Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

  “Everybody fights!” he said.

  “I know.”

  “What is going on?” Jake hollered in a croak.

  “I—I don’t know, Jake.” Tillie reached out to touch him.

  Jake slapped her hand away. He paced back and forth a few times and fumed. “Oh, you ‘don’t know’ but you have an entire set of pictures of my dad alive and fine? You ‘don’t know’ but you kept photos of him and … her,” he said with disgust, “in your stupid drawer with your other stupid pictures? You do know. You’ve known. You’ve known where my dad is. How long, Lost and Found? How long?”

  “I don’t know why any of this is happening! Or how! And don’t yell at me!”

  Tillie saw her mom’s shadow by the door. Don’t come in, Mom, she thought. Don’t.

  “Why did you keep these to yourself, huh?” Jake asked with a jeer. His face looked cruel, so unlike him. “You just weren’t going to tell me? For Christ’s sake, you just laid out all our clues but didn’t include the ones that led you to find him?”

  “I don’t know what to say.” And she didn’t.

  “Of course you don’t. You never do,” Jake added under his breath. “I guess that’s why you like to be alone.”

  “Well, maybe it is!” Tillie answered him, standing up straight next to her desk with her hands tightening into fists by her sides.

  “I came to you and not my friends because I figured you, out of anybody, would know how to keep a secret. Your whole life is a secret, right? But now you’re keeping secrets from me, too!” he growled.

  “You know what’s wrong with you, Jake? You talk so much that you don’t hear what other people are saying. How was I even supposed to tell you about what I saw? You are so delusional that you wouldn’t have believed your eyes. You would have made up some deranged story about how Ms. Martinez is holding him hostage or something. Well, you know what? She isn’t. You even love her. So how can you blame your dad?”

  “STOP TALKING, TILLIE!” Jake shouted.

  “You mean like you never do?” She hated this, hated him.

  She saw her mom moving toward the door, as if she might enter. “Leave me alone, Mom!” Tillie felt herself howl.

  “Well, you know what’s wrong with you?” Jake leaned toward her with a pointed finger. “You are so convinced that something’s wrong with you that you thought I wouldn’t talk to you anymore if you told me this. Something as important as this. Like there’s nothing else about you, except your stupid pictures, that I would like. But guess what, you moron? I do like you. You’re funny and you’re smart and you’re kind of weird, and I like that. But why do you have to be such a liar?”

  “Stop calling my pictures stupid!” Tillie inched closer to his burning-hot face.

  Jake laughed a short, bitter laugh. “See? All you care about are these.” He gestured at the mess of photos around him. He began to move toward the door, shaking his head in disgust, breathing heavily.

  “And you?” Tillie said, and he stopped and turned back to her. “What do you care about, huh? Being the funniest guy around? Making sure everyone thinks you’re so great? You know, I saw you in sixth grade, making fun of me. I saw you doing my walk! My limp! Making everyone laugh at me! That’s what you care about, huh? Making everybody laugh, no matter who you’re hurting!” Tillie was crying now.

  “What are you even talking about?” Jake looked at her like she was the delusional one. “I never made fun of you! Not once! Has it ever crossed your insane mind that you’re so paranoid that other people are judging you or making fun of you or thinking something bad about you that you thought you saw something you didn’t?”

  “I make stuff up? I’m paranoid? You’re the one who thought your dad was some hero on the run when really he was just a—” Tillie stopped herself.

  “What? What is he?”

  Tillie had started sobbing and she couldn’t stop.

  “Well, you did what I asked,” Jake said softly as he turned to leave. “You found him. So thanks, Lost and Found. I guess we’re done.”

  Tillie watched him go, unable to move.

  “I didn’t want to hide it from you, Jake,” she yelled out as he went down the hallway. “I just didn’t know what else to do!”

  Tillie heard the door slam and hurried toward the window, watching Jake walk away from her house, his silhouette a dot in the night.

