“You cannot open the back of the camera until our next class, or you’ll ruin the film,” she emphasized. “I know it is tempting. Do not open it. On Tuesday, we’ll go over how to do that safely, and we’ll start to talk about developing. For the weekend, you’ve got two pieces of homework. The first is to read the first two chapters of your textbook. That should reinforce what we talked about today, and it’ll give you a good point of reference for questions.
“The second is to shoot the rest of this roll of film. You can take pictures of anything. People, still lifes, landscapes, whatever you want. Don’t worry too much about the subject matter. The only requirement is that you write down the settings you used for each picture. After we develop the film and you see what you shot, the notes will help you understand how your choices contributed to the image.” She glanced at the clock. “We’ve got a few minutes left and some good light in here. Go ahead and shoot a few frames.”
For a moment, everyone sat motionless, no one wanting to be the first to move. But then a girl on the right side of the class got up, and the silence broke. The room was large, clearly used for painting and other visual art classes, and some girls went to a corner where canvases were stacked and a mobile was hanging, while others ducked out into the window-lined hallway.
I stayed seated. I looked down at the camera in my lap. Was the aperture the same as shutter speed or f-stop? The film she had given us was ISO 400, but were there other things about the ISO that you needed to consider? I flipped back a page in my notebook. It was not helpful.
Beside me, Sam was also sitting with his camera in front of him, but he looked decidedly less nervous. He raised the camera to his eye, pointed it downward, adjusted a few dials, and clicked. I glanced at where he was pointing, but it looked like nothing, just the floor.
“Are you not walking around?” I asked him.
“I will eventually,” he said. “There’s plenty to see right here.”
I craned my head to look at the screen on the back of his camera. But of course, there was no screen on the back of his camera, so I turned the motion into an awkward stretch, which he must have interpreted as me trying to get his perspective on the floor.
“You want to see?”
I didn’t know what I would be seeing, but whatever. “Sure.”
“Look through the viewfinder right there,” he said, pointing at a spot on the floor. “Sort of at the intersection of those tiles. From where I was sitting, here.”
He scooted his chair a little to the right, and I followed suit. I put the camera up to my eye. It was blurry. Tentatively, I turned the lens until the floor became clear. It looked like a floor with some stuff on it. It was not an interesting picture. I moved the camera, and my head along with it, to the left and right experimentally.
And then I got it. It was like looking at a Rorschach inkblot: just a splotch until it wasn’t. One hexagonal tile spawned other hexagonal tiles, which opened out into the shapes of the items on the floor: a backpack slouched in the top right, just touching the spindly legs of a desk, which led down to a stray piece of paper. A sweater, arms reaching out of frame, in the bottom left.
I imagined it in grayscale, as Erica had suggested. The sweater, textured black; the paper, bright white. It was kind of an interesting picture.
“Okay, now…” I heard Sam say from beside me. Hearing his voice was like listening to a telephone call, my eyes occupied with the camera. “Wait. I’m sorry.”
I set it down and turned to him. He looked as if he’d just dropped something on the floor—childishly guilty, embarrassed. “Sorry for what?”
“I should’ve asked. Do you want help? I thought you were a beginner because you said you were new here, but I shouldn’t have assumed. That you were a beginner. Or that you wanted any help. I mean—” He gestured around the class. “It would be almost too much of a cliché for me, the one guy in the class, to be explaining the subject matter. I…am so sorry.”
I laughed. “I most definitely do need help, so yes, please. I promise it’s welcome.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” He grinned, still a little flushed. “But tell me if it becomes unwelcome. I won’t be offended.”
He explained the light meter, and I experimented with changing the aperture and the shutter speed. I felt the concepts that Erica had explained clicking into place as I turned the dials back and forth. It made sense, mostly. I sat back in my chair.
“The first picture feels momentous,” I said.
“It’s not.” Sam raised his own camera, fiddled with a couple of settings, and snapped. I looked where he’d pointed his viewfinder. Just the whiteboard and a framed Ansel Adams print. “I guess it’s a little more important than it would be with a digital camera, because you are using up film,” he amended. “But I think you just have to jump in.”
In my pocket, my phone came alive with buzzing. I took it out: Jess, complaining about Patrick, saying she wanted a drink, telling me she missed me, asking if she should ask her mom for a new coat. I set it down on the desk, watching the texts roll in. Lunchtime was a little earlier back home.
“Who’s that?” Sam asked.
“My best friend,” I said. I stood up and put the viewfinder to my eye, aiming it vertically down at my desk, where my phone lay bright and crooked next to my notebook. I adjusted the shutter speed and aperture until the light meter was balanced right in the middle, and I clicked. When I put the camera down again, Sam was smiling.
“Done,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Accomplished.”
“Nice. Congratulations.”
From the front, Erica called, “Folks, class dismissed. Enjoy lunch.”
