How We'd Look on Film

by Kai Gorbahn

Overview

For Dray Emerald, it all started back in Grade 11 when he was sixteen years old, when life was simple and he know who he was and how to be happy. That's when he had a crush on the perfect girl, Anna Markus. But when she moved away from their hometown of Smithers, British Columbia, everything began to change.

Dray, a once-perfect Mormon boy-turns his back on his faith and family and gets caught up in a world of drugs and alcohol. He gets kicked out of the rich and privileged life his parents have handed him. Planning on hitting the road without ever looking back, fate keeps him in town for one last summer. At the age of seventeen, he finds himself living in his own apartment. For the first time in his life, the possibilities are endless.

He has the chance to win over Anna, who's back in town for summer break, but he's torn between her and the lovely Rose Miller, his hometown sweetheart and longtime friend. Things slowly tilt into place as the seasons change. By coming to terms with the world around him-his friends, family, and his hometown of Smithers-he nears closer to solving the mystery in his heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475902501
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/13/2012
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.83(d)

Read an Excerpt

How We'd Look on Film

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By Kai Gorbahn

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Kai Gorbahn
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-0250-1

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Chapter One

Scenes and Dreams

Once upon a time I had a close circle of friends. There was me and Eric—best friends—and Cliff and Trent. Together, the four of us were unstoppable. We were like a team, a group of artists on our way to success. In Grade 11 we went downtown each day—usually to Main Street—and filmed outrageous videos of stunts, pranks and jokes. Kind of like Jackass, although not nearly as crude.

With dreams of being famous, I'd edit the footage around and upload it on YouTube. Though we never exactly broke through the mainstream, we eventually caused a stir in the town we lived in. The local newspaper even put us on the front page and did a big story on us, interview and everything. Soon enough it seemed as though everyone had seen our videos: all the kids at school, their parents, even our teachers. We were stars. Everyone wanted to know us.

But I guess it's that age-old story about fame—that it never lasts, that people turn on you, that things eventually spin out of control.

The school's hockey players—who began to slowly feel out of the spotlight—started making fun of us by Christmas. They'd call us names in the hallways and post rude comments up on our YouTube page. Suddenly our videos weren't cool anymore. As the months went on we tried to pick it up, tried to be more bad-ass, desperately attempting to gain everyone's respect again. But that, we discovered, did nothing but get ourselves into real trouble.

A furniture store went as far as to actually try and press charges, all because we had filmed a prank inside their store and apparently scared off one of their customers. The police were involved and everything. Fortunately we got off with a signed apology and card.

At school we weren't so lucky. One student wanted to be in our videos so badly he came up with an elaborate prank that got himself expelled. He dressed up in black clothes, wearing a mask, and tackled the school's mascot in front of the whole school at a pep rally. Teachers chased him down, took off his mask, and expelled him on the spot. I was suspended—since I'd filmed and initiated it—but that was nothing compared to the guilt I had that our videos had gotten someone kicked out of school, someone who was only expelled because he wanted to be a part of our filming troupe.

The principal of our high school tried to be forgiving. He knew we were nice kids just trying to have some fun. The four of us had all come from good homes. We never drank or smoked or skipped any of our classes. He tried his best to help us, but by the time it was Grade 12 it was a much different story. The school-board told him that if we wanted to stay in high school, our videos would have to be put to a stop.

And so the four of us called it quits, taking our website down and putting away our cameras. That exciting time in our lives was over and done with, and as time would have it, our group gradually drifted apart.

The least concerned over this was definitely Cliff. Throughout all of high school he'd had an abundance of friends, which was unfortunate for me—our senior year—because he was the only friend by then I had left.

Trent was still around, but over the summer—while Eric and I had gotten jobs at 7-eleven—he slid into a different crowd of friends, one that had introduced him to drugs and alcohol. As he edged his way into their group, and as school approached, it was clear to us that Trent was better off sticking with his new circle of friends. I guess it also helped that they were in the same grade he was, because this was our last year and he still had one more to go.

Sometimes we have to go our own separate ways. Even Eric had to do the same and we're as close as friends can be. Nobody can believe it, but Eric and I have only known each other for two years. In the world of high school we started off as enemies: I was the drama-fag; he was the jock. But those lines blurred between us after a bad hockey injury prevented him from being able to play anymore. With no sports, he started hanging with Cliff more often—his long-time friend from elementary school—shocked to find that he was also friends with me. It took time, but as he got to know me he slowly realized how alike we truly were. Through the haze of high school he discovered there was one more person like him. We were almost the exact same. When people saw us together they thought we were twins. In fact, we used to lead people on and tell them we were brothers. We have the same haircuts, the same interests, even the same personalities.

Grade 12 changed everything. Eric couldn't handle school anymore. The fights we got in with the jocks—his former friends—weren't worth it to him. He dropped out of school to get away from it all—and he too, like Anna, had left me all alone. And because he lived out of town, I never got to see him on weekends, either.

