And then, in the middle of all my dithering, a cab pulled up and out stepped Naomi Fine wearing a baseball cap and an open zip-front hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a jumper under the hoodie, and maybe that was or wasn’t a baby bump, but her breasts looked large and full, and something about her face shouted “Flush of motherhood!”
Knowing instinctively I’d have to make it a profile shot because there wasn’t enough baby bump to see from the front, I took out my camera and started to shoot. I could tell this was something Naomi Fine could not have expected, because she was wearing that hat and plain clothes. After all, she was supposed to be on location in Toronto, and there should have been no way a stranger would have recognized her, right? She actually stopped on the sidewalk and gave me an absolutely classic look of utter astonishment.
And there it was—the money shot.
Less than a minute later I was in a cab headed to Carla’s office because this shot was big, Big, BIG! and I was totally freaked that something terrible might happen before I could get the photo to her—like the camera might unexpectedly die or an earthquake might hit New York, or the entire solar system might be swallowed by a black hole—but none of those things happened, and Carla was waiting outside her office for me with an umbrella because I’d called ahead and told her what I had.
Carla was more ageless than old. My best guess was that she was between sixty-five and seventy-five, but you’d never know it from the way she acted. She was short and plump and had enough energy to keep a small city lit for months. As soon as I got out of the cab we raced up to her office like two giddy kids who’d just gotten their hands on a big bag of candy, and I watched over her shoulder, my nostrils filled with the mixed scents of Chanel No5 and stale cigarettes, while she transferred the shots onto her Mac Pro. I felt instantly and totally relieved, because now even an earthquake couldn’t stop us, and Carla scrolled down to the money shot and let out a scream and jumped up and hugged me and we both danced around the office like crazy people.
And then she was on the phone to the top editors because this shot was so hot she didn’t even dare put it in lo res on her private website.
And the bidding began.
By the time I left her office two hours later, we’d sold my first cover shot to People magazine.
And my first year of college was probably paid for.
Although, honestly, I was seriously wondering, why bother with college?
It was dinnertime when I sailed into the kitchen. Mom was on the phone, still wearing her work clothes. I waved my hands excitedly, gesturing for her to get off so I could tell her the news. The expression on her face was icy. “She just walked in,” she said into the receiver. “I’ll speak to her. Thank you.”
“Mom,” I began to say, “you won’t believe—”
“That was Mrs. Krohn, the school secretary,” Mom sharply cut me off. “Where were you today?”
“Well, uh, I was at school for a second,” I said. “But I had to leave.”
Mom cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, silently demanding an explanation. I was happy to provide it. “Because I got some information about Naomi Fine? The actress? The whole world wants to know if she’s pregnant and I—”
“You cut school to go take pictures?” Mom asked, emphasizing the incredulity in her voice so I’d know how PO’d she was.
“Yes, but—”
Mom shook her head, as if she wasn’t interested in my explanations. “What do I have to do?” She tilted her face upward and raised her hands in exasperation as if pleading with a higher being. “Tell me, Jamie. What do I have to do? Do I have to take away the camera? Ground you? I’m tired of this stupid game you’re playing. You’re not a paparazzo. You’re a young woman who happened to get lucky once. And then that stupid magazine decided to make a spectacle of you because you’re so young. And now you’re living in this fantasy world where you actually think you’re a professional. It’s as if you’re still playing with dolls, Jamie. You’re not a photographer. You’re just a little girl with a camera. Can’t you understand the difference?”
The kitchen went silent. I knew I could have gotten mad. I could have yelled back. But in a strange way, I understood where she was coming from, and I wasn’t mad. Everything she said was true. It was strange and unreal. I was just a kid with a camera. That’s exactly what I felt like. And yet . . .
I took out my cell phone, dialed Carla’s number, and held it out toward my mother.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked with a frown.
“I want you to speak to Carla.”
Mom stared at the phone and shook her head. “I have nothing to say to that woman. She should be ashamed of herself. All she’s doing is perpetuating this fantasy.”
I was still holding the phone, but I had not yet pressed send. “You don’t want to know how much money I made today? You don’t want to hear that I just sold a cover to People?”
My mother’s forehead furrowed as she looked at me uncertainly. I guess she was realizing that either I was telling the truth or had gone really, truly, certifiably insane. Finally she said, “Are you serious?”
I nodded at the phone. “Ask Carla.”
Mom shook her head and sat down wearily at the kitchen table. “I don’t want to talk to that woman. I’m tired of playing games. Put the phone away and tell me what happened.”
I sat down and told her how I had staked out Dr. Emily Clarkson’s office until Naomi Fine arrived.
“How did you know she’d show up?” Mom asked.
“She’s in the middle of a movie shoot in Toronto,” I said. “It costs hundreds of thousands a day to shoot a movie. They don’t give stars days off, so if Naomi came to New York to see her doctor it meant it must have been a really pressing issue. She took a private jet. It made sense that if she was pregnant, she’d have to get to the doctor fast and then fly back.”
Mom stared at me in wonder.
