“Suddenly?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Um, please don’t take this the wrong way, but what you’re saying about your grandfather reminds me of something that happened with my grandmother. She used to love playing bridge with her friends every Tuesday and Thursday, and then one day she stopped going. Dad asked her about it, and she said, ‘What the hell is the point of playing if I can’t keep track of the cards?’ We had noticed she was starting to forget things, but we didn’t know it was such a big deal. Until all of a sudden, it was. Has your grandfather been … well … different lately?”
I thought I knew what she meant, but that didn’t mean I wanted to admit it. “Different how?”
“Well, for one thing, before he gave you his stuff, did you notice him making any unusual mistakes?”
I thought about that eagle flying right across Grampa’s viewfinder, and nodded.
“Spacing out? Maybe forgetting common words once in a while?”
Again, I saw the eagle. Then I remembered something else: Once, in July, we had been sitting at a diner having breakfast. He had been sugaring up his coffee, and then when he was ready for the creamer, he said, “Pete, please pass me the … uh … white stuff.” Was that a danger sign?
I nodded.
“And then, out of the blue, he quit photography?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded slowly. “Just got disgusted and walked away, right?”
“Yes, but — what are you trying to say?”
“Peter, my grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease.”
I had heard the term but wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it meant.
“That’s when an older person’s brain deteriorates faster than normal.”
Aha. “Wait, I didn’t say his brain was abnormal or anything, I just said —”
Angelika cut me off. “Does he seem OK most of the time?”
It was my turn to nod.
“But then all of a sudden, he blanks out?”
“Yeah, but my mom said he’s fine. And he’s her dad — she knows him better than I do.”
“My grandma was my dad’s mother. He insisted that she was fine, too. And then one day we went over there for Sunday dinner and found her standing at the head of the table, trying to carve a raw chicken.”
Swell.
“But the first signs were when she started dropping out of activities, like the incident with the cards. Sound familiar?”
Grampa had never played bridge, but other than that, yeah. I didn’t feel like hearing any more about this, so I said, “I don’t know. Can we try shooting now?”
Unlike AJ, I guess Angelika could tell when to let a subject drop, because she smiled brightly, struck a pose on the stool, and said, “I’m ready for my close-up now!” I was really, really glad I had practiced this with Grampa and gotten all the camera settings right, because he had been telling the truth: It was hot under the lights, and looking at Angelika made it terribly hard for me to think clearly. The whole situation just seemed so — I don’t know — Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition–esque.
Don’t get me wrong. Angelika obviously wasn’t wearing a bikini or anything, just jeans and a white dress shirt with a collar. But she was smiling and pouting, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth once in a while. And me? I was dying.
When we took a break to switch lenses, I got her a glass of water. She gulped it down in about three seconds, which made me wonder if she was thinking, um, impure thoughts, too, or just having a field day putting them in my head. I just kept telling myself, Chill, chill, chill. You don’t know this girl. You don’t know this girl. You don’t know this girl. Sure, she’s funny. And smart. And hot. And OH, HOLY COW, DID SHE JUST FIX HER BRA STRAP? Wait, what was I saying again?
Eventually, when the basement was starting to feel like Satan’s private sauna, my mother came downstairs to offer us homemade brownies. Angelika turned to see what my mom was carrying, and without thinking, I snapped off three frames of her face just as she set her eyes on the brownies and smiled. This wasn’t like the sexy, posed smiles Angelika had been working for the past half hour, or the smirk she put on in class while she was making sarcastic anti-teacher comments. It was just real. She looked almost like a little kid for a second or two.
When Mom had gone back upstairs, we fired up my computer and looked over everything we had gotten. And you know what? Those three shots of Angelika looking at the brownies were the ones. Which proves two things:
Like Grampa always told me, you can’t force the shot …
… but when the perfect image presents itself, you’ve got to be ready.