The sad thing about Eric and I was that he had already began drifting away from me in the weeks before he decided to permanently leave school. I never took it personally, though, because I knew what was going on in his mind. He thought if he went solo, instead of always being with me, he'd have a better chance at fitting in; without me he might have blended in easier. Maybe people would have stopped talking behind our backs so much, cracking jokes, saying we were gay.

Plus, it never helped that in all of our time throughout high school we had never had girlfriends. There were simply no girls we were interested in.

The only girl that truly intrigued me was Anna, but she was three years younger. It was true that I hoped there was a future between us, but I wasn't worried about it. I believed I had all the time in the world. The last thing I expected was for things to turn out the way they did. The moment she left Smithers, my whole world changed. My senior year was a fraction of the life I used to lead.

* * *

Things all began to change when we got ourselves jobs. When Eric and I first started working at 7-eleven we were looking through a completely new lens, as true observers. It astounded me each shift, how hundreds of people came in like clockwork for a daily pack of cigarettes. I never knew smoking was still such a big deal. Hardly anyone ever smoked in public anymore. Everyone seemed to have been smoking discreetly. I began to wonder what the big deal was. How was smoking worth the ten dollars they spent on it every day?

While walking to work one summer morning, I noticed a guy a few years older than me as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He was standing on the corner of the street up ahead of me. As he lit a match and drew in the smoke, a thought ran across my mind: What would it be like to be someone who smoked?

I used to view my life one way and one way only. It was the life I had been born into: a safe and responsible Mormon lifestyle. My dad was the Bishop of our church, and it was expected of me to follow in his footsteps. That had never bothered me before; but then again, I'd never really thought of it. That morning, before work, the hunger for an alternative suddenly appealed to me. Now that Anna had moved away ... What would make me happy? I watched him exhale the smoke, and without even the slightest precognition I found myself wishing I was him; or, simply, anyone other than myself.

Then something magical happened: a truck came around the corner and pulled up next to him. After taking one last drag, he tossed the cigarette onto the street, hopped into the vehicle, and drove away, leaving his already-lit cigarette unprotected, at my disposal with no one around. Taking the opportunity at hand, I walked up to it and hurriedly breathed in my first breath of tobacco.

Because I didn't know what I was doing, I of course ended up inhaling far too much, brutally burning the inside of my lungs. But that didn't matter; it was exciting! For the first time in a very long time I felt alive.

And that's how it all started.

That summer, while house-sitting for one of my parent's friends, I told Eric that I'd tried a cigarette. Though I expected him to be disgruntled by my actions, it turned out that Eric had had a similar experience. We were on the same page. We always were. A few days before he had gotten one of his older friends to buy him a pack, but so far he'd only smoked one of them.

That night we walked around town, smoking cigarette after cigarette, talking about how great it was that it was now summer, that we had all this money from our new job to blow.

We even went into 7-eleven and I got myself a coffee, which was also against the Mormon religion, the one I used to follow. So what was next? Marijuana.

When I asked Eric if he wanted to smoke weed, he laughed harder than I'd ever heard him laugh before. He couldn't believe what he was hearing; he never saw it coming. It was the one thing he didn't understand—Anna was gone and a part of me had left with her. Nothing mattered the same way it mattered before.

"How are we gonna get weed!?"

"I've no idea," I replied, chuckling. "How does everyone else?"

"People have drug dealers." He smirked and jokingly asked, "Do you know any drug dealers?"

"I'm sure we can find one," I said. "We have the whole night!"

The only place that we could think of was the really sketchy apartment building behind Safeway. Everyone in town knew how dirty that place was. All things considered, it was practically a crack house. When we arrived there, by chance there so happened to be a guy outside his six-foot high porch, minding his own business, having a cigarette. Giving Eric a quick look, I told him, "Here goes nothing," before sprinting across the street and up to him.

"You selling?" I asked the man.

"How much you want?"

My heart was racing like crazy. "I just have twenty dollars," I told him.

"One sec," the dealer said, disappearing inside his apartment. I looked back to Eric and gave him the thumbs up. That's all it took. Getting drugs was that easy. That's the kind of world we live in, I remember thinking.

Turning back to the dealer's apartment, I heard the screen door open up as he stepped back onto the veranda. He walked up to the ledge and carefully dropped the bag of pot down for me to catch. I put it in my pocket, and as he crawled down on his knees, I handed the twenty dollar bill up to him.

