by Carol Snow
"No more incense," Delilah said. "Not since it gave that woman the asthma attack last week."
"Bad karma," the boy said.
"Totally."
"Can I zoom out?" the guy at the machine asked in his high voice. "Or only zoom in?"
"You can zoom out once you zoom in," the redheaded boy said. "But you can't zoom out from the original shot."
"Why not?"
The boy wiped some sweat off of his pink forehead. "There's nothing you can zoom out to. You've only got what's already in the picture."
The man's eyes widened like he'd just been told the secret of life. "You're right," he said in wonder.
"Madison, this is my brother," Delilah said to me. "Samson?" It just popped out. Delilah scowled. "Ha, ha, funny."
"You've heard that one before." I wished I could take it back.
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"Almost as many times as the psychic jokes."
"I'm Leonardo," the boy said. "After the artist?"
He wiggled his orange eyebrows. "The turtle."
That made me smile. "Who's older?"
"I am," Leonardo said. "By a year and a half."
"I'm fifteen," Delilah said.
"Really? Me, too."
She nodded as if she knew that already. "A lot of people think I'm like twelve."
"I didn't think that," I said, far too quickly. I looked at Leonardo's orange hair and then at Delilah's striped locks. "Your natural hair color?" I guessed.
She raised her pale eyebrows and tucked a striped lock behind her ear. "Who's to say what's natural?" She turned to Leonardo. "What are you up to?"
He shifted his skateboard to the other arm. "Me and Duncan are going down to the beach to skate. I think I'm late."
"Duncan and I," she said.
Leonardo rolled his eyes. "What. Ever."
"Who's Duncan?" I asked, though it was none of my business.
"Our virtual brother," Delilah said.
I nodded as if that made total sense even if I wondered: Hologram? Imaginary friend? Nothing these two said would surprise me much.
The bells on the front door jingled again, and a youngish woman in a loose beach cover-up--yellow patterned with blue fish--clomped over to the man at the printer.
She put her hand on his back. "What's taking you so long? I
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was getting worried." A straw beach bag hung from her shoulder.
"This picture stuff is complicated." He peered at the screen.
"It's really not." She smiled patiently and pushed some buttons. Her hair was the same sandy color as her husband's.
I thought of my camera. I hadn't planned on telling anyone about the old woman in the beach shot because it sounded so Sci Fi channel. But it was probably just some technical snafu. Maybe Delilah and Leonardo could explain it to me.
As I fiddled with the case, I tried to keep my voice casual. "After I got my camera back yesterday, I took some shots on the beach. And there was this weird thing. I mean, maybe it's not that weird, but I've never seen it before...."
I turned on the camera and found the picture of the old woman in the pink bathrobe. Delilah and Leonardo peered at it while I told them what had happened.
"You're right," Leonardo said when I'd finished explaining. "It is weird."
"Could something have happened during the repair?" I asked. "Like, maybe someone took a test shot to see if it was working?"
"On the beach?" Delilah said. "No." She wrinkled her freckly nose, scrunching the constellation above her lip. "Have you ever seen this lady, Leo?"
"No." He wrinkled his nose in exactly the same way. "But she looks...bright."
"You mean smart?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, I mean bright--like, light. See? Everything around her is dim and foggy. But she looks like she's standing in a patch of sunshine."
He was right. Normally I pay close attention to the lighting
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of my photographs, but I'd been so freaked out by the woman's presence that I hadn't even noticed that she seemed to have come out of a different, better-lit shot. Which brought me right back to explanation number three: technical difficulties.
"There must be something funny going on with my memory card," I said. "Like, maybe the last time I downloaded my photos onto my computer, the camera got infected with some kind of virus."
"That makes no sense," Delilah said.
"Maybe she's a ghost," Leonardo suggested, just as the bell on the front door jingled. As I looked up, I half expected to see the woman in the pink bathrobe float into the room.
