SF Chapter 83: Script
A few days after Daniel had run into Lindsay at the spa, he was lying leisurely on his bed, phone in hand.
"Hey Sam, how you doin'?" Daniel said as he called Samantha.
They had been talking from time to time, always over the phone, still keeping their "promise" not to see each other again.
Sam had become a good friend of his, mostly because of their similar ages, their shared love of reading, and, obviously, because they were both writers.
"Hi, Dani," she answered on the other end of the line. "Ah-" she paused for a moment.
"I'm with a boy right now," Sam remarked.
"Oh..." Dani muttered. "Is he the jealous type? I can call later."
"He already left," she replied. "It was Rusty, my brother. He said to say hi to you."
"Are you trying to make me jealous? I knew it was only a matter of time anyway."
She snorted on the other side of the phone. "As if."
"So, did you read it?" Dani finally asked what he actually wanted to know.
"Yep," Sam confirmed. "I liked Olive, the main character."
"When you told me you had written Easy A using some unused ideas from your other movie, Mean Girls, I thought you were basically running some kind of copy scam."
"But even with some similarities, this feels like a different movie. Or, at least, reading it feels like it," she concluded. "I especially liked Olive's parents, Dill and Rosemary."
"Yeah," Dani laughed. "I got inspired by my brother-in-law, Phil. I thought it'd be fun making both parents the cool parents."
"And that part where Olive basically spends the whole weekend at home doing nothing feels so relatable," Sam remarked.
"I think that part is gonna be great because of the song!" Daniel said excitedly as he got up from the bed.
"I tested it with my sister and nieces. Alex, one of my nieces, actually called me today complaining that she couldn't get the song out of her head."
And then he started singing to Sam.
♫♪I got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine
I got a love, and I know that it's all mine, oh
Do what you want, but you're never gonna break me
Sticks and stones are never gonna shake me, no ♫♪
♫♪I got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine
I got a love, and I know that it's all mine, oh
Wish that you could, but you ain't gonna own me
Do anything you want, you can't slow me down, no ♫♪
And he sang even louder, making dramatic gestures with his hands.
♫♪Take me away ♫♪
"Hey, Daniel-" Alan lightly knocked on the door before walking in.
Daniel kept singing, completely ignoring the interruption.
♫♪ A secret place
A sweet escape
Take me away
Take me away
To better days
Take me away ♫♪
"Yeah... I can see you're busy," Alan said awkwardly before walking away.
"Did anyone see you?" Samantha finally spoke after he stopped singing.
Daniel replied, "Yeah, my brother. He saw me singing and doing all my awesome poses."
"You have zero shame, don't you? I can already picture the scene. I can practically feel the awkwardness your brother felt," she deadpanned.
"Eh," he shrugged. "I've had worse. He already walked in on me doing other things before."
He could picture her rolling her eyes on the other side of the phone.
But Samantha got a little curious and asked, "What's the most embarrassing situation you've ever been caught in?"
"Why should I tell you? What do I get out of it?"
"I'll tell you a secret."
"Fine," he agreed. "There were two times I got caught that weren't exactly embarrassing, but a little awkward."
"First was my dad, who walked in right when a girl was giving me a BJ. The bite was painful. It took a whole week for the bite mark on little Danny to disappear."
Sam burst out laughing.
"The second one was my mom walking in on me. But I didn't see her... because one of the girls was sitting on my face... you know," he said suggestively.
"It was her friend's twin daughters. I only remember her saying, 'Really, Daniel? Couldn't you at least use the bed?'"
"God, you are such a degenerate bastard," Samantha mocked, still laughing. "Your parents must have it rough."
"A little bit," he didn't deny it. "But now they're enjoying the benefits. Mean Girls made us a lot of money."
"Anyway, what's the secret?" he asked changing the subject.
She paused for a moment before replying, "I'm writing a new book. I haven't told my dad or my brother yet."
"Wooow. Tell me. Tell me," he said eagerly, like a little kid.
Sam began explaining. "The protagonist's name is Miles 'Pudge' Halter, an introverted teenager obsessed with famous last words, who decides to leave his boring life behind and study at a boarding school."
"There, he meets new friends - especially a smart, funny, impulsive, and emotionally complicated girl. Miles quickly falls for her."
"For now, I'm thinking of naming the book Looking for Alaska, which is the girl's name."
She finished, "And it'll have my usual profanity and sexual content."
"Yeah, that's what I like to hear," he joked.
"Perv."
"And yet, my books are family-friendly while yours are full of adult content," he retorted.
She went back to talking about her new book. "One of the lines I gave Alaska was actually inspired a little by what you said the last time you were here."
"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present," she read out loud.
"Whoa, nice one!" he praised. "She'll be cute, right?"
Samantha snorted.
"Come on, let's be realistic. A funny, impulsive, and emotionally complicated girl only works if she's cute. That's the harsh truth of life. If she were ugly, no one would care," he pointed out.
"It's like Marissa Cooper from The O.C. show. Nobody would've cared about her if she wasn't the whole 'it girl' type."
Samantha didn't argue because she knew he had a point. The two of them kept talking until late into the night.
[Samantha commentary]
"I like talking with Dani," Sam commented as she sat on her bed. "His appearance is misleading. He actually reads a lot too, which makes sense since he's also a writer. We can talk about a variety of books."
"And I feel like I can openly talk about other things with him too."
"But we're still keeping our promise not to see each other again," she concluded.
[Commentary ends]
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Author's note: Looking for Alaska is a book written by John Green, the same author who wrote The Fault in Our Stars.
For me, Pocketful of Sunshine is Emma Stone's best scene in the movie (Easy A). And the song is really catchy.
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