The Tension of Opposites

by Kristina McBride

  A minute later, the bell rang, and Mr. Hollon, one of the school’s youngest teachers, walked to the front of the classroom. He was wearing a navy blazer and a teal tie-dye T-shirt. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail that brushed his shoulders as he patted his pockets, looking for something. I had to force myself to focus on all this. To keep my eyes from darting to the dark boy seated next to me.

  “Lose something?” someone from behind me asked.

  A few people chuckled.

  “My blue pen,” Mr. Hollon said.

  More chuckles filled the room. The pen was clearly visible to all of us, tucked neatly behind Mr. Hollon’s right ear.

  Darcy ahemmed loudly and gestured toward the side of her face.

  “One moment it is lost”—Mr. Hollon smiled and slowly reached for the item—“and the next it is found. And that, my friends, is our first lesson.”

  I heard low chatter around me.

  “This simple demonstration is the foundation for a yearlong project that I expect you to begin thinking about immediately.”

  “Lost and found?” someone asked.

  “Well,” Mr. Hollon said, “what those two words represent.”

  I sucked in my breath. Knowing.

  “Just like Noelle Pendelton.”

  The whisper slammed into my back, and I stiffened. In my peripheral vision, I saw Max look at me. I ignored him.

  “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, considering the recent news….” Mr. Hollon bent forward a bit and put the pen on the desk in front of him. “Let’s try this another way. I’ll say a word, and you say the first thing that comes to your mind. Ready?” He put his hands in the air. “Fast.”

  “Slow.” Several voices spoke together.

  “Hot.”

  “Cold.” More voices joined in.

  “Up.”

  “Down.” This time almost the entire class answered together.

  “We could go on all day, right?” Mr. Hollon nodded. “What are we listing?”

  “Antonyms.”

  “Ooh, fancy.” Mr. Hollon laughed. “Very good. And … antonyms are?”

  “Opposites,” Darcy said.

  “Right!” Mr. Hollon touched his finger to the side of his nose. Then he quickly walked to the door and flipped off the light. After stepping to his desk, he hit a few buttons on his keyboard, and the image of an eagle soaring over a mountain peak flashed on the whiteboard behind him. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A bird.”

  “An eagle.”

  “Okay.” Mr. Hollon nodded. “But what does it represent?”

  “Flight.”

  “Freedom.”

  “The United States.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Mr. Hollon looked at all of us. “Take out a pen and piece of paper.”

  There was shuffling all around as I opened my notebook and pulled a pen from my purse. I couldn’t help looking at Max, this new guy who, with his slouching posture and legs stretching into the aisle, seemed more at ease with my classmates after a few hours than I did after my entire life.

  “Write down what this picture represents to you.”

  I wrote freedom, not caring that I had stolen the word from the classmate who had shouted it out a few moments earlier.

  “Now comes the tricky part. I want you to write down three things you could photograph that would oppose that thought, feeling, or idea.”

  I stared at my teacher.

  Tricky?

  Not so much.

  I looked down at my paper and wrote one word three times.

  Noelle

  Noelle

  Noelle

  “Now,” said Mr. Hollon. “Write three more words. What thought, feeling, or idea would your picture represent?”

  I looked around the room, several words echoing through my head.

  Kidnapped, abducted, snatched

  Enslaved, imprisoned, restrained

  Most people were hunched over their papers, writing. A few others stared at the drop ceiling, squinting into the fluorescent light, or studied the rows of pictures that plastered the walls like patchwork wallpaper. I twisted in my seat, wanting to walk to the row of computers that ran along the back of the room, needing an update on Noelle and the guy who had taken her. Instead, I watched an orange-breasted robin land on a swaying branch of the tree right outside the classroom window. Counted the flowers Darcy doodled along the side of her paper.

  Mr. Hollon walked past my desk, tapping his finger on my paper. I swiveled around to find Max facing me, one elbow balanced on his desktop and the other on the back of his seat. His fingers were intertwined, his hands resting on his chest.

