* * *
Even if I set aside all thoughts of romance, I was still looking forward to seeing Sam. I caught his eye when he walked into photography on Tuesday, but he was late, and Erica started talking almost as soon as he sat down.
“Did everyone take some great photos during spring break?” she asked the class enthusiastically. She received mostly unenthused nods, but mine was genuine. I had spent Monday afternoon developing the three rolls of film from last week, but I hadn’t had time to print contact sheets yet. I couldn’t wait to see the pictures. I wanted to send them back to Jess and Ethan, show them what I was trying to do every time I raised my camera to my eye.
“Good to hear. So! We’ve bounced around a lot, but we’re going to devote the whole second half of the semester to portraiture. In the classroom, we’ll be studying some of the great portrait photographers, and you’ll have an essay next month that will be part of your final project grade. In the darkroom, your project will be a collection of portraits—of people who are important to you. These portraits should tell the viewer something about who this person is and what they mean to you.”
As she talked, she was passing out sheets of paper. I scanned the rules for the assignment when she handed them to me—no fewer than six prints and no more than ten, use up at least eight rolls of film, hand in contact sheets along with final images. The due date was just a few days before the end of the semester. And…
“We’ll also be presenting them in a show on the last day of school,” Erica announced. Everyone perked up. “This is the first time we’ve had this opportunity. The school has decided to move the paintings in the hallway downstairs to the alumni building, so your photographs will hang in that hallway through the summer and all next semester. Given the timing, I’m hoping some of your families will be able to join us for the opening reception.”
The room swelled with the sound of girls talking to each other and flipping over the assignment sheet to read the back. Sam looked excited and more than a little nervous, which was almost laughable; he was an incredible photographer, and everyone was going to love his work. Mine, on the other hand…
“For a whole semester!” he said. “I know it’s just the arts hallway, but a lot of people walk through there.” He scanned the assignment sheet himself, lips moving a little as he read.
He was right. The arts hallway got a lot of traffic. It encompassed the big windowed room at the entry of the building and the long, broad path that ran down the middle of it. I could just imagine my family walking along, admiring my classmates’ photographs, then getting to mine and going silent. “So this is what you spent your semester on?” I heard my mom saying after a long, doubtful pause. “Will this help you get into college?”
At the same time, I was making a list in my head: Who would I photograph? How would I do it? Was there supposed to be a theme? I was even more glad that I had taken so many pictures on spring break, because there were people at home I wanted to include. Maybe I had captured an incredible portrait without even knowing it. Probably not, but maybe.
Erica let the class talk for a minute and then shushed us, starting a lecture on the elements of a great portrait. I tried to stop thinking about the assignment or my parents’ potential disappointment and just take notes.
When class dismissed for lunch, though, Sam and I left the building in a chorus of girls talking about their plans for the project.
“This is going to be great,” Sam said.
We burst forth into the sun. Today, for the first time all year, it was warm, not hot yet, but bright and mild. I had dared to wear a T-shirt under my jean jacket instead of a sweater. For once, I thought we might spend our whole lunch hour outside.
“Do you know who you’re going to photograph?” I asked as we walked toward the gazebo.
“Mom, Dad, Claire, Alex, Justin, Kitty,” he recited. He glanced sideways at me; I saw it in my peripheral vision. “You, if you’ll let me.”
I felt warmth on my face and hoped it was the sun. “I’ll let you if you let me.”
“Deal. How about you?”
“Oma, Claire, and Kitty for sure. You, I guess.” I caught his eye and he smiled. “I’d really like to include Jess and my friend Ethan, and the twins and my parents. But I don’t think they’re visiting, so we’ll see if I got good pictures of them when I was at home.”
“I never asked. How was your spring break?”
“Good. Weird.”
“Weird how?”
I shrugged. We had reached the gazebo before Claire and Kitty, and I sat down on the sunny side, Sam dropping down only a few inches away.
“I never wanted to come here.” The curve of the gazebo bench placed him at an angle to me, and I saw something cross his face that made me want to take back my words. “Not that I’m unhappy here,” I rushed to say. “Actually, I love living away from my parents. Oma is great. And Kitty and Claire and you…”
He looked directly at me, waiting.
“I’ve never had friends like this before,” I said, realizing the truth of it as I said it. “You know, a cohesive group. At home, it was always just Jess. And then her boyfriend and our friend Ethan, I guess, but it was mostly just her. And here I have y’all, and it’s really good.
“But leading up to last week, I still missed home. My parents a little and my siblings a lot. And Jess a lot. So maybe I built it up in my head too much, I don’t know. But it ended up being weird.”
“Yeah, but weird how?” he pressed.
I glanced up the hill. Claire and Kitty were walking down toward us, laughing at something, Claire’s hair drifting around her in the breeze.
“Everything is almost the same as when I left, but not quite,” I answered. “The things that are different, I don’t recognize. And the things that are the same, I don’t want to be part of anymore.”