Next we shot maybe fifty pictures of me, and then my dad came downstairs to tell us Angelika’s mother was at the door. Angelika took the memory card with her, so I had no idea whether she had gotten any good shots, but that was OK. I knew I had aced my half of the assignment. Plus, wow. I was almost starting to think AJ had been right: Angelika was giving off signals — signals so strong even a moron like me could pick up on them.
Now all I had to do was figure out what to do next. And, barring a sudden and unforeseen bar mitzvah party, I had no clue how this part was supposed to happen.
At our next photography class, Angelika came in with a huge smile on her face and her hands behind her back. I could tell she was holding something but couldn’t tell what it was. I asked her what she was hiding, but she just ignored me and edged her way over to her seat. I asked again, and she said, “You’ll see.”
I asked, “Can I see it now?” and Angelika shook her head. I said, “Pretty please?” and she shook her head again. Then she winked. So I tried to reach around her back with one hand, but she twisted away. I reached around with the other hand, too, which meant I had my arms completely around Angelika when Mr. Marsh walked in. I could feel two things: First, she was holding one of those cardboard tubes you put posters in, and second, I really didn’t want to let go.
Until Mr. Marsh cleared his throat behind me. Angelika and I separated in a big hurry, while the upperclassmen all around us laughed. As we scrambled into our seats, I distinctly heard Erika, one of the senior girls, say, “Ooh, look, the fur-resh-mannnnnn is turning red. It’s just so adorable!” I don’t know why all these older women think the word “freshman” has three syllables.
Anyway, Mr. Marsh said, “I hate to interrupt yer … ahem … social time, but we gotta get started. Now, what’s that yer holdin’, Miss Stone?”
Angelika didn’t look half as mortified as I did. In fact, she seemed kind of pleased with herself. “It’s our project, Mr. Marsh. We did our portraits at Peter’s house on Saturday, and then I went home and worked on the images in Photoshop. Peter hasn’t seen them yet, so I was, um, hiding the tube when you walked in.”
The only senior guy in the class, Danny something, whispered so everybody could hear, “Ooh, they’re playing Hide the Tube! Way to go, little fur-resh-mannnnnn!”
Apparently, senior guys say it that way, too. Kill me, I thought.
“May I see the photos?” Mr. Marsh asked, ignoring the tide of laughter that was breaking across the classroom. He made a beckoning gesture, so Angelika stood and brought him the tube. Then, right in front of everyone, he took the cap off of one end, and pulled out a bunch of rolled 11 x 14 inch prints. One by one, he hung the prints from clips over the whiteboard. Next, he asked the whole class to gather around and see.
I kind of wished I were still across the hall in the boring beginners’ classroom with AJ. Because you know what? When you’re bored, you’re safe.
I was the last person to make my way to the board, which meant that I had to look over people to even see what the prints looked like. Danny and Erika parted to let me slide in, and I got my first look. Holy cow! The shots were amazingly good. Angelika had printed the best shot of herself smiling at the brownies three times, in three different ways. There was a sepia-toned one that looked like an antique, a black-a
nd-white one that emphasized her dark hair and the gleam of her teeth, and finally, a highly processed color one that took my breath away. Angelika had edited the colors so that everything was washed out but her eyes and her lips.
Mr. Marsh gushed over our work, complimented me on the sharpness of the image, and then asked Angelika where she’d gotten so good at editing and printing. It turns out her mom is a graphic designer for a huge publishing company in Allentown, right near where we live. I couldn’t believe Angelika hadn’t mentioned that when I’d been bragging about my grandfather’s photography career.
Note to self: Ask girls questions.
Angelika had printed three different shots of me. They weren’t as amazing as the ones of her, which made sense because we had spent so much more time on shooting her, and of course because she was so much better-looking than me. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t great, either. Mr. Marsh made some technical comments about the shots, and then said, “Well, kids, I am really impressed. For the prints of Angelika, ya both get an A. For the photos of Peetuh, I could give ya both a B now, or ya could go back and try ta shoot some more. Trootfully, I would encourage ya to take another stab at it. Ya seem ta enjoy each other’s company, an’ I wouldn’t wanna leave ya wit’ any …unfinished business. Heh-heh.”
