Friday was our first scheduled day to assemble a full cut of the town film. Ash had cleared the media room before school. He taped a sheet of paper over the window, wrote FILM WORK / BACK AT LUNCH on the door, and set two chairs in front of the best computer. When I arrived, he had already sorted the market footage by place.
“You got the grocer,” he said. “Your mom looks good in that light.”
I set my bag down. “She says she looks tired.”
“She does. She also looks happy when she hands someone a roll.”
I sat beside him. On the screen, Mom slid a paper bag across the counter to a girl with a bicycle helmet. The girl tucked the bag into her bicycle basket before she rode away. We put that after the ferry ticket and before Dev's cleanup team weighing their trash. For a few minutes I could see a film beginning to take shape. Then we reached the river shots.
Eli's sound files were in the project folder. The door at dawn. The hall before anyone arrived. Water against the rail bridge. He had named each one carefully. I clicked a file to test the opening, and Ash stopped me.
“He messaged me last night,” Ash said. “He wants those out.”
I turned to him. “All of them?”
“He said he doesn't want his recordings used in the film.”
“He didn't tell me.”
“Maybe that's why he told me.”
I looked at the files. They were his work, and he could take them back. I knew that before I felt the loss of the opening I'd built around them.
“Have you removed them?” I asked.
“I didn't want to do it before you got here. I can.”
“I'll do it.”
I selected the audio files and moved them out of the active project folder into a return folder for Eli. I left the footage where it was, but the first sequence played without the clicks and steps that had made it feel alive. The room itself seemed quieter when the clip ended.
Ash tried the same sequence with music from the school's free library. A bright piano came in as Mom opened the kiosk shutter. It made her look as though she expected a crowd to cheer. He stopped it before I could object.
“Wrong,” he said.
“Very.”
He tried a softer track. That one turned Mr. Nouri's stuck shutter into something sad. We watched it all the way through because the edit was clean, and then I shook my head. Eli had recorded the actual shutter, the scrape and the kick and Mr. Nouri's laugh. Without it, our best shot looked like a picture chosen to fit somebody else's song.
“We can record our own sounds,” Ash said.
“We can. They won't be the ones Eli chose.”
“He was good at it.”
“He is good at it.”
Ash nodded and took the music out. We left the opening quiet for the meeting with Ms. Cho. I could hear the chair wheels behind us and someone practicing lines in the hall.
At lunch, Eli came for his recorder. The school had lent it to him for sound work, but he had kept his own memory card inside. He stood by the table while I checked that the card and the case were together.
“Your recordings are out of the film,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“I saved them in a folder for you. I didn't delete the originals.”
“That's fine. Send me the folder link and take it off the project drive after I have it.”
I nodded. We could manage that part. I wanted to ask if he would still come to the screening, if he would still talk to me after the play. Both questions were too large for the space between the table and the door.
“I should have listened when you told me what I could say,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I didn't think those words would give anything away.”
“You thought about it. You knew I didn't want them.”
He had caught the part of my defense I wanted to leave out. I had weighed his boundary and decided my version was more useful.
“Wren's review moved up,” I said. “I panicked.”
“I heard. She called me after.” He held the recorder case by its handle. “I spoke to the coordinator too. I told them Wren went because I asked her and that she came back. I didn't need the whole school to hear how bad that day was.”
He had done something for Wren while keeping his own line. I had known he might. I had posted before asking.
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“I believe you.” He looked at the screen where Mom's face was paused above the market counter. “I need some distance from the film and from you for a while.”
“The door recording was your idea,” I said. “I didn't want you to think I only asked for it because I needed a sound file.”
“I know you liked it.” He shifted the recorder case in his hand. “You listened to the places I recorded. That mattered to me. Then I told you one part of my life wasn't for the film or the post, and you decided your sentence needed it.”
I looked down at the return folder on the screen. I had not put Eli's voice in the film. I had put a piece of his life in public, and he knew the difference better than I had.
I wanted to bargain for a shorter time. He hadn't asked me for one.
“Okay,” I said.
He left with the recorder. Ash came back from the vending machine a minute later, saw my face, and put a bottle of water on the table without making a joke. I thanked him. We worked through the market footage until Ms. Cho arrived.
She stood behind us while we played the first two minutes. The sequence worked without Eli's sound, though not as well. When it reached the river path, I stopped playback. I had built a short section from the cleanup and the warning sign. It had no old footage in it. Ms. Cho checked the list of releases and asked whose voice would explain the river program.
“Nobody yet,” I said. “Ash thought the program might let us film a lesson.”
“Not while this is still being reviewed.” She closed the folder. “I also saw your post, Sadie.”
“It was under my name. I didn't use the project account.”
“I know. My concern is that people may think the council authorized a statement from its student director.”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't. Some readers will still connect the two. The council needs a clear boundary here.”
Ash looked down at his notes. Ms. Cho turned the screen back to the paused river path.
“Put this sequence on hold,” she said. “Keep filming the town. Keep sorting the material we have permission to use. I need to speak with the school supervisor about the archive before I approve anything near the river story.”
“The cleanup footage has releases,” I said.
“This isn't only about the forms. You and Ash are deciding what to place beside a public rumor involving people you know. I want time to see the cut and ask what it suggests.”
She wasn't taking the commission away. She was asking me to stop treating one piece of the film as separate from the choices I'd made outside it. I wanted to tell her I understood. I wasn't sure I did.
After she left, Ash dragged the river section into a folder labeled HOLD. He could see I was still staring at the place where it had been.
“I can take over that part,” he said. “Film the cleanup and the bridge. No Wren, no Eli. Give you room to finish the people section.”
“Ms. Cho said hold.”
“I mean when she clears it. I can build a version and you can choose.”
“You keep saying ‘river section’ like the town has a separate river.”
“It runs through the middle of the place. We can't pretend it's not there.”
“I don't want to pretend.” I closed the project window. “I want to know what we're saying with it.”
He leaned back. “Then figure that out. I can work on the rest.”
I could hear impatience in his voice. He had helped carry this film for a week, and now the part he cared about was frozen because of my old file and my new post. I did not want to hand him control just because I had made a mess. I also knew I couldn't keep everyone waiting while I thought.
“Sort the interviews,” I said. “Leave the river untouched until Ms. Cho decides.”
“Fine.”
He turned back to the screen. It was our first argument about the film that didn't end in a better shot.
On the way home, I passed the pool. Through the glass I saw Wren at the far end with one small class, though the board showed another instructor had taken the earlier group. She knelt beside a girl adjusting her goggles, then stood and counted heads before they went in. She looked tired. She also looked busy with something she knew how to do. I stayed outside where she couldn't see me and walked on when the class began.
At home, I went to the cupboard where we kept spare cords and old phone boxes. My backup drive was behind a package of printer paper. I took it out, found its cord, and set it beside my homework. Its label said CAMERA / SUMMER in my fifteen-year-old handwriting. Mom had gone to the kiosk for the evening inventory. The house was quiet except for the refrigerator motor and someone talking in the yard next door.
I plugged the drive in. The light came on. I opened CAMERA / SUMMER, then AUGUST. There were dozens of files named by date. The river outing was in a row between a bakery picnic and a short video of Wren trying to balance three peaches on her head.
I clicked the peach video first. She dropped the top one and laughed so hard she had to sit down. Off camera, Eli told her the fruit was fine and picked it up.
Then I opened the river file. The first frame showed sunlight on the path and the edge of my own thumb across the lens. I put on headphones. I let it play.