Sam looked down at our feet, stretched out onto the floor of the gazebo. He was wearing black-and-white sneakers; I was wearing my boots. He tapped the toe of my right foot with the toe of his left.
“That sounds hard,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Kitty and Claire reached us and set down their bags. Kitty glanced between us and looked like she was about to say something, but Claire spoke up first.
“At last, my plan to spend time outside has paid off,” she crowed. “Aren’t you glad we’ve been preparing for this all semester?”
“As I told you walking down here, our preparation wouldn’t matter today, because it is actually an acceptable temperature,” Kitty told her. She passed me a thermos of coffee from her backpack, and I mouthed thank you. “In Florida, this is as cold as it ever gets.”
“Claire, I’m going to wait until the next really cold night and make you pose in a T-shirt and shorts to take my portrait of you,” Sam said, laughing.
“Why are you taking a portrait of me?” Claire tied up her hair and unwrapped her sandwich. We told them about our photo assignment, and Claire actually clapped her hands. “So you’re telling me that not only one but two pictures of me are going to be hanging in the art hallway for six months? That is great.”
“It’s something,” Kitty said, looking a little uneasy. “You have your work cut out for yourself with me.”
“You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met,” Claire said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Do you not like having your picture taken?” I asked.
Kitty made a face. “I don’t hate it. I just don’t like most photos of myself. I don’t think I have a good face for cameras.”
“She’s lying,” Claire said. “And I say this as someone who absolutely has a good face for cameras, so I would know.”
“I’m just saying,” Kitty protested, “don’t go for gritty realism, okay? If people are going to stare at me while they wait for drama class to start, I want to look good.”
“Y
ou will look great,” I promised, and Sam nodded.
* * *
It was easy—easier than I had expected—to fall back into my routine in Virginia, made easier by the fact that we had switched to daylight savings time and the weather was finally getting warmer. Every day, the sun shimmered on the river for a little longer, woke me up through my window a little earlier. When I called home twice a week, I asked for the twins first, then talked to my parents for a few minutes.
I talked to Jess less than I used to, justifying it by telling myself that we were both busy. I didn’t let myself think too hard about my feelings for her, except after we talked. I missed her so much after we hung up that I had to lie on my bed and focus on the ceiling for a half hour after our conversations finished. But that was fine. It was okay.
Especially because I was legitimately busy. My classes weren’t getting any easier, my Monday SAT prep class had expanded to fill my Wednesday study hall, and my photography assignment took up all the mental energy I had left at the end of the day. In addition to planning the four pictures of Oma, Kitty, Claire, and Sam, I needed to figure out how to include my friends and family at home. I hadn’t gotten any good photos of my parents or Jess; I had taken pictures of the twins and Ethan that I thought might work, but I wasn’t sure. Erica had patiently sat with me while I pored over the contact sheets, and she had agreed there were some good images, but they weren’t perfect; I would need to look at cropping, brightening, or darkening them, which was a lot harder in the darkroom than it was on the computer.
Plus, I wanted to spend time with my friends. Now that it was warmer and my curfew was later, suddenly there was always something to do. There was coffee at Harold’s or a dorm dinner I was invited to join; there were blankets on the lawn and study sessions in the gazebo and movie nights on Kitty’s laptop. They came over to Oma’s and we made dinner for her, burning the garlic bread and overcooking the pasta so it fell apart on our tongues, but the tomato sauce was so good—thanks for the herbs, Nadine!—that it didn’t matter. Sam joined us for a trip to one of the local antique stores, and we laughed at magazine covers and haunted dolls. Sam was around more than he used to be; sometimes Justin and Alex joined us, too, and I grew to like them both, Justin for his quick wit and Alex for his earnest need to argue about books.
On days when I wasn’t spending time with them, I still wanted to be outside. I joined Oma on her walks with Eleanor Roosevelt, ambling around the neighborhood while Ellie sniffed at rocks and tried to eat the crab apples that fell from the trees. It was on one of these walks that I took my photograph of Oma. We were slowly making our way down the beach, the river lapping at the sand to our left and the school rising up on our right.
When I had thought about Oma’s portrait, I had considered capturing her at the dining room table, symbolizing the quiet evenings we spent together while I did homework and she graded papers. Or cutting peppers in the kitchen, to reference the long conversations we sometimes had while she cooked and I cleaned. I hadn’t intended to take the picture—or as Erica said, make the portrait—on the beach. I just had my camera with me because I always did.
But there, as she and Ellie walked ahead of me, she paused and looked out toward the horizon, and I felt the moment slip into place: a key catching in a lock. I held my breath and raised the camera to my eye. The frame saw her in profile, the setting sun draping itself over her features; to her left, the river flashed and flickered, and to her right, the bank was grassy and still. I adjusted some settings quickly, quietly, then clicked and exhaled.
She looked back at me and smiled. “Sneaky with that thing, aren’t you?”
“You looked really beautiful, Oma.” I picked my way over the rocks and sand to catch up to her.
