Will agreed to drive us all out to Deschutes National Park on Tuesday, the second official day of spring break. I worked a full shift at La Promenade on Sunday and Monday. I didn't see Jackie on either of those days, but since the cafe was busy as ever with tourists as well as regulars pouring through at every hour of the day, I didn't have too much time to dwell on it or feel too disheartened. Still, that didn't stop me from glancing toward the booth at the front of the cafe where she usually sat, as if she could suddenly appear there at any moment. I still caught myself looking up whenever someone entered the cafe, my heart sinking ever so slightly when it wasn't a woman with a shock of curly blonde hair and clear blue eyes and a warm smile filling the doorway.
Willow was on spring break too, so she was free to help us with the shoot, and on Tuesday morning, as Willow went to retrieve her old bike, a text from Will came through my phone (I had given him my number on Saturday as a necessary evil for coordinating getting to the national park).
Tuesday 10:05am
Will: Ford truck full of mics, wires, cameras, three band members and your chauffeur coming your way.
Willow and I waited outside our apartment building, our bikes mounted and on their stands next to us. I tapped my phone anxiously as a couple of cars rolled by on an otherwise quiet street, keeping my eyes peeled for the blue Ford truck I remembered seeing in Will's driveway. It definitely looked big enough to hold all of our equipment, but counting all, we would have six people in the truck as well. I have a half-crazed imaginary scene play out in my head of us getting pulled over for trying to stuff six people in a four-seat truck, Ms. Dunham at school finding out about it somehow, and suspending both me and Will for good, eliminating any chance I had at music school. But when Will pulled up minutes later, my worries on that were swept aside somewhat. I caught a glimpse of Danny, Ryder, and Olivia in the back, Olivia between the two boys, squished a bit but all, thankfully, with their own seats. That left Will in the driver's seat, and two more seats in the front, which Olivia, Ryder, and Danny had so kindly left for us.
Willow and I made our way to the other side of the truck, Danny helping us to put our bikes in the bed of the truck. Will opened the door wide for us, and Willow hesitated for a second, looking at the two seats at the front with a hint of uncertainty on her face.
"Do you want me to sit in the middle?" I whispered to her; secretly, desperately hoping I wouldn't have to, but I had to ask. Willow tends to be pretty shy around people she doesn't know. I didn't want to put her in a position that would make her feel uncomfortable; although my discomfort at having to sit right next to Will would be perhaps almost on par.
Willow took in a deep breath, then shook her head, hauling herself up into the truck and setting down in the middle seat before Will could extend his hand to help her.
I clambered in after her and shut the door, and then we were on our way, speeding past the small streets of Oak Point, passing by the trees and small shops and corner stores of the town. Will glanced at Willow, though she was staring straight ahead, not making eye contact with him, looking rather rigid and stiff.
As we pulled up to a stoplight, I decided to break the ice first. "Will, this is Willow," I said, gesturing to my little sister. "Willow; Will."
For a moment, they turned to stare at each other, the look of simultaneous shock on their faces almost comical. Then someone in the back — Ryder — snorts, and both Willow and Will burst out laughing.
"Good to meet you, Willow," Will said, recovering from the laughter first. "Can I call you Will for short?"
"Absolutely not." Willow looked horrified by the very idea, then Will laughed again.
"Then I won't."
He glanced at me for a moment, a flash of blue eyes meeting mine, then looked back to the front, urging the truck forward as the light ahead turned green.
We continued driving toward the foothills of the mountains, edging closer and closer as Oak Point began to slip away, leaving us in a vast wilderness of trees and greenery. The back of the truck, I soon discovered as I turned around, was full of equipment — Olivia clutching the video camera tightly, Danny surrounded by wires and plugs and a portable battery, and Ryder up to his knees in half-assembled stands for the camera. Despite the cramped back, everything seemed to fit without much of a problem, thanks to the size of the truck (I always thought trucks that size were a waste of gas, metal, and space in general, but at that moment, I was thankful for its monstrous size).
