Depth of Field

by Chantel Guertin

  DEPTH

  of FIELD

  A PIPPA GREENE NOVEL

  CHANTEL GUERTIN

  ECW PRESS

  For Fitzy,

  who was with me

  every step of the way

  (literally)

  CHAPTER 1

  THE PLAN

  Go to NYC! For the first time in my life! (Aside from the 72 hours I lived there after traveling down the birth canal — TMI? probably — and being born, but I was 0–72 hours old, so I don’t remember much. Correction: I don’t remember anything.)

  To Tisch photography camp! Yes! Because even though Ben Bastard (a.k.a. Ben Baxter) came first place at Vantage Point this year by using my photos, I came second!

  Ignore Ben Baxter because there will be 22 other students there from the East Coast. And …

  There will be Dylan! A.k.a. Official Boyfriend. (Or OB, as Dace is now calling him, which makes him sound like a feminine hygiene product.) Dylan’s going to work for his uncle, the Manhattan-based concert merchandise mogul, and totally see the ins and outs of working in the music industry. And meet a ton of bands. Maybe even pitch his own music to a record producer? Pipe dream, probably, but then he could forget about college—what Harvard?—and move to New York, with me (if I get into Tisch for college of course, small detail). Bottom line: Dylan + me + NYC = pretty much as awesome as it gets.

  And Dace! Who’s coming along to find an agent and start her path toward becoming the next Cara Delevingne. Minus the drug scandal.

  So, in sum: 336 Hours. 1 Big Apple. 0 Rules.

  THE REVISED PLAN

  Go to New York alone. Why? Because:

  Dace’s mom decided that the likelihood of Dace becoming the next Cara Delevingne with the drug scandal was possibly greater than her becoming C-Diddy without. Or that all she’d end up doing was shopping. (Likely.) And that algebra was more important than all of the above. (Debatable.) And:

  Dylan isn’t coming either. Turned out Dylan’s uncle isn’t going to be in NYC because he’s going to be on the road managing merch sales for the Cherry Blasters. Feeling guilty, maybe, about kiboshing Dylan’s NYC trip, he offered Dylan the chance to join him and the Cherry Blasters on tour. And Dylan took it. (Obvi.)

  So now I’m going to be in New York WITHOUT my BFF or my OB. And instead:

  Stuck in New York WITH the single person I despise most in the world: Ben Baxter.

  “I have to say, for someone who hasn’t stopped talking about Vantage Point and Tisch and New York for, like, months, you are totally missing the point right now,” Dace says, winding a section of my hair around her new five-attachment curling wand. It’s the kind without the clamp, which gives you great waves, only you have to wear the glove or you’ll burn your fingers off, which is why Dace is curling my hair for me while I moan. It’s late Saturday afternoon and we’re in my room—me on my desk chair, Dace standing behind me.

  “I’d like to feel sorry for you,” she says, “but I don’t think I need to remind you that I’m the one who’s stuck in Spalding, while you’re in the greatest city in the world. Even your emo boyfriend is traveling across the East Coast with one of his favorite bands. So can I get a little pity party over here, please?” she says, making sad eyes at me in the mirror.

  I laugh. “OK, OK. You have a point.”

  “Aaaaaand you’re done. Shake it out.” I flip my head over and shake my head as instructed, then flip it back again. Dace smoothes it and nods her approval just as the doorbell rings.

  “It’s your big night,” she says excitedly.

  What she means is it’s my final date with Dylan pre-departure. He’s planned something—no idea what. Dace thinks it includes sex. Which I’ve told her a billion times it doesn’t, on account of my three-month rule. She thinks I’m just holding out so that she can have sex before me, since she’s always claimed she’d be first, but she doesn’t even have any prospects at this point. Which would be totally fine with me, because I’m in no rush. I mean, OK, I’m not exactly the poster child for virginity at this point—er, technically—but Dyl and I haven’t actually done it. No Capital S sex. Yet. And I do think that’s a big deal, which is why I’m determined to stick it out for three months before I turn in my official V-card. Three months is kind of arbitrary I suppose, but when Dylan and I finally became exclusive BF/GF, I decided on it: Three Months. It seemed like a respectable amount of time to wait—more than, say, summer vacation, but less than an entire semester of English class, which is where we seem to only read about star-crossed lovers: Catherine and Heathcliff, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet. Anyway, tonight is our last night together before we’re separated for two whole weeks. Parting really is such sweet sorrow.

