Dreaming of Cheers (Standing Up to Life Book 3)

Chapter 36:

"WHAT KIND OF cameras are you hoping to use?" Mr. Randolph asked us on Thursday.

"...whatever they'll give us?" I said hesitantly.

"Just on videotape?" he asked.

"Well... it would probably be really cool if we could do it on real film," I admitted to him. In the last week I had looked up every resource at our school library, the town's public library, and Amy and I had even gotten her mom to drive us into Albuquerque to look in their main branch to try and decide how to do things.

"Wouldn't that be expensive?" he asked me. I don't think he thought I had a clue what I was talking about.

"Yes, it will be," I said. "But I'm hoping we'll have some people come through for us today. When we were at the film festival everyone was offering to help us out if we wanted to do anything else... we're just trying to take them up on that. Amy and I are hoping they'll help us out," I answered him honestly.

He gave us a dubious look and let us head off to the lab where we had adopted a computer as our own. Amy and I hadn't slept a lot the last couple nights, but our page total was nearing sixty-five already. We were proud of ourselves for making it that far, but we had at least another twenty-five pages, and we wanted to finish it today. That was our goal. I had to work hard on not breaking down during that part of the script that we were working on though. We were already to a part where the three boys were tracking the protagonists down.

The heroine, her name was Allie – after my doll, had just looked up as the boys came around a bend in the ravine they were in. Amy and I focused all our energy that day to finishing the script. We were able almost get to the end during English. I was shaking a bit during band while I thought about how some of the scenes felt way too familiar. The boys ended up attacking Allie, not a lot, but some, before the one nerdy boy got together his 'MacGyver' like skills and got her free.

After dance practice we headed to Amy's house, hoping to finish up the rough-draft of the script as I stayed the night. During dinner her dad said, "I got a message for you two today," he said.

"Oh really?" Amy asked.

"Yeah, Lilly from Mattel called and said you'd called her about your project?" He looked clueless - apparently, we hadn't filled him in. We did really quickly and he nodded. "Anyway, she said that Mattel would be happy to provide you with the money to rent cameras, film, microphones, and developing of the film for a share of any proceeds." He added the last part. That began a discussion with him about the legal ramifications of the help we'd asked for.

"Okay girls, I need to talk to them again tomorrow and hash out some of this. Do you almost have your script done to fax to this Mr. Spencer?"

"We're hoping to finish tonight," I told him.

"Good, I want you two to do that and see if you can get your English teacher to proof-read it tomorrow. It would be a good thing if we can fax it to him Saturday. In the meantime, I'm going to call and talk to him myself tomorrow."

The project seemed to take on a new immediacy at that point. Amy and I worked till midnight that night so that we could finish it off. It came to ninety-six pages total, and we both felt like it was going to be awesome! As I lay in bed that night, I dreamt at first of the film making, how much fun it would be... but sometime in the night the dreams changed to nightmares again. I woke up at three in the morning drenched in sweat and alone in my room. I walked into my bathroom and paced in my bedroom for several minutes before trying to sleep again. 'This is getting old real fast,' I thought to myself.

The morning came far too early after that, and I had trouble staying awake at breakfast. Melanie saw that I was way more tired than Amy and I think she suspected that I'd been up again last night. She gave me a hug before we got out of the car asking, "Are you going to make it today, Tiff?"