Before the Morning [BEING EDITED]

09 | Record

Nora leaned forward, propping her elbows on Willow's kitchen table and pushing her hands through her hair. Well, it was official: she was an idiot.

"What's up?"

She looked away from her laptop—one of the Macs her school handed out at the beginning of each school year. Willow sat in the seat adjacent, her own laptop in front of her. Done with a preliminary layout of the pre-production schedule ("Very basic," she'd said. "Literally just guessing what phase we'd be in week by week."), she was now busy looking through the private Facebook she'd created after their meeting this afternoon. She'd asked everyone to post any known schedules—whether they be work, social, or general life responsibilities. Not that any of them knew where they would be come the end of June, which was when they all agreed filming could realistically begin.

"I was looking up how much mics cost," she said. Dumb. She knew it even before she typed anything into Google. Why spend more money than absolutely necessary on a project she shouldn't want to succeed? But...if she was paying Nolan, she might as well make it the best video it could be. So, she'd Googled. And now she was even more stressed.

She was looking at one-hundred dollars—and that was the cheap option. Basically, the entire freaking budget.

"How much do they cost?" Erin asked. She was at Nora's opposite side, jotting in a notebook.

Nora twisted the laptop. Erin grimaced.

"It's not...too bad?" she tried.

Nora grinned despite herself. "Thanks," she said.

Erin laughed. "You're welcome."

Nora could just record on her phone. That would cost literally nothing, and it wasn't like the microphone installed in her phone wasn't adequate. But...

No matter how hard she tried to fight it, she couldn't deny it: she wanted the video to be good—as professional as it could be, anyway. Did she deserve a professional video that people would love? No. Did she want one?

She bit her lip.

"What's with the long faces?" Nathan asked, moseying into the dining room with a cup of coffee.

"Everything's so expensive," Nora said. She groaned, because she was in the mood to be a little dramatic.

"Whatcha looking at?" He rounded the table and peered over her shoulder, sipping at his coffee. "Oh! Mics?"

She nodded.

"Hmm." His expression brightened. "Oh, you know what? I'm actually friends with Mrs. Gendron, the media teacher. She should have recording equipment."

The girls perked. "Music recording?" Nora asked.

"Yeah. She deals with all sorts of media—music, digital art, photography, film production. I can give her a call."

You don't deserve it.

"That would be amazing," she said. "Thank you so much."

He smiled. "Of course, kiddo."

✝

"Okay, so, I think I have an idea of what we could do for the screenplay," Erin said the next day, at their picnic table. She wrung her hands.

Nora gave her encouraging smile. "I'm sure whatever you've got is amazing."

"One-hundred percent," Andy said. He wrapped an arm around Erin's shoulders and tugged her to him. Her cheeks, already flushed with nerves, grew a feverish red.

"Don't get your hopes up," she said softly.

"Hey."

They all turned.