“Just on the stool is fine,” I said. I was trying my best not to check her out, even though I desperately wanted to. She was gorgeous—she had the looks of a top-ten model, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she was a model when she wasn’t in school. She took a seat on the stool, pointing her back straight. Her belly shirt rode up, almost to her sternum. She looked into my eyes and my heart fluttered. “We’ll just get a couple shots and then you can be on your way. Oh, I almost forgot. What’s your name?”
She smiled. “Kat,” she said with that delectably soft voice.
“Kat—What’s your last name, Kat?” I asked, with my notebook in my hand.
“Stevens,” she said with a grin.
“Your name is Kat Stevens? Isn’t that a musician?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so,” she said. And she still had that smirk on her face, as if she was trying not to laugh. She looked cute with that smirk.
“Okay, Kat. Just so you know, if your name is wrong here, I won’t be able to deliver your photos when your parents place an order.”
“That’s okay,” she said, still with that smirk.
“And that makes this kind of… pointless,” I said, forcing a smile.
“I’ll place my own order. Don’t worry. Now how do you want me to sit?” She straightened her back again, curving her spine in the most beautiful way. She crossed her legs, leaving her heeled foot dangling at the edge of my frame. She had her toes painted a teal colour.
“Just like that is fine. We can, uh, do a few different shots, if you want.” I felt colour rushing into my cheeks. I bit my tongue in an attempt to gather my composure. She was pretty—stunning even—but as far as I knew, she wasn’t a legal adult, and I wasn’t interested in having anything to do with a minor.
I snapped a shot, and then she changed her pose naturally, like a trained model. “Okay, good,” I said. I snapped another shot, and she changed her pose again. We ended up taking twenty different shots, including a couple of standing shots.
I looked through the pictures. She was a natural—beautiful in every single photo. “Great shot,” I said. “But I, uh, can’t send these to you. They don’t really look like school photos—your parents would get the wrong idea. But if you place an order, I’ll use that first shot we got. That one should be fine.” I forced a big smile. I could still feel my cheeks burning warmer. Why was I so flustered? Why was I so obsessed with this young woman? I bit down on my tongue again.
“Oh, my parents won’t see them. Like I said, they would be for me. I would order them separately, if that’s okay. Just one of each. Could I get a deal if I order one of each? Maybe 50$ for all of them? I don’t have much money.”
“Um, okay, sure. I guess we can do that. As long as your parents know these aren’t school photos—they aren’t meant for your yearbook or anything like that,” I said.
She laughed. She had a cute laugh that made my head spin. “You’re cute,” she said. “Don’t worry. They’re just for me. Thanks, sweetie.” She took off without saying anything else. While she was going, I caved to my desires and I took a look at her perfect bum as she walked out of my apartment. And then I noticed the open beer sitting on the counter and my heart trembled. I hoped she didn’t see it—it wasn’t the most professional sight in photography history.
I unloaded the pictures to my computer that night. It took almost an hour just to get all of the photos from my SD card onto my hard drive. There were so many photos, and I would have to process all of them. And what was I going to do when everyone ordered prints? Where could I go to get potentially thousands of prints made, seeing as I hadn’t even been paid yet? My heart stammered. I kept telling myself that I would figure it out once the orders were placed. I’d figured my shooting set up in just twelve hours—if I could do that, I could do anything. I was sure I could find a small printer willing to print on a deferral.
Before shutting my system down for the night, I found myself looking at the picture of the girl who called herself Kat Stevens. I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. I couldn’t believe how natural she was in front of the camera. And I couldn’t believe how enamoured I was with her.
CHAPTER V
The orders came back to me by courier on Monday evening. They were all packed into a medium-sized moving box. I didn’t know what to expect until I opened the box, and then I felt sick as soon as I looked inside. The box was over-flowing with paper. The orders really were being put through with my lazy recycled paper system. Some of the pages were crumpled; some were covered in student doodling. Some had notes from the parents: ‘My son wore his white shirt to picture day. Had I known the backdrop was going to be white, I would have sent him in his blue shirt. Please change the colour of his shirt before sending me my twenty-six prints. Thank you.’
I had a daunting task ahead of me, but I was determined to see the job through. The box was also filled with cash and cheques—so how could I say no?
I dragged the box over to my computer and I got started right away, picking up the first order and referencing it to my little notebook. It took me a few minutes to sift through the pictures to find the correct student. Then it took me another few minutes to make the photo look nice and proper, and then it took me another few minutes to export and correctly label the photo so I could find it again once I went to order prints. Then I put the order page to the side, starting a new pile. I looked at the clock and realized I’d just spent nearly twenty minutes on a single student and I had hundreds to get through.
I stayed up late that night, until 4:00 AM, and my finished pile was hardly half an inch tall—and I still had about six inches of orders left. I went to sleep and woke up early the next morning. I made a pot of coffee and I got right to work. I sat at my computer for sixteen hours, but I was only half done, so I did the same the next day. And it was midway through the next day when I came across an order from ‘Kat Stevens’. She wanted one of ‘every good photo’. There was a fifty-dollar bill attached to the order, as promised.
