Depth of Field

by Chantel Guertin

  Ramona leans over, her bright red curls touching my face before she whispers in my ear. “Better think of something good,” she says as though it’s creative writing class and I can just make something up. Ramona Haverland—that’s my roommate, and she oozes confidence. I’m hoping some of it’ll transfer to me while we share our closet-sized dorm room (a.k.a., the most awesome closet I’ve ever been in, a.k.a. “Greeneland”—Ramona’s mash-up of our last names).

  Gabrielle nods to a student in the first row. “Julian, why don’t you stand up and start.”

  Julian’s dressed in a skinny black suit with a skinny black tie. He’s topped with messy thick black hair that looks like somebody scribbled it in with magic marker and wearing a pair of scuffed black boots that, despite how beat up they are, give him an air of careless luxury. I bite my nail, listen to his story and wonder how I could have ever come here without investing in a new wardrobe. Anyway, Julian won a photo contest when he was nine. Seriously—beating out a photographer whose work had appeared in Life.

  Next to Julian is Savida, who has jet-black hair that’s shaved on the sides with the rest long and gathered into a top knot, a nose ring and big black dark-rimmed glasses. Her entire person is obscured by an enormous thick black wool cardigan that, with sleeves rolled up past her elbows and hem dangling past her butt, makes her look tiny and romantic and cozy. Plus, she’s wearing these awesome skinny leather pants. Leather pants! And they look fantastic on her. If I wore leather pants, I would totally be that girl wearing the leather pants. But Savida somehow manages to make the cardigan her showpiece and her legwear only something that she happened to throw on, that only happened to be leather.

  I pull self-consciously at the hem of my Tisch sweatshirt—the one that was Dad’s. My security blanket, the one that felt so cool when I’d wear it at home. But now, I’m having wardrobe remorse. Like, why would I wear a school sweatshirt to the actual school I’m attending?

  Whatever. This isn’t fashion camp, it’s photo camp. I refocus on Savida, who’s explaining that she took her first photograph with her dad’s vintage Nikon at age three. She’s a junior at the Storm King, this Hudson Valley boarding school, where she studies digital photography every afternoon.

  When Izzy, this guy with porcelain skin and freckles on his nose and big round hipster glasses, goes next, Ramona snaps her fingers and leans over again. “I knew I recognized him from somewhere—he went to Oweka. Just for one summer I think,” she says, debating the comment almost with herself.

  “What’s Oweka?” I whisper.

  “Camp Oweka. This photography camp in the Adirondacks.”

  “You went to photography camp?” I say, and Gabrielle gives us the evil eye for talking. Way to make a stellar first impression, Pip.

  Ramona goes next, sitting up tall and pulling the ends of one of the three scarves she’s fastened around her neck, and I listen, in awe, as she says she’s from Brooklyn. And that she’s been going to Camp Oweka all summer every summer since she was seven. “I’m the youngest of eight kids—half the time my parents are calling me by the wrong name. I guess I can’t blame them, but it still sucks. Anyway, it’s hard to feel different at home. But when I’m at camp, I feel like I have my own thing.”

  I didn’t even know there was a photography summer camp. Not that Mom and Dad could’ve really afforded to send me. But if Ramona’s parents have so many kids, how can they afford to send her to camp?

  “Camp Rotunda’s better,” Connor, this tall guy beside Izzy, says, grinning competitively.

  “Yeah well, Rotunda’s for snobs. They don’t have worker campers like Oweka.” She holds up her hands. “Surprisingly, dishpan hands make it easier to grip the camera.”

  “Oweka’s a fantastic camp,” Gabrielle says. “We have many Tisch students who work at the camp during the summer. I’m really looking forward to seeing your work,” she adds, then nods at me. “Philadelphia?”

  “Watch out,” Connor adds, turning his attention to me as I stand. “She’s got the sweatshirt.” My face flushes.

  “That’s so if she gets lost, she can get returned,” Kai, a guy sitting beside Connor, says.

  “That’s enough,” Gabrielle says, doing that teacher-glare-thing, which makes me feel a bit better. Then she nods at me, to go next.

  I decide to go with total honesty, even if it’s not as impressive as everyone else’s experiences. The only competition I’ve placed at—the only competition I’ve even entered—is Vantage Point. The same contest everyone else here in the room entered—and half of them won. “Hi,” I start nervously, clasping my hands behind my back so I won’t fidget. “I’m Pippa Greene. I go to Spalding High in, uh, Spalding. And my dad is a photographer. Was a photographer.”

