Me: BEN IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND!!!!
Me: I don’t have a boyfriend!
Me: Can we talk?
When I get back Ben’s just leaving the Sbarro a few steps from our table. He sets down a tray of Diet Pepsis and pizza slices. I reach for the Canon Rebel on the table and he says, “That’s mine, babe.” He’s right—there’s no dent on the case. “And listen, no more pictures right now. Eat up. I’ve got to get going.” But I haven’t even gotten my foam board yet.
The pizza tastes like the cardboard box in my mouth. I wipe my hands on a napkin and stand up. He hands me my camera and bag, and I distractedly sling them over my body. “I’m going to take the bus home—I still have to get my foam board.”
Ben shrugs, and then I go for it. “Listen, Ben, we need to talk.” My heart pounds. I’ve never done this before. “I don’t think this is going to work between us. I really like you, but I just don’t think I like you in that way.”
Ben keeps his eyes on the pizza. “Because of that dude?”
“Yes. No. It’s complicated.”
“Huh. Well that sucks. But . . . all right.” He doesn’t actually seem that heartbroken. “See you at Vantage Point?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I? Mrs. Edmonson wants everyone in photo club to meet at the school. To look at our contest entries.”
“Sure,” he says. “Right. See you tomorrow.”
• • •
The house is quiet when I get home. I head straight upstairs to my room. I plug my camera into my computer, and check my phone again as the pictures download. Still nothing. Once the pictures have finished downloading I pull them up one at a time.
My heart pounds. Something’s off. The pictures are different. They’re shots of kids at school, shots of football practice, shots of some SUV. Ben’s SUV. I pull the cord from the camera and look at the pics through the screen. Same pics. I turn the camera over in my hands. My hands are shaking. The dent. There’s no dent.
This isn’t my camera.
My hands can’t text fast enough.
Me: I have your camera. Where r u? Can u drop it off?
Ben: Really? Weird. At a party. Camera’s in my car. I’ll drop off tomorrow?
Me: I really need it tonight—I want to finish my VP entry!!!
No response.
I squint at the screen. Wait, what?
My Vantage Point folder is gone.
Hands shaking, I call Mom.
“Were you on my computer?” I ask, panicked.
“Of course not. What’s wrong?”
“My Vantage Point folder is gone. Trash is empty. Someone’s been on my computer.”
“Breathe, Pippa,” she says, then gasps.
“What?”
“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but when Ben was over, he asked if he could get a photo from your computer—one of the two of you he said you took awhile back. He wanted to get it printed and framed as a gift for you.”
I feel sick.
“I’m so sorry, Pip. He wanted it to be a surprise and I thought it was so sweet of him. Do you think he deleted your photos by mistake?”
He didn’t delete them by mistake. He did it on purpose. Talk about keeping your enemies closer.
• • •
Hours later I’m in bed, tossing and turning, when my phone buzzes. I grab it from under my pillow, praying it’s Ben.
Dace: Hekp.
Me: ???
Dace. Help! Can u come get me?
Me: Where r u?
Dace: Cole’s. Crazy party. 47 Oakwood. Or Maplewood? A street with a tree name.
Dace: Please get me? Drunk. PS Sorry.
Me: Be there in 5.
My hoodie’s by the bedside table and I pull it over the clothes I fell asleep in. The bedroom door makes its usual creak, but Mom’s still snoring as I pass her room.
I tiptoe down the stairs and out the back door, then make my way around to the front, pop the car in neutral and back it out of the driveway. It’s in a case like this that I’m glad we don’t have a garage. There’s no way I could escape undetected if I had to open a garage door.
For a split second I feel a pang of guilt over Mom’s rule about driving without a licensed driver, which is, in a nutshell, don’t, since it’s illegal. But then I make my own rule.
PIPPA’S RULES FOR BREAKING MOM’S RULES ABOUT DRIVING
When your best friend drunk texts that she needs rescuing even when you’re technically in a fight, drive the car.