Instead, it was a guy about my age, shorter than Leonardo, lean and wiry. He looked vaguely familiar. He had tan, almost golden skin and bright green eyes. His hair was brown and wavy-wild, the tips bleached whitish blond. A tiny gold hoop hung in each earlobe. His clothes were standard-issue skater boy: loose, dark T-shirt and long shorts.
He was really cute if you liked that type.
"Dude," he said to Leonardo. "I've been waiting for you for, like, an hour."
"Complications," Leonardo said.
The guy's green eyes shot to me, stopped and grew wide. Blood rushed to my face--and then I realized where I had seen him before.
"The girl on the sidewalk," he said, still looking at me. Of course: he was the guy who'd almost run me down with his skateboard.
"Hi." I looked at the floor, my face still hot for reasons I couldn't
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understand. He was the one who should have been embarrassed, not me. Because surely that's all I was feeling: embarrassed.
"Madison, this is Duncan," Delilah said. "Our virtual brother." So he wasn't an imaginary friend.
"You met his dad," Delilah told me. "Remember Larry? The guy who fixed your camera?"
I said, "So Larry and your mother are..."
"He's her boyfriend," Delilah said. "Or maybe ex-boyfriend. It changes from week to week."
Duncan said, "My dad said it's over. But he was, like, doing her laundry when he said it, so who knows."
"Larry has settling-down issues." Delilah said. "And my mother has commitment issues."
"But she's made a commitment to working on her commitment issues," Leonardo chimed in. "Jury's still out on Larry." Skateboard under his arm, he opened the front door. "Let's boogie," he told Duncan.
Suddenly, the walls shook with thunder. "So much for the beach," I said.
Duncan's green eyes glittered. "Are you kidding? This is the best time to be there."
I was about to follow Leonardo and Duncan out the door when I noticed the computer on the counter, looking all unused and lonely.
"Would it be okay if I checked my e-mail really fast?" I asked Delilah.
She shrugged. "Sure."
I hope she didn't think it was rude of me to ask--which it was, kind of--but I was feeling seriously out of touch.
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On MySpace, I had a comment from Rolf Reinhardt, the guy I'd almost, sort of gone out with in the spring.
heard u made the buzz! awesome! me too--sports reporter.
I'd heard Rolf was on the paper, but I hadn't said anything to him about it. I clicked over to his page (his profile shot showed Sponge Bob, which was neither funny nor original) and congratulated myself on not checking to see if he'd posted any new photographs. But, okay, I did glance at his relationship status: single! No way! He and Celia had broken up already!
Not that I cared.
I ran through about twenty possible return comments before finally settling on a simple "congratz."
I had a new message--which I thought was a good thing until I saw Kyle Ziegenfuss's pale, puffy face on the profile shot, his eyes half closed, like he'd just been smoking pot. Which he probably had.
hi madison, just thowt I woud stop by and say hi
howz ur summer going mines good, but boring to, wat are u doing this summer, im just hangin call me
if u want to hang sometime, kyle
Kyle and I weren't friends, but
he didn't quite get that. At Amerige High, I was a "student guide" in this tutoring program called Peerage. Motto: "Bridging the Academic Gap while Building Friendships." Yeah, whatever. Like The Buzz, it would help
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me get into college (again: not that that was my motivation). Basically, the program matched up a smart kid with a dumb kid so the smart kid could make the dumb kid smarter and the dumb kid could make the smart kid more sensitive or something. And I know "dumb kid" sounds really harsh, but it's the term Kyle always used, and, well--you've got to admire his forthrightness. Kyle was classified as learning disabled, which was different than being stupid. But he was seriously slow--in the way he talked, moved, and thought. Maybe he was just unmotivated. More likely, all that pot smoking (he'd started when he was twelve) had messed up his brain.
He was a nice enough guy, though, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I always answered his messages.
hi kyle, thx 4 stopping by! i'm away 4 most of the summer.
hope u r having a gr8 time.
madison
At least spending the summer in Sandyland meant I didn't have to worry about into Kyle. I hit "send" and sighed.