  All of a sudden a roomful of faces are looking at me, like, what do you mean, was a photographer?

  “He died,” I clarify, and several people gasp. “No, it’s fine—he died last year.”

  Which actually prompts more gasps.

  “Not like that,” I say. “It was fine. Well, it wasn’t fine. It was awful. It kind of wrecked me. But I’m totally over it. I’m fine.”

  Which sounds callous. But I am not saying another thing about my dad or death or anything else and, perhaps I should just take a vow of silence for forever. And then I blink—hard—and try to smile. How to end on an up note? “He went to Tisch. And I want to too. Just like him. That’s why I’m here.”

  Gabrielle nods, scribbles something and then looks up. “So you … want to be a photographer because your father was a photographer?” she asks, somehow making it sound totally simple.

  “It was something special we had.”

  She nods again. “That’s really nice, Pippa. I think a lot of the others here can probably relate—how many of your parents introduced you to photography?” More than half the students raise their hands. I know what she’s trying to do, to show me that I have something in common with everyone else, to make me feel like less of a freak, but she’s just basically told me I’m not special. “It’s pretty common—someone has to have that camera we first pick up and try out, right?” She smiles. “Of course, I’m very sorry to hear your father passed away. And I don’t mean to make light of it, but please try to keep in mind that his memory will only go so far. I see it all too often that people have ulterior motives for pursuing this path, but it’s got to come from within you. You’ve got to make it your own. Have your own reasons for wanting to be a photographer. But not to worry that you don’t yet. That’s why you’re here, right?”

  I can feel my face burning. This could not get any worse.

  “Sorry about your dad,” Ramona whispers. I shake my head. But I can feel myself tearing up. Again.

  Thankfully, Gabrielle turns her attention to the door at the back of the room. I pick up my pen to scribble in my notebook, just to look busy, and pray my face isn’t burning up, when my pen freezes in mid-air at the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Is this the photo camp?”

  Because there it is. A voice I’d know anywhere. A voice I was hoping I would not hear in New York. I had actually convinced myself he wouldn’t show. I was even thinking there was a chance I had telekinetic tendencies and had willed him not to come, given I’d already been here for 17 hours and hadn’t seen him. So much for my superpowers.

  It’s bad enough that I’m already feeling super stripmall in my generic look. And then Ben has to show up and prove that not everyone from Spalding is so generic. I take him in—head to toe—standing in the doorway. Is it possible he aged a year or two since Friday? With his fitted mustard jeans and his navy pea coat and the burnished leather satchel and his hair, that hair, the way it’s cut military-short on the sides and pushed back off his forehead like he’s some ’50s screen idol, he looks like he belongs here, here at Tisch, here in New York. Oh god, does he have to make it so easy to despise him?

  Do you, Ben Baxter?

  CHAPTER 3

  THE PLAN FOR DEALING WITH
BEN BAXTER

  Ignore him. No talking to him, no sitting beside him, no texting with him, no acknowledging any part of his existence. Bottom line: Dead To Me.

  It had been going so well. At first, I dreaded we’d be on the same bus from Spalding, and I even got Mom to bring me to the bus terminal early, just so I could stand at the front of the line, get a seat near the back of the bus and set myself up with my bag beside me, headphones on, book up in front of my face—international bus language for Leave Me Alone. Not that I really thought he’d want to sit with me after the efficacy of the silent treatment I’d been dishing out to him since Vantage Point. But you just never know—being the lone two souls who know each other can make even the worst enemies become allies. And there was no way I was risking that. But then he wasn’t even on the bus. I kinda assumed he’d flown to New York, or taken a helicopter, or had a private driver in a black sedan or whatever spoiled rich kids who steal other people’s stuff just for kicks do to get to New York for a camp they don’t even deserve to be at.

  Aunt Emmy met me in New York at the Port Authority, and we took a cab to the Tisch building to get me registered. Still no Ben. Then there was a dinner for the Tisch campers at the dining hall in Graydon Hall, where we’re all staying, and he wasn’t there either. And I thought for sure he’d decided not to show. That he’d decided to take the $5,000 from Vantage Point and run, or had contracted temporary amnesia and altogether forgotten about Tisch Camp. We got our checks last week—so he could’ve faked some non-life-threatening disease, like a reaction to gluten, and bailed. It was hardly beneath him to scam the system.