When I get to Cole’s house, bass is pumping out the windows. The street is lined with cars, but there’s a spot at the far end of the street. Once I’m inside, the smoke in the house requires actual effort to penetrate. People are everywhere—dancing, making out, passed out. How will I find Dace?
Me: I’m here. Where r u?
Dace: Upstairs. Bathroom.
Strange kids crowd the staircase in a line that leads all the way to bathroom. At least, it does in those ’80s movies.
“Hey, there’s a line,” a guy hollers as I push past him on the stairs.
“Yeah, well, I’m cutting it,” I grumble, totally focused. “Dace?” I pound on the door.
It opens a crack and a hand grabs mine and pulls me inside.
Dace is a mess. Her eyeshadow is smudged and her mascara runs down her cheeks. Her eyes are bloodshot. She smells like she’s been bathing in rum.
“They were all doing coke and they wanted me to do it and . . .”
Whoa. I pull her into me. “Did you?”
She shakes her head. “That’s why I’m hiding in the bathroom.”
She wants to escape out the bathroom window but it’s like a 40-foot drop to the grass below. I grab her hand and pull open the bathroom door.
“Ooh, lezzers in the bathroom!” Some guy shouts then makes kissy noises at us. I stifle the impulse to kick him in the balls. It would be too good a fate for him. Instead I pull Dace toward, and then through, the front door.
“My head . . .” Dace moans.
• • •
Dace promises to be quiet as I open the door to the house, and somehow we manage to get upstairs without waking Mom. I go to the bathroom and get the bottle of Advil.
She is spread out across my bed. I push her over to one side and pull the covers over her, then climb in beside her.
“I love you, Pip.”
“I love you too, Dace. I’m sorry.”
“Me too. So dumb. Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Why were you there? I thought you were done with Cole.”
“I don’t know. I hate the fact that he hooked up with some other girl at my party. I wanted to get back at him. Asher broke up with me or whatever, not like we were together, but anyway. So, I don’t know, I had this idea I’d make out with Cole’s best friend at the party. Get back at him.”
“Who? Zach Gellerman? You’re so competitive.” I hug her. “So did you?”
“Oh who knows? I definitely made out with some guy, but I don’t think he even knew Cole. Not that Cole even noticed. Not my proudest moment, that’s for sure.”
“Oh Dace . . .”
“You know who else was there, sucking face?”
“Who?”
“Ben.”
“Really? Shit. I need to get my camera back from him. I’m 99% sure he swapped it on purpose. And deleted all my photos for Vantage Point from my computer.”
Dace sits up, eyes wide. “What? Are you kidding?” Then she gasps. “Wait—what if he stole my mom’s iPad too?”
I think back to the night at Dace’s party—and the way, contrary to what I told Dace before, I left Ben alone while I went to the bathroom. Shit. Bathroom breaks, apparently, are my downfall. Could Ben be the thief of Spalding High?
I groan. “He had the chance to grab
your mom’s iPad. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Dace says, and she scrambles out of my bed. “We just need a clothes hanger.”
• • •
“Cut the engine and turn off the lights,” Dace says as we turn onto Oakwood. “Let’s coast the rest of the way.”
My hands grip the steering wheel, devoid of feeling. “The street’s uphill. I’ll just park here.”
“Pippa! We’re, like, five houses away. How are we going to make a quick getaway?”
“We’ll run,” I say, shutting off the engine and opening the door.
We find the SUV parked across the street from Cole’s house—how’d I ever miss it the first time? “Just act normal,” I hiss, walking around the front bumper and over to the curb. Turns out that advice was futile. Dace is on all fours, the coat hanger she brought, now stuffed up the back of her hot pink shirt. She nods, motioning for me to join her as she crawls on the grass. She’s swaying. Still drunk. Why did I—in my perfectly sober state—let her talk me into this? I pull her to her feet and hold her up as we creep past the cars.