I packed the camera carefully into my bag, cushioning it with a scarf. Before I left, I paused and responded to a bunch of Jess’s texts all at once: Patrick loves you, I love you, that coat is great. The class cleared out around me, and Sam put away his camera. His messenger bag had a special compartment for the camera and its various accessories, and I couldn’t decide whether to be jealous or roll my eyes.
“See you next class,” he said, raising a hand. “Happy shooting. I hope you enjoy it.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said. “You too.”
“I always have a grand time,” he said. “It was really nice to meet you, June.”
“Nice to meet you, Sam.”
He left, turning back and smiling one more time before he disappeared around the corner.
Five
I liked photography more than I had expected, and I was glad that Jess had texted me. But the morning had been dulled across the board by lack of coffee. I headed to the cafeteria in search of it. At the cafeteria at Greenmont, you could buy premade Starbucks Frappuccinos, which were expensive and too sweet but better than nothing. I was hoping for a similar situation here. But when I got to the cafeteria, the line was almost out the door. I waited for a few minutes before tapping the girl in front of me. She looked up from her phone and turned around.
“Do they have coffee?” I asked.
She shook her head and returned to her phone.
I left. My sandwich would have to be enough.
no coffee in the cafeteria, I texted Jess. this place is going to kill me.
I had gotten maybe halfway back to the classroom building when I heard someone yell, “Hey!”
I stopped. It took a minute before I saw where it had come from: the gazebo in front of the arts building, down the hill near the river. Claire, from science class, was waving inside it. I looked around, but there was no one else outside. I raised a slow hand in her direction.
“Yeah, hi!” she screamed. Her voice sounded as if it were taking ages to travel through the air. “Come here!”
I switched directions, walking fast down the grassy slope toward the gazebo. As I got closer, I could see two other people huddled inside as we
ll, sitting on the bench under an enormous plaid blanket: Kitty, who was not a surprise to me, and Sam, who was.
I stepped into the gazebo, and Kitty stuck out one hand for a weak wave before retracting it back into the flannel cave. Sam nodded. Claire stood in the middle, wearing a hat and gloves and puffy coat, holding a thermos, red-cheeked and triumphant.
“Hello,” she said. “June, yes?”
“Yes. Claire?”
“That’s me.”
“What’s up?”
“You looked cold.”
“It’s not really warmer in here,” I said.
“That is correct,” Kitty said between clenched teeth.
“True,” Claire said cheerfully. She gestured to the blanket. “You remember my girlfriend Kitty from yesterday, and this is my cousin Sam.”
“We just met in photography, actually, but I did not know you guys were related.”
“Guilty,” Sam said, smiling.
“Lucky,” Claire corrected.
“Can I ask why you’re outside?”
“I have the same question,” Sam piped up.
“And I have an answer,” said Claire. “This year, I made a New Year’s resolution to spend more time in and near the water. More time outside. We spend way too much of our lives stifled up indoors, and I want to take every opportunity to get some fresh air.” She breathed in deep, as if emphasizing her point, and Sam pointedly rolled his eyes. Kitty, silent, looked as if she very much wanted to be inside.
“So…that means you eat lunch outside?” I asked.
“We will once it gets warmer. For now, our lunches are inside. And we will go get them soon. But we’re doing part of lunch out here every day,” she answered.
Sam pulled out his phone. “Five minutes left,” he reported.
“Thank God,” Kitty said. “I am from Florida. I’m not built for this.”
“I made them promise to do at least ten minutes,” Claire explained. There was silence. It really was freezing. No one said anything for a minute, and I got the feeling it was time to go.
“Well,” I said, starting to turn away. “Enjoy.”
“No, wait!” Claire said.
“Yeah,” Kitty chimed in. “I wanted to hear more about why you’re here. We got cut off by the end of school yesterday.”
I hesitated.
“I’ll let you have some blanket,” Kitty said.
She raised the edge and waved it at me like an invitation, and I relented. I scooted in, and she let the heavy fabric fall down on us. I was immediately warmer. “Thanks,” I said.
“Thank you for joining us,” Claire said. “So come on. Tell us more. Tell us why you’ve come to Saint Annie’s.”
I took a breath. “It’s not that interesting.”
“By telling us that, you have made it infinitely more interesting,” Claire said. “We’re not going to judge you.”
“They’re definitely going to judge you,” Sam said under his breath.
Claire ignored him. “Only if you’ve committed a violent crime or something.”
“I did not commit a violent crime, and I certainly wouldn’t tell you if I had.”
They didn’t press further, so I didn’t say anything else. I looked out at the river, calm and cold, and back at each of them in turn. Claire was squinting at the trees and buildings on the hill above us, her cheeks red, hair frizzing underneath her wool hat. Kitty was inspecting something on her phone under the blanket, maybe the timer—surely we had only a few minutes left. But Sam, who hadn’t even asked the question, was looking at me with a frank, unguarded curiosity, as if I were a problem to solve.
