Any Place But Here

by Sarah Van Name

  It was the last afternoon of class, and I wanted it to go on forever. I had glimpsed bits and pieces of my classmates’ work over the past six weeks, but I hadn’t seen it all together like this. Sam and I barely had time to hang up our own photos before helping out the girls who had come rushing in late, and every picture took longer to hang because I was marveling at it. Not all of them were technical masterpieces—far from it—but every single image I saw fulfilled the first challenge that Erica had set us, to take a picture of a person that told you what that person meant.

  I hammered nails; I lifted frames; I unfolded plastic tables and folding chairs. I ran back and forth to the cafeteria carrying trays of cookies and jugs of lemonade. At ten to three, the entryway with the drinks and snacks was starting to fill up. Erica looked around, wild-eyed, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay. I think we’re ready. If you need to prepare anything else, now’s your time. Be back here at three. I’m going to say a few words.”

  I escaped to the bathroom, where I found half my class. It swarmed with the breathless, intimate energy of girls gathered in front of mirrors. The counter was a mess of lipstick and hairbrushes dense with tangles. Megan fastened the thin silver clasp on Ruby’s necklace, biting her lip. Jasmine zipped Maya’s dress. Lauren swiped on deodorant and leaned close to the mirror, dabbing at her hairline with a damp paper towel. They—we—chattered. So many people, so many more than we were expecting. Were our photos good? Would our friends like how we had showed them, or would they be angry at us? What were we doing this summer? Could we believe it was the end of the year?

  I put on red lipstick. I had never worn it before because it wasn’t mine; it belonged to Jess, and I had found it under the futon, cleaning up after she left. Once we started talking again, I told her I’d mail it back to her, but she said I could keep it. “I only used it once, and it’ll look better on you,” she’d said, even though our skin tones were almost exactly the same. She was right. In the mirror, I looked new.

  I took a picture of myself and texted it to her. almost time for my photo show!

  “Two minutes,” Jasmine said to nobody in particular, and I ducked out before the mass exodus could begin. As I pushed open the door, my phone buzzed with a reply: you look AMAZING, good luck! remember me when you’re a famous photographer!!!

  Back in the entryway, I spotted Claire, inches taller than everyone around her, and squeezed my way through the crowd. I gave her and Kitty one enormous hug.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” I said. “This is a lot of people.”

  “That it is,” Kitty said. She looked over my shoulder, half smiling. “We were actually just talking to—”

  “Hi, June!”

  I turned around. There, beside Oma, were my parents.

  Dad grinned broadly, and Mom raised a hand in an awkward wave. They both looked so wholly out of place in the crowd that my mouth hung open for a moment before I could react. The weird thing wasn’t that they were parents at a student event. So close to move-out day, a lot of my classmates’ families had come. In fact, Sam had told me his family was coming, too, though I didn’t see him anywhere.

  The weird thing was that in this building, this safe and separate space, I almost never thought of my parents. Them and their anger, their suspicion, their disappointment. My gut reaction was to turn away, certain that when I turned back, they would be gone.

  Instead, I stepped forward and hugged them both.

  “I didn’t know you guys were coming!” I said into Dad’s shoulder.

  “Mom invited us,” said my mother. “She said we couldn’t miss it!”

  “This is a big deal,” Dad said, looking slightly overwhelmed—or at least surprised—by the crowd and the noise. I gave Oma a hug too, trying to catch her eye and silently communicate what the hell, but she just gave me a big smile and turned to talk to a student who had asked her a question.

  “Did the twins come, too?” I asked, looking around, and Dad shook his head.

  “They’re staying with friends tonight,” he said. “End of school sleepover.”

  “So, do y’all have baby pictures of June to share or what?” Claire interjected.

