How I Fly

by Anne Eliot

  Harrison laughs. “Well, of course you are all going to blame me, but I don’t have anything to do with any missing equipment, I swear. And, based on WOA summer workshop rules, why were you not in your room after curfew? I think it should be noted that Cam Campbell just implied he was breaking some serious school rules last night.”

  “Then please note, Harrison Shaw knew Cam wasn’t in his room,” Ellen calls out.

  Professor Perry crosses the room and flicks on some extra lights. “The hallways within the dorms have new mini-cameras with time-lapse recorders as well. It will take some effort, but we can get to the bottom of all of this if need be, so please be honest.”

  I note Harrison’s shifting in his seat. His mask of full bravado slips some, because I think the dorm’s hallway cameras were a surprise to him.

  Ellen’s also shifting in her seat and blushing to the roots of her hair, but she holds her head high when she says, “I was with Cam last night. Cam was with me. In my room. We didn’t—I mean, it was all innocent—but if we are being honest here, then I also broke rules.”

  Harrison snorts and says, “Innocent, my ass.”

  Ellen tilts her chin up keeps her face away from Harrison and addresses only the administrator people. “Cam and I have been really good friends since…well, we’ve known each other since grade school. He just stayed because I was so sad about Laura going away. My best friend getting sent home, and then this whole tribunal thing was a lot to handle. And…so…I’ll take the blame for Cam. I should not have let him stay. I’ll be happy to tell my mom about what happened. I’m really sorry we broke the rules. I don’t even remember falling asleep. When I woke up, Cam was long gone. So you could check those video feeds, and maybe we could help you pinpoint the time when things might have been taken out of Cam’s room. And by whom, because I think we all know.”

  My heart expands because Ellen is so determined, serious, and so darn cute defending me.

  “It’s true,” I say. “I won’t deny I stayed with her, and I’ll have no problem informing my mom about that as well. But I’m pretty sure we aren’t here to discuss minor curfew violations.” To quickly change the subject back to Harrison, I hold up the memory card again. “Luckily, I’d pulled this card out of my camera right after class yesterday, before my camera went missing. I’d wanted to get some prints off that huge machine in the print shop. But all morning that printer wouldn’t work properly. And at this point I would suggest someone check if it has been tampered with.”

  I glare bullets at Harrison.

  He responds, “Oh. That’s right. Blame me for that also. I must have superpowers, so blame me for everything. It’s also my fault the cafeteria ran out pancakes this morning! Can’t you see, Professor Perry, they’re all just firing out accusations? They’re crazy. Crazy!”

  The administrator lady scribbles more notes.

  “Well, let’s decide who is crazy after we all see the photos on Cam’s card. How about that?” Professor Perry asks. He takes the card from my hand and puts it into the universal card reader connected to his computer. “Of course, I will be backing this entire card up to the cloud should anything else decide to go missing. You don’t mind, do you Cam?” He asks, shooting Harrison a look.

  “Not at all, sir,” I reply.

  Harrison’s mask slips again, and he’s suddenly looking panicked for the first time since he sat down in here, which is good. He calls out, “Whatever’s on there can’t prove anything. Ellen and I did our shots together and I made sure—I mean, we were sure we wanted to be completely alone when we took them, and I mean completely. Because Ellen…she was always all about being alone with me before she dumped me, that is.”

  He tosses Ellen this suggestive wink, which makes her gasp out, “That is not true! We broke up last week, and it was a mutual breakup. I didn’t really want to be alone with him at Grand Bend—not like he’s suggesting, anyhow.”

  “Oh. Okay. Yeah. Sure. What about all of those kisses? Have you already forgotten all that we shared after one night of making out with Cam?”

  His leering eye roll that implies she’s a liar and also easy makes me want to punch him in the face. But I won’t, because I get that a major part of Harrison’s game is to make us react so we all get in trouble right along with him. Not this time. He can say what he wants, because I’m not going to get distracted from my quieter, more lethal goal of crushing this guy with facts and tangible proof.