The silence stretched on and on, during which time I went through a litany of emotions: defensiveness, annoyance at them for asking, and finally annoyance at myself for making a bigger deal out of it than it was. I said, shrugging, “I live a few hours south of here, in North Carolina.” Kitty and Claire looked up at me again. “I got expelled because my friend and I got caught drinking at a dance. I wanted to just go to public school at home, but my parents thought I was going to keep getting into trouble if Jess was around. I think. I don’t know for sure. They didn’t exactly give me a full and reasoned argument. Anyway, they sent me here.”
I picked at a thread at the edge of the blanket. My phone buzzed, and I resisted the desire to take it out of my pocket. The river washed lightly onto the sand and back out again, like water sloshing in a bathtub.
“I’m not a delinquent or anything,” I said into the silence. “It was just alcohol. Jess got to stay at school, but that’s because her parents suddenly became big donors.”
“Jess is your friend who you were drinking with,” Kitty clarified. She had put her phone in her jacket pocket.
“My best friend,” I answered. “Yes.”
“Well,” Claire said after a long moment, “I would say that was about seventy percent as interesting as I had hoped.” She grinned. “Thanks for telling us.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Claire,” Sam groaned.
“I’m not,” she protested. “I’m just saying—”
“I had my money on you being a witch sent away to hide while your powers develop,” said Kitty.
“I was thinking pregnant,” Claire added.
“A pregnant witch was our best guess, is what we’re saying.”
“A witch could use a changeling to get a baby. She wouldn’t need to get pregnant herself,” I pointed out. All three of them stared at me for a moment, and then at the same time, Claire started laughing and Kitty’s phone alarm went off.
“Thank God,” Sam said. He and Kitty got up and started folding the blanket. I helped as much as I could. At this point, it seemed rude to walk away. And besides, if I had told myself that I didn’t want friends here, I had been lying. I wanted someone to hang out with at lunchtime, gossip with before class, share notes with when it came time for tests. I just didn’t have my hopes up for anything too serious. Before Jess, I’d only ever had surface-level friendships, and I didn’t expect anything deeper here. I wasn’t good at making good friends. Jess was once in a lifetime.
We walked back up the hill together, Claire chattering about the proven benefits of spending time outdoors, and went back to the classroom building. Inside, they sat down underneath their lockers, and when I sat down with them, they didn’t object.
Still, I waited to pull my sandwich out of my bag until they started to eat. Last year, there had been a month when Jess decided she was going to stop eating lunch because she wanted to lose weight, even though she was and had always been perilously thin. It was an awful few weeks. Claire and Kitty didn’t strike me as that type, but you never know, and being the only one with food at lunchtime would have been worse than eating alone.
Fortunately, each of them quickly unpacked their lunches. I grabbed my PB&J and pretzels in relief. I was finishing the first half of my sandwich, listening to Claire explain how your body adjusted better to cold the more time you spent in it, when Sam reached to grab a handful of her crackers and knocked over a thermos.
“Shit, Kitty, I’m sorry.” He set it upright and pressed a few napkins into the carpet.
“No big deal,” Kitty said. “There’s always more coffee.”
I stared.
“Where?” I asked.
“In my room,” she said slowly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe an angel. My grandma only has a French press. I have not yet made a successful cup of coffee. All I want is a standard coffee maker. Or to have a McDonald’s within walking distance, but I know I’m not going to get that.”
Claire screwed up her face. “McDonald’s?”
“Their coffee is good,” I said, maybe a little too forcefully.
“Okay, but you should actually try Harold’s,” Kitty interjected. “Or if you ever want
to stop by my dorm room, you’re always welcome.” She did not know what she was offering. “But I make pretty average coffee. Harold’s is incredible. I don’t know how they do it. They order the beans from this place in California that they will not reveal.”
“We’ve tried,” Claire sighed.
Sam shook his head. “I can’t believe y’all drink that stuff.”
“You don’t like Harold’s coffee?” I asked.
“I love their food. I don’t drink their coffee. I don’t drink any coffee. It’s so bitter.”
“That’s the best part,” I said.
“It’s gross.”
“You’re wrong.”
“She’s right,” Kitty noted.
I did know what he was saying. I had not started drinking coffee of my own accord. My parents drank it, and every time I’d tried a sip as a child, I’d hated it—which was probably appropriate. But the first summer of Jess was also my first summer of coffee. She loved it, and on weekends, we would hike the mile and a half from her house to McDonald’s, the cheapest source of caffeine we could find. I spent my allowance on iced coffees that were half creamer and a quarter sugar, weaning myself off the additives slowly, getting to the point where I could drink it black like her. Now, I couldn’t have it any other way.
“Oh! Did I tell y’all about the recital Ms. Hammond is making me do this semester?” Claire asked Sam and Kitty, and the conversation switched tracks smoothly. I finished my sandwich and listened to them talk about Claire’s piano recital and the three colossal pieces she was supposed to memorize for it. When Claire started trying to convince Kitty to try out for the track team, I listened to that, too, and I listened when Sam described the elaborate historical role-playing debate his history class was putting on.
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