Chapter 40

I backed up several steps and held up my phone. “Okay, hmm, Nate step a little closer to Bec. That’s better. Actually a little closer. Good, now put your arm around her like Hayden is doing. It will look better.” Bec’s cheeks went a little pink and Hayden’s annoyed look at having to take a picture turned into a smile.

“Say, ‘UCLA.’”

After getting something to eat, we arrived at the theater about ten minutes early, but I didn’t see my brother anywhere. “Should I call him?”

“It would be fun for him to see you in the audience,” Bec said. “Then we can talk to him afterward.”

“Okay. Sounds good.” It mostly sounded good because I was nervous. He’d asked me not to come and I was worried I was about to ruin his special night by being here. I shook off the feeling. He’d be happy. I knew I would’ve been if our places were reversed, if I’d seen him in the audience the day I’d given my campaign speech or the many times since that I’ve had to make presentations in front of the school.

A couple of minutes before six, the lights dimmed and a big screen lit up onstage. I was still trying to locate my brother, who I now thought was sitting in the front row. The back of his head looked an awful lot like the backs of several other people’s heads, though: mid-collar-length dark hair. Right as the clock on my phone reached six, a tall man walked out to the podium on the stage and tapped the microphone a few times.

“Hello, friends, family, and, of course, film students. I’m so pleased you could all make it. I’m Dr. Hammond, head of the film department. Welcome to our end-of-the-year awards ceremony highlighting our best pieces of the year. I know your time is valuable so we’re going to get straight to it.”

My brother was right: this was a fairly slow-moving ceremony. A clip from each film that won an award was shown after the honor it won was announced. The short clips were too short to get into and yet long enough to drag on. I pulled out my phone and texted Hayden.

Can it be used in a sporting competition? It was my turn to ask and I was pretty sure I had narrowed down his answer to Twenty Questions to a few different options. It wasn’t a person, it wasn’t a place, it didn’t breathe, it could be carried.

It took his phone a second to vibrate, and when he pulled it out and read my question, he smiled.

His fingers moved over his screen typing for way longer than it took to write a simple yes or no. I squeezed his knee and he chuckled. Sure enough, when his answer came back, it was an analysis of my question.

Sporting competition is such a general term. Do you mean only a sporting competition? Or do you mean that one of its uses can be in a sporting competition?

Do people like to play games with you? Or is it pretty much a one-time occurrence and then they learn their lesson?

Is that one of your questions? Because that would make eighteen. Also, seeing as how this is the second time you’ve played this game with me, you tell me.

Bec elbowed me in the side and I looked up to see my brother’s name on the big screen with the title of his piece: Reprogramming a Generation.

“This next piece,” Dr. Hammond said, “is one of my very favorites. The insight and perspective that Drew shows us is raw, honest, and real. And because of those things, along with the documentation process itself, Drew has won the ultimate award this year: overall best piece. Congratulations, Drew. I wish we could see the whole film today because there is so much there, but that’s impossible. So let us take a short look at your video and then please come up and accept your award.”

On the screen, my brother’s name and the title of the piece faded, replaced by the UCLA campus. Students were walking to class, the halls were full, and the camera kept zooming in on people on their phones. Then the scene changed to one I recognized immediately, our house. Drew’s voice came on.

“How is selfworth measured today? By the amount of likes a post gets, by how many friends we collect, by how many retweets we accumulate? Do we even know what we really think until we post our thoughts online and let others tell us if they are worthy?” While he was speaking, the camera moved slowly down the hall. My face had gone numb because I knew where he was going. I remembered that camera glued to his face over his last year of visits home.

“T, what are you doing?” he asked.

I was sitting on the couch, my phone out. He asked again. The part he wasn’t showing on film was the four times he’d asked me that same question and I answered him. Now he was showing the time where I was ignoring him because he had officially gone past the annoying stage.

“T, what are you doing?”

Finally my on-screen face looked up. “I’m checking our pic that I posted to Instagram.”

“How many likes has it gotten?”

My on-screen version smiled then and my real-life self looked down. “Only fifteen. If it doesn’t get more, I’m deleting it.”

Drew laughed. “Hey, I’m going to make a video of this for my class, okay?”

“Like a Vine or something?”

“No, just for a project.”

“This would be the most boring video ever.”

The audience laughed.

Bec growled next to me. “I’m having an immature brain again.”

“Me too,” Hayden said, and squeezed my arm.

“I’m fine,” I whispered, trying to make that declaration true.

The film kept going, though, and I wanted it to stop so badly. Now it was just Drew, which was better, walking down the hall again a little later in the day. “If I posted a picture of a tree I’d seen fall in the woods and nobody ‘liked’ it, would I start to question if it really happened?”