Page 67 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
Holding her jaw, I deepened the kiss. She gripped me to her, kissing me back hard and hungry. As if trying to convey something new. Something that we were both chasing as we clung to each other.
It wasn’t until the footsteps from nearby hikers approached that we broke apart. Her gorgeous eyes were half-lidded, her breaths heavy. It pulled a smug smirk out of me. I wasn’t the only one dying here.
As we started moving again, those two soft words clanged around in my head.
“I know.”
She could act tough all she wanted. But the way she kissed me—the yearning in her voice a mirror to my own—told me she felt the same way.
The next day at the assembly everything would change. She’d become a Legacy, we’d get out of Woodhurst and away from all this pressure, and she’d see that we could do this for real.
With a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t looking, before I could quadruple-guess myself again, I pulled the card out of my pocket and slipped it into her backpack.
CHAPTER SEVENTEENCLARATHEN
AT THE LEGACY ASSEMBLY‚I was a wreck. Reid put a reassuring hand on my bobbing knee and squeezed. Things had become strange between us since the hot springs. He’d been distant—which I thought I wanted. We spent my birthday together the day before, and while I didn’t mind that he hadn’t given me a gift, it was unexpected. I didn’t know how to act around him, either.
Especially not in this moment that my entire life hinged on.
The lights lowered as the assembly was about to start. The nerves weren’t just about the decision, though. As part of my Legacy submission, I used the same documentary sample as my CAFA application. It was a short glimpse into the longer doc I was making about the Legacy Program and Woodhurst.
I had received a message the night before that they wanted to use the video to hype everyone up. That felt like a really good sign, but it wouldbe the first time my work outside of yearbook videos would be seen by so many people.
The assembly began like it had every year prior, with a full-out dance performance by the pom squad. Delaney was front and center, sparkly and dazzling as always. When it was over and the crowd calmed down, the projection screen descended behind Principal West onstage.
It was time to announce the Legacies. My mom was in the crowd, still in scrubs, having rushed from work. But she was there, and that’s what mattered to me.
Principal West propped his reading glasses on and, after a short speech about the importance of Legacy, he began to read out four names I expected to hear. Reid Rousseau. Amaya Masters. Joshua West. Delaney Whitlock.
The fifth and final name was one I’d only dared to hope for.
Mine.
Reid wrenched me into a hug. My mom waved to me from her spot in the crowd, eyes shining. Everything slotted into place. My dreams. My future. I was going to film school, and I was getting out of Woodhurst. It was a joyous, riotous blur. Maybe the best moment of my life.
“To celebrate, we have something very special to share with you. Clara, who is planning to attend California Film Academy this fall to study documentary filmmaking, has made a video about our esteemed Legacy Program. You’ll see exactly why she was chosen as a Legacy.”
The lights went out, and the screen flickered on, but the image remained black as we heard only the sound of heavy breathing and theclack-swish,clack-swishof what I knew were toe shoes hitting the studio floor over and over.
Everyone cheered as Delaney filled the screen doing pirouette after pirouette after pirouette. I’d cut her four-hour rehearsal down to ahandful of seconds. She tried to get a new move exactly right but kept wobbling. After every slip she’d study herself in the dance mirror—drawing her hands across her collarbones or her hips, or squeezing her thighs then trying again. Especially when her dance teacher yelled at her in a clipped accent that she kept landing “heavy—tooheavy.”
It was a similar grueling opening for everyone featured. Amaya on the stage warming up her voice when she had pneumonia, Josh typing an essay on the bus after one of our races, Reid running sprints over and over on the school track.
I caught a close-up of Reid, sweat slipping down his nose as he caught his breath. He stood, dropped his water bottle onto the grass and went back to the track.
My voice filtered from off camera, asking him an off-the-cuff question, “You’re going again? Aren’t you tired?”
He shot me a devilish grin over his shoulder. I remembered being so proud I had the camera trained on him as he panted out, “It’s about what you do when you’re tired.”
Everyone cheered again as the rock music I’d put over that moment swelled.
But then in an instant it cut out.
The screen went black on a part that I knew was supposed to cut to a close-up of the blood seeping through Reid’s sweaty, dirty arm bandage at state that he refused to let Coach look at. It was the beginning of the real story of Legacy. How hard everyone pushed to achieve it.
But that’s not what played. People clearly thought the cutout was intentional at first, but the longer the screen was dark, the confusion started to rise. Both in the room and in me.
Did something happen to the computer? The file?