"If this is good, I'll be back," I said, pretending as though I knew what I was talking about. But I had no idea. It was like acting: I was playing the part. As I ran back to Eric with the weed I was practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

On the grounds of my old elementary school, under one of the night lights, we hollowed the tobacco out of one of Eric's cigarettes and sifted weed down the paper tube until it was full again. Once the operation was complete, we lit the thing up and passed it back and forth. Because we never knew how pot worked, we never properly inhaled. We sucked it in like a straw into our mouths and blew out, not even remotely getting high from it. But that didn't matter to us. It wasn't about getting high; it was about experiencing something new.

As fun and exciting as that night was, things came crashing down the next day. After arriving at the place I was house-sitting and surprising us with a visit, my mom immediately recognized that something was up. "What's going on?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I responded casually, but she could tell I was incredibly nervous. She came through the doorway, looked over, and saw the two empty cups of 7-eleven coffee sitting on the counter. Two, not one.

"Are one of those yours?" she asked.

Because I never—ever—lied to my parents, I told her the truth. And without even a word more, she stormed out of the house and called my dad over. He arrived moments later. Up until that day I'd never seen him so worked up. And this was only over coffee! While Eric hid in the bedroom he'd slept in that week, my dad lectured me in the living room. He sat me on the couch and towered over me, pacing back and forth, quoting some of the principles of our church. Sitting down, he calmed himself and said, "You get your own job, and now that you're staying somewhere other than home you think you can do whatever you want—is that it?"

"I don't know," I said. That's all I ever said to my parents. I never knew how to speak to them so I always kept silent.

"What's next ... Smoking? Marijuana!?"

He noticed something trigger over my face.

"You've smoked pot," he remarked softly, realizing the cold truth.

I remained silent and so did he. With a sharp exhale he stood up and walked out of the living room. "Dad," I said, standing up, but he'd gone and left already.

After hearing the door slam shut, Eric came strolling down the hallway over to me. "Well this was all a huge mistake," he said, picking up a few things scattered on the floor.

"Come on," I said. "No it wasn't."

"Last night was supposed to be fun," he replied, hanging up a jacket. "Now your parents are going to hate you." But I didn't care.

No one understood where I was coming from. I was just a kid with nothing going for myself. I never liked my plans for the future. When I turned nineteen I was supposed to go on an excursion with the Mormon church for a whole two years! I didn't want to do that. But everyone thought I did. It was expected. I was stuck in a life that had been chosen for me.

My parents blamed the whole thing on depression, which might have been true—maybe I was depressed. But either way, when school started back up they put me in with a psychiatrist, something I was secretly thankful for. After Eric dropped out of school I had no one else to talk to.

* * *

"So now I'm going to ask you a very important question," the psychiatrist asked, after taking me into his office and introducing himself. Pushing his glasses up, he continued, "I don't want you to think about your answer; I want you to say what comes immediately to your mind. Okay?"

I nodded, trying to make myself comfortable in the chair in front of him. His office was cozy and trendy, but very professional.

"If you could have any three wishes granted," he asked, "what would they be?"

I was quiet, thinking of the many possibilities.

"You don't need to think about it," he told me again.

"Money," I began, saying the most obvious thing there was. "To have security," I put straightly.

"And?" he pried, folding his arms.

"To be a famous actor."

"And then what?"

I sighed, knowing the one thing I couldn't allow myself to leave out: "Anna as my wife," I admitted. There was a moment of silence, which left me to think about my last answer more clearly. She'd been gone three months and I was already missing her like crazy.

"Interesting," he said. "Okay. Tell me about Anna."

"She's just some girl I used to know," I murmured dismissively.

"Used to know?"

I stopped and thought about what he said, then laughed. "Well I obviously still know who she is—"

"Let me guess," he said, snapping his fingers. "She moved away."

"All the way to Vancouver ..."

"Did you two ever have sex?"

Surprised by such an explicit question, I scowled at him.

"I take it from your response that you've never had sex?" he further questioned.

"Anna's only thirteen years old," I told him, then corrected myself, "fourteen now."

"But you're interested in sex, right?"

"I suppose, but not really."

"You're almost seventeen," he noted, checking the file on his desk. "Do you think maybe your infatuation with her is because you're afraid of getting older, afraid of the future?"

Everything he said was completely beyond me. "What? No! What are you talking about—"

"Look," he went on, "I'm not a therapist; I'm a psychiatrist. You could tell me everything and it wouldn't make a difference. You're clearly depressed. Just looking at you I can tell you were once a completely different person ...

"But Anna has nothing to do with it. Depression is a symptom, a disease," he began to explain. "What bothers depressives has nothing to do with something in particular. If they fulfill something in their lives it just opens up another empty spot. There's always gonna be something wrong; it's just how you look at it. A depressives mind is made to always create problems. Fortunately, modern medicine can change that. Have you done any drugs?" he casually asked. "Do you drink alcohol?"

"I've smoked weed," I told him, "but just once."

"Did it feel good?" he inquired.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from How We'd Look on Film by Kai Gorbahn Copyright © 2012 by Kai Gorbahn. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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