Waiting for a Spaceship.
OPEN ON A RAILWAY BRIDGE IN BRITISH SUBURBIA, OUTSKIRTS OF LONDON. DAY. THE SOUND OF CARS ARE HEARD. WINTER.
TWO BOYS ARE LEANING ON A RAILWAY BRIDGE, LOOKING OUT OVER THE RAILWAY.
The boy on the left is STEVEN. STEVEN is a sensible quiet kid, he tends to look beyond his own life, seeing the bigger picture. A cog in a greater machine. He is wearing some casual jeans and a GAP hoodie, you can tell he doesn’t care too much about his clothes.
The boy on the right is JONNY. JONNY is almost the complete opposite of STEVEN. He is self-centred, spontaneous, and is, of course, very, very deep. He is wearing skinny black jeans, and a check shirt that’s slightly too big.
The boys are friends down to mutual benefit, JONNY gets someone who’ll listen to his ramblings and who has a very clear head, and STEVEN gets a very odd example of a human being to observe and study.
The scene begins half way through a speech JONNY is making at STEVEN
JONNY
You know? And where are we gonna go when we die? Is it all, like, for nothing? Do we have a purpose, or are we just surviving… tell you what, maybe we’re all, like… dreaming, maybe it’s all a nightmare and what seems normal right now really isn’t and we’ll wake up and everything’ll make sense and you’ll be like “oh… that makes sense”… you know? Or not… but like everything you’ve ever done wrong is like not wrong anymore, it’s like -
STEVEN gets a notebook out of his pocket, the cover says ‘Jonny’s problems. An analysis by Steven Fletcher’
STEVEN
Break-up?
JONNY
No.
STEVEN
Family problem?
JONNY lets out a small laugh. As if to say “what are you on about”
JONNY
No.
STEVEN
Rejection?
Silence.
STEVEN turns to a page marked ‘rejection’, it is blank.
STEVEN
Do tell.
Silence.
STEVEN
I’m just trying to help.
Silence.
STEVEN
Look. Jon…
Silence.
JONNY
I’ll tell you if you put that note book away.
STEVEN
Why?
JONNY
Because some people don’t enjoy having their feelings written down for the world to see.
STEVEN
Only I’m gonna see it. And I’ll have already heard it.
Silence.
JONNY
Look, I’m just saying that… other people have feelings too, and you can’t just not… take then into account you know?
STEVEN
We don’t know that.
JONNY
What?
STEVEN
That other people have feelings.
JONNY
Well, you know I do, you’ve got them all written down in there.
JONNY signals towards the note-book
STEVEN
It could just be like, part of your program. You could just be told to say this stuff by some computer.
JONNY
But I haven’t been.
STEVEN
Ok.
JONNY’s phone buzzes, he takes it out of his pocket, looks at it, and collapses into his arms,
JONNY
Argh. I hate the mobile phone network.
STEVEN
Well it was designed to be the centre of all angst and worry in the teen population.
JONNY
That it was. Now I have to reply.
STEVEN
Not yet.
JONNY
I do.
STEVEN
I presume this is the girl that told you to go look somewhere else then?
JONNY
Yep.
STEVEN
Then why reply? What are you going to gain?
Silence.
JONNY
I suppose you’re right.
JONNY puts his phone away.
JONNY
It’s not the first time I’ve like, been told ‘no’ by a girl.
STEVEN shows JONNY the blank note-book page.
STEVEN
Yes it is.
JONNY
I don’t tell you everything you know.
STEVEN flips through all the pages in the book.
STEVEN
Yes you do.
JONNY
I wish it was easy to hate her. Then I could stop thinking about it.
STEVEN
Isn’t saying ‘no’ enough for you to?
JONNY
It would have been. Except she said it as nicely as she possible could. She didn’t want to hurt me.
STEVEN
Evidently she failed.
JONNY
I guess. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
STEVEN
Not as good either.
JONNY
So now we have to be ‘friends’. And I just don’t know if I can do it. It’d just be embarrassing now that I’ve poured out my heart -
STEVEN
-brain-
JONNY
-to her.
Silence.
STEVEN
Look. Just think of it as a preemptive break up. And you’ve had plenty of them.
JONNY
Yeah but, look. This girl. I’ve always liked. Like throughout those.
STEVEN
‘Like’ is so insincere. Why don’t we ever use ‘love’?
JONNY
Because we’re teenagers. And because using the word ‘love‘ makes us sound like our parents.
STEVEN
Oh yeah. Also. I knew that.
JONNY
Knew what?
STEVEN
About you liking someone throughout the other ones.
JONNY
You did?
STEVEN
Well, I’d worked it out.
Silence.
STEVEN
Well, plenty of more fish in the sea and all that crap.
JONNY
Nah. I reckon we’ve all only got about five.
STEVEN: Five what?
JONNY: Fish.
STEVEN
That’s probably accurate.
Silence.
JONNY
Why are we here?
STEVEN sighs.
JONNY
No, like, why are we here?
JONNY lies down on the ground of the railway bridge, and feels a train rush under him.
STEVEN
Like… here?
STEVEN points to the ground, and then lies down on it too.
STEVEN
…well, it’s so we want to leave.
JONNY
You think?
STEVEN
Well, do you want to be here?
JONNY
No.
STEVEN
Neither do I.
JONNY
I wanna be in L.A. Writing cliched love songs.
STEVEN
Well that’s what we’re all waiting for. The music producer coming to spot us. To take us away and to make what we want to do when we grow up, what we will do when we grow up.
JONNY
In one way or another.
STEVEN
I think i’m about to say something clever, and overwhelmingly deep.
JONNY
Go ahead.
STEVEN
You see, We’re all waiting for a spaceship.
JONNY
That completely ruined the mood.
STEVEN
It did, didn’t it.
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