"Bad news?" Delilah asked, gluing a straw to her board.
"Nah, just--there's this guy, and..." I tried to come up with the right words.
"Boyfriend?"
"Kyle?" I shuddered. "God, no. He just thinks we're closer than we really are, and I don't want to hurt his feelings, but..." I shook my head. "Whatever. I don't have to deal with him till September."
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"September?"
"When I go back to school."
She said, "But in September you'll be--" And then she stopped.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." She looked at the counter, and I started to feel all creeped out, like maybe Delilah could see my future. But that was ridiculous. She wasn't even the family psychic--not that I believed in any of that stuff.
As I left the shop, I heard the printer whir to life.
"See? That was easy," the sandy-haired woman told her husband. And then, to Delilah: "How much would it cost to have my fortune told?"
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8.
Over the next few days:
It rained.
I learned more than I ever wanted to know about sharks. And my mother got a job.
Let's start with the rain. After a long night of pounding water, wall-shaking thunder, and flashbulb-bright lightning, a stagnant, damp dreariness turned the sky a murky, one-tone gray and unleashed the full power of Home Suite Home's mildewed dog aroma. It was the kind of rain that ruled out long walks or picture taking. It was the kind of rain that dulled hope and cut vacations short.
Not that we were on vacation.
In the motel parking lot, dads in Windbreakers ran back and forth loading minivans and SUVs while shivering children stood damp-faced in open doorways, cartoons blasting from behind.
Homesickness struck me like a terrible flu. My muscles ached and my stomach cramped. I wanted my bed, my computer, my
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photo-covered walls. I wanted my kitchen and den and living room.
I wanted my life.
We couldn't see a movie or go shopping or do any of the other stuff I typically did on a rainy day--because, in case I hadn't heard my parents the first fifty times, "money is tight" and "we all need to make sacrifices." (Argh!) Not that it mattered: the closest movie theater was miles away, and the surf shop was the only store worth visiting. There wasn't even a bookstore in town, and I'd already finished the two books I'd brought.
So I filled the time listening to my iPod, taking still-life photos of bruised fruit in a purple plastic bowl, and watching "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel. Part of the programming was dedicated to explaining how rare shark attacks are. A larger part was spent on shark attack reenactments, with the occasional Jaws clip thrown in. It was enough to turn me from an Ocean Person to a Lake Person.
My father, slumped on the edge of his bed in a T-shirt and shorts (at least he'd changed out of his bathrobe), watched every minute. He was supposed to be working--that's why we were here, after all--but it was raining too hard for construction.
In case sharks weren't scary enough, late in the day the programming gave way to haunted house investigations. Ghosts scratched children's cheeks. They hovered over beds. They rattled pipes, shattered dishes, blew cold air.
" Get out of the house!" I muttered at the television. If these people were so terrified, why didn't they just pack up their bags and go?
Why couldn't we?
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During the commercials, I played with my camera. Most of my Sandyland shots were the usual beach stuff: breaking waves, the yellow swim float, some long-legged sandpipers. Again and again, I returned to the old woman in the pink bathrobe. She was still there. It still made no sense.
Maybe she's a ghost.
Leonardo was just saying that. Ghosts aren't real. Everyone knows that, even the people on TV. If ghosts were real, those people would get out of their houses.
Grocery shopping with my mother was the highlight of my first rainy day; that's how low I had sunk. Outside Food World there were gumball machines, a coin-powered pony, and a blue charity drop-off bin with clothing and shoes only stenciled on the side. After wearing my black shorts and pink-and-black striped T-shirt for four days straight, I longed to pitch them into the bin. Unfortunately, that would leave me naked.
Inside the store, it was freezing. Overhead, fluorescent lights buzzed as if they, too, were shivering. My mom pushed the squeaky cart while I used my honors math skills--imperfect though they were--to comparison shop. We hardly spoke. When she muttered, "I suppose I should start clipping coupons," it took all my strength not to say, "Yeah, that'll fix everything."