We’re steps away from the SUV when Dace breaks free. “All rigggggggght!” she roars like she’s a UFC announcer. “Let’s bust this guy!”
“Dace—geezus!”
I pull her down to the grass, behind the SUV, so we’re out of sight of anyone inside Cole’s house. Dace pulls the coat hanger from under her shirt and unwinds the top, then hands it to me. “You’re on, Pippa.”
The wire ends in a hook. It looks a bit like the question mark floating above my head. The SUV’s front window seems impenetrable. “Dace—I don’t have a clue how to do this.”
Dace throws her hands in the air. “This is your moment, Pippa. Your chance for revenge. Your opportunity to get back what’s rightfully yours. Also, I’m gonna throw up.” She puts her head on the grass, moaning. Her long blonde hair spills over her shoulders.
“Oh crap.” I lean over and rub her back. “C’mon, I’ll take you home.”
Dace lifts her head. “No way. We’re not leaving. You slide the hanger between the window and the door and wiggle it around—there’s a switch that it has to catch on—or something. It totally worked this one time for Veronica Mars.”
My bitten fingernails aren’t able to pry the rubber weather sealing away from the SUV’s glass window. “Dace, can you do this? Dace? Where are you?”
Smash!
The tinkling of pebbles—glass, actually—spilling against concrete. Oh, there’s Dace—standing at the back of the SUV beside a boulder-sized hole in the back window.
My scream’s drowned out by the wail of an alarm. The SUV’s lights flash. “Run!” Dace yells, sprinting back toward my Honda. But my memory card. The hole the rock made is just big enough. My cheeks press up against the sharp edge of the tinted safety glass. The streetlight shines through the hole and I can see what the tinted glass hid moments ago: a rear compartment full of electronics. There’s an iPad, a couple of iPods and then, by the rear wall of the back seat, the Canon Rebel camera that’s the object of this misbegotten quest.
Then comes the blare of a second alarm. It’s not coming from the car, but from behind me—and it’s getting louder. A glance around the SUV’s side, and I can see the lights of oncoming police cars.
There’s the old familiar feeling. The creeping black around the edge of my vision. The world tilts—and I clutch at something, anything to stay vertical.
No. No. No. Not now.
Hey, panic attack? You listening? Now’s just not a good time. Anytime but now.
It’s the rear windshield wiper—that’s what I’m grabbing. OK. My arm fits through the hole in the window but my hand gropes only air. The vehicle dips when I step onto the rear bumper. I push my arm in up to the shoulder—there, the camera strap. The lens knocks out a new section of window on its way out just as two cop cars pull up in front of Cole’s house. Noise complaint—that’s why they must be here, but they’ll register which vehicle the alarm’s coming from soon enough. I have seconds, really. Just enough time to grab one more thing before I duck down and scurry back to Mom’s Honda.
Dace is huddled down in the passenger seat of the Honda when I get in.
“Did you get it?”
I hand her my camera, and then the second thing—the iPad that was alongside it. “It’s Vivs’s color,” Dace says, flipping open the magnetic pink cover and turning it on. The car starts on the first twist of the ignition and I pull the Honda out of the tight space, narrowly missing the back bumper of the car in front of us. “That’s what I like to see,” Dace says, showing me the picture of Vivs and Fred on the tablet’s home screen. “It’s hers. You saved the day, Pippa.” We’re around the corner when Dace sticks her head out the half-opened window.
“Busted, asshole!” she shouts into the night.
Under the circumstances—and that we’re out of sight from the cops—I let the swearing-ban violation slide.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 28 HOURS UNTIL VANTAGE POINT
Dace’s groaning wakes me up the next morning. “My head . . .” she moans, and for a moment I forget about last night. Then I remember everything.
“Adviiiiiiilllll.” I get her a glass of water from the bathroom. Thankfully Mom got up early to work the 7 a.m. shift and she obviously didn’t even realize Dace was here.
Dace moans some more. “Ohhhhh . . .” she says as I climb back in bed.