  When there’s no reaction out of me, Harrison crosses his arms and tries again: “Before you start showing what’s on that card, I want you all to know that Ellen Foster is now dating Camden Campbell. Dating him only a few days after dating me. I don’t think whatever he’s brought should be shown at all. I’ve accused this guy and that dude Patrick of bullying me. They threatened me—like, my whole life—like, to kill me! And it’s obvious whatever he’s brought is going to be so biased and so messed up, that we shouldn’t even look at it. They’re worse than Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Ellen gasps again. “You are the biggest liar alive, Harrison Shaw. Really. You are.” I put my hand on her shoulder to try to keep her calm.

  Professor Perry asks, “Is this true, Ellen? I thought you said Cam stayed with you because you were just friends. Now I discover that you and Cam are suddenly together? Like a couple?”

  Ellen turns in her seat, face going all pale again. “We are a couple, and it’s not…sudden. It’s not how Harrison is making it sound, that’s for sure. Cam and I—”

  “See? She’s admitted it!” Harrison cries out. “Who’s the liar now, Ellen Foster? Who?”

  “Please. Wait,” I say, mostly to Ellen, but I say it loudly so the room quiets and returns their attention to me. “Ellen and I are happy to address the status of our relationship, but first, let me show you the photographs I’ve brought so we can stay focused on why we are all here.”

  “Good idea.” Professor Perry, now shaking his head as much as the other administrators are, finally gets my shots to load into thumbnails across his computer screen. I walk over to the computer so I can scroll through the thumbnails, but pause to turn on the huge overhead screen before clicking on any of them. “This shot is going to seem kind of strange to you, like I’m a stalker so…yeah. I need to explain. Ellen and I—being together—it’s not sudden, like she said. See, we’ve been in love with each other for almost a whole year now. Only we, our relationship, got really sidetracked with life and other people.”

  I click on a photo and let it fill the screen. It’s a shot of Ellen in Grand Bend. She’s lying flat on her back in a grassy spot down in the little park next to our hotel. She’s holding Harrison’s camera—and she’s pointing it directly at a bird’s nest in a tree. I’ve captured a shot of when Ellen took her awesome close-up of the bird.

  She’s smiling that sweet, upturned smile of hers, and scrunching her face while taking the winning shot that showed the incredible, hovering, and angry bird. I also captured some of the emotion that Ellen captured of the same scene. The little bird is so obviously torn between feeding and guarding her babies, all while staring Ellen down with this look that is only for Ellen that seems to say, Come one inch closer and lose your eyes.

  It is so very obviously the shot Professor Perry featured as Harrison’s yesterday that everyone pulls in noisy breaths in recognition, and then starts whispering. To add nails to Harrison’s coffin, we can all see Harrison in the background. He’s staring down at the lake and not involved in helping with any part of this shot. So he can’t even claim that he collaborated. It appears he’s looking out at the water. Only, because I know the jerk, he was obviously leering at the French girls in their bikinis.

  I interrupt the whispering going on in the room with, “Even if I have to say this in front of everyone, and even if this shot makes me look like a shady stalker—then okay. I can handle that. I took these shots of Ellen Foster because aside from the fact that our relationship as a couple was derailed, I’ve never stopped loving her and
missing her. Which is what I was doing when I took this shot. Missing her. Pining after her, and being generally a self-pitying, lovesick…yeah…stalker.”

  “Aww,” Ellen says, making me smile.

  I go on: “And my longing for Ellen Foster, a girl I thought I’d lost to time, to fate, and to someone else—that longing went crazy last week in Grand Bend. She and I were in such close proximity I think I was about to go insane.”

  “Which is why he was out to get me! To ruin my life!” Harrison shouts. “Sheer jealousy! And fine, it’s pretty obvious from this that the photo I turned in was not my own. But that was a huge mistake.” He pleads, “Professor Perry, we were sharing a camera. I also took hundreds of shots of that same bird and nest. I must have simply mixed up which shots were mine.”

  Professor Perry ignores him and nods at me. “Go on, Cam.”