Heh-heh. It’s really too bad students aren’t allowed to throw cameras at their teachers.
As we headed back to our seats, Mr. Marsh dropped the bomb. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “as ya know, there is a lot of overlap between the yearbook and school newspaper staffs and the roster of this class. And as ya also know, many of yer assignments throughout this year will be used as material for the school publications.”
Had we known those things? Everyone else seemed to be nodding in agreement, but as a fur-resh-mannnnnn who had basically been thrown into the class, I wasn’t sure I had heard anything about joining the newspaper or the yearbook.
Mr. Marsh continued, “Anyway, this morning I received a very disturbing e-mail message from the school business office. Some of ya might remember that for the past several years, the school has outsourced all of our sports photography to Ackerman’s Photo Studio here in town. Ya might also be aware of our district’s budget crisis. Well, apparently, the school board has voted ta freeze the budget for this year and has also canceled all outstanding contracts.”
One of the junior girls, Danielle, who was layout editor for the yearbook — which I knew because she mentioned it approximately every fifteen seconds — said, “So what are we going to do? We can’t have a yearbook without sports pictures!”
Mr. Marsh said, “I have an idea, but it’s gonna take a lot of extra work. I was thinking that maybe we could rearrange our class assignments so that you guys take the sports pictures. Does anybody here know anything about sports?”
The only sophomore boy in the class, James, said, “Well, I shot a sports spread for the newspaper last spring, remember?”
Danny leaned across his desk and stage-whispered, “Uh, Jimmy, I’m not sure chess really counts as a sport.”
James turned and spat, “Oh, yeah, Mr. Big Shot Senior? And I suppose your status as cocaptain of the debate society makes you an expert on all things athletic?”
A junior named San Lee, who usually leaned way back in a chair in the corner of the back row and rarely spoke, sat up and said, “Guys, shooting sports is really tricky. We need somebody with a lot of experience, or the whole sports section of the yearbook is going to look like it was shot with a little kid’s toy camera.”
Angelika raised her hand. “Mr. Marsh, guess what? Pete and I are very experienced. I mean, at sports shooting …”
And that’s how I became athletics coeditor of my high school yearbook.
I haven’t mentioned the worst thing about my arm situation yet, mostly because I hate thinking about it, and it’s way worse than just not being able to throw. It’s even worse than the scarring. The truth is, after my surgery, when all the splints, supports, and bandages came off, my left arm was super-weak, and the muscles were starting to get all shrunken and withered. I mean, I’m a sports guy. I’ve been working out every day of the week for years. Every time I’ve ever watched a ball game on TV, which was pretty much every night, I’ve done push-ups, sit-ups, and wrist curls on and off the whole time.
It’s not like I was some huge hulk of muscle before my injury, but I was wiry. I was strong. So when the wrappings came off, and I saw how wimpy my forearm had become, I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. The doctors told me I’d be able to regain “much of the functionality” of the arm, which I’m sure they thought was very comforting. Then they sent me to physical therapy. All summer long, it was three afternoons a week. The first few weeks I wasn’t even supposed to move my own stupid arm. The therapists would twist it and turn it, or put it in machines that rotated and revolved while I bit my lip until it bled.
I knew that stretching could hurt, but never like this. Just getting my arm extended until it was almost straight was like some horrible endurance event in the Cruelty Olympics. The hardest thing was that as soon as therapy was over for the day, the muscles would pull tight, and the arm would start to bend again.
How bad was it? There were nights when I could barely sleep from the cramping. And plenty of other nights when I did sleep, but the pain found its way into my every dream. During the day, I wore nothing but long sleeves from July through October just so nobody would have to look at my wimpy little jacked-up limb. I never told anybody how bad it all was, physically or mentally. The physical therapist would make me fill out these pain self-evaluation forms and I’d just check off whatever column was closest to fine.