  Thankfully, Erica chose that moment to stand up on a chair and shush the crowd. As everyone settled down, I felt someone grab my hand and squeeze it once, quickly, then release. I turned to my right, where Sam had appeared beside me as if by magic. He smiled. Behind him, Claire was hugging and whispering greetings to a couple who had to be his parents. I smiled back at him—those eyes, how could you not?—and then turned with the crowd to listen to Erica.

  “Welcome to the first annual St. Anne’s photography show!” The crowd hooted and clapped in such rambunctious appreciation that I started laughing. This was definitely the rowdiest art show I had ever attended. It was the first art show I had ever attended, too, but whatever.

  “The twelve students in my class have worked very hard over the past semester to learn how to not just take great pictures but also develop and print their film—a dying art,” she added, grinning at some of the parents and teachers in the audience, who were nodding in shared nostalgia. “They’ve spent the last six weeks making portraits of the people in their lives who mean the most to them. Those portraits will hang in the arts hallway until next January, so if you have friends who couldn’t make it today, you can tell them they only missed the cookies.

  “And speaking of, we have plenty of refreshments.” She gestured to the back of the room, where we had set out enough snacks for an army. “So please, grab a plate as you browse, and enjoy the work. Let’s give a round of applause for the artists!”

  As Erica climbed down from her makeshift platform, the crowd exploded in applause even louder than the first round, and I glanced at Sam, giggling despite myself. It was impossible not to be both embarrassed and proud.

  As the noise died down, people started to move into the hall. Sam and his parents had split off to talk to Claire near the table of cookies, Kitty and Oma were chatting with some of her former students, and my parents were standing still, looking baffled.

  “June, we had no idea this was such a big deal!” Mom said.

  “It’s not a real exhibit, just a school thing.” Even as I resented them for being surprised, I had to admit that I hadn’t given them much information. I tried to remember what I had told them. I had definitely mentioned it, but I was pretty sure I had made it sound like the event was an in-class celebration. When they told me they were planning to come up the day after school ended, I hadn’t even considered inviting them. Apparently Oma had taken it upon herself.

  “School exhibits can still be a big deal,” Dad said gently.

  “We just met Kitty and Claire,” Mom said. I braced myself for criticism, but she continued, “They seemed wonderful. Are their parents here?”

  “Not yet. They weren’t in my photo class. Their parents are coming tomorrow. But my friend Sam, I don’t know if you met him—” I nodded to him across the room. “He goes to school in town, but he got a special exception to attend this class. He’s Claire’s cousin. His parents are here.”

  “We’d love to meet them, too,” Dad said, following my gaze.

  “Yes, we were thinking maybe we could take you and your friends out to dinner tonight,” Mom said. “Your oma said there was a place you like. A diner?”

  “I—yeah, that would be great.” I had planned to spend the evening packing, but I definitely wasn’t going to turn down free Harold’s. And if my parents were actually going to be nice to my friends for once…

  “But first, show us these photos!” Dad clapped his hands together and turned toward the hallway, now swarmed with people.

  “Yeah, sure. Mine are way down at the end.”

  As I threaded my way down the hallway, Mom grabbed my hand, Dad holding her hand behind her. I was reminded of when we used to go to the state fair w
hen the twins were younger and I had been the middle link in the chain, Mom in front, then Candace, then me, then Bryan, then Dad, the five of us weaving our way like ducklings through the crowd.

  The area in front of my and Sam’s photos was still open; he wasn’t there, and the crowd hadn’t gotten this far. “Here they are,” I said, gesturing to the wall. I felt suddenly self-conscious, and I leaned against the door to a supply closet, looking at the portraits that signified the last five months of my life as my parents stepped closer to inspect them.

  I had ended up with eight pictures. On the top row, I had hung the portraits of people from my life here. There was Claire in her bedroom, cheeks puffed out and laughing, eyes wide open, fairy lights tangled in a bokeh shimmer behind her. Kitty at Harold’s looking down, smiling, her short hair curling around her ears in need of a trim, golden hour soft on her cheeks.