So I opened up her pictures, which I had in a separate folder, because I didn’t want them lumped in with the school pictures, in case someone from the school came around asking for the whole folder. I went through the photos and picked out my five favourites. I’d already done some minor colour correcting with the photos, and Kat’s skin was perfect—so there was no need to do any tweaks in Photoshop. I saved the photos, and then I found myself staring again at Kat. And that’s when I realized she looked familiar. There was something about her face—something I’d seen before. It was suddenly bugging me.
I started processing more student photos, but that nagging image of Kat remained in my mind. Why was she so familiar all of a sudden? Why didn’t she seem familiar before? Or was I just exhausted from sitting at a computer for multiple days in a row?
I didn’t finish the photos until noon the next day—about thirty-two hours before the prints were due at the school. I grabbed all of the money from the box, swung around the bank to get the money into my account, and then I started going from print house to print house with my hard drive. “You want how many prints by tomorrow morning?” just about every print shop asked me.
“Roughly twenty-two hundred,” I said. “Each file is labelled with how many prints I need.”
Of course I was turned down more times than I could count. But I eventually found a small shop that was willing to take the job. The owner’s eyes lit up when he saw the order. “I’ll have to charge you rush order pricing,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
It was almost two thousand dollars for the prints, but there was almost four thousand in the box, so I still came out with a profit. I walked that box of prints into the school the next morning, ten minutes before the bell rang and classes started. With a big smile on my face, I placed the box down on the administrator’s desk. “Here are all of the prints from picture day,” I said. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was the school’s hero—and I was officially a
professional photographer. I deserved that smile that was stuck on my face, and I deserved all of that money that was now in my bank account. I was already starting to think of where else I could post an ad, so I could get more work. Maybe I could go from school to school, advertising my picture day services. Maybe I could use some of my new money to invest in a proper backdrop—maybe the classic cloudy sky backdrop that schools seem to love.
But my picture day job wasn’t technically over yet. I still had a small bundle of photos left to deliver: the photos of Kat Stevens. I decided not to leave them with the rest, in case one of the teachers decided to look inside the manila envelopes. But I had no idea where to deliver them. I didn’t even know Kat’s real name.
So I slipped the one appropriate picture day photo of Kat out from my folder and I asked the school administrator, “Do you know who this student is?”
She stared at me with narrowed eyes, only looking at the photo very briefly. “Why?” she asked accusingly.
“She asked for her pictures to be delivered to her home, but she didn’t give me an address,” I said.
The administrator continued to stare me down. I wondered if she thought I was a predator or a paedophile. She slowly looked down at the photo. “I’m not allowed to give out the students’ addresses. But even if I was allowed, I wouldn’t be able to because I have no idea who that is. She does look familiar though. Why don’t you leave the photos here with the rest and we’ll see to getting them sorted.”
“Um, no, that’s okay,” I said. I found myself taking a step back. “I’ll, uh, hold onto them for now. But if you hear anything about a student missing some photos, be sure to let me know.”
I found myself rushing out of the school, as if I’d been caught—though I knew that I hadn’t been caught. And even if I had been caught, I had nothing to hide. It’s not like the photos were illegal. Kat wasn’t naked in the shots, though she did look as sexy as hell. I brought the photos home and I tried to think of a way to track Kat down, so I could deliver the photos to her home address.
I spent most of that day, trying to look Kat up on Facebook. Like a total weirdo, I found myself searching her classmates and finding students with profiles that weren’t hidden with privacy features. I went into their friend lists and searched through thousands of profiles, hoping to find Kat. I thought that if I could find her profile, then I could message her to let her know that her photos were ready. I could ask for an address. But I couldn’t find any profile that looked like her. I was scrolling through another student’s friend list when my buzzer rang, making me jump. It took a moment to bring myself up to my feet. “Hello?” I said into the two-way system.
“Hey, it’s me,” a feminine voice said. The speaker was tinny and crackly, but I knew I was speaking to Kat.
“Oh, uh, hey. I’ve got your pictures here. I’ll bring them down,” I said.
“Mind if I come up?” she said.
My heart bounced and bobbed. I knew the correct answer was ‘no’, but under the stress of the moment, I blurted out, “Sure, come on up,” and I pressed the button to unlock the front door.
CHAPTER VI
I buzzed through my apartment, cleaning up as much as I could in the tiny amount of time that I had. My counter was covered in dishes and my desk was covered in boxes of takeout. I hadn’t had time to clean over the past week, trying to get all of the prints ready for order. I opened all of my windows—I couldn’t smell anything off, but that didn’t mean that my apartment didn’t smell off. It couldn’t have possibly smelled very good, seeing as I’d been sitting in front of a computer screen for five consecutive days.
There was a knock at my door. I looked around, still dissatisfied with how my apartment looked. My living room was still barren, everything still stuffed into my bedroom. I hadn’t had a chance to get everything back to normal after I moved it all for picture day. “One sec,” I said. I wanted to light a candle and I wanted to spray some Febreeze, but I had no time. I knew I needed to answer the door—so I did.