“So was that it?”
I had told her about the portrait assignment. We had even brainstormed her photo together. She said she could find a pedestal to stand on if I wanted to portray her as my life’s greatest hero.
“That was it.”
“What is it going to say about me?”
I parted my lips to make a joke. But then a rogue wave splashed up onto the rocks, soaking both of our shoes, and we laughed in unison, and I said, “That I love you very much, and I’m very grateful that you’ve let me into your home.”
She stopped and hugged me until Ellie pulled us forward.
“I love you, too,” she said, and then we talked about homework.
Sixteen
If you had asked me that spring about my plans for college, my answer would’ve been pretty vague. I had thought about it, of course, but only in broad and abstract terms. I knew that I was expected to go, that I wanted to go, and that I wanted somewhere far away—or at least far away enough that I’d have a few hours’ head start if my parents decided to visit. I knew that I wanted to go someplace good, though I had enough self-awareness to understand that I was not Ivy material. I knew that my parents could pay for some of it and that I would need to pay for the rest in some combination of scholarships and loans.
The woman in front of me, however, was more serious about college than anyone I had ever met. She looked at me severely through large glasses before opening the folder in front of her.
“June,” she said.
“Yes?”
She was shuffling through the papers in the file. There weren’t many, but given that I hadn’t even known I had a file until a few minutes ago, even a small number of papers was concerning. I waited while she skimmed before, finally, she sat back in the chair with a sigh.
“I apologize,” she said. “I’m meeting with a lot of students today, and I haven’t had a chance to review everyone’s file in advance.”
“That’s okay.”
“Did you find the presentation useful?”
Earlier today, the entire eleventh grade had come together in the assembly hall so that this woman—I think her name was Mrs. Wagner, or maybe Weber—could tell us what it took to get into college. Oma had told me to expect a presentation about the different kinds of colleges out there, with tips about how many schools to apply to and how to write a strong application. Similar speakers had come to visit in the past, she said, and they had been well received. But the message Mrs. Wagner-or-Weber had delivered was that we, all of us, were teetering on the edge of failure, and the slightest misstep could tip us into the chasm.
“Your future success rests upon your ability to choose, apply to, and be admitted to the right university,” she had told us with the solemnity of a prophet predicting a death. “It is not the time for games.”
Now, I was sitting in front of her in the guidance counselor’s office, at the individual appointment I had been required to attend after school. To her question, I nodded. Yes, I had found the presentation useful.
“Good,” she said, businesslike, sitting up straight again. “So. Academically, you’re doing well. It’s nice to see the number of AP classes you’ve taken. If you keep getting these kinds of grades, you’ll be in a good place there.” She glanced down. “I see you’re in the SAT prep class. How are your practice tests?”
“Good.”
She sat expectantly, waiting.
“I don’t remember the number, I’m sorry.” I did, but I didn’t want to tell her.
“Well, as long as you’re scoring high. How’s your writing? For your personal statements and essays?”
“Pretty good, I think. I get good grades on my essays.”
She nodded and turned a page. There was a long silence as her eyes moved down the sheet of paper, the font too small for me to read across the desk. “I see that you’re new to the school this semester. It’s unusual to switch schools midyear; can you tell me any more about that?”
I looked at her carefully, trying to judge whether my file said exactly why I had been sent away from Greenmont. The file was slim, and since I had technically left of my own accord, there w
as no reason for the school to know what had happened at the dance. When I talked to an administrator at St. Anne’s before arriving in January, I had done what my parents told me to do: obliquely reference a difficult social situation, say I needed to be more challenged in class. But these things, I knew, had a way of getting around.
Mrs. W stared right back at me with the exhausted rigidity of a woman with a task to complete and too little time.
“I needed a change,” I said finally, to which she nodded. I was waiting for her to ask more questions—it was not a good answer—but clearly, she’d just had a box to check. I sat back in relief.
“Well, that just leaves extracurriculars,” she continued. “It’s problematic that you’re not involved in any clubs. The ideal applicant has interests outside school.”
“I do photography,” I said weakly.
“Lean into that. Submit a supplemental art portfolio if you can. A lot of schools don’t weight them heavily, but it can’t hurt. Now, I don’t know if you’ve thought about budget and where exactly you’ll be applying, but…”
She started pulling brochures out of her bag. The next twenty minutes passed in a haze of glossy photographs, tuition costs, and application deadlines. I almost believed she was paid by the number of pamphlets she handed out. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that I didn’t want anywhere too cold or ask whether I got in-state tuition in Virginia or North Carolina or both. By the time I staggered out of the office, bag bulging with brochures, I was pretty sure the best path would be to melt into the earth and never go to college. That, or apply to thirty schools. There didn’t seem to be any in-between.
Thankfully, Claire was waiting outside when I emerged, having taken the appointment before mine. She hopped up when she saw me.
“How was it?”
I made a face, which she mirrored back.
“Yeah,” she said. “Mine was bad, too.”
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