  In Oma’s portrait, she was paused on the beach, the gentle tide washing up to her ankles. She was looking out toward the horizon so you could see her profile more than any details in her face; I had tried my hardest to balance the light, but she was still more outline than anything else. Beside her, Ellie paused on the rocks and looked out in the same direction, as if hoping for a stick she could chase.

  Last on that line was Sam, standing in the middle of a wide landscape of parking lot and hill, holding his camera up to his eye. He might have been the only person in miles. He was barely identifiable if you didn’t know him. But I knew him.

  On the bottom row were the pictures of people from home. Ethan looked out his car window at the camera lens, his face in shadow but his eyes still sharp, wearing the wry expression that appeared just before he smiled. Raindrops blurred the air between him and the camera. The twins’ portrait, too, was one I had taken at home: both of them in the corner of our L-shaped couch, the place they had claimed as theirs for as long as I could remember. Bryan held a book, and Candace was playing a game. Their faces shared the same concentration; their bodies turned toward each other in perfect, unconscious symmetry.

  My parents’ photo made me wince, but there was nothing to be done about it now. On spring break, every time I had raised my camera to take a picture of my mom, she had noticed and thrown her hand in front of her face as if the photo were a bug to swat away. My dad had kept making goofy faces, which might have been fine, but I had never gotten the composition right, so I had never taken a picture.

  The image I had finally printed was of my phone propped up on the windowsill at night, in the middle of a video chat, glowing so brightly that the world outside the window had been reduced to flat black. I had turned off my camera so they wouldn’t see me taking the picture, so the rectangle that should have showed me was dark, too. They were waiting for me to speak, both of their faces crowded in the frame of the phone. Dad’s left ear and half of Mom’s cheek were cut off.

  And then, finally, Jess. Hers was the eighth in the series, far right on the bottom row. I had given her the last word, like I always did. The print was the one of her walking away from the playground, the swing empty in the foreground, with the chain-link fence and the road beyond. I had made maybe a dozen prints of the photograph, even though there weren’t any major technical mishaps—the focus, framing, lights, and darks had all been in order from the beginning. It had been clear from the first moment I saw the negative that this was the image I would choose, and if the symbolism was a little too on the nose, maybe that was what I needed. I think I made so many prints because I was always hoping that in the next one, when the picture appeared on the page, she would have turned around.

  My parents took several minutes to look at the pictures, during which a bunch of other people wandered down the hall, glanced at my photos and Sam’s, then turned around again. It gave me time to look over Sam’s collection. I had seen a lot of his pictures because I had helped him with last-minute prints, but I hadn’t looked at them all together like this. They were, as I had known they would be, very good. Lines and curves, black and white met each other in crisp, intentional contrast.

  It was funny to see his portraits of Kitty and Claire next to mine. He had taken the picture of Claire at the Shabbos table at his parents’ house, her hands in the middle of tearing a piece of challah and a rare serene expression on her face. In Kitty’s photo, she was lying down, apparently asleep, on a blanket on the grass. I remembered that day. The lawn had been crowded with winter-sick girls desperate for the sun, but Sam had found the angle that made it look as if Kitty were alone.

  The picture of me was the only one I hadn’t seen, and though it made me feel horribly self-absorbed to admit, it was the one I liked best. Like my picture of Sam, his image of me showed me alone in a wide landscape. Unlike him in my photo, though, nothing shielded me from the camera. I was smiling a little, leaning protectively against the gate to the condo, as if guarding it from intruders. My bag was nowhere near me—I remembered him taking it away—so it was just me and the wall and the river and the sky. My hair was blowing in the wind. I looked beautiful.

  Finally, my parents turned around. My heart sped up. I couldn’t read their expressions.

  “These are really lovely,” Mom said. She stepped in to hug me tightly, and when I started to pull away, she didn’t let go. “I’m so impressed.”

