The Real Z

Total Pro

At the Locks, Z sends the rented drone soaring over the water like a “super expensive paper airplane,” but her mind keeps drifting back to the blow-up with Lauren and Mari. Distracted, she nearly flies the drone straight into a sailboat’s mast, and Dad’s shout snaps her back just in time to steer it clear.

Z’s sunk most of her grant money into the drone rental after Becka insisted the aerial shots would give her CloudSong movie an edgy look, and after watching a few drone videos online with Mom that looked genuinely unique. Now, as the drone buzzes out toward the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, where crowds gather to watch boats rise and fall through the channels while salmon fight their way upstream from Salmon Bay, the same fish Z once begged to take home as a pet, she just hopes it delivers.

It doesn’t. The feed on Z’s controller shows nothing but choppy, dull water, even once a big shipping boat and the channel finally drift into frame. Dad, looking over her shoulder, admits all he sees is water. Z insists she just needs to get closer, but Dad stops her and asks whether she checked the rules for flying a drone over a public place like this. She hadn’t. She’d studied the drone’s manual carefully enough to know its range. Checking the actual airspace rules had slipped her mind, though, somewhere between the movie, Camera Club, and homework. Dad reminds her that he and Mom already warned her drones come with real regulations. Annoyed but privately aware he’s right, she brings the drone in.

Landing it safely and tucking it back in its bag, Z swaps it for her regular camera and apologizes to Dad for snapping at him earlier. When he asks if she wants to talk about it, she shakes her head, not wanting to get upset in public. Instead she teases him as “Mr. Production Assistant,” his running joke since they left the house, and checks that he’s still willing to work for her even after her attitude. He happily agrees to be the director’s assistant. As they head toward the fish ladder so she can film close-ups of the salmon, joking that she might bring one home, she texts Lauren about nearly wrecking the drone, then a second text about their Friday presentation. Neither gets a reply, and watching the typing bubble appear and vanish without an answer makes her stomach twist.

Pushing the silence out of her mind, Z sets her camera rolling on the Locks properly: boats rising and lowering, tourists snapping photos of the sunset turning the water a gorgeous amber. Inspired to add some local color to her movie, she pulls out her pocket recorder and works up the nerve to interview a family walking the docks, a couple and their red-headed toddler, Deacon, who’s fascinated by the fish. He eyes her camera gear with equal interest while his mom keeps a firm grip on his hand. The mom’s answer about what Seattle means to their family, and her line about rainy days making the sunny ones sweeter, are exactly the kind of moments Z wants to use.

Z finds Dad again by the fish ladder, watching salmon force their way through its twenty-one openings toward open water, and can’t help feeling like she and the fish have a lot in common lately, working hard and getting nowhere with her friends, her movie, and her school project. When Dad offers to head home for more drone footage before sunset, Z decides it can wait until tomorrow. Sitting together as their dog, Popcorn, settles onto her feet, she thanks Dad for showing up to help her film despite his own rough day, and he gently reminds her not to lose sight of having fun with all of this. She promises to try harder. As the sun sinks below the water, Z decides this particular Seattle secret, and the moment, is one she’d rather keep just between the two of them.