  “Whatcha got?” he asked, his whisper nearly scalding me.

  I covered my paper with one hand. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Max leaned forward, and I breathed in his clean scent. My brain rode a wave of laundry detergent, shampoo, and bar soap. I fought to keep from being pulled under. If I allowed myself, I might sit here for the rest of my life, breathing him in.

  Max propped his elbows on his knees and crossed his forearms over his legs. “Try me.”

  My hands started shaking, so I clasped them together. All those words were still shouting through my head, jumbling everything so that nothing made any sense. Least of all my desire to reach out and rub my thumb along Max’s smooth lips. “I’m not even finished,” I said.

  Max stared at me, his smile pulling inward a bit. “Better get to it, then.”

  I ducked my head toward my notebook, scratching my pen across the paper several inches from my eyes. Max leaned back into his seat. He swung his knees lazily in the aisle. Darcy flipped and flopped her sandal. She popped another bubble of her gum.

  Finally, I wrote the three words represented by Noelle, thinking about how she and the idea of freedom opposed each other.

  Captive

  Prisoner

  Hostage

  Mr. Hollon finished his round through the desks and parked himself in front of the classroom, blocking my view of his prizewinning close-up of a praying mantis. “Anyone care to share?”

  Max raised his hand.

  Mr. Hollon’s eyes scrunched closed. “Mr…. Kinsley, right?”

  “Yeah.” Max nodded. “I immediately pictured myself in the backseat of my parents’ car.” Several people laughed. “I was their prisoner as we drove from Montana to Ohio, away from all my friends and family, miserable about spending my junior and senior years with a bunch of strangers.”

  As Max spoke this long string of words, I was surprised to remember that his voice was velvety soft. Somehow my memory of the previous Friday in the woods had been distorted, the sound of his voice turning more abrasive with each passing day. I had expected his words to be gruff and crackly—scratchy to my ears, the way the stubble on his face would feel against my hand.

  Mr. Hollon moved on, allowing several other people to share, and I tried to catch another glance of Max without being obvious. It didn’t work. When he caught me looking, his face broke out into another one of those smiles from the woods. A smile that I found myself starting to like. Maybe a little too much. Just before I looked away, a few loose curls dipped forward onto his forehead, and he swiped them back with his hand.

  “So there we have it. Your portfolio theme is the Tension of Opposites. We will learn many different techniques during the first three quarters of the year, and by the end of March, you will put together a portfolio demonstrating your mastery of each lesson. Fourth quarter will be an intensive on style. We’ll talk about that later.”

  Everyone got quiet. I glanced at Max’s brown leather shoes. He was tapping his foot, and I wondered what kind of music he liked. Then I squeezed my eyes shut. Since when did I care anything about a random guy sitting next to me?

  “What about the Tension of Opposites?” Darcy asked.

  “In addition to fulfilling a variety of requirements, while also taking the best pictures you can take, you’ll infus
e your work with emotion by showing the opposition that is evident in every aspect of life.” Mr. Hollon looked around the room. “Put plainly, each photograph in your portfolio must have an opposing image.”

  I thought that maybe my first photograph could be of Max. The next, a self-portrait. He was so confident. And I was so … not.

  “I know a few of you prefer to use thirty-five-millimeter cameras. I expect you to find some way to incorporate a digital trick or two into your final project. And I might suggest that you hoard all the film you can get your hands on. It’s going out of style. Fast,” Mr. Hollon said as he passed out the classroom rules and syllabus for the first quarter. “For the remainder of the period, I’d like for you to make a list of all the antonyms you can think of. Hopefully this exercise will jump-start your creative process.”

  I put my pen to the paper in front of me.

  Right and wrong

  Easy and difficult

  Big and small

  Concrete and imagined

  Max leaned in to me again. “How’d your pictures turn out?”

  His scent infiltrated my nose. Scrambled my brain all over again. “What?”