There was no column for “epic arm fail” anyway.
After the weeks of “passive mobility” exercises — in case that wasn’t too much of an oxymoron — the therapists made me start actually doing the stretching myself. Right around the time I became an official sports photographer, my arm was starting to feel a little looser. And then one day, when AJ had been bugging me again about getting back into pitching shape, I got home from school and the house was empty. So I went a little nuts.
I took my pitchback net out of the shed, grabbed a bucket of baseballs from the garage, and set myself up maybe twenty feet away from the target. I’m not stupid or anything, OK? I knew I had to be careful and take it slow. I wasn’t trying to throw from a regulation distance right off the bat, and I definitely wasn’t thinking I could throw anything resembling a real pitch.
Mostly, I just really missed standing there with a baseball in my hand.
I stood there for the longest time, with that sick-to-the-stomach feeling you get when you’ve broken your mother’s favorite lamp or whatever, but she hasn’t noticed yet. I could even feel my legs trembling a little. But I went ahead and cocked my left arm behind my head. Then I tossed the ball.
It went about three feet and plopped into the grass like a fat little dead pigeon. I sat down on the lawn and wept so hard I could barely breathe. Then I picked up the ball, dropped it into the bucket, carried the whole shebang over to our garbage can, and dumped it.
“A sports photographer, huh?” AJ asked me a few days later on the way home from school. “With Angelika? Suh-weet!”
“Yeah, but —”
“But what? She volunteered the two of you, right?”
“Yeah, but —”
“But nothing. You’re gonna be hanging out together, like, nonstop.”
“Yeah, but —”
“First you’re going to go to all the games together, right?”
“Yeah, but —”
“And then you’re going to have to edit the photos together. In the yearbook office. Wa-a-ay after school. Alone. It’s gonna be, like, your office of lo-o-ove.”
“Yeah, but —”
“Ooh, I know what you’re going to say, though. What about baseball season, right? I mean you’re good and all, but I don’t see how even you can pitch and take pictures
at the same time.”
Yeah, I know I could have told him the whole truth then. Believe me, I know. But instead I just let him roll over me. As usual.
“But wait, that’s perfect, Pete! Then she’ll have to come take pics of you in action. And she’ll be all, ‘Wow, did you really just strike out thirteen batters in one game?’ and ‘Oh, Petey, your butt looks so cute in that uniform!’”
We stopped on the sidewalk in front of my house, and AJ said, “Uh, Pete, weren’t you going to say something?”
“Nah, it’s all good,” I said. “I just, uh … oh, forget it.”
“What, man? You can tell me anything. I trust you with all my secrets, don’t I? I mean, that one time when we were in second grade and Nikki Krupnik kissed me in the coat closet, I told you. Am I right or am I right?”
I laughed. “Uh, AJ, you told me that because you wanted me to tell everybody. This is different.”
AJ put on his most serious face and sat down on my front steps. And once again, I had the perfect opportunity to tell him. “Well, Pedro, what is it?”
I took a deep breath. Then I chickened out and came up with a weaselly half-truth. I mean, it was true, but it wasn’t everything. “I don’t know how to tell Angelika this. Or Mr. Marsh. But I’m supposed to take pictures of a volleyball game tonight. And …”
“And what?”
“And I don’t know anything about shooting volleyball.”
“What’s there to know? You just point the camera wherever the ball is, and press the little button. Oh, and don’t get all distracted by the bouncing babes in tight shorts.”
“No, you don’t understand. Shooting indoor gym sports is really complicated. The light is crappy, you can’t use a flash because you’ll blind the players, and the action happens really, really fast.”
“And there are bouncing babes in tight shorts. Sorry, Petey, you just can’t convince me that this is a problem. You’ll figure it all out. Just don’t stare too much, or Angie will get mad.”
Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip Page 5