CUT TO YOU

Chapter 2 — "Westfield in September"

Avery POV

There is a specific kind of energy that lives in a high school on the first day of classes that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

I've tried to describe it before — in my journal, in a short film concept I scrapped sophomore year, in a voice memo I recorded at 11 p.m. once and never listened back to. I've never quite gotten it right. It's not excitement exactly, and it's not nervousness exactly. It's something in between. Something that feels like standing at the edge of something without being able to see the bottom.

Senior year has a different version of it. Heavier. Sharper around the edges.

Like we all know this is the last time.

I don't let myself think about that for too long. I'm not here to be sentimental. I'm here to make the best film Westfield High has ever produced, get into the program I've been working toward since I was fifteen, and walk across that graduation stage in June knowing I did exactly what I came to do.

Sentiment is for the ending. I haven't earned the ending yet.

First period is AP Literature, which I am taking because college applications require it and also because I genuinely love it even though I would never lead with that information in a room full of people who think loving English class is embarrassing. Mrs. Dalton is back, same reading list as always with two new additions, and the girl who sits next to me — Priya, my other closest friend, the one who brings snacks to everything and once created a color-coded study schedule so detailed it had its own table of contents — slides into her seat at 7:58 with a cinnamon roll wrapped in foil and a planning notebook already open.

"Happy first day," she whispers, sliding half the cinnamon roll onto my desk.

"You brought food to first period."

"I bring food everywhere. This is not new information about me." She uncaps her pen. "Are you ready for Friday?"

I take a bite of the cinnamon roll. "Yes."

"Scale of one to ten how ready."

"Eleven."

She nods, satisfied, and writes something in her notebook. I don't ask what. With Priya, it's better not to ask. She has systems the way I have plans — elaborate, thorough, and deeply personal.

"I made a project management template," she says. "For the film. For whoever your partner ends up being. So you can hit the ground running Monday."

I look at her. "Priya."

"It has a timeline, a task breakdown, a communication protocol section—"

"Priya."

"And a risk assessment."

"A risk assessment."

"For delays. Weather, equipment failure, creative differences—" She pauses. "Mostly creative differences."

I turn back to the front of the room where Mrs. Dalton is writing the semester overview on the board. "Thank you," I say. "Genuinely."

Priya caps her pen with a satisfied click. "That's what I'm here for."

Film Production is third period and it is, without question, my favorite fifty-five minutes of any school day.

The film lab at Westfield is not fancy. The equipment is two generations behind what the magnet school across town has, the editing bay chairs are the kind that squeak if you shift your weight wrong, and the projector in the screening room has a flicker issue that Mr. Okafor has been submitting repair requests about since I was a sophomore. None of this matters. The moment I walk through that door — squeaky hinges and all — something in my chest settles into place like a key turning in a lock.

This is where I belong.

Mr. Okafor is already at the front of the room when I arrive, which means I am not, technically, the first person here. This is mildly irritating. He's arranging papers on his desk with the calm, unhurried energy of someone who has taught this class for fifteen years and knows exactly how today is going to go.

Marcus is already in his seat, camera bag on the desk, grinning at me when I walk in.

"Eleven out of ten," he says.

"Priya told you."

"Priya tells me everything." He pulls out the chair next to him. "Sit down. Okafor looks like he has news."

I sit. I look at Mr. Okafor. He does look like he has news. There's a particular quality to his stillness when he's about to say something that's going to change the shape of the room — I've seen it before, twice, in the three years I've been in his classes. Once when he announced the school had gotten a grant for new equipment. Once when he told us the previous year's showcase submission had placed in the top ten nationally.

Both times, the room got very quiet before he spoke.

It's getting quiet now.

Students file in around me. I note them — the film production seniors, the people I've worked alongside for three years. Good people. Talented people. My competition, technically, though we don't say that out loud.

The bell rings.

Mr. Okafor looks up.

"Welcome back," he says. "Let's talk about the most important thing you'll do this year."

He doesn't make the full announcement today — that's Friday, he says, partnerships and all. But he outlines the new co-director rule and the room reacts exactly the way I expected it to react.

Confusion. Mild protest. Three people talking at once.

