The Arts

15 - Film-anthropic Efforts

IVAN

          Holy crap. You are literally sitting four feet away from Gianna Russo. Play it cool, Ivan. Play. It. Cool.

          He, Gianna, and Tyler were circled up at a table outside. Tyler and Gianna each had notebooks open to clean pages, pens poised to take notes, which made Ivan feel insanely ill-prepared. All he had brought along was his camera. Tyler had told Ivan to take charge of media communications, whatever that meant. But it was his only way to impress Gianna, so Ivan really had to go for it.

          When he first met Gianna in freshman orientation, Ivan thought she was totally scary. The way she had boldly and publicly mocked another student on the first day of class took some serious guts. In the moment, Ivan had felt a little bad for Andi. But that Ivan was dead now. The new Ivan had to surround himself with confident, good-looking people who were willing to be exclusive. So naturally, he had found himself desperately thirsty for Gianna Russo.

          Sure, she was a cliched mean queen stereotype, but that meant she was popular and drop-dead gorgeous. Even when she was covered head to toe in campy neon gear for homecoming week. It was Monday, Class Color Day, which meant practically the entire freshman class was a sea of highlighter yellow so vibrant it gave Ivan a headache.

          Ivan had consulted Jack about how to look cool during homecoming week. Like, not be too extra but also not be a chump and avoid costumes altogether. Jack said to just buy a class shirt and wear it with jeans, so that's exactly what Ivan did. And also what Tyler did, since Ivan passed along all his tips to him, like some strange game of Popularity Telephone. Ivan thought it was super weird that they were practically matching. If anything, it made them look dorky.

          Gianna, though, was all out. She was on the cheer squad, so she was practically required to overdo homecoming week whether she liked it or not. Her bright yellow shirt was tucked into a black, high-waisted tulle skirt. Neon yellow socks reached all the way up to her knees and a myriad of black and gold plasticky party necklaces hung down just past her chest. Her classic cheer bow matched her shirt and socks. On anyone else it would've been a little too much, but Ivan couldn't help but adore it.

          So much so, that he had barely registered that Tyler was talking to him.

          "...do you think you could handle that?" Ivan had just managed to catch the last bit of Tyler's sentence, and he shook away the fog of his thoughts about Gianna.

          Immediately he knew he looked like a complete and total idiot. Possibly the idiot of the century. "Um. Sorry. What was that? Sorry." Just put a dunce cap on him right now.

          "We just want you to run all the social media. I'm talking Facebook, Insta, Twitter, TikTok, you name it. We want this organization everywhere. And we want you to document our process and post that too. So people know that we're legit." Tyler smiled tightly, seeming somewhat annoyed that he had to repeat himself, but nevertheless passionate about the cause.

          Ivan tried his best to match that energy. Personally, he had never given a thought to poor kids who were depraved of voice lessons and dance classes or whatever else you needed to work in the performing arts. But it was clearly incredibly important to Gianna. So, by the symmetric property, it was then incredibly important to Ivan. X equals Y therefore Y equals X and all that.

          "Awesome. You're the best," Gianna flashed Ivan a pearly-white smile, and his heart did a backflip. "Okay, next on the agenda," she continued, "local schools. I've done some research on nearby studios, but I think we should start right here at The Arts. We could talk to the deans of all the different concentrations and even the principal, see if we can get her on board."