Dear Lined Piece of Paper,
What a week. No sooner had I figured out a way to finance my fantastic project than it has been taken away. At least temporarily. Brian—the X-Man kid who I had hoped to do a long-term film project about—was found. I guess I should say he was kidnapped. Yes. He was kidnapped and then found in some guy’s basement. The guy had bought the movie I made about Brian, and so he knew some things that made it easier to take him.
Man. People do some fucked-up things. I’m glad he’s back, but I doubt his parents will let me make any more movies of him. The police called after he was found, and they wanted to talk to me about my website and the movies, but Dad and Kim said I don’t have to talk to anyone, and they got our lawyer to explain things to them. Brian’s family is happy he’s home, and they think the movies I made saved his life! So no one is there to press any charges at all.
And you know what? It did save his life, just like Tate said it would.
Oh God, Tate. I can hardly think about her now without feeling butterflies in my stomach. I keep remembering her out on the lawn by the fountain holding me in her arms and whispering so sweetly and making everything better. She’s the most interesting person I have ever known. I’ve been watching the movie I took of it all week. There’s no sound, which makes it even better. I used the little camera and attached it to the edge of the fountain. So you can’t see all of us, mostly just our faces and chests. She’s so beautiful. I need to have her over to make more movies of her in my room. I like it when she talks about her life. I like how she changes and how her expressions are so free floating. I like everything about her.
I want her to be the star of the best movie I have ever made. Something better than what Eric and I made. Something that really will reveal all the beauty in the world.
I had to talk to Dr. Adams again about Brian. He asked me how I felt and I told him I felt like I had corrected something that went wrong before and also afraid that it might mean my camera would be taken away.
He said, “What would it mean if your camera was taken away?” And before I even realized what I was saying I said, “It would mean that I was blind.”
“Can’t you see without your camera?” he asked.
I said yes I can but I was really thinking no. I totally can’t. Of course not. Not the way I want to. Not the way I need to, so I can study things and understand what’s going on. No, actually not at all! I would rather look at a movie I’ve made of myself than look in the mirror, because it’s more interesting. If I have a movie of Tate, I can rewatch it and understand what’s going on. It doesn’t slip away through time into nowhere.
But of course I said yes. Sure, I would still be able to see blah blah blah. And I didn’t tell him about correcting my own dosages. I didn’t tell him that actually I was mad at Brian for getting kidnapped because he almost got my camera taken away from me. He almost made me blind.
If it wasn’t for Tate figuring out it would be better for me to go to the police myself I’d be completely screwed.
We should have known something was wrong. We should have known he was struggling. I do blame myself for this. The fact was we had a lot of time at home with him and we spent a lot of time together, the three of us.
David essentially left his job so he could be a better father and be there for Graham, and I know I was the one who constantly reassured him that there was no problem.
When the police called and said a film Graham had made was probably the reason Brian Phillips was kidnapped, I told them the one sure thing was that a film Graham made was the reason Brian Phillips was saved. Then they told me about the wish list and the camera. A known pedophile had bought Graham a camera. And Graham had provided this person with our home address, where the camera was shipped. That startled me. So many strangers having our address. I know kids think differently about privacy than we did when we were young. But this was a serious lack of judgment.
“Why would you do that?” we asked him. “If you wanted a different lens or a different camera, why wouldn’t you ask us?”
He said he wanted his movie to be a surprise. He wanted to be independent. He thought no one would trust him after what happened in Virginia. And all those things seemed reasonable. Heartbreakingly reasonable conclusions for a young boy to come to.
Dr. Adams said it was important to have consequences, but at this point I still believed it was wrong, completely wrong, to take the camera away. I thought it would only make him do something more desperate in order to have it. I understood how important it was to him to have it—to be able to control his environment more, to frame what he saw and what he looked at again. I felt I understood him.
The consequences we gave him had to do with the car. No more driving the Austin to school, and David was putting the new car—the one they were planning to work on together next—on hold. He wouldn’t have it shipped until things settled down.
“What do you mean by settled down?” Graham shouted at us. “You take everything from me. First I can’t see Eric, then I can’t watch my own movies, now I can’t put things on my wish list or drive my own car. And you won’t let me work on the new one you promised me. What am I supposed to do?”
David remained calm and loving, as he always does in these situations. “Well,” he said, “it seems like you’ve got a nice group of friends here, and you’re lucky to have folks right next door. Maybe you could spend more time with them. You know, when I was your age, I didn’t have a car.”
Graham groaned and rolled his eyes. “I know. I know. You’ve told me. I know. But I thought that’s one of the reasons you wanted me to have one.”
David told him he was sorry, but it wasn’t negotiable.
I remember thinking this would all blow over. I remember thinking this was just a stage he was going through and that eventually he would realize we were right. I remember thinking that once he became more a part of high school and his friends, he’d be more reasonable about these things. I remember thinking a lot of things that fall, and looking back now, none of our ideas would have made any goddamn difference.
I was meditating in my backyard. A lot had happened that week, and I was trying to practice having a blank mind so later I could use my powers of concentration to get some work done. Tate and I had been skipping school a lot before all that stuff with Brian happened, and I realized once things had settled down that I was probably not going to be valedictorian. She was. Which was fine and all, but I thought maybe we could get our GPAs so that they were identical. Maybe it could be both of us. Anyway. I was out there relaxing by the fishpond, sitting on a stone slab and trying to naturally expand my consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, Graham Copeland was standing right in front of me with a camera.
I blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t an apparition of some kind. Then I laughed and said, “What’s up, G?”
He said, “I’m just out roaming the neighborhood.”
“Dude,” I said. “How are things going? How does it feel to be a hero?”
“Good,” he said. “It feels good to be a hero. I think it’s good publicity for my career as a filmmaker.”
“Well, there you go,” I said. “Hey, can you turn that camera off? We’re just having a conversation. I don’t think it needs to be documented.”