Chapter 22: In Front of the Lens

The first day of the series, we shot at the glacier lagoon, and I forgot my own name.

The ice floated in the water in blocks the size of cars, blue and white, and the light was low and gold.

It was the best location I had ever seen.

The cameraman stood behind the big camera in a hat with ear flaps.

Sunna stood beside him with a clipboard, and my mother sat in the van with a thermos, watching through the windshield.

"Whenever you're ready," the producer said.

The red light came on.

I looked into the lens and felt every word I knew leave me.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Emmett Quill. And this is, um."

I looked at the ice.

"It's a lagoon," I said.

"Cut," said the producer, kindly.

We tried again.

"Hi, I'm Emmett, and welcome to the south coast of Iceland, where."

Nothing came.

I could hear the cameraman breathing.

"Cut."

On the fifth take I said "welcome to the south coast" twice.

Then I stood there in the cold while an iceberg turned slowly in the lagoon.

My mother knocked on the van window and held up a thumbs-up.

It didn't help.

"I wrote four hundred scripts," I said, when we stopped. "I know exactly what to say."

"You know what to say when it is somebody else's mouth," Sunna said.

"That's not helpful."

"It was not meant to be helpful. It was meant to be true."

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