19. Then The End

Because we pushed hard in the final weeks, with a few overnighters mixed in, we were going to finish filming on schedule. A minor miracle. Or a medium miracle. Credit to Dan's and Valentina's organizational and leadership skills. The dwindling budgetary reserves were great motivators as well. Having finally completed the night chase scenes we were scheduled to start at 2 P.M. on our last day of filming.

A few days earlier, during a brief meeting after that night's shoot, Cleo insisted that we film the final scene before the penultimate scene. She thought it appropriate we finish filming our movie in the classroom, and then celebrate there. She also pitched the scene flip pragmatically; the staging of the kill effect would take preparation and time, and we wouldn't want to feel rushed to complete that scene to squeeze in the final one. Throughout filming, Cleo had been ever present with her screenplay binder, and usually had offered opinions about the blocking or scheduling only when asked, careful to not step on Valentina's toes. At this meeting, Valentina didn't push back on Cleo's impassioned suggestion that verged on a demand. Valentina trusted her creative partner and best friend implicitly, and she joked that her dream of filming everything in accordance with the story's timeline "had already been killed dead."

Cleo proactively setting the day's schedule was the first of two unusual events leading up to our last day/night on-set. The second was Cleo inviting me to brunch.

I met her at a little diner in North Kingston, which was a thirty-minute drive from the school. It was a Tuesday morning and the place wasn't crowded. The main counter and booths were spotted with gray-haired old-timers having coffee and purposefully burnt toast while reading their newspapers. We were told we could sit anywhere, so we chose the booth in the back.

We'd worked together, closely, for almost five weeks but I'd been safely hidden inside the mask for, essentially, the entirety of that time. I was nervous and didn't know how to act or what to say now that I was supposed to talk. I almost asked her if Valentina had granted us permission to have brunch.

Cleo saved the nonexistent conversation by asking what I was going to order. I said a couple of eggs scrambled, maybe some toast, nothing too heavy. I patted my nonexistent stomach and said that I still had to fit into the suit one last time. I meant it as a joke because it was a joke. Cleo reacted as though she were offended on my behalf.

She said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look exhausted, and you've gotten too thin, and to state the obvious, what you've put yourself through physically is too much, way too much." She paused, looked out the window, and shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's okay." It wasn't okay. The purple bags under my eyes were as big as plums. I'd passed through the previous two weeks in a fog, and I had slept maybe two hours the night before.

Cleo shook her head again. "I don't think it is okay anymore. We're all tired. I'm sure I look like shit too. Not that you look like shit, anyway, forget I said anything. Order whatever you want."

The thing was, she didn't look like shit, didn't look as tired as I felt. Granted, the following is distorted through the lens of memory, as Cleo is doomed to be fixed in my mind. She looked the same as she did when I first met her: impervious and imperial, above (but not thinking she's better than) the proverbial fray, while at the same time, looking like she might get up and run away at any moment.

I ordered the lumberjack breakfast: French toast, eggs, sausage, home fries. She ordered a Greek omelet. The food came out quick and we ate quick too.

I said, "I guess I was hungry."

"Yeah, holy shit, I'm impressed."

Being with Cleo still felt like I was cheating on the movie's rules. I didn't know what to do with my hands now that I couldn't fill them with knife and fork.

Cleo asked, "Do you want something else? We have time, and this is on me, remember."

"You sure? Thank you. Maybe a Coke for the caffeine," I said.

"No coffee, really? Not even tea?"

"No, I hate coffee. I don't like hot beverages. Food is hot and drinks are cold are my eating/drinking rules." I shrugged, admitting I was still a child, the fully grown kind.

"What kind of monster doesn't like coffee?"

The waitress came over and smirked at my Coke request. Cleo and I laughed at the smirk and at me.

I said, "I can't believe this is almost over. I'll never forget this experience."

"I bet."

"And it means I have to find another job again. Ugh."

"You don't have the acting bug now? You aren't going to move to L.A. after this?"