  “Well, when Ellen was taking her shots of the birds, and the sunsets and the shimmering sand while down in the little park, I was up in my room pouting. I don’t have shots of the other photos she took, but if you will accept my word, I can tell you I watched her take the sunset ones. They took her so long, and she worked really hard on them. I got so behind on my work watching her, that I had to miss the bonfire so I could catch up.”

  “I’d wondered where you were,” Professor Perry says.

  Cam nods. “If you can’t tell from this shot, the view from my dumb hotel room looked over the park where Ellen and Harrison were working every single day, and it was like I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t work for days because they were working in that park. I shouldn’t have photographed her without permission. I know that’s not appropriate photographer behavior.”

  Ellen pipes up, “I would have given him my permission. And for the record, the third shot that Harrison turned in—the shot of Cam’s eye and the lake reflecting next to it?”

  Professor Perry nods. “Yes?”

  “I took that photo without Cam’s permission the first day Harrison lent me his camera. I can’t prove it, but since before Cam and I were even dating last year—back at the beginning of our junior year—I took a stalker photograph of Cam with my iPhone nearly every single day.”

  “You did?” I look at Ellen, shaking my head and almost laughing. She nods, beet red.

  “I did.”

  “Aww,” I say.

  “I’m going to puke.” Harrison crosses his arms. “Seriously, puke.”

  “Well.” Professor Perry shakes his head, clearly annoyed. “We can all agree that photographing people without their knowledge is rather bad form, and should not be done if one is a professional,” he says while the administrator lady scribbles down more notes.

  Harrison shifts in his seat as though he’s actually trying to see what the woman with the notepad is writing down. “I hope you’re writing stuff on Cam and Ellen as well as writing stuff about me. All of us have broken so many rules here. If I’m to have any punishments for what is obviously, again, a huge misunderstanding—an innocent mistake—then they should also be reprimanded and removed from scholarship consideration, that’s all. I only want this to be fair.”

  “I will decide what is fair, Mr. Shaw.” Professor Perry shakes his head, and then sighs again, like he hates all of us. I don’t blame the poor guy. “Are you finished with your love story, Mr. Campbell?”

  “Well…almost. I just want to address the relationship thing. Where did we leave off?”

  Harrison snorts. “You were being a pathetic loser and stalking Ellen from the hotel room?”

  “Right. I was taking stalker photographs of Ellen with my telephoto lens so I could stare at her face, which only made me feel sorrier and sorrier for myself—because as you can see”—I nod toward Ellen—”she’s so beautiful. Even right here right now—even with her face all puffed up from crying—she takes my breath away.”

  Harrison acts all wounded. “Ellen and I dated the whole summer, and a few days after she and I break up, they’re acting like they are in insta-love. It’s just so unbelievable.”

  “Harrison Shaw, you will have your chance to speak,” Professor Perry says. “Though these details are rather tedious and possibly unnecessary, after studying this photograph that Cam’s submitted as evidence against you, I think it is in your best interest that you think of some additional facts that might help you, instead of running your mouth in ways that is continuing to anger this advisory board.”

  “But how can you use this photograph against me when anyone can see they’re out to get me at this point? Like…they could have easily edited me into this image.”

  Ellen cries out, “Harrison! You were there. You know the shots are mine and you can’t snake your way out of this!” To the administrators, she says, “Yes. I dated Harrison all summer, and I know it looks really bad and sounds worse now that we’re sharing all of this awkward information. But—I don’t want anyone to think I’m just the kind of girl that trades boyfriends really fast, because I’m not. It’s only that…all the time I was dating Harrison I was realizing what I didn’t quite understand yet. That…Harrison Shaw wasn’t right for me.”

  I bite my lip to hold back shouting out things like: Because he’s insane. A felon. A TOOL! And because she still loved me!

  Ellen continues, “I want you to know—despite the fact that I did kiss this manipulating con artist…” She frowns at Harrison. “And despite the whole world pulling us apart, Cam and I were always together. I hope that makes sense, and even if it sounds like teen drama or whatever, he and I are completely real. I love him and I always have.” She shrugs. “That’s all.”

