Four Weeks, Five People

STELLA

I’m Stella. Seventeen. From Wethersfield, Connecticut. My happy place is... Well, it’s definitely not here, I can tell you guys that much.

JESSIE / JOSH

Stella! / Hmm.

JESSIE

Is this really the note you want to start camp on, Stella?

STELLA

Well, I didn’t really want to start camp on any sort of note, thanks very much. Or at all. But since no one asked me, I guess this is the note we’re all stuck—

JOSH

Hmmmmmm.

* * *

Josh’s voice is so deep and mellow and pleasant that both Stella and Jessie stop arguing.

JOSH

If you could be anywhere else right now in the universe—feel free not to limit yourself to this world!—where would it be?

STELLA

Running. Well, that’s not a place, but—On the road, I guess. On the road, running.

* * *

Josh looks at Stella very seriously.

JOSH

Hmm.

JESSIE

And why you’re here.

STELLA

And why I’m here.

* * *

Deep breath.

STELLA

I don’t know. I used to be this normal, happy-go-lucky kid. But then at some point I couldn’t remember the last time I felt normal or happy-go-lucky. I couldn’t remember the last time I even wanted to get out of bed.

* * *

For a moment, Stella looks surprised at her own honesty. Then she pulls it together and makes the bitchiest face imaginable to compensate.

STELLA

The point is, I couldn’t bullsh—oops, I mean BS—about feeling fine well enough to get my psychologist to believe me. Whatever. You go.

* * *

Stella turns to the BLOND GUY next to her, who is tall and blue-eyed and tan in a way that makes me hate him instantly.

ANNOYINGLY ATTRACTIVE TEEN

Mason. I’m seventeen, and I’m from Bethesda, Maryland. My parents are idiots, is basically why I’m here. My happy place is...a land...governed...by rationality.

* * *

He pauses every few words, an obvious (not to mention incredibly irritating) effect meant to demonstrate how profound he is. I watch Stella’s eyes get narrower and narrower until they’re barely even slits.

MASON

Somewhere where people use logic instead of succumbing to blind emotion.

* * *

Mason sighs, as if the burden of being the lone rational agent in a dumb, emotional world is heavy on his shoulders indeed.

MASON

So, sure as hell not in that world. Oops, sorry, that might have been a little aggressive.

BEN (V.O.)

Mason is so into himself that it’s terrifying. Mason is Patrick Bateman in training. Oh, and if cinematic precedence means anything in the real world, it’s that Mason is so going to hook up with Stella by the end of Week 3.

* * *

Mason shrugs, then looks over at me, expectant. I realize, suddenly, that I am standing next to Mason, that the camera has panned left and I am on-screen with absolutely zero lines written and a captive audience. I take a deep breath and swallow hard.

* * *

Here is the anticlimax: