It should have been raining that night. That’s how it always is in the movies. It’s always raining when her universe falls apart. But it wasn’t. That day the skies were clear and the air was warm. She had spent the day with her girl friends soaking up the sun in her bikini and laughing. The day had been perfect. That night was muggy, the last remains of August spilling over into the first days of September. The sky was preparing to rain, but it wasn’t. In the movies, the director will fast forward through most of it, highlighting the most dramatic points. “We won’t work.” “I will always love you.” “Please don’t go.” “I need you.” The director will shoot the final seconds of the scene. The night is done up in blue and gray tones, to set the mood. She’s crying, he’s just standing there, watching. Then, the audience isn’t sure who starts it, they step into each other and she cries on his shoulder one last time. The director would zoom out, cutting to the next scene. She’s in bed, curled up on her side, sobbing and shaking. Her room is dark but in the streetlight creeping in through the partially open blinds the camera would focus on the shoe box next to the bed, the lid is half off. The camera zooms in and you can see him staring out at you. The entire scene is ten seconds tops. Fade to black. Plain white letters float across the bottom of the screen
“Three weeks later…”
The blinds are open; the skies are still clear, crisp September air floats through the open window. She’s sitting on her bed, an old picture grasped loosely in her hands. She isn’t crying but there’s a sadness about her. The director does a scan of the room, to show the differences since we last saw her. Pictures would fade off the wall. Old movie tickets, that he paid for of course, would vanish off the dresser. The dry bouquet of flowers that he gave her on prom would finally shrivel up and die in a time elapsed clip. And all the borrowed t-shirts would crawl away and hide in a corner. The next series of shots would pass in about thirty seconds. You’d see her alone, then in a crowded room, then with friends, then her trying her hand at some new boys. These next few months would go by in a matter of seconds. Not showing each individual day that she had to fight the loneliness that threatened to consume her. Fade to black.
“Three months later…”
The director will have set up his ending. He’ll cut to the final scene. She’s alone, not crying and she doesn’t look sad, just peaceful, legs dangling off the edge of a secluded tree house. All the leaves are gone off the trees and everything seems dead. Even the air. The river looks like a long strip of cold steel. Dark gray clouds hug the skies and the air is bitter cold, like death, in her lungs. A sigh will escape her lips; the camera focuses on her far away eyes. The director will leave subtle hints that he’s on her mind. But we also know that her life is slowly rebuilding itself. That she no longer cries herself to sleep and that solid ache in her chest has dissolved into only the occasional twinge. Her eyes close and a well placed raindrop will slip through the trees and land on her cheek. The camera will zoom in and we will watch her eyes drift open and face turn skyward. A peal of thunder will ripple through the shot as the camera starts to zoom out. The skies will finally open up; the shot is twenty seconds long tops. But as rain soaks her to the core and the camera pulls further away, before she fades completely out of the shot we would see her wipe ay her eyes. Whether she’d be wiping away rain or hidden tears, the director will never let on. Fade to black, roll credits.
Only the audience knows that she’d be okay in the end.