“I don’t get it.”
I reached into my backpack and took out my mom’s camera, which I’d brought from home.
“Oh, no,” she protested the moment she saw it. “I’m never appearing on film again as long as I live. Not even at a birthday party.”
She began heading for the door. I jumped in front of her. “Listen to me. This can work. We can explain what you really meant.”
She stopped and thought. “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t like what I film, I won’t use it. Just say, ‘Off the record,’ and I’ll burn it or drown it or whatever.”
“Give me the camera,” she said after a moment. She studied the controls briefly, then turned it on me. “Now, say, ‘If Mary Anne doesn’t approve of this film, I can’t use it,’ ” she instructed me.
I obliged and she handed the camera back to me. As she sat on Claudia’s bed, I aimed the camera at her and turned it on. “Mary Anne, can you tell me how you were feeling the other day when we filmed you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she began. “I was having a bad day. I’d had an argument with my stepmother, Sharon, who is a really wonderful person. But even the best person on earth can annoy you sometimes, and …”
The interview went on from there.
* * *
For the rest of the week, we edited. Pete fell in love with the video editing system. He became obsessed with filming sound, creating audio effects, making visual montages. He and Emily began to get on each other’s nerves as they argued over what to do.
Erica and I were less involved. I had to admit, though, that the process was very interesting. “Are you using the new film I submitted?” I asked on Wednesday.
“We’re not sure yet,” Emily said.
“That’s as much a part of the film as the rest of it,” I insisted. “It’s just on another piece of tape.”
“We aren’t that far along,” Pete told me. “I’ll rewind it and you can see it from the beginning.”
It looked great. They’d cut the interviews so that only the most dramatic parts were used. And Pete had selected perfect music to introduce each interview.
“Use what I gave you, please,” I urged them.
On Thursday, at dismissal, I entered our Short Takes room and found Kristy, Anna, Logan, and Alan viewing their finished film and laughing hysterically. On the monitor, Rosie kissed Logan and announced, “You saved my life!”
“It looks good,” I said, smiling.
“Thanks,” Logan replied. “I can’t wait to show it tomorrow. How’s your project coming?”
“I was hoping to sneak a look at it,” I admitted.
Kristy shook her head. “Pete was in here finishing up when we walked in. I saw him take the tape out of the machine and leave with it. It looked as if he was just doing some last-minute editing.”
I phoned Pete the moment I got home. I had to know if I could invite Mary Anne to the special premiere of the class movies scheduled for Friday after school.
I kept getting his answering machine, though.
I wondered if he wasn’t answering the phone on purpose. Finally, around nine-thirty, his mother picked up and called him to the phone. “Do I need to apologize to Mary Anne?” I asked him directly. “I know you did the final cut.”
“I think she’ll like it,” he answered. “I mean … I think so. I guess I could be wrong.”
“Should I invite her to the premiere?” I asked.
“I wonder if you’ll be able to keep her away,” he replied.
* * *
On Friday after school I waited anxiously outside the auditorium with Claudia. “I told her to come but I don’t know if I should have,” I fretted as I watched for Mary Anne.
“She was determined to see it for herself,” Claudia replied. “It wouldn’t have mattered what you said.”
Mary Anne showed up just then. She waved but wore an anxious expression. “Stacey, whatever it is, I’ll deal with it,” she said as she joined us. “The important thing to me is that you tried.”
“Thanks,” I said. I realized that mattered to me too. I’d taken a stand and let the others know how I felt.
We waited for Abby, Kristy, and Jessi, then walked into the auditorium together. A surprisingly large number of students had turned out for our amateur film festival. Cokie was there with her friends. I’d say close to fifty kids had come, plus at least ten teachers.
A large white screen stood on the stage. Ms. Murphy walked in front of it and gave a quick introduction. Then the films began.
Kristy’s group’s film was funny. I could barely stop laughing. The next film, directed by Sarah Gerstenkorn, was a funny fairy tale done in Claymation.
Ours was the last. I glanced at Mary Anne. She sat, stone-faced, watching.
Jessi folded her arms anxiously when her piece came on. I wondered if admitting she felt different would make her feel better or worse now that it was out in the open.
Jessi was followed by Abby, who shook her head, as if she were still thinking about it.
“This is wonderful,” Claudia whispered to me after her interview ended. Then Mary Anne’s face came on the screen. I clenched my fists nervously.
Her interview ran entirely as filmed.
I slumped in my seat. My face came on and my interview ran as filmed too.
But then Mary Anne appeared again.
Thank you, Pete and Emily, I thought.
Mary Anne spoke calmly. Finally she came to her conclusion. “Sometimes you say things in the heat of the moment. You want to take them back. When you’re filmed, you can’t. The truth is, I love both my mothers. I love the idea of my birth mother that I carry inside me. And I love Sharon.”
I glanced at Mary Anne. She was crying, but she was smiling too. She turned and mouthed the words, Thank you.
Claudia squeezed my arm. “Good going,” she whispered.
Several more interviews ran. Emily had cut hers to about a second. Pete’s talk about not wanting to be stuck was very affecting, more than I’d even realized. Cokie and her friends all cheered when she came on.
When Alan came on screen, he let out a humongous burp. The laughter distracted kids from hearing what he was saying on film. Oh well, I guess he couldn’t be expected to change completely overnight.
Then I appeared again. I’d turned the camera on myself before handing over the second tape.
“I had a happy childhood before the fighting started,” I said. “The film in my mind recorded lots of happy times. I suppose, in a way, we’re all filmmakers, remembering what we loved, editing out what we don’t want to remember.”
That was the most important thing I’d learned from working on our project. Our memories are little private films. We’re all directors, trying to create a picture that balances truth with love and forgiveness.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Stacey’s Movie, Stacey and her classmates have a chance to make a movie of their own using a video camera. What a great project. When I was Stacey’s age, videos and video cameras didn’t even exist! I saw my very first movie when I was five years old. My dad took me to the Garden Theater in Princeton, NJ, to see Swiss Family Robinson. My ticket cost fifty cents. My dad told me that the first movie he ever saw at the Garden, sixteen years earlier, cost him a nickel.
The year that I saw that first movie was 1960. In 1960, you couldn’t go to a store and buy or rent a movie to watch on your television. You had to go to a theater. The first movie I ever saw more than once was The Sound of Music. Not long after that, I saw Mary Poppins four times — so you can tell how much I liked that movie! As I grew older, I began to watch scarier movies. By the time I was about thirteen, one of my favorite movies was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. My friend Beth liked it too. We tried to time our sleepovers, which were usually held at Beth’s house, for nights when The Birds was going to play on TV. Now that I’m an adult, I still love going to the movie theater, but renting a movie to watch at home is a lo
t of fun too. If I were a student at SMS, I would love Stacey’s Short Takes class!
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Suzanne Weyn
for her help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1999 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, May 1999
e-ISBN 978-0-545-87482-3
Ann M. Martin, Stacey's Movie
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