In the health and beauty aisle, she spent some time looking at hair color boxes before picking one called ash blonde . And then she shocked me by asking, "Do you want to do yours, too ?"
This was a peace offering. I'd been asking for blond streaks since junior high. I reached for a highlighting kit and then stopped. Blond streaks seemed too cheery for my current mood.
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Instead, I took a box of black dye off the shelf, narrowing my eyes at my mother, daring her to stop me. But she didn't say anything.
On our way to the check stand, we passed the "Flower Shoppe," which was basically a counter with plastic buckets full of carnations and daisies, along with shiny balloons that said happy birthday and congratulations on your retirement.
My mother paid for the groceries in cash. For a moment, I worried that she wouldn't have enough money--how mortifying would that be?--but she did. When the checkout woman gave her the change, my mother cleared her throat and asked, "Are you hiring?"
That floored me. When my mother had said she was getting a job, I thought she meant something glamorous, like an interior designer or a party planner. And I guess I thought she meant something easy to leave. A real job, with regular hours, tied us to this town more than I liked. She was going to make me stay here for the entire summer. I could just feel it.
"Applications are at customer service," the checkout woman told her.
My mother nodded but did not stop on the way out. "I want to color my hair first," she told me. "No rush," I said.
"Ash Blonde" was misnamed. It should have been called "Margarine."
"Maybe you can find a salon around here to fix it," I said when my mother came out of the bathroom, a stained white towel over her shoulders.
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I was just trying to be helpful, but the wrinkle between her eyebrows deepened. "You want me to do yours?" she asked.
I touched a strand of my brown hair. On the way home from Food World, I'd decided that black hair was a bad idea. But I didn't want to back out and hand my mother even the tiniest victory.
She ripped open the cardboard box and put on plastic gloves. There were two bottles; she poured the smaller one into the l
arger and shook it. Immediately, the room stank: a harsh chemical smell that made my nose sting.
I closed my eyes and pictured Jenny, my hairdresser back home. She was twenty-five, with streaky hair cut in daring angles. Now, far from the salon, my mother drew stripes along my scalp with a plastic bottle. When she'd worked her way from ear to ear, she stroked the goo along the length of my brown hair and then snapped a plastic shower cap over the whole smelly mess.
While I waited, I washed my black shorts and striped T-shirt in the bathroom sink with the bug-spray-scented shampoo. When I was done, I wrung them out as best as I could and hung them on the towel bar to dry. I could wear my Dennis's Building Supply T-shirt until morning.
Later, as I stood in the shower, the water ran gray at my feet. I got scalded just once as someone, somewhere, flushed a toilet. But that wasn't the worst of it. My hair looked bad wet. Dry, it looked hideous, like a Halloween wig---and not a nice one from a party store, either, but a cheap one that you'd pick up at the drugstore for six bucks.
"I told you black was a bad idea," my mother said when she saw it.
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"No, you didn't."
"You know what I thought."
My clothes were still damp the next (rainy) morning. I tried on all of the outgrown clothes my parents had brought on the off chance that I had shrunk.
I hadn't. Most of the clothes were from junior high (I should really clean out my closet more often). The shirts ended above my belly button, and the shorts wouldn't snap.
If only my mother wasn't so stinking skinny, I could have worn some of her clothes. Instead, I was left with my dad's fugly orange T-shirt (which he'd told me I could keep--gee, thanks--because it was too small for him anyway) and my new board shorts. It's not like I'm going to run into anyone I know. An image of that skater boy, Duncan, flashed through my mind.
Not my type.
When my mother went back to Food World to submit her application, I tagged along with the shopping bag full of my old clothes. The bag fell with a hollow thump inside the blue charity bin: a piece of my life gone forever.
"You can wait out here, if you want," my mother said, standing by the automatic door as I adjusted my board shorts, which really were kind of big. Beyond us, raindrops trickled from the eaves.