Jump Cut by Ted Staunton

whole movie. Set up, intro, action, climax, clinch, fade. What’s wrong with you? Get shooting.”
    â€œShooting what?”
    â€œ This . Your grandpa said, Make a movie . Look at what I’m giving you here. What more do you want?”
    â€œBut this is just…stuff. Real life. It’s weird, but there’s no story or anything.”
    Her painted-on eyebrows go up, and I can tell she’s probably rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses. “No sto—You really don’t know anything, do you? It’s all in the editing. Life is a movie with no jump cuts. It’s the cutting that makes the movie.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œSkip it.” GL sighs. “Just my luck for my last picture; the story of my career.” She flicks ash from her cigarette, takes a deep breath. “How did your grandpa die?”
    â€œHe just died. In his sleep.”
    â€œGood exit.” GL nods. “I should be so lucky. I don’t have a history of smooth exits.” She throws the cigarette away. “And watch your driving. You follow too close. I can’t exit yet.”

FOURTEEN
    After that, GL clams up and pretty soon she’s snoozing. That’s fine with me, even though she snores. I’m still pretty steamed by that “you don’t know anything” crack. I mean, what has there been worth filming? GL shooting the gun maybe, with Al tied up? Yeah, right. I can imagine how happy Al would be, all over YouTube. I’m still a little sore from the last time he grabbed me.
    The traffic gets really busy and I have to concentrate. It’s too weird for anyone to believe anyway. Life is not a movie. A movie is heroes and hot girls and special effects and adventures and excitement, not real life. AmberLea is not Hollywood hot. Driving old ladies up to cottage country to get a kiss on the cheek is not Fast and Furious . Al—well, I’ve got to admit I still don’t get how Al fits in. If he’s for real, then he’s the one thing that could be from a movie.
    And then I get it: what we’re doing. What we’re doing is Gloria Lorraine trying to make her life into a movie . Of course. She just said, My last picture and Look what I’m giving you here. This is her little fantasy, and she’s dragging me and AmberLea along for the ride. I bet Al is a washed-up actor too. Probably even his mustache was fake. I bet she’s hired him to act this out.
    And then I really get it, and it’s even worse than I thought. What if Grandpa worked this out with Gloria Lorraine, to give me a fake adventure, one that I could handle, instead of a real adventure, like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I guess a tattoo and a road trip are all he figured Bun and I would be up for. I’m surprised he didn’t just have Bunny order a T-shirt. Oh, man. And to think I really got into it there, blowing off Jer and acting like a character in a B movie at the border and in the Tim’s parking lot.
    Now I’m totally bummed. I drive up Highway 427 and then crawl along the 401 to Highway 400, where we go north again. All the time I’m wishing I could just pull over and walk away. That would be tricky on a major freeway. Besides, even though Toronto is my town, I don’t exactly know where I am. Then I do start to recognize stuff, because this is the way to Grandpa’s cottage too. By now it’s about two thirty in the afternoon, so it’s getting crazy busy here too, on a summery Friday. It would take me forever to get home from here. I keep driving.

    Before we get to Barrie, I pull into a highway service center. We gas up, then park. I take Mister Bones over to the rest area, which is a patch of grass with some picnic tables under a few trees. The others go inside. I don’t really want to deal with them right now.
    Mister Bones does his thing, and I check for messages while I think over what to do. There are two from Bunny. The last one reads,