The first video began to play. It was supposed to be a short thriller I had only made because my brother had wanted to play a corpse really badly.
The scene showed a reporter, played by my friend, driving and pulling up to a house. A flock of birds roused from a tree into the sky when she left the car. She rang the doorbell.
The tension rose with alternating extreme close-ups of a nervously tapping foot, a ticking wristwatch and hands tightening around a clipboard. When she gripped the knop the door swung open.
"Bitch, don't go in there," Billie whispered.
I bit my lip to supress a laugh when the reporter went inside. At the end of the hallway a pair of shoes peeked out from behind a door frame. The crappy copyright-free music swelled to a crescendo. The camera moved towards the pair of feet and zoomed out at the same time. The effect was vertigo inducing.
Billie shot up from the couch to hit the space bar of the keyboard, pausing the video. "Wait! Was that a- what's it called? A dolly zoom?"
"Yes." I nodded with a laugh. "I had to practice for days. We didn't have a camera slider so I had to use a skateboard."
We continued the video and watched the reporter discover the corpse.
Afterwards, I showed a bad horror short film that I had made while on a class trip. It was impossible to stay serious at my classmates' bad acting and the ridiculous plot.
It became obvious that Billie was a pro when it came to filmmaking. She spotted each shot I had put special care into, be it with the colour coordination, composition or camera movement.
The last thing Billie and I watched was a comedy sketch my friends had done. Even though I had seen it plenty of times I joined Billie's infectious laughter.
The credits rolled, a joke in itself because it was just my name over and over again.
The background for the credits was the frozen last frame which showed my friend looking directly into the camera with a goofy grin on her face.
Looking at the screen I realize how much I missed her. A fond smile spread over my face.
I felt Billie looking at me from the side. "Who's that?"
"My best friend." The words felt heavy.
"Can I ask you something?"
I finally tore my eyes away from the screen after it had faded to back. "Yeah."
"So..." Billie cleared her throat, "you're gay, right?"
I paused, my cup of tea frozen in the air halfway to my lips.
"Sorry, if I'm assuming anything," she added when I did not answer immediately.
"No, no, it's ok. I'm not gay though." I took a sip from my tea after I remembered how to move. "I'm bisexual."
How had Billie figured it out? I was not hiding anything but I had also kept any queer jokes to myself.
Billie nodded and showed no other reaction. "You just- people don't usually look at their best friend like that."
"Ah, that's what gave me away."
"And sometimes you have this weird, like..." I looked at her as she trailed off, a smile on my face when she vaguely gestured around. "That! That look right there on your face."
Apparently my attraction towards Billie was a lot less subtle than I would have liked. I did not look away, though. I was not going to apologize for who I was.
"Hey," she shifted on the couch to face me, "can I ask you something else? If you don't want to answer, that's totally cool too."
"No, go ahead. Ask me anything."
I genuinely felt like I could tell Billie anything. At this point I was sure it was not just because she was a stranger and nothing I said had real consequences. We were not strangers anymore. I suspected it was just her. She made it easy to be myself.
Billie looked at her hands. My eyes followed her tongue as she wet her lips. She looked almost nervous.
"I know it sounds like a dumb question but I actually want to know."
"Just ask, Billie."
"How did you know, like, for sure that you were bi?"
The question was direct but not blunt. I leaned back to think.
I asked myself which version I should tell her. I told straight adults that I had always felt drawn to strong personalities whether they were male or female. I told friends it started with a Twilight obsession and ended with me thinking Kristen Steward was hot.
Both versions were only half true if I was being honest with myself.
"I fell in love." I nodded towards the monitor. "With her. I mean, I knew before that I liked both boys and girls. Figuring it out gave me, like, a short identity crisis but luckily that was before puberty so I didn't have an identity to begin with." I wanted to lighten the mood but stopped when I saw how serious Billie was. She was soaking up every word I was saying.
Why are we talking about this again, I asked myself. Why would Billie even be interested? There's no reason unless...
I stopped my train of thought abruptly. Nope. Don't even go there.
"A few years later..." I continued, "I don't know, it didn't happen from one day to the next. We grew up together and had always been close. Then one day it just hit me, you know?" I shrugged but stopped mid-movement when I realized my mistake. "Shit! Sorry, you don't actually."
I laughed nervously. "Just... just imagine that situation with a guy. The moment you realize you have a thing for someone and you just think: Oh no, this shit is ganna hurt."
Billie nodded and I continued, "I just remember feeling like someone had pushed me off a building or, like, out a window or something."
I put my cup down. The truth of what I had said weighed heavy on me but I was not sure if Billie knew what I was talking about. She was straight, false hope here or there.
Falling in love was always scary but falling in love with a girl for the first time could be scarier. It had taken me some time to get used to it.
"I never told her and now I'm over it anyways." I cleared my throat. "But yeah... she was the reason I knew for sure."
Billie looked lost in thought and was quiet for a long while.
I stood and brought the empty cups into the kitchen. "Do you want to watch anything else or-"
I broke off when Billie's phone vibrated with a call. "Gimme a sec. That's Finneas."
By the time I had washed out the tea pot the call was over.
"He said he and Claudia could pick me up on his way back to the hotel in 20 minutes or so."
"You know what? If you are interested I could make prints of the pictures I took of you right now. It doesn't take long."
"In your darkroom?"
"Yeah. We can chose the negatives we want to print."
I beckoned Billie to come over to my desk and took out a folder with the developed film in filling sheets.
Billie held the negatives against the light of the desk lamp and tried to make something out in the inverted colours. "I can't see shit."
"I know, just... try and turn your brain inside out."
"There. That's me." She pointed at two negatives and took a closer look at another one, further down in the sheet. "What's that?"
"Oh, those are my nudes."
Billie's head snapped up with a shocked wide-eyed expression. "Hu?"
"I'm joking." I laughed out loud. "You should've seen your face."
"Quit fucking around." She was cracking up too. "Seriously, what the fuck is that?"
"It's just landscape. The countryside and hills and shit."
I looked through the negatives as well and chose a few to print before getting ready to go into the darkroom.
"Can I watch?" Billie asked.
"Why not? Could you take that?" I nodded towards the negatives. My hands were full with a stack of paper, scissors and other utensils I was going to need for the printing progress.
We walked into the bathroom and I gave Meo an apologetic look before I closed the door behind us.
If I was quick the prints would be ready before Billie had to leave.
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The Sifters - Andrew Bird