  Her mom came out from her hiding place outside the door, and held Tillie, weeping, in her arms, telling her it was all going to be alright.

  But it wasn’t. Because it was the first time she’d ever had a friend over. And it was also going to be the last.

  17

  Stalker

  Friday went by, and the weekend, and two more days, and Tillie successfully dodged Jake. She did everything possible to avoid him at school. She waited outside in the mornings until the majority of kids had entered the building, arriving a little late to her class, just so she wouldn’t see him before first hour. She took alternate routes to her classes to make sure she didn’t pass his locker. She ate lunch in the math teacher’s room, where kids were welcome if they wanted to do homework. She scribbled random numbers into her notebook.

  And then, on Wednesday at lunchtime, Abby stopped her in the hall.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “Come eat with us.”

  Before Tillie could protest, Abby added, “And hey, is Jake okay? Seriously. He’s been at your old table all week.”

  Really? She could hardly imagine it.

  “Oh,” Tillie said. “I actually really don’t know.”

  Abby shrugged. “Okay.” She linked her arm through Tillie’s and walked her toward the cafeteria.

  As Tillie made her way into the lunchroom with Abby, she saw Jake seated where she used to sit, slouched over his tray, headphones on. She didn’t have to worry about catching his eye because his focus stayed entirely downward.

  When they joined the group at the table, Abby started asking Tillie about when she got into photography. As Tillie haltingly began to tell the story about her grandpa and the Polaroids she heard someone say “Jake” from a little ways down the table. Tillie paused to listen.

  “He’s over there at the Lost and Found table,” she heard Ian say.

  “Yeah, is he the new Lost and Found or something?” Emma said.

  “Maybe he’ll come in tomorrow lugging a weird old camera,” Ian said.

  The group of them laughed.

  Abby turned to Tillie, and then back to her crowd. “She’s right here, guys! Can we get a little respect?”

  “Oh, hey, Tillie,” Ian said. “We were just messing around. No hurt feelings, right?”

  Tillie ate her grapes and meatloaf in silence. She couldn’t escape to her old table because it wasn’t hers anymore. Her cafeteria hideout had been stolen.

  Abby leaned in to whisper in her ear. “News flash—Ian is kind of a jerk.” She nudged Tillie’s shoulder and smiled. Tillie did her best to smile back.

  She tried to ignore Jake, even though he was all she could think about.

  She promised herself she would never eat lunch in the cafeteria again.

  * * *

  In Tillie’s first art class since her fight with Jake, Ms. Martinez talked them through a watercolor of an orange and an apple. “Use a thick brush to create the background space, covering your canvas. Use a small brush to add detail. Pay attention to the light. Don’t be afraid to mess up. Colors are malleable.”

  The fruit bowl sat in the center of the room and the kids worked on stained wooden easels the school must have been using for two decades.

  Tillie fantasized about spending the class pretending to draw the apple and orange and then when they turned their easels around to show what they’d done, she would reveal a painting of Ms. Martinez kissing Jake’s dad.

  As Ms. Martinez walked past Tillie’s canvas she said, “Good job.” But it was like an outline of “Good job,” with none of the color it usually had.

  Tilli
e forced herself to look up at Ms. Martinez and act like everything was normal.

  “Thanks,” she started to say, but as she took in Ms. Martinez’s face, she stopped. Ms. Martinez’s eyes were glued on her, as if she’d just been waiting for the chance to share one small, private glance, and her expression told Tillie that she knew everything. Her brow furrowed, not in anger, but in an awful mixture of sadness and disappointment. She pointed toward her glasses and said, “Got them back,” in a low, deliberate voice. Then she shook her head slightly, as if shooing away some unpleasant thought, and moved on to the next student’s work.

  So she knew what Tillie had seen. Who else knew? Had Jake confronted his parents? Had Jake’s dad told Ms. Martinez about the girl at his office? It didn’t really matter. It was done.

  When the bell rang, Tillie rushed out of the room without looking at Ms. Martinez’s face.