“Hey, we didn’t talk about the fashion show,” I say.
More groaning.
“You got my text.”
She nods, running her fingers through the ends of her hair.
“Why’d you sneak away without talking to me?”
She looks at me in disbelief. “That’s what you care about? Not that you saw me in a mall fashion show?”
“Of course that was a surprise, but all I care about is our friendship.”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I was so embarrassed that you saw me and that I lied to you . . .”
“What’s going on?” It’s so unlike Dace to be like this. She’s usually the strong, confident one.
“Come on,” she moans. “I went on and on about how I wasn’t doing mall shows anymore because they’re the death of any real modeling career and how I’m better than that and I get the new agent and then you catch me in my lie?”
“But I don’t get it . . .”
She’s staring at the comforter. “I can’t do anything more than mall shows. That’s what the new agent says, just like the old agent said. It’s my destiny. Mall model forever . . .” Tears start down her face and she sniffs, still staring at the comforter. Then she starts to cry. Really cry. I’ve never seen her like this. Tears uncontrollable, face blotchy, black eye makeup smearing down her cheeks. Her nose running and her breath catching. But I get it. Modeling is her life. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone told me I wasn’t talented enough to go to Tisch. But I also don’t believe that Dace’s career is over. She is talented. Surely those two agents don’t know everything there is to know. I reach over to hug her. I pull her into me and she buries her head in my chest. I smooth her hair, the way Mom does to me.
“That’s not true,” I reassure her.
“But it is.” Her voice is muffled in my tank top. “I’m over the hill. And there’s nothing else I want to do. I’m going to have to face reality. Live the American Dream and work at the dollar store.”
“Just so you know, I’m pretty sure you will never have to work at the dollar store—unless you get hired by a mag for some ironic haute couture shoot in one.”
“You don’t get it. You’re legitimately good at what you love to do. You’re going to be a photographer, just like you’ve always wanted. But I don’t have a backup plan.”
“Listen to me,” I say, handing her a wad of Kleenex. “You don’t need a backup plan. You�
��re not going to be a model. You are a model. We just need a better plan. And we’re going to figure it out.”
“We are?”
I nod. “And I already know what we’re going to do.”
“What?” Dace rubs her mascara-smudged eyes.
“I’m going to win that competition—somehow—and get into the Tisch camp. And you’re going to come with me and find yourself an agent in New York. One who gets you real go-sees for real jobs. Deal?”
She nods. “Oh, one other thing I should probably mention.”
“What? Last night while you were drunk you binged on entire Fudgee-O’s rather than tossing the wafers?” I say, pointing to the near-empty bag on the floor. “It’s OK. You’re allowed.”
She shakes her head. “I still have my V-card.”
“What?”
“I lied. I don’t know why. Asher and I didn’t do it. I mean, he wanted to and I sort of wanted to but then he passed out. And when you told me about Cole and how he was fooling around with some random chick—and I actually liked him better than Asher. What an ass. I don’t know why I lied. I just felt stupid. And I wanted Cole to hear the Asher rumor somehow, to make him think I didn’t care about him—even though I did.”
“But why did you lie to me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it really even had anything to do with you. I was just feeling like such a failure about everything and I didn’t want to tell you how badly modeling was going because I felt like we had this plan for our lives and I was letting you down. I thought that you’d make it big and you wouldn’t need me anymore.”
I shake my head. “I’ll always need you—whether we’re super famous or both working at the dollar store.”
“Could you even imagine? Us, at the dollar store?” She giggles, and so do I. Then reality sets in. All my first-choice photos are gone. Maybe I can use alternates from those same shoots. At least I have the ones on my camera . . .
I unplug the charger from the outlet by my desk and pop the battery in my camera. “I took some pics of you in the show. You look really good.”
“Ugh,” Dace says, but moves to the end of the bed as I turn my camera on and press the playback button. The screen is black.
The Rule of Thirds Page 12