Page 122 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
This whole thing feels like a warped mirror of what happened last year. Everyone—the Legacy committee, half the town, our families—all here to see her work. But the difference is Clara hovers beside the AV table, guarding it with her life. No surprises tonight.
Well, except our own.
She’s leaning against the wall, emerald eyes already fixed on me. I can see the nerves in the way her fingers twist.
The lights in the Lodge dim, and the conversation quiets to murmurs before stopping entirely as the doc begins.
The scene opens the same way it did last year. With Delaney twirling and stopping, twirling and stopping. With close-ups of her pinching her body, holding her head in her palms in frustration. Then it cuts to Delaney a few days ago, looking drawn in comparison, sitting in what looks like her bedroom.
Delaney’s smile is timid. “I’m Delaney Whitlock, and I’m a dance Legacy.”
It’s a similar opener for everyone. All of us who are supposed to be remarkable but have done nothing but lie and betray each other for this program.
Amaya’s voice cracking through pneumonia last year, and her sitting down on the stage for her interview this year, her under-eye circles darker. Josh (his complexion ruddier), Nicole (unsmiling). After their introductions and explanations of what it is to be a Legacy, it cuts to me.
“Hi, I’m Reid Rousseau, cross-country Legacy.”
Off-camera Clara’s voice: “And state champion.”
“Oh, yeah, that,” on-screen me says with a shrug. The crowd around us laughs.
But I can’t tell if they’re laughing with me or at me. Sweat forms on my hairline, and I can’t get comfortable in this chair.
Only after my opening scene from last year where I’m repeating drills and say “It’s about what you do when you’re tired,” instead of cutting to rock music like it did, it fades to a shot of me right after the Fun Run yesterday.
My voice filters as a voice-over. “The whole town is rooting for you when you’re a Legacy. To have that kind of support at your back means something.” It plays over a slow-motion shot of the cheering crowds and kids wearingFuture Legacyshirts.
“I don’t want to let anyone down.”
Then a focused shot of my bleached knuckles gripping my knee.
Anxiety funnels through me faster, and I dart my eyes around. Anyone who’s seen the post would know what this means. That Clara chose to show the very thing I’ve tried to hide all weekend.
It transitions into a montage of me talking to people all weekend—smiling, laughing, nodding, and listening. Kids, parents, my teammates. Before intercutting it with another shot of me leaning against a pillar in a stolen moment before the Shakespeare show where my head is leaned back, my eyes closed, trying to calm my racing pulse.
It’s totally exposing.
The entire doc is like this. Not just of me, but everyone. The way Josh mocked and messed with me last year, then spliced with a distant shot of Principal West lecturing him this year. The way his face fell after as West walked off. Only then to turn to a sneer during his interviews.
Questioning the value of the program the entire time. The impact it’s had. The narrower her attention on each of us gets, the clearer it becomes that the program has infused the school and town culture with something darker than anyone wants to admit.
Punctuated by my interview: “It just seems like it rewards peaking in high school.”
My heart is beating out of my chest at the shot of my face, the barely hidden pain there as I grimace and limp when I think no one else is looking.
“To expect us to have everything already figured out by the time we graduate high school seems…”
“Unfair,” she finishes off camera.
I nod. “Yeah. Really unfair.”
Then it shifts to covering Clara’s disqualification, summarizing it from interviews. Making the point of just how desperate this program makes people. My hands ball into fists when I look over at Logan, whose face is totally impassive as he watches.
I’m pretty disgusted when Nicole says, “Legacy is competitive. You have to be willing to endure whatever comes at you. No one is entitled to it.”
Josh’s response follows. “When everyone started talking about you, it took the heat off me, okay? I was under a lot of pressure last year with Legacy and running and securing valedictorian—I just needed one thing to go right.”
That selfish asshole. I glare at the back of his head and even with the lights low, I can see his ears are bright red.