  I check my outfit one last time—scoop T, black crop jeggings, brown booties, brown military jacket—and dab on some lipgloss before I run downstairs to open the door. Dylan. Those green eyes. Swoon. He grins at me, then holds out a cactus—one of those ones with the round bulb on top so it kind of looks like the Space Needle. “Needs no water while you’re gone.” I back up so he can come inside. He kicks his snowy boots against the doorway’s metal ledge—today was December’s first snowfall—as I take the cactus and place it on the small table where we throw our keys.

  “You look gorgeous.”

  “Dace did my hair,” I say awkwardly.

  “I wasn’t looking at your hair.” He grabs me by the hips and pulls me in to him. My breath catches as he leans forward, and then his lips are on mine.

  “Get a room,” Dace calls as she bounds down the stairs into the foyer.

  We break apart, and she grabs her coat from the banister, then slips her arms in the sleeves. “My turn.” She grabs my shoulders. “I am going to miss you so freaking much,” she says. Dace tested out a Swearing Ban a couple of months ago, swapping the F-bomb for Fudgee-O and other ridiculous substitutions, but that failed after, like, three days. Now she’s hit a middle ground, where she swears like a rebellious Sunday school teacher, saying things like “freaking,” “fudge” and “shoot” about 20 times a day. I don’t know which is worse.

  “I’ll miss you too,” I say. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze tight. When we let go, I wipe a tear and she shakes her head.

  “Baby.” She grins. “You really broke the seal. Dr. Judy would be so proud.” It’s true. I never used to cry. Like, never. Now, I’m basically Niagara Falls. “Remember, take as many cabs as you possibly can. You never know when you could get the Cash Cab.” She pulls on her black knee-high leather motorcycle boots, then high-fives Dylan.

  “Later dude,” she says, giving him a wink.

  “Bye Dace,” he says, then turns to me. “You ready?”

  I nod. “What are we doing?”

  “You’ll see.” We walk down the driveway, and he opens the passenger door of his dad’s old beat-up navy Cadillac for me.

  We both get in, and as the car comes to life the Cherry Blasters’ latest single is playing on the radio.

  “You cued this up,” I say, giving Dylan’s shoulder a shove.

  He claims innocence, and this feeling washes over me, a wave of missing him in advance even though he’s right here next to me.

  A few minutes later, we’re pulling into the parking lot at Hannover Park, which is the big swath of green in the middle of Spalding. There’s a reflecting pool that is, in a week, maybe two, about to turn into a skating rink, a conservatory with a massive orchid collection that Dad used to love to photograph, a children’s area that’s actually kind of fun even if you’re not a kid and, off on its own, on the side of a gentle slope that gives it a view of the whole of Spalding valley, the gazebo where Mom and Dad were married when I was one.

  “I love this place,” I say to Dylan as he turn
s off the ignition.

  He nods. We get out of the car, and he grabs my hand and leads me toward a walking path.

  “Come on, what are we doing?”

  “You’ll see soon enough!” he teases. We make our way through the snow-frosted grass, moving farther and farther away from the town. I always find it so odd how the park clears out as soon as there’s the slightest chill in the air. That’s when it’s at its best. A scan of the snow-dusted area around us reveals a single jogger, a guy maybe Dad’s age, who passes by, the crunch of snow under his sneakers and his breathing almost in time to the bass beat coming from his earbuds. I can see the gazebo’s silhouette in the distance. “It’s been ages since I’ve been up here,” I say, thinking back to the last time. With Ben. We came here to shoot together. Before I found out he was a lying thief. When I thought he was into me. When I thought he was cute. Temporary insanity—the only reasonable explanation.