  “I’m very proud of you,” Dad said, joining the hug, and I felt Mom nod. “This is great. Really, really great. And all As on your report card, too!”

  “Thank you,” I said. My voice was muffled by their bodies, and I was thankful they couldn’t hear the waver in it. I couldn’t remember the last time my parents had said they were proud of me without a “but.” I had not expected them to think very much of the photographs. And I hadn’t particularly expected praise for my grades, either. At the very least, I had thought they’d call out the A minus in AP Spanish, which I couldn’t pull up to an A despite hours of studying. But they hadn’t said anything bad at all.

  When they finally pulled away, Mom’s eyes were wet, though she quickly wiped the back of her hand across them. “I wish I had known more about this exhibit,” she said. “I would’ve made sure you had time to take a nice picture of me.”

  “At spring break, I didn’t know about it, either,” I said honestly. “My teacher hadn’t told us yet.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” I turned and saw Erica, who had appeared beside me out of the crowd. “I’ve heard it from a lot of parents who are conspicuously absent from these collections. Next year’s class will know before they go home, but this year, I didn’t get permission for the exhibit until after break. My fault!” She held up her hands and smiled. My parents introduced themselves, and she shook their hands, beaming.

  “Your daughter is incredibly talented,” she said, putting her arm around me.

  “She’s exaggerating,” I said.

  “I’m not,” she insisted. “It’s been a joy teaching you this semester, June.”

  “We’re very proud,” Dad said again, smiling.

  I was feeling wildly uncomfortable, if happy, when Kitty and Claire broke through the crowd, Sam and his family in tow and Oma bringing up the back of the group.

  “Oh my God, these are amazing,” Claire said immediately. “Way better than anything else here.”

  “You haven’t even had a chance to see them,” Sam said.

  “They feature me,” Claire said, rounding on him. “Therefore—oh my God, June, you got the one with my cheeks puffed out!” She posed next to her photo in an uncanny imitation of herself.

  I leaned against the wall again, Sam beside me, while everyone looked at the pictures and my parents talked to Erica. This time, I grabbed his hand.

  “We did it,” I said to him. “Good job.”

  “You too,” he said. He leaned down and placed the lightest, briefest kiss on the top of my head.

  We probably stood there for half an hour, chatting in different groups. I met
Sam’s parents, who said warmly, “We’ve heard a lot about you,” and Sam met my parents, who pretended they had heard a lot about him, even though I had told them almost nothing. Mom raised her eyebrows at me when no one else was looking, and I knew I would have to answer questions later, but I resolved not to worry—not today, at least. I had all summer to decide how much I wanted to tell her and Dad, about Jess and Sam and my whole life for the past five months. Sam and I answered questions about our photos, and as self-conscious as I felt, it was nice, to have done all this work and have almost all the people I loved there to see it, showing real interest.

  By four, the hallway had almost cleared out, and my parents had gotten friendly enough with everyone to invite the entire group to a celebratory dinner. I had no idea how we were going to fit nine people in a booth, but I trusted that Harold’s would provide.

  “What time is it?” Dad checked his watch.

  “We have a few hours until dinner,” my mother said. “Mom, can we go get settled at your place? We drove straight to the school. Traffic was worse than I expected.”

  “Oh yes, of course, I’ll go with you. June—great job, again,” Oma said, giving me another big hug. “Want to come?”

  “I need to finish up some stuff here. But I’ll be back home before dinner.”

  “We should get going, too,” Sam’s dad said. “Sam, we’re giving you a ride home, right?”

  “Right,” Sam said. He hugged me, too, as our parents said goodbye to each other. “See you at dinner,” he said. “I’ll give you a proper goodbye then.”

  “Deal,” I said. “But it’s not goodbye forever. Just for a while.”

  “Deal,” he said, smiling as he pulled back.

  Finally, Kitty and Claire and I were left alone in the hallway. We looked at one another in the sudden silence, and I started laughing.