The Girl in Blue

15- The Girl Brainstorms

Lana

"I absolutely refuse," Levi shakes his head at me as we're in the studio room again on Monday.

"Nope, you already consented to it," I tell him. I'm showing him the texts that he had sent me on Saturday night that I had typed up and printed. "By sending them to me, you basically gave me permission to use them. And it's perfect for the story."

"No, it's ridiculous. I was drunk when I sent that to you and it's really not that great," He insists.

"It is that great, that's why I want to use it," I assure him. "It's given me a lot of ideas too. Here, this is everything that I got. I think that it's a lot and we don't have to use it all but maybe it'll get something going. Before our casting call this weekend, we need to have an excerpt for them to read too."

"It's not the gum thing," Levi says quickly.

"It doesn't have to be the gum thing," I assure him with a small laugh. "We just need something; we should probably decide on that today. So let's see what you've got, other than the gum thing."

We both start putting all of the stuff that we've created over the weekend up on the board using magnets or the thumb tacks so that we can see it all laid out on the board and we can pick and choose which inspirations or quotes we want to use in the film.

"Why is that paper torn?" Levi notices on one of the papers that I had put up on the board.

"I didn't like the last part of that one," I admit. "I scratched it."

"Let's hear it," Levi decides, looking over at me expectantly from his chair.

"What? No, I scratched it, that means that we can't use it," I tell him again. I should tell him that I threw that other half of the paper away but before I can tell that lie, he starts defending his side again.

"Well, then I'm scratching the bubble gum thing, you hypocrite," He says with a small laugh.

"Fine," I decide quickly, knowing that it was unfair of me to ask him to keep his unwanted quote without me giving him mine. And I really like the gum quote and I want to keep it so I pull out the bottom half of the ripped page from my notebook and I clear my throat. I think that I scratched this part because it was a bit too personal and I don't want to read it in front of this guy that I don't really know that well.

"I wanted to feel okay," I start reading from the paper. "I couldn't put my finger on it, I couldn't find one specific reason as to why I wasn't okay but I felt it in my soul that something was wrong. I was not whole, and my entire being craved to be okay. To be whole, maybe. I felt like all of the people that saw me, could tell how truly fucked up I was and that they took pity on me, or maybe stayed away. I think that they could see it in my eyes, my soul screaming out for help. I wanted to exhale the things that I did not like about myself and about the world to make room for all of the good things, the things that would really make me feel okay. Not excellent or brilliant, I did not have the desire to feel on fire like most. I only wanted content-ness. Okay-ness."

Levi doesn't say anything after I've finished.

"It's stupid," I say quickly after his silence doesn't end. "That's why I tossed it. And it's totally irrelevant to the story."

"I like it," He decides and then he stands up. Without giving me a chance to react, he swipes the notebook paper from me and adds it to our brainstorming papers that are already on the board. I want to whine about it, to tell him to take it down, but I know that if it comes down, so does the bubblegum quote. So it stays. "We need a time line."