  Harrison rolls his eyes. “Again. This is all contrived bullshit.”

  I’ve torn my gaze away from Ellen. I know if I meet her eyes right now, I’ll get all shaky. I’m also worried my voice will go wobbly, because—damn—I love this girl so much.

  Quickly, I add, “I just have one more thing. Before you meet and decide on things like scholarships, and before you look at that list of notes and figure out who broke which rules and what the heck happened here this summer, there is one scholarship that should simply be reassigned.”

  “Son. It’s not that easy. You teens have been hitting each other, electronics have disappeared and been broken, students have been sent home, and there’s the question of blatant plagiarism still hanging in the air. This is the worst year in this program’s history, thanks to all of you.”

  “Mistakes. All mistakes. What if I take away my charges of these guys bullying me and attacking me with crutches if you could all understand that I simply messed up? It was an honest mistake,” Harrison begs, again trying desperately to save his own butt.

  I stay quiet, realizing that this looks so bad—not only for Harrison, but for all of us. Patrick walked away from campus last night and Laura London’s getting sent back to Ireland.

  Professor Perry crosses his arms. “The entire committee as well as all students and parents involved would have to agree that we don’t need to go forward with punishments. We’d all have sign documents to this agreement today. It would confirm the huge misunderstandings; otherwise, your grades for this program as well as the scholarship allotments can’t be salvaged.” He glares at Harrison.

  “I’m willing to do whatever I can to make sure none of this silliness gets on to my permanent files,” Harrison adds, acting like he’s doing Professor Perry a favor now.

  The president of the university finally stands. “Son, no one will be happy if the entire reputation of this esteemed program becomes jeopardized because you all made very poor choices. Ellen and Cam, would you also be willing to go off record and not press charges to keep your records clear?”

  “I guess I would be okay with that,” Ellen says quietly.

  I want to call out a challenge, order them to call the police, but I’ve already heard what the attorneys will do. I already know too much about how the legal systems drag everything out and cost too much money. I can also tell from Ellen’s face she, just like Professor
Perry and the entire administrative staff, only wants to be done with this day and with Harrison Shaw.

  I nod. “As long as people find my camera and my laptop, and as long as you consider correcting the biggest injustice that happened here this week.”

  “Which would be?”

  I blink at the university president. “The wrong person won a very coveted scholarship.” I point at the image of Ellen photographing the bird again. “In case you don’t see what I see in this shot—when Ellen Foster is doing what she loves, which is photography, her light shines so damn bright anyone should be able to notice it. I just want this photo to prove that Ellen is the real deal, and she deserves a chance to come here and study. Attending this university is her lifelong dream. If you can’t reassign the scholarship to her, then please give her mine.”

  “Cam! No.” Ellen flings her arms wide. “I won’t accept. I won’t take away Cam’s hard-earned scholarship.”

  I finally risk a glance at Ellen, who’s looking like she has a lot more to say. Her eyes tell me that she sort of wants to kill me for what I’ve said—but she’s smiling at me in a way that confirms just how much she loves me. I smile back, suddenly not caring about any of this. I realize that whatever happens here today—and in our futures—that she and I will always be together. Always. And that’s the only thing that is important.

  Professor Perry clears his throat. “Ellen, can you prove any of the other photos I selected to win the scholarship were yours?”

  She tears her gaze away from me and nods at the professor. “Yes, sir. If needed, I can try to get copies of those stalker photographs I took in the past. The ones of Cam’s eyes. I’m sure if you do a style comparison, they will prove that the shot submitted yesterday is mine.”

  Professor Perry shakes his head. “I was hoping you would say that. And there’s no need. Patrick Gable, our runaway student who also broke a ton of rules, forwarded me about five hundred of the shots you are talking about this morning. So many that he crashed my computer. So I would like to confirm to the jury in attendance here that two of the three photos shown yesterday did not belong to Harrison Shaw, and, in fact, are Ellen Foster’s work.”