Guns N' Roses's Sweet Child O' Mine played on the radio as we sped toward Deschutes National Forest, the park closest to Mount Bachelor, which loomed white and gray in the distance. Maybe it was the fact that an old, familiar song was playing, or maybe it was the pretty scenery around us, but as we started our trek upwards, switchbacking along the twisting roads of the mountainside, I started to feel more at ease, a knot in my stomach beginning to loosen itself ever so slightly. I let the lyrics wash over me and leaned my head slightly out the window, which Will had down, the wind blowing through my hair pleasantly. I listened to the song as Axl Rose sang she's got eyes of the bluest skies, as if they thought of rain. Clearly, Oak Point and its surroundings were not thinking of rain at all. It was a rare day for springtime in Oregon — the temperature was in the low seventies, the sun shining brightly in the sky, fluffy white clouds rolling by in the sky above. As we kept climbing, my nose was suddenly filled with the woodsy smell of the trees around us, outlining the winding road as we climbed further uphill.
After another fifteen minutes, we made it to the parking lot, the truck bouncing along the gravelly lot as Will swung it into an open space. There were plenty of families milling around, kids running around underfoot and around the nearby trees, and bikers getting their gear ready to bike down the mountain trails.
It turned out to be quite a chore to get all of the equipment out of the truck, even with Will's help, but we managed to get everything together. We get some weird looks as we passed by the many families and kids that were there, presumably also on their spring breaks, and I could understand why. Olivia is still clutching the video camera as if her life depended on it, glaring at every rock that she encountered as if daring them to trip her up; Ryder, on the other hand, was tripping over and almost falling quite frequently, getting himself tangled in various wires; Danny and Will are holding all the various stands for the camera so they stuck out of their arms at odd angles. Willow and I have our bikes, perhaps the only normal-looking object of the whole group, and we led the way down one of the mountain paths, trying to get away from the crowd and find a good, clear place to shoot.
We had to walk for another twenty minutes or so before we far enough along to stop running into people, and the path began to clear before us, the only sound in the silent air the occasional grunt as Will or Danny shifted one of the stands in their arms or a loud curse as Ryder tripped over another wire.
"Let's stop here," Olivia said, looking around, and Ryder immediately took this to heart, dumping the wires that were beginning to wrap themselves around him unceremoniously onto the ground with a loud thump.
Danny was already getting to work, motioning for Will to set down the stands for the camera and putting them together as Olivia mounted the video camera carefully on one of them. Ryder plugged the various wires into the portable battery while Danny checked one of the lights we brought along for effects. Will stepped back as they dealt with the technical details, taking in our surroundings. The path we were on was narrow and somewhat rocky, the trees tall and covering our view of anything but the path itself lying out before us.
Ryder began to lay out some crash mats around the path, out of the camera's view. I doubted we would need them, but since Willow is less experienced with the bike, and since the path we were biking on was rather rough and uneven, we brought them along just in case.
Olivia directed me and Willow on where we should go, walking our bikes a little bit up the trail so we could bike down past the camera, and I get the chance to feel the knot in my stomach tightening again as I caught Will looking my way. I'm reminded once again of having him here, watching us shoot. Although it isn't a performance technically speaking — I wouldn't be singing or playing at all — it's still close enough to it to make me feel queasy and my palms clammy with sweat despite the warmer air.
"Okay, Violet, Willow," Olivia called to us from below. "Just bike down the trail at a normal speed past us, keep going for a few seconds, then stop. That'll be the whole shot."
Willow nodded. I tried to speak but my tongue was suddenly glued to the roof of my mouth.
"Okay, start biking!" Olivia called out.
Willow and I kicked off at the same time, me in front, and we started rolling down the path.
"And...ACTION!"
That was a phrase I heard a few dozen more times in the following hour or two.
Willow and I biked down the path again and again and again, always waiting for Olivia's cue first while I was subject to a barrage of her comments and suggestions.
"No, Violet, you can't bike past us too fast, or you're just a blur in the camera."