“Mom, it’s not rocket surgery. It’s obvious. Everybody assumed that she was pregnant. It’s just that I was the only one who figured out who her doctor was.”
Then I told her how much money People had agreed to pay for the shot. Mom’s jaw dropped. She looked as if she’d lost her breath. Even though she thought the celebrity magazines and TV shows and tabloids and websites and the whole American obsession with celebrity in general were completely loony, she understood how big this was.
“And you know what’s really whacked, Mom?” I said. “You’re completely right. I am just a girl with a camera. And I am living in a fantasy world. But the crazy thing is, so is everyone else.”
That night I lay awake in bed, way too excited to sleep, my thoughts racing. I was about to win the equivalent of Olympic Gold for paparazzi—a People cover! It was amazing and unreal, and I both knew and didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it. I didn’t blame my mother for having doubted me. Looking back, it was incredibly lucky that I went to the same school as Ethan Taylor, whose mother was Naomi Fine’s eye doctor. (And yes, he sure did get his one hundred dollars.) But I also believe that luck doesn’t just happen. You have to create opportunities for it. I didn’t have to get my camera ready when I sensed something might happen with Tatiana Frazee in Cafazine. I didn’t have to track Ethan down. I didn’t have to gamble on ditching a day of school to hang around outside Dr. Clarkson’s office. And the other thing is, no one wants to hear about all the times I stood around on stakeouts for hours but got nothing for my efforts except sore feet and a head cold. That’s where persistence eventually pays off. If you keep trying and trying, sooner or later you’ll probably get lucky. Like the Lottery ad says, “You’ve got to be in it to win it.”
That Saturday Nasim’s parents went to the opera, and he made me a traditional Persian dinner of naan, yogurt, lamb, and vegetable kebabs with rice. We ate by candlelight in the Pahlavis’ formal dining room, an ancient tapestry of a princess and a unicorn hanging on the wall beside us.
We talked about sch
ool and friends, but it wasn’t long before the subject turned to my forthcoming People cover. The truth was, it was difficult for me to think about anything else.
“How do you do it?” he asked.
“I told you,” I said. “I just stood there and waited, hoping she’d show up.”
“No, what I meant was, how do you know when to take the picture? How do you know whether it’s a good picture or not?”
“I don’t always know,” I said. “That’s why I shoot rapid-fire.”
“I remember when we first met, before you were shooting celebrities, you would take a long time to set up just one photo.”
Was it my imagination, or did I detect something subtly critical in his words? Was he implying that the photos I used to take were more artistic and therefore somehow better? “I’m not doing that kind of photography these days.”
He nodded, took a sip of water, then dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin. We’d finished dinner.
“Does it bother you that I don’t take the kind of photos I used to take?” I asked a little bit later while he rinsed the dishes in the kitchen and loaded them into the dishwasher.
“No,” he said. “But must it be one or the other? Can’t you do a little of both?”
“I guess I could, but that’s not what I want to do right now.”
Nasim dried his hands with a dishtowel. “Want to watch the movie?”
“Okay.” I’d brought over Persepolis, the animated movie about a rebellious girl growing up in Iran. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Nasim disapproved of the pictures I was taking. But I didn’t want to spoil the mood and decided to drop it.
We went into the living room and sat on the couch. Nasim’s arm was over my shoulder and I nestled my head against his neck. I thought he’d pick up the remote and start the movie, but instead he brushed some hair away from my face, leaned over, and kissed me. “I’m proud of what you do.”
“You sure?” I asked uncertainly.
“Yes.”
“Well then, thank you,” I said, and kissed him back.
It started to look like we might not get around to watching the movie. I tried to forget our discussion about my photography and lose myself in the moment, but I didn’t succeed completely. Then the alarm on my cell phone chimed. I gradually eased out of Nasim’s embrace and turned it off. “I can’t believe it’s time already,” I mumbled, straightening my clothes.
“Sorry?” Nasim’s brow furrowed.
“Shelby’s party.”
His dark eyebrows dipped. I could tell that he’d forgotten about the party and had other ideas about how to spend the next few hours. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I just had to go to that party. “You know how much this means to me.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and stood up. Nasim still hadn’t moved from the couch, so I grabbed his hand and gave him a tug. “Come on, we’ll have fun.”
I knew Nasim wasn’t happy about going to the party, and on the way over I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t like I was choosing the party over him. It was just a matter of timing. He said he understood, but once again I got that feeling that deep down he wasn’t allowing me to see his true feelings. It was frustrating, but I’d learned from experience that there was nothing I could do about it.
It turned out that the party wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped. Shelby’s little get-together turned out to be a catered affair for 120 people in a rented loft in Soho. Most of the kids weren’t from Herrin, and Shelby was so busy introducing me to everyone as “the one from the New York Weekly article,” that we never actually got a chance to speak.
Each time she mentioned the article, I had to bite my lip to keep myself from telling her about the People cover, but I was terrified that would jinx the whole thing. Nasim, who’d been a little grumpy ever since we’d left his place, tagged along for a while but finally wandered away after he’d heard me answer the same questions for the tenth time. At one point I saw him talking to Shelby and felt jealous that he was getting more face time with her than I was.