I couldn't tell if she was having fun at my or the movie's expense. "No, probably not," I said. "How about you? What's next?"

Cleo said, "I'm not sure. Every ounce of focus and energy has been on this movie for well over a year now. I haven't allowed myself to think past today, the last day, you know? Maybe I'll sleep for a month and then figure things out."

"Yeah, sleep sounds good. I hardly slept last night after reading the sides. The final one."

Cleo nodded. "The final one."

"Hey, um, can I ask you a question I've been too afraid to ask?"

"Uh-oh. Sure. I think."

"How much of the Cleo in the screenplay is you?"

"She's all me," Cleo said. I saw, more fully, her I'm going to get up and run away and never be found look. She added, "And she's not me. She played tennis in high school. I was just a nerdy drama kid." Then she laughed loud enough to turn heads in the diner, and she covered her mouth.

I said, "Maybe she needs to hit the Thin Kid with a tennis racquet."

"She totally should. Chekhov's tennis racquet."

"Okay, well, I don't know how to say the rest of it without being blunt," I said, though I couldn't achieve bluntness. I couldn't look at her while I stumbled and fumbled around. "All the stuff about, you know, her hands in her pockets, not actively, what, choosing to die, but, like, welcoming it if it happened. Is, like, that Screenplay Cleo or is that you too?"

"Both." She rubbed her eyes under her glasses, and I tried apologizing, and she cut me off. "No, it's okay, I'm touched you're asking. It's like this: I'm afraid of being someone who could do what the character Cleo does, and I'm afraid of thinking like her, or I'm afraid of thinking like her all the time. I could be wrong, but I think all of us at some point in our lives, especially when we're teenagers, feel like we want to die, and yet, at the same time, we're terrified of it. That's—that's part of the human condition, right?"

The waitress filled a pause with my fizzing soda in a tall, clear plastic cup. I didn't know what to do with her answer, so I got silly. I exaggerated a sip of my drink using the straw, and said, "It's hard to have a serious conversation about the human condition while one of us slurps soda." I belched to punctuate.

"Gross," Cleo said, and rolled her eyes. "She should've put a childproof cap on the top in case you spilled."

"Now I have regrets I didn't ask for one." I sipped again, and then managed some of the bluntness I had promised. "Okay, so, you don't want to die, then?"

"No, not right now."

"Good."

Cleo said, "Look, this movie is not to be taken literally. Valentina and I had an abandoned school and we wanted to make a horror movie using it. I wrote about what scares me, even if I can't fully describe what scares me. What I said a minute ago is only part of what scares me. The screenplay is the full explanation, or exploration. Who was it that said trust your subconscious when writing? That's what I did. There are so many types of horror movies and different ways of approaching them. My favorites are like fever dreams that on the surface defy the logic of our everyday yet, somehow, expose what's really underneath. Those movies are so real—like, too real—and as disturbing as that can be, it feels kind of, I don't know, wonderful."

"Yeah, everyone who sees this movie is going to feel wonderful."

Cleo stuck her tongue out at me. "That's the last time I buy you French toast and a Coke."

"Sorry. I meant that everyone will feel peachy."

"Such a brat," Cleo said, and rummaged through her purse for cash to pay the bill. "I get you're fixated on the Cleo character, but the whole screenplay is me too. Even if Valentina is mostly Valentina and Karson is mostly Karson—his real dad isn't a minotaur, mostly—and the Thin Kid is, well, you get what I'm saying. That's all me too."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"What?"

"Well, you know Valentina and Karson really well and you used who they are for the story, yeah? You didn't know me at all when you wrote the Thin Kid." I paused because I'd lost the thread already and I wouldn't be able to explain how the weeks in the mask and being in the hotel by myself had changed me. So, I gave her one of my patented jokes/not jokes. "I'm afraid that I'm a figment of your imagination. That you created me."

"Don't blame me. Blame the mask. It's cursed, remember?"