  * * *

  Her dad—never home right after school—was in her room. Waiting for her.

  He sat on her bed, surrounded by pictures.

  “Matilda…” he said when she opened the door. He didn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed on the images before him, toppling over his thighs and onto the bed. Some were on the floor.

  She wanted to say, “Whatever the teacher or grown-up who called you said is wrong. I didn’t do anything, I was just trying to help someone.” But she didn’t. She couldn’t. All she managed to say was, “Why aren’t you at work? Where’s Mom?”

  Tillie’s dad didn’t respond.

  And then another possibility occurred to her. Maybe, after all this time, he had discovered her photos’ worth, their beauty. Maybe he wasn’t mad about the search for Jake’s dad. Maybe he was too awed to speak.

  “I find things for people, with my camera.” She’d always wanted to tell him this. “They call me Lost and Found.” She nodded toward the puddle of photographs.

  She forced a small laugh, as if to signal it was no big deal. At the same time, she checked his face to see if there was any reaction. But he remained blank.

  So she stood still and waited. Her leg was starting to hurt from standing in one place for too long. Her dad picked up a picture and then put it back down.

  “Dad…” She came toward him to sit on the bed.

  But before she got there, her dad lifted up a picture. He stared right at her, with a tight mouth and a locked jaw. He turned the image toward Tillie. Her dad held a picture of himself, with a tiny flash of her mom’s cheek. It was a photo she’d taken through the keyhole in their bedroom door. A close-up of his face. In the photograph his face was absent of feeling in that way a face gets when a person becomes overwhelmed and needs to just shut down. It was a photo Tillie had spent a lot of time looking at, wondering if he was thinking of her and her leg, or her mom, or something else—some mysterious something else that made him so unknowable.

  She looked at the photograph and then back at him.

  “What is this?”

  “A picture,” Tillie whispered.

  There was a long pause.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “You know I use my camera a lot,” Tillie said, trying to make her voice light. She wished she could say, “You know I love my camera more than anything.”

  “You’ve been looking at your mom and me? When we’re in private?”

  She couldn’t speak.

  Her dad stood up and began to pace. His voice, which rarely held much expression in it at all, boomed and filled the room.

  “Your mom made me come in here. To see what might be true about a call from that boy’s mother.”

  So Jake had told his mother he knew. His mother had told his dad. His dad had told Ms. Martinez about the office showdown and with the details from Jake’s mom she must have put it all together. Tillie cursed Jake in her head.

  “And this is what I find,” he went on. “Me and your mother.” He paused and stopped in place, shaking his head at all that lay before him. “And so much of me…” He bent and sifted through some pictures on the bed. Tillie saw that it was the “Dad” file.

  “Talk about invading privacy,” Tillie said under her breath.

  “So I’ll ask you again. What is the meaning of this?”

  Tillie tried to remember the last time he’d been in her room this long.

  “I love to take pictures.” Tillie’s voice shook. The pain in her back and leg had tripled since the morning. “Like Vivian Maier. I Googled her, Dad.” Tillie paused, waiting for something, anything. “I could be as good as her one day,” she added desperately.

  Tillie’s dad looked her up and down. “I can’t believe this.” He put his hand to his head. “You’re nearly thirteen years old, and all you do is watch other people. Like a … a stalker.”

  Tillie’s mouth parted, but no sound came out.

  “I’m so sorry, Tillie. I’m so sorry for what I did to you,” he said. He started to walk out of the room, but he stopped when he was next to her and said, “But this has to stop. No more camera. No more pictures. Nothing. You’re not okay.”

  18

  Break

  She knew how to sneak out now. No problem at all. But holding four cameras was a challenge.

  Outside she felt a slight end-of-March drizzle. Spring was so close, but the air remained cold and dreary. In her front yard she spotted a few buds. She stepped on them as she walked across the lawn to the garbage.

  The trash bins sat by the curb. Tillie put the cameras down next to them.