My mother and Nasim were the only ones who knew about the People cover, and I made them swear not to tell a soul. I didn’t even tell Avy or my father. I was convinced that the more people who knew, the greater the chance that the whole thing would be jinxed—that an even bigger story would break and the editors at People would pick a different cover photo, or that Naomi would get a restraining order to stop the magazine from publishing my shot.
After all, it really was too good to be true, wasn’t it? First the Tatiana Frazee shots, then the New York Weekly story, and now the People cover? That was way too much good fortune. Something had to go wrong, didn’t it?
But nothing did. Five days later People hit the newsstands with my photo of the pregnant Naomi Fine. By third period, copies of the magazine were flying around school, along with the whispers and the stares.
“This is ab-so-lutely amazing!” Avy gushed at lunch, a copy of People lying on the table before us. “Now you’re going to be even more famous!”
I wondered if he was right, and what exactly “more famous” would mean. But maybe it wouldn’t happen. “Not really,” I said. “Unless you know where to look and have a magnifying glass, most people aren’t going to notice my photo credit.”
“But you got paid a ton, right?” Avy said.
I nodded.
“And it is good for your reputation,” added the ever insightful Nasim with a tinge of irony in his voice.
“True, all that,” I said, and glanced toward the table where Shelby Winston was sitting with her friends. Shelby gazed back at me with a smile and lifted a copy of the magazine. She pointed at the cover, made an OMG! face, and winked.
My star was definitely on the rise.
NEW YORK PRESS
Baby Pap Scoops the Pros Again!
Jamie Gordon, the “baby paparazzo” has done it again! The fifteen-year-old prodigy photographer, featured three weeks ago in a New York Weekly magazine profile, has nailed the cover of People with a shot confirming that actress Naomi Fine is pregnant. Photo editors and fellow photographers are agog.
“First the Tatiana Frazee child-abuse shots,” quipped one editor. “Now the Naomi Fine baby bump. It’s amazing. Either this kid is the luckiest thing ever, or she really knows what she’s doing.”
“It would be a remarkable accomplishment for any paparazzo,” agreed another. “But for a kid that age, it’s mind-boggling.”
Some of Jamie’s fellow photographers are understandably jealous. “I’m not impressed,” said one. “Some people are saying that the first time might have been luck, but the second means she’s for real. But lots of people get lucky twice. They even hit the Lottery twice. Let’s see how long it takes for her to scoop everyone again.”
The newspaper article featured a side-by-side display of the People cover and a photo of me taken by that paparazzo, Lynn, outside Naomi Fine’s building the day Marco the hairdresser freaked out. And, just as Avy had predicted, that was only the beginning. The story was picked up by national TV and dozens of other news outlets. Suddenly I knew what “more famous” meant. I was interviewed and photographed, TV news teams followed me from school to my stakeouts with other photogs. At one stakeout outside a restaurant, Seth Rogen made a joke out of coming up to me and asking for my autograph!
Dad and I flew to LA for the Tonight Show. Even though I barely slept on the red-eye coming home, I went straight to Herrin from the airport the next morning, running on adrenaline and doing my best not to miss more school and tick my mother off. And, of course, looking forward to basking in everyone’s admiration.
After all, there I was on TV, the Web, the supermarket news racks. For the moment I was not just the most well-known high school student in New York.
I was, quite possibly, one of the best-known high school students in the country.
If not the world.
After school I trudged home, pulling my roller su
itcase stuffed with outfits I’d brought for the Tonight Show. I was toast, completely exhausted after catching at most only two or three hours of sleep on the plane the night before. I left the suitcase in the front hall and went into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at a mug of tea cupped in her hands, looking haggard and pale. I knew at once that something was wrong.
“What happened?” I asked.
She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Alex had a seizure. Elena was taking him for a walk. Luckily they weren’t far from St. Vincent’s.”
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“Yes, thank God. It wasn’t a bad one. We just got home half an hour ago. He’s in his room, resting. But it was terrible. I was so scared when I got that call. I had to cancel all my afternoon appointments and rush down there. My patients know about Alex, and they say they understand when I have to cancel at the last minute. But not everyone reschedules. Each time something like this happens, I lose patients. . . . Sometimes”—her voice cracked—“I just don’t know if I can handle it.”
She placed a hand over her eyes and began to weep. Her shoulders trembled, and she looked old and drawn. She wasn’t just crying because she was tired and scared; she was crying because it was so unfair.
“Can’t Dad help?” I asked. “Couldn’t Alex stay with him more?”
“It’s not practical.” Mom pulled the tears from the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “Alex needs so much medical equipment. The insurance company won’t pay for duplicates just because we’re divorced. And anyway, I’m always worried something will happen when he’s at your father’s place.”
“Even though you know what you know?” I asked.
Mom raised her head, wiped her reddened eyes with the back of her hand, and scowled at me. The tic around her left eye came back. It took her a moment to understand what I’d meant. Nearly everyone with muscular dystrophy dies by the time they reach twenty-five. “Don’t say that. Medicine is constantly making advances.”
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