Only in the Movies Read Free Page B

administration, and an academic wing and a stand-alone theatre were added.
    “Doesn’t look very artsy,” Dad commented as we drove into the parking lot and took the last space marked Visitor. I peered through the rain-drenched windshield at a blank wall with a No Smoking sign bolted to it.
    We got out of the van and I followed my father through the rain, up the cracked sidewalk, past a flagpole that pinged rhythmically as the wind snapped the halyard back and forth, and into the school. Dad had a file folder tucked under his raincoat. What was in it he hadn’t said.
    The office was opposite the main entrance. Inside, it looked like any other school admin centre. There were no students there, no staff to be seen—just one secretary sitting behind the counter, working hard to unjam the jaws of a staple remover.
    “We have an appointment,” Dad informed her. He looked at his watch. “Two minutes ago.”
    The secretary, a pudgy woman in a too-tight blouse, pointed a finger armoured with a blue glued-on nail at a couple of plastic chairs. “If you’d like to take a seat.”
    “I still don’t think they’re going to let me in,” I whispered. “I can’t see there’s any point in coming here.” Except to be humiliated, I should have added.
    After about ten minutes, the door marked Principal opened and a tall woman in a green turtleneck sweater andfire-engine red jeans appeared. Her clothing contrasted dramatically with her dark skin. She held a clipboard thick with well-thumbed pages and had parked a pencil behind one ear.
    “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Blanchard, Jake,” she said smoothly, nodding to each of us in turn. “Rehearsal. We’re doing the Scottish play this year. I’m Sylvia Pelletier. Please come in and take a seat.”
    She led us into an office that looked more like a living room and waved us toward two chairs. There was a thick Persian rug on the floor, a couple of abstract oils on the green wall opposite the door, a library lamp with a brass chain on her desk. She sat in the leather chair behind the desk and opened a file.
    “Now, Jake, I have the student records sent to us by your present school,” she began, avoiding small talk, “and”—lifting a single sheet of paper—“I’ve read your application. You say here that you hope to become a screenwriter.”
    I nodded. Cleared my throat. What are you doing here? I imagined I heard under her words. My father made me come, I wanted to tell her.
    “You’ve read our school calendar, I take it,” the principal went on patiently, removing the pencil from behind her ear and looking at it as if she wondered how it had got there. I nodded again, sinking deeper into my chair.
    “Yes,” my father said brightly.
    “Then you must know that we don’t have a screenwriting program here at York.”
    Yes, I knew that, I wanted to say, feeling stupid and angry with myself anyway. What a couple of hicks, she must have been thinking, the old one smiling like a halfwit and theyounger one looking like a one-legged lumberjack trying to get into ballet school. I stole a glance at my father. He seemed cheerfully unaware that we were making fools of ourselves. He turned to me and flicked his eyes in the direction of the cool and sophisticated principal. Talk to her, he was urging me.
    But I was tongue-tied, and I’d had enough. I gripped the arms of my chair, preparing to get up and get out.
    “Yes, of course we know,” my father replied, in the voice he used when he explained to a client why her renovation was going to cost 40 per cent more than she thought. I settled back down. “But, you see, there’s nothing at all of a creative nature available at Jake’s present school. Mrs. Blanchard and I hoped that he could take some writing courses, maybe something in the art or theatre department, and that the general, er, creative environment would inspire him. He’s wanted to be in movies—well, not in them, exactly, but writing them—since he