I don't talk. I listen. I process.

Co-director. Performing arts partner. One film. Shared vision.

I have approximately forty-seven thoughts about this in the space of thirty seconds and I keep all of them behind my face, which is a skill I have developed over years of being the kind of person who feels things very strongly in a world that rewards appearing to feel things moderately.

"The performing arts faculty and I have already reviewed the eligible seniors from both departments," Mr. Okafor continues, with the particular calm of someone who anticipated every objection in this room and has decided not to engage with any of them. "Partnerships are assigned, not chosen. They will be announced Friday morning."

"What if the partnership doesn't work creatively?" someone asks from the back.

Mr. Okafor looks in that direction. "Then you'll learn something important about collaboration." A pause. "Which is, in fact, the point."

Marcus catches my eye. I look at the front of the room.

I'm not worried. I have a plan.

I just need to know who I'm planning around.

Lunch is the full group — me, Jade, Marcus, and Priya at our usual table near the courtyard windows, where the light is good and the noise level is manageable and we have sat, in variations of this exact arrangement, since ninth grade.

Jade has opinions about the co-director rule.

"I think it's brilliant," she says, stealing one of Priya's chips. "Film and performing arts finally talking to each other. It's about time."

"You think it's brilliant because you're in performing arts," I point out.

"I think it's brilliant because it IS brilliant and also yes I'm in performing arts." She gestures with the chip. "Avery. Think about it. Someone who understands performance, who can talk to the actors in a language they actually speak, who can bridge the gap between what you see in your head and what actually comes out on screen—"

"I can do all of that."

"You can do the vision part. The control part. The planning part." She gives me a look that is fond and completely unsparing at the same time. "The letting-someone-in part is the part that needs work."

"That's not—"

"I'm your best friend and I say it with love."

Priya nods sympathetically. Marcus is very focused on his sandwich.

I pick up my water bottle. "Friday will be fine."

"Friday will be interesting," Jade says. "There's a difference."

"Who do you think you'll get?" Priya asks, opening her notebook — she has already, somehow, started a page on this topic. "From performing arts?"

"Someone reasonable," I say. "Someone with a work ethic. Someone who can take direction."

Jade makes a sound that is not quite a laugh.

"What?"

"Nothing," she says, in the voice she uses when it's definitely not nothing.

I follow her eyeline across the cafeteria before I mean to.

Caleb Rivera's table is three rows over — loud, crowded, the natural gravitational center of whatever room he's in. He's in the middle of something, hands moving, everyone around him tracking the story. Then whatever he's saying lands and the whole table reacts and he leans back in his chair with that easy, unhurried satisfaction of someone who has never once in his life told a joke that didn't work.

I look back at my lunch.

"Someone reasonable," I repeat. "With a work ethic."

Jade says nothing. She has perfected the art of saying nothing in a way that communicates everything.

"Stop it," I tell her.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was chewing." She takes another chip. "Very innocently."

Under the table, I slide my hand into my bag pocket and touch the edge of the shot list. Folded, slightly warm from being in my bag all morning. Still there. Still solid.

Friday is four days away.

I can wait four days.

After school I go to the film lab.

I know technically there's nothing to work on yet — no project assigned, no partner confirmed, no official starting gun. But Mr. Okafor never locks the lab until five and the editing bays are open to seniors and I think better in here than anywhere else.

I sit in bay number two — my bay, the one with the monitor angled slightly left which I actually prefer — and I open my project folder and I look at the concept document I've been building for two years.

A girl. A box of photographs. A person who left.

I've never written down who the person is. I don't need to. I know.

I scroll through the shot list. The storyboard. The location references. Everything I've built in the quiet, in the margins of three years of high school, in the hours between everyone else's life and sleep.

This film is going to say the thing I don't know how to say out loud.

The only question is who's going to be standing next to me when I make it.

I close the folder. Look at the dark monitor for a second. Then I open it again and add one line to the bottom of the shot list:

Trust the process.

I stare at it. Delete it.

Trust the plan.

Better.

I save the file, pack up my bag, and walk out through the squeaky door into the late afternoon.

Three days until Friday.

I'm ready.

I just want to know what I'm ready for.