  She grabbed her tiny range finder first. It was easy to break. She just held it, said her goodbyes, and threw it down onto the road. It cracked on the concrete, and with one stomp from her good leg, she turned it into a piece of trash.

  This would make everybody happy. No more “stalking,” no more ruining lives.

  Her huge film camera, the one that used to be her mom’s, the one that her Google research told her was the same kind of medium-format film camera Vivian Maier used to secretly capture people’s lives on the streets of Chicago, would be more difficult to destroy. Tillie lifted it above her head with both hands.

  Art should capture something true, Ms. Martinez had said. But Ms. Martinez had just been a big lie.

  With a grunt, Tillie hurled the camera onto the cement as hard as she could.

  No one wants the real truth. Jake hadn’t wanted to see that he was just another sad kid from a broken family. And she hadn’t wanted to see that she was just a broken girl. But he was sad, and she was broken.

  The lens cracked into a dozen shards, but only a tiny section of the camera’s body came off, and Tillie cursed.

  It wasn’t her body that was the broken part. No. It was her. She was awkward. A lurker, a freak. Was that because she was in pain nearly all the time? Was that because people either stared at her or looked away as fast as they could when she walked down the street? Maybe. But it didn’t really matter why.

  “Come on,” she said aloud. “Break.” She kicked the camera with her good leg.

  Except that it mattered to her mom, who didn’t let her go a second without reminding her that she was different, that she was alone.

  “Break!” she commanded with another kick.

  And it mattered to her dad. The “why” meant everything to her dad.

  Tillie took the metal top off the trash can and held it up high.

  I’m so sorry for what I did to you … he’d said.

  Tillie brought the trash can lid down onto the camera with a loud crash. The camera splintered into pieces.

  Next, Tillie grabbed her best friend, her beautiful DSLR, the one that had captured most of her Lost and Found shots, and placed it by the scraps of metal and glass that lay before her. She lifted the lid again.

  Oh, yeah? You’re sorry, Dad?

  She brought it down. A couple of fragments of the camera flew off the curb and onto the street’s pavement.

  Then why did he just ignore her?

  She bashed it again. Harder.

&nb
sp; So they got into an accident! He hurt her! By accident! Because of bad luck! Okay, fine!

  She smashed it harder.

  Did that mean he had to stop laughing and smiling? Did that mean he had to stutter and mope and be ashamed of her? And anyway, he hadn’t done anything to her! This all had nothing to do with him! She would’ve found and loved photographs no matter what happened to her, no matter what path she’d taken. It was who she was!

  But not anymore.

  Tillie slammed the lid down on the remains of her Lost and Found camera again.

  No more “stalker.”

  And again.

  No more freak.

  And again.

  Three cameras lay decimated before her. Garbage.

  The last camera to destroy was the Polaroid camera her grandpa had given her, the one that no longer worked. It would fall apart with one strike, she knew, but she couldn’t do it herself. She pressed it to her cheek, and placed it in the middle of the road. The next car that came would do the dirty work for her.

  She looked out at the mess she’d created. A picture did say a thousand words, Tillie thought. And her pictures had been her screams, showing the world that she was on the outside of it. She only watched, lived in life’s periphery, told other people’s stories … And now, without her photos, she’d just be silent.

  Sweeping up the other cameras’ remains, she put them into the trash bit by bit, and that was that. As she walked back into the house, she heard a car drive by and the Polaroid camera crumple beneath it.

  There you go, Dad, thought Tillie. No more cameras.

  19

  Drawing with Light

  “And so ‘photo’ means light. And ‘graph’ means drawing or writing. So, therefore, ‘photography’ means drawing with light. If you think about it, it’s pretty interesting. Because we think of photography as just something our parents do to make sure they remember us when we were babies, but really it’s a science and an art about light and how it reflects in the world.”

  Tillie had written the assignment, an essay on “What I Love” in the autobiography unit in her English class, begrudgingly. It had been three weeks since she’d given up photography, and it seemed so stupid to still talk about it, but she didn’t know enough about anything else.