"Violet, you have to keep your hair up and not blowing in your face so we can actually see you."
"Violet, you look like you're being tortured. This is supposed to be the happy part of the video, remember?"
"Okay, now you look like you're just in pain."
"Okay, okay, I get it already," I panted after the millionth time, my bike crunching to a stop at the end of the designated strip of the path we were using for the shoot. My legs were beginning to complain, cramping from the sudden bursts of pedaling and stopping, pedaling and stopping, and hiking back uphill each time we did a shot. Willow is also completely out of breath. "Maybe we can conclude that I'm not cut out for this music video thing now?"
Danny was peering through the viewfinder, watching the last run, then he looked up at me. "Violet, Life in Color is your song," he reminded me gently. "If anything, you need to be in it. It's your message, just like you said before. The message you want to send."
The message I want to send. Thanks to Jackie, I had figured out, at least to some degree, what that was. Life in Color was, really, an ode to music itself. How listening to my parent's old records brought me back to life when it seemed like nothing else would. Like The Beatles and The Beach Boys and Elton John and Queen themselves lent me a helping hand so I could spring back on my own two feet. Little did Danny know, though, that the song was also partially written about him.
He was the first and only friend I made at public school, once Evelyn had to take another job and didn't have any more time to home school me and Willow. Although the kids teased him with the name 'Cinder Block,' he didn't appear overbearing to me at all — a tall, sturdily built, but quiet kid with the most genuine, if rare, smile. When I first got him to crack a grin, it felt like I won the highest prize, and we spent most of middle school together, even if we only quietly sat in each other's presence. We never needed to say words to each other. Our exchanged looks always said everything — even now, he's looking at me; encouraging me along whenever I needed it. And that meant everything to me at a time when I felt abandoned and lost.
But how could I possibly communicate all that in a few shots of a camera? I thought desperately, and then I heard Will's voice from somewhere below.
"You all need to come down here!"
I looked around in confusion. "Where are you?" I called out loudly. Will was nowhere in sight, but I could still hear him as he replied.
"Down here! I have just the thing you need!"
I dreaded to think what that could possibly be as Willow and I dragged our bikes down the path, Olivia and Danny slower behind us as they moved the camera, Ryder dashing ahead of us to see what Will was talking about. He disappeared around the corner and almost immediately gave a yelp. "Whoa! Hell yeah!"
I rounded the corner of the path and finally caught a glimpse of what lay below me. The rocky path continues for another fifty feet or so before transitioning to a wooden ramp, which dropped dramatically, curving at the end, a gap between it and the next wooden ramp that curved around the mini ravine, circling around and slowly spiraling downward before it flattened out, another smaller ramp curling at the end and dropping off at the path a few feet below it.
"Uh, hell no," I said firmly. "Not if I don't want to accidentally crack my head open."
"That's what the crash mats are for, aren't they?" Ryder said, already beginning to set them up at the edges of the two ramps.
"Willow, we don't need you to do this shot," Olivia called out to her as Willow paled visibly at the sight of the ramps. "We already got plenty of good ones of you in the previous shots. This is just for Violet."
"Thanks for that," I muttered under my breath as Willow smirked and walked her bike down to the first wooden ramp, Will extending his hand to help her down.
"On a scale of one to ten, how desperate are we for this shot?" I asked, shutting my eyes, already knowing the answer.
"Ten!" Olivia and Ryder called out in unison. Danny's already looking in the camera's viewfinder, having set it up toward the end of the ramp. Will's standing off to the side next to Willow, looking at me curiously. "Listen, Sunshine, if you don't want to-"
At the sound of that stupid nickname, my eyes flew open and I kicked off the ground, my feet hitting the pedals and urging my bike forward, straight toward the ramp, feeling nothing but the shake of the bike and the pounding of my heart as I approached the ramp. The wheels' gears squeaked as the wheels navigated first the uneven ground, then the rough wooden boards, and I have to keep my feet locked onto the pedals to prevent myself from thrusting my legs out and stopping my momentum, which kept building and building until the gap before me was staring me straight in the face. I took a deep breath and clutched onto the handlebars for dear life as my bike suddenly met empty air, the solidity of the ground swept out from underneath it just like that.