  Then I get my first glance into the gazebo. Dozens of tiny lights flicker, like fireflies at dusk. As we get closer, I see they’re tealights in old jars, large and small, scattered around a mass of blankets and pillows of different colors and sizes. There’s a picnic basket in the middle. I couldn’t have pinned a more romantic scene on Pinterest.

  “What do you … who did … ? Did you do this?” I breathe, which is when Dylan’s hand squeezes mine. He’s watching me take in the scene, and I put it all together. “But … how?” I step into the gazebo, then realize they’re those battery-operated lights.

  “This is so romantic,” I say, making my way through the blankets and sitting down on a red blanket I recognize from his parents’ basement rec room. Dylan reaches into the basket and pulls out two glass soda bottles. The retro kind that have bottle caps on them. “Root beer or grape?” he asks.

  “Grape.”

  He uses his jacket sleeve to twist off the cap then hands the soda to me. He does the same for his own bottle. Then he sits down beside me, pulling a navy blanket over us.

  “Happy anniversary,” he says and we clink bottles. Technically, yesterday was the two-month anniversary of the day we became officially boyfriend-girlfriend—the day of Vantage Point when I rushed to the hospital and we had our first kiss. But we thought it would be more special to celebrate it tonight, our last night together before we both leave Spalding tomorrow. He rearranges some blankets beside him to clear a space, then takes our bottles and places them on the gazebo ground. Then he wriggles closer to me, pulling the blankets around us, nestling us into a cocoon of blankets and comforters, and we lie down, propping up our heads on the cushions. Dylan puts his arm around me and I wriggle in closer, into the nook of his shoulder.

  “It looks different from here, less suburban, more … charmed, don’t you think?” he says, and I look out beyond the gazebo’s edge, to the twinkling lights down below that dot the streets of Spalding Heights, where the wealthier half of Spalding lives.

  “I know—it’s so beautiful,” I say. “It’s so beautiful, and you set this up for me—it’s—” And I don’t know what it is, but the lights look like they’re melting, there’s so much moisture in my eyes, and Dylan says, “Hey, hey,” in a soothing voice and I bury my face into his shoulder.

  “You all right?” he asks gently.

  “I’m so happy,” I say, feeling silly. “I just can’t believe it’s only been two months—how can you get a best friend like this in just two months?”

  “It’s weird,” Dylan says. “The two months with you feel like forever, but the two weeks we’re heading into, that seems like it’s going to be forever too. But in the worst possible way.”

  “We’re both going to be busy. My mom says it’ll pass by in a minute,” I say.

  “I hope so,” Dylan says.

  “For the record, I think she’s full of it.”

  He laughs. “You hungry?”

  “Yes,” I say, realizing just how hungry I actually am. He sits up and reaches into the picnic basket, pulling out Halloween-sized bags of chips, chocolate, candy.

  “That’s not all,” he says, pulling out a red Tupperware and lifting the lid. “I baked. Chocolate chip cookies. No nuts because my girlfriend does not like nuts in her cookies.”

  I sit up too and reach into the container. I hold up the cookie, inspecting it at eye level. “Hmm, perfectly round, equal proportion of chocolate chips to batter. These might look too good to taste good …” I say, referring to how Dylan and I first started texting each other—taking pics and documenting food.

  “Definitely not. I’ve broken the theory with these. They definitely qualify for a Food Alert. Go on, taste it.”

  I take a bite and he’s right. “Yum.” I finish my cookie and I wipe my hands, dusting off the crumbs. Dylan laughs, then shakes out the blanket that’s over us. “You got cookie crumbs in the sheets, honey,” he says, mock-annoyed, like we’re some married couple in a sitcom. “I’m going to have to make you sleep on the couch.” He gives the blanket one more big shake, then wraps it around me, pulling me into him until we’re lying down again, snuggling as close as our bodies can get to each other. He’s looking up, and I tilt my face so I’m nuzzling his neck, his hair. He smells like soap. The kind of soap that smells awesome. I could smell the guy for a thousand years.

  I close my eyes. “Sometimes it seems like forever ago I was stressing over my Vantage Point entry—it feels surreal that I’m finally going. I can’t wait to share every minute with you. And for you to share every minute of being on tour with the Cherry Blasters with me.”