  “The Three Sisters?” He tilted his head, his eyes soft and sincere.

  “Oh.” I took in a deep breath. Through my mouth. “Pretty good.”

  “I’d love to see them.”

  “Yeah, right,” Darcy said. Then she snapped her hand to her mouth, hiding a smile.

  I turned to her and widened my eyes.

  “Oh. Did I say that out loud?” Darcy slid forward and looked past me, speaking directly to Max. “Tessa is a bit shy,” she said, like I wasn’t even there.

  Max’s brown eyes locked on mine. I looked away.

  “Shy?” he asked Darcy.

  “She only shows her pictures to two people. Mr. Hollon”—Darcy pointed at our teacher, now seated behind the mess piled on his desk, and then turned her finger toward herself—“and me.”

  “Really?” Max crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. “Didn’t you have to turn in some kind of portfolio to get accepted into this class? I thought the whole Art Department evaluated the applicants, deciding who’s in and who’s out.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Not my idea.”

  “Last year,” Darcy said, “I was Mr. Hollon’s teacher aide the same period Tessa had photography. When I saw how good her pictures were, I talked him into letting her apply early. Tessa, however, wasn’t so easy to sway. She chickened out at the last minute.” Darcy shrugged. “So I broke into her locker and turned the portfolio in for her.”

  Max sat back in his seat. “Classic.”

  “She’s lucky it worked.” I tapped my pen on my paper. Wrote two more words. Friend and enemy.

  “All I did was get you in.” Darcy pointed her finger at me. “You could’ve taken it off your schedule.”

  “I know,” I said, looking from Darcy to Max. “I had this crazy whatever moment when I was in the counselor’s office going over my classes. I just let it go.”

  “It was a good decision,” Darcy said. “You’ll see.”

  “Hey, Darcy,” someone called from the back row. “Come back here for a minute. I gotta ask you something.” Darcy popped out of her seat, rushing back to talk for the last five minutes of class.

  “Just so you know,” Max said, rapping his knuckles on my desk, “I like a challenge.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Darcy’s right. I don’t show my stuff to anyone. Ever.”

  Max shook his head. “That right there. That was a challenge if I ever heard one.”

  “No,” I said, wondering if Max could feel the vibrations of my pounding heart. “It totally wasn’t.”

  “I’ll have my pictures later this week,” Max said. “I’ll show you mine”—he smiled again, lowered his voice to a near whisper— “when you’re ready to show me yours.”

  Part of me started to hate him. Wanted to scream for him to leave me alone. It was the side of me that did everything possible to keep people—all people—away. But another part of me, the side that was dying for a friend (or maybe a little more), the side that I wanted to tear out and mash into the carpet, felt a little excited.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, bending over the lines of my notebook, pressing my mind toward the next pairing of opposites. Trying, trying, trying not to smile.

  Wednesday,

  September 16

  4

  Special Delivery

  Noelle and I are at our neighborhood park, sitting at the grassy edge of the pond. Thirty feet away, a fountain splashes water toward our bare feet, which dangle in the cool water. We’re both laughing hysterically at something. Noelle’s head is thrown back, her face tipped to the sky. Her eyes are squeezed tightly against the sun, and the fingers of both hands curl around long green grass that sprouts from under her legs. And me, I’m looking right at her, my mouth open wide as laughter pours from me. This is one of my favorite pictures from the summer I turned fourteen. Sitting there next to her, I had no idea it would be our last summer together.

  Noelle had never seen the image, which had been taken a few weeks before she went missing. Every time I looked at it, I wondered if we’d both known, on some instinctive level, what was drawing near. With Noelle gripping the ground like she didn’t want to be torn away, and me staring like I was trying to memorize every aspect of her that I could, it wasn’t so hard for me to believe that we’d heard a whisper carried on the wind. If only the message had been a shout, if only we could have prepared, everything in my world might have remained right side up.