I heard a sound as the wind whistled through my ears that sounded like a shout and a scream, and it took a moment to realize it was coming from me; it felt detached and far away. All the breath left my lungs for a moment as I touched down on the ramp on the other side of the gap, and I gasped as the solid ground met my wheels again. I snuck a glance backward at the ramp I had just left, the gap looking more sizable than before. I heard some whoops and calls from below, and with my heart racing a million miles an hour and the adrenaline rush coming over me, I started to laugh; the kind of laugh you do when you're thinking I cannot believe that just happened. A floating feeling washed over me and I gave another little laugh of disbelief as I looked forward again, following the wooden path around the downward bend.
It's funny; because only once I reached the end of the wooden path did I realize that the camera was still there, and I managed to clear the second ramp back to the rocky path on the other side, braking hard and skidding to a stop a few yards away.
I looked to the others, my feet covered in dust and my forehead slicked with sweat, hands shaking slightly at the feat I just brought off. "Please tell me you got all that."
Danny, Olivia, Ryder, and Willow are already looking through the viewfinder, each in turn. Danny turned to me, an exceptional grin spreading across his face. "Come and see for yourself."
I swung out my bike's stand, leaving it behind as I walked over to the camera and put my eye to the viewfinder as Danny played back the clip. The shot is already set up beautifully — the view of the ramps spotted with the dappled sunlight from the trees above. Then I came into the shot, and the camera panned to me as I advanced to the ramp. The look on my face pretty much communicates everything I was feeling at that moment — my eyes wide in horror at the scene before me. When I cleared the ramp, I spot the moment I must have emitted that weird, foreign scream.
But when I clear the ramp, that changes drastically. The shock on my face is visible from the moment I glanced back at the ramp, but that shock quickly turned into triumph as I started to laugh; a genuine laugh, my eyes lit up, the curls in my hair blowing in the wind as the camera followed me. All my emotions were right there at the surface — relief mixed with triumph, laughter mixed with carefreeness as I loosened the grip on my handlebars and let my body relax. I looked more than just happy. I looked alive.
And it was exactly the message I wanted to communicate.
When I stepped away from the viewfinder, Danny, Ryder, Olivia, and Willow are all grinning at me.
"Alright," I sighed, but it proved hard to suppress my own smile. "It's perfect."
The others spent the next few minutes looking over the shot again, Olivia pointing out a few spots that we could edit back in the garage, and that's when I looked over at Will, still standing off to the side, looking at me with a smile that was becoming more and more familiar now. Something about his expression seemed different, though; his head titled slightly as he held my gaze, the look in his eyes as they stared into mine making me feel almost as if he was looking at me for the first time. I waited for the knot in my stomach to tighten again, but instead, it loosened; a rush of warmth went through me, and for once, I stop holding back my smile, giving him a small one in return.
We do several more shots of Willow and I biking normally before we call it a wrap, then the others wanted to try going down the ramp, though we all ensure to keep the crash mats in place beforehand. I laughed as they all experienced the same thrill and rush as they cleared the ramp, Ryder whooping as loudly as he could when he did. Will tries, too, easily clearing the ramp several times. Then we packed up the camera and stands, hiking back up the trail and back to the truck. Willow foraged on ahead, Olivia, Danny, and Ryder following her as I trailed behind, walking my bike, Will falling into step beside me. Occasionally, I would catch him glancing my way out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes his head would flick back to the front just as quickly; other times, his gaze lingered for longer, my eyes meeting his several times, the same rush of warmth going through me, buzzing in my bones and remaining long after his eyes left mine.
this was one of my favorite scenes to write! though i would honestly be too terrified to go on any kind of bike ramp whatsoever...i don't think i could pull it off like violet did!
how do you think violet & the gang will fare in the first round of the contest with their music video?