  Dylan’s quiet for a moment. “You know, I was thinking …” he pauses. I can feel his heart beating.

  Say you changed your mind, I plead silently. Say you’ll come to New York.

  “What if … what if we went old school? Like Dark Ages. No texting, no calling, no FaceTime, no email.”

  I push myself up, away from him, so I can look in his eyes to see if he’s joking. He looks back at me. Not a hint of teasing on his face.

  “You’re serious? What, you want to handwrite letters? Practice our cursive?”

  He looks away, up at the ceiling of the gazebo, which, I guess, has just become fascinating to him. He shakes his head and looks back at me.

  “It’s two weeks, and it’s going to go by so fast. Let’s live in the moment. Soak it all up. And then come back here and tell each other everything. Face to face. Can you imagine how intense that will be? What our reunion will be like? The stories we’ll have to tell each other, when we’ve really lived them?”

  I sit up, moving farther away from him. “Are you trying to break up with me?”

  Dylan bolts up. “Are you kidding me?” He grabs my shoulders. “Just the opposite. I just think … I don’t know, I thought it would be something we’d always remember we did. I’d miss you like crazy. But I thought … I guess, I thought it would be really romantic.” His face falls. He’s serious.

  I don’t want to agree to it. But I nod, promising myself I’m not going to get all sappy or clingy. Dylan reaches under the corner of the blankets and pulls out a package—a large soft square, bundled up in wrapping paper that says It’s a boy! I raise an eyebrow.

  “It was this or Christmas wrap in the basement. Open it.”

  I tear at the paper, then unfold the blue fleece. “Your Buffalo Sabres blanket.”

  “I figure you can put this on your bed in your dorm and remember our first date at the Cherry Blasters show.” My mind goes to that warm fall night. When I fell in love with Dylan.

  “What if you meet some groupie and fall madly in love, like in Almost Famous?”

  “I promise I’m not going to fall in love with anyone,” he says, his green eyes staring into mine.

  “But you, Dylan McCutter,” I say, “you’re the kind of guy who could break a girl’s heart without even knowing.”

  He runs his hand over my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear. “Not yours. It’s better this way. Because if I weren’t going away, I’d be sitting at home, texting
you every five seconds, being that super annoying boyfriend you left behind, and you’d be having fun but then you’d feel guilty, like, Gah! I’ve got to text that annoying Dylan back, only I’m at this awesome party with Tavi Gevinson but I don’t want him to think I’m having fun without him—”

  “You know who Tavi Gevinson is?”

  “Of course. I read Rookie when you’re not looking.”

  I slap him playfully on the chest. “Shut up.”

  He grabs my hand, keeping it on his chest. “Come here,” he says, pulling me into him, and then on top of him, and we lay there for a while. I rest my head on his chest.

  “Two weeks until we’re reunited,” Dylan says.

  “Two weeks.” I run my left hand up his chest, to the side of his face, his day-old stubble rough in the palm of my hand, then push myself up so I’m facing him, our faces inches apart, and press my lips to his.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Why are you here?” Gabrielle smoothes her long dark ponytail, though there’s not actually a hair out of place. Her intonation makes it more of a statement than a question, and she peers around at all of us expectantly. Gabrielle Brady—she was one of the judges at Vantage Point. Now, we’re on her turf: a small classroom—smaller even than any at Spalding—with whitewashed walls and a panel of wipeboards and a podium at the front. The room is arranged in semi-circular rows with chairs that have those little writing tablets that fold out from the side of the chair. At first I felt disappointed, thinking we’d be in some lecture hall, stadium seating for 150, like I imagined college, but actually, the close quarters feel intimate. More important. There are twenty-four chairs, but only twenty-three of us in the seats. The missing student? Ben Baxter. Dreams really do come true.

  It’s Monday morning, 9:15 a.m., the first day of Tisch Camp, and at the podium, Gabrielle’s looking impossibly elegant in her black pants and a crisp white shirt, collar up. “I want to know who you are,” she says, “where you’re from, why you live, eat, drink and breathe photography.”