And there stood Kat, in a cute floral sundress and glossy white heels. Her long blonde hair was down, some strands were straight and some were wavy. Her big eyes were shining and burning into my better sensibilities. “Hey,” I said with an awkward smile.
“Hi there,” she said with an adorable smile that made my heart hurt. I tried to mentally remind myself that she was possibly only seventeen. I cleared my throat and I corrected my posture.
“I, uh, have your pictures,” I said. “I’ll grab them.”
“Mind if I come in for a second?” she asked. But she didn’t wait for an answer. She simply let herself into my apartment. She looked around, still with that smile on her face. I hurried to the kitchen and grabbed that folder of photos. I passed it to her. “Here you are,” I said. I just wanted her gone as quickly as possible. I didn’t want her to stay long enough to smell the musk in my apartment that I couldn’t smell.
But instead of leaving, she started opening the envelope. She quickly pulled out the photos and then I watched as her face lit up. “Oh my God,” she said. “These photos are amazing.” She slowly flipped through all of them, her eyes glowing at the sight of each. “I look so… pretty.”
“Well you are very pretty, so it wasn’t hard,” I said, and then I immediately regretted saying it. She was just a kid—at least she was possibly a kid. There was a good chance that she was an adult, though. There was a good chance that I had nothing to worry about… But there was also a good chance that I was flirting with some serious danger. “I guess that’s that then,” I said. “You’d better be getting home.”
“Wait,” she said. “Did you have to Photoshop these pictures at all?”
“What do you mean? No—not at all.”
“So this is really how I look?” she asked. She seemed flabbergasted, as if she’d never seen a picture of herself before.
“That’s you—that’s the girl I’m looking at,” I said.
“Let’s do it,” she said. My heart started pounding and fluttering around in my chest, swirling down into my gut. My legs began to tremble and my knees nearly buckled.
“Excuse me?” I said, my voice suddenly cracking.
“I said let’s do it—let’s do another photo shoot.”
“I—uh—I don’t think that’s a great idea, Kat,” I said. “But I’m glad you like the photos. It’s always nice to see a satisfied customer.”
“I’ll pay you. I don’t have much—I get my allowance tomorrow. Fifty dollars and we’ll do another shoot. I know that’s probably not a lot to you, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Kat—you’re just a kid, and I don’t think it would be appropriate,” I said.
“I’m eighteen,” she said. And I’d never found so much relief in two words before. I tried not to exhale a relieved breath of air in front of her.
“Well, I still don’t think it’s right. You’re still in high-school,” I said. My heart was still fluttering about inside of my gut. I bit down on the edge of my tongue and I tried my best to maintain my composure.
“I promise it would be fun,” she said. And then my heart skipped a beat. How could she promise such a thing? What was she insinuating?
“I’m sure it would be fun, it’s just… I don’t know.”
“Great. Tomorrow—I’ll be here in the morning with my makeup done. I’ll bring a few different outfits. I was thinking we could shoot downtown—there’s a really cool alleyway with lots of colourful graffiti. We can get some cool urban shots.” Her excitement was childish, making me wonder if she was telling the truth about her age. I was tempted to ask for ID, but I didn’t know how to do so comfortably. All I could do was smile and nod and hope that my legs didn’t give out while she was looking.
“Okay,” I heard myself say.
“Thanks, John!” She looked at her photos again while she slowly turned and headed towards my building elevator.
My heart was still stuttering, and I was still trying to think of a
way out of the photo shoot—but it was fifty bucks, and fifty dollars goes a long way when you’re nearly broke. Even with my big payout from the school, I still wasn’t rich. I still had bills to pay and equipment to buy (if I was going to get more gigs).
So I went inside and I got my camera and LED light batteries charging. I prepped my camera bag with a few lenses that I figured would be best for the shoot, and then I found myself cleaning everything, worried Kat was going to show up again and see my dirty apartment.
CHAPTER VII
It was 7:30 AM and the sun wasn’t even up yet when my buzzer rang. I was awake, so I wasn’t taken off guard, though I was surprised that an eighteen year old was up so early. And she had her makeup and hair all done up, which meant she’d probably been awake at 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning. But she was excited, and it’s hard to sleep when you’re excited—I know because I was awake at 5:00 AM, making sure my batteries were properly charged and all of the correct equipment was packed into my camera bag.
As soon as I opened the door for Kat, she asked, “How do I look?” She did a little spin, making her dress lift up into the air. She looked phenomenal. She was wearing a little black dress with the tiniest little skirt. She had black stockings up her perfect legs, and a black choker necklace around her throat. “I have a few other outfits,” she said, motioning to the bag in her hand, “if you think this one is too Goth.”
“I think you look great,” I said. The outfit was a bit Gothic, but it was undeniably sexy. A part of me was excited to be seen out on the street with Kat, looking so sexy. Maybe people would think that we were an item—that I was dating a beautiful younger woman. But I was also terrified to be seen out with her, worried people would think that she was too young to be getting sexy photos taken. I still only had her word to go on.
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