  Lying on my bed, clutching the photograph, I glanced at the television on my dresser. I’d muted the sound when I flopped down in the middle of my bed, deciding as I waited for the interview to start that it was finally time to prepare the gift I’d held on to for years.

  I slid the picture into a frame and secured the back in place, then dropped it into a slender box and sighed. Noelle had been home for over a week, and every time I gathered the nerve to call, one of her parents or Coop told me she wasn’t ready to talk. So far, this interview was the best shot I had at getting any new information about her. And this gift was the best plan I’d come up with to see her face-to-face.

  “An act of denial,” my therapist had said when I told him about the picture and how I planned to give it to her one day. During that session, he made me choose a date when I would admit she was gone, acknowledge that she was never coming home. The date became a big deal to him, and when it arrived, I lied, telling him I had put the framed picture in a box, wrapped it, and buried it in the woods behind the park.

  For effect, I added that I had played our theme song, “One Step at a Time” by Jordin Sparks, on my iPod while mounding damp dirt on top of the entombed box, pressing it deeper into the ground as the melody swept through the swaying treetops. He steepled his fingers under his chin and nodded slowly, then said he thought I no longer needed to see him on a regular basis. When I walked out his door for the last time, I wondered if he was calling me cured and almost laughed.

  I folded a piece of cream-colored card stock and opened it before pulling the cap off a purple gel pen.

  Forever friends, I wrote.

  And then, Love you. Tessa.

  I stuffed a few pieces of white tissue paper into a gift bag and gently placed the box inside, then tucked the handmade card beside it and pushed everything away from me, pressing my face into my patchwork comforter. Part of me wanted to call Dr. Anderson and tell him how very wrong he had been. Noelle was home. If I had actually buried the picture, I wondered, would the box still be there, waiting for me to dig my fingers into the soft soil and pull it into the sunlight?

  I looked up to see Noelle’s parents seated at a table behind a line of microphones. I hit the volume button and heard the rustle of paper and the rush of hushing voices.

  Mr. Pendelton looked at the scene before him, wiped his scruffy cheek with one hand, and then started spe
aking. “First of all, we want to express our gratitude to all the people who have helped from the very beginning.”

  Mrs. Pendelton nodded. “There is no way to thank you enough. All the long hours of searching, following up on leads, the prayers—they all played a part in Noelle’s safe return.”

  “Noelle is home now,” Mr. Pendelton said. “Nothing matters more.”

  “How is she?” asked a voice from behind the cameras.

  “She’s okay. Struggling a bit, as expected.” The camera zoomed in on Mrs. Pendelton, highlighting the dark purple bags under her eyes. “We just want to give her some normalcy after everything she’s been through.”

  “So … as I’m sure you will all understand and respect”—Mr. Pendelton cleared his throat—“we will not be doing any additional interviews. We need to allow Noelle some space. And to keep the media circus as far from her as possible.”

  “You mentioned normalcy. When will she be returning to school?” This was a different reporter. His voice was softer, not as close to the microphones. I turned up the volume, leaning forward as I watched the Pendeltons glance at each other.

  “We’re not sure. We’re seeking advice on how to deal with the different situations that will arise. Right now, we’re just trying to love our daughter.” Mr. Pendelton’s voice cracked.

  “We know how lucky we are,” Mrs. Pendelton said.

  “Do you know anything about what happened to Noelle during the two years she was gone?”

  Mr. Pendelton closed his eyes.

  “We’re going to let her share those things when she’s ready.” Mrs. Pendelton reached over and grasped her husband’s hand.

  “The arraignment was today, and Croft pleaded not guilty,” another reporter stated. “What about the trial? Will Ms. Pendelton testify against Croft?”

  The camera zoomed out as a man who was seated next to Mr. Pendelton leaned toward the microphones. His thick red beard looked scratchy and rough. “I’m Garrett Kelley, the lead prosecutor for this case. All I can say about the issue is that I have spoken with her and I am very impressed with her strength and fortitude.”