRIDAY IN ENGLISH and social studies we worked on outlining a storyline for the film we wanted to make. For the first time in several days, I was able to focus on something and threw myself into the project head first. "Okay, so do we agree that this sounds like a good rough sketch?" I asked of the group at the end of English that day. I saw plenty of nods around the table as we looked at the story outline, we were looking at.

We'd decided to make it a mystery/adventure style movie. The beginning of the movie was going to start off with a girl going through a normal school day to introduce her and her friends. One of her friends was going to be a geeky kind of guy that was always getting picked on. The next character to be introduced would enter the scene by telling the bullies to knock it off. By the end of the first school day the four main characters would be established, along with three 'evil' characters. I already knew I was going to base those characters off of some real-life people.

The story continued with the girl arriving home and finding a package waiting for her from her grandfather. It was an old book he had found on his bookshelf that his grandfather had given him. She begins looking through it with interest. While she rifles through the pages a very old folded piece of paper falls out, it contains a letter written in Spanish. Intrigued she would take it to school the next day to show it to her friend that spoke fluent Spanish to interpret. They copy it and her friend spends the night translating it into English, calling her friend who gave it to her excitedly and telling her that it's talking about hidden gold.

All four friends are eventually involved in finding a secret map on the back of the letter that leads them to way back in the boonies of her grandparents' ranch. At an early point the three antagonists discover what they're looking for and follow them on four wheelers out to the area where they're searching. The three guys jump the friends and tie up three of them while one of them is gone. The rest of the film would involve the friends fighting their way free of their captors and coming back to dig up the large amount of gold.

"I think this sounds awesome!!!" David said. He and Kyle had come up with most of the action parts of the outline, while Amy and I had come up with a lot of the more mysterious pieces of the story. Nikki and Ashley had come up with a cute scene between the main girl and the geeky boy to kiss at the end.

"Yeah, this should totally rock!" Kyle said.

"I'm just really afraid it's going to be hard to pull off," I admitted to them honestly. I'd done some research in the past couple months into real filmmaking and this seemed like it might be challenging, especially in the amount of time we had to finish the project.

"Well, you said you had some people you could call?" David asked. Amy and I nodded, "Call them and see what they say... If they say no then we'll go to Plan B."

"Sounds like as good of a plan as any," I told them as English class ended.

"Tiffany you want to come over to my house and work on this tonight?" Amy asked. It was Friday, and because we had a practice tomorrow on Saturday, Coach was giving us the night off. "Maybe later... Mom is picking me up to go to..." I stopped. I didn't like talking about seeing Doctor Reynolds when other people were around anymore. Not that I'd ever really liked talking about the fact that I saw a 'shrink' regularly.

"Oh yeah," she remembered that I'd told her my parents were trying to minimize the amount of school I was missing for a few weeks on account of all the days I'd missed before Christmas. "After dinner maybe?"

"Maybe, I'll see what my mom says," I told her.

After school my mom picked me up from the band room and took me into town to be Doctor Reynolds last patient of the day. Doctor Reynolds was concerned about me, I could tell from the looks in her eyes, but gave me praise in my willingness to confront all of my problems. "Tiffany, just be careful, don't push yourself too hard," she told me. "I'm glad you do the dance squad and band, but be careful you don't overload yourself again."