  “Hey Pippa,” he says now, and gives me a casual little low-effort wave, where the actual hand fluttering happens down around his waist, like an afterthought. Gabrielle gives me an interested look, and I shrug, and then she kind of confers a moment with Baxter, their low tones inaudible. But apparently Baxter passed whatever test he had to with her, because he starts up our side of the room, stops beside me and, while I feel every eye in the room on me once again, asks if he can sit in the only empty seat in the room, which just happens to be beside me. I sort of shrug as I shift in my seat.

  “What’s my new boyfriend’s name again?” Ramona whispers into my ear, loud enough for Ben to hear.

  “Trust me,” I say, also loud enough for Ben to hear. “You do not want him as a boyfriend.”

  “Ben, do you want to introduce yourself to the class?” Gabrielle asks.

  “Ben Baxter,” Ben says, holding up his hand in a second wave, this one presidential, like we’ve all been awaiting his arrival and now the inauguration can begin. “Sorry I’m late. I had a few things to take care of.”

  AS THOUGH WE CARE.

  “Well, Ben Baxter,” Gabrielle says, checking her list, “give us your story—why you’re here and what you’re hoping to get out of the next two weeks.”

  Ben looks around, leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, one leg crossed over the other, ankle-to-knee style. It’s his casual CEO pose. Instead of looking down at his shoes, or fiddling with his camera the way others did, he makes eye contact—first with Gabrielle, then with each of us, total politician style. He says he’s originally from Cheektowaga, but that he moved to Spalding this year and is completing his final year of high school. “I just decided to take up photography for something to do since the school is pretty lame and doesn’t have a snowboard team like my old school. So I joined the photo club and really liked it. That’s it. I don’t have any skill, any formal training.”

  I stare at him, then back at Gabrielle, my mouth agape.

  Somehow he’s managed to make his total lack of experience sound enviable.

  “Well, I’m very impressed,” Gabrielle says as she scribbles something down. “I recall your work from Vantage Point obviously, but I never would’ve guessed that it was your first year seriously taking photographs. Or, what, your first month? You have some really raw talent. And your honesty—it’s refreshing. It just goes to show that sometimes we stumble into our calling, but we can really go a long way if we’re passionate about it.”

  Seriously? He fails to say anything impressive at all and still he comes out on top? How does he do it every single time? Gabrielle closes her notebook. “I’m really looking forward to having you here at the camp, Benjamin.” She smiles more warmly at him than she has at any of the rest of us.

  “That makes two of us,” Ramona says, nudging me in the ribs.

  Gabrielle explains how the camp will work: a mix of in-class lectures, off-site exercises, and time spent with a mentor—someone to learn from on a one-on-one basis. The mentors are real, working New York photographers, most of them grads of the program. She rattles off a roster of names and I recognize some of them from the fashion-world reality TV shows Dace is always watching. America’s Next Top Model. Project Runway. These are big names. At the mention of Victor Demarchelier, Ramona squeals.

  “You know who that is, right?” Ramona whispers.

  Son of Patrick Demarchelier. One of the greatest fashion photographers alive. Dace’s favorite photographer—he’s shot a ton for Vogue.

  “Victor’s so talented. You know Grace Codd­ington went to his opening? They’re, like, besties or something. Plus, he’s super cute.”

  The next name’s Atom Lin, who was President Clinton’s official state photographer back in the ’90s. People ooh and aah at their favorites. And while I’ve heard of some of them, I realize that maybe I haven’t been living, eating, drinking and breathing photography. I like it, but am I out of my league? And then all these thoughts vanish when I hear the final name.

  David Westerly.

  “Are you OK?” Ramona whispers, leaning into me. “Your face is all flushed.”

  I nod, but say nothing, and when I look up I catch Ben watching me, but I turn my attention back to Gabrielle. She explains that all the mentors’ business cards are in the glass bowl she’s holding and that we’ll start at the end of the alphabet and work backward. More than half the class goes ahead of me, choosing a name and reading it aloud. Ramona gets Jed Franco, a food photographer. I do a head count—six people left. Six chances to get David Westerly’s name. I hold my breath as some guy walks to the front. Pulls a card. Reads it aloud. “Abigail Rosen.”

  I exhale. Five more.

  A simple business card has the ability to change my entire two weeks here in a way that I never even imagined possible. No biggie or anything. It was good enough that I got into this camp, but to actually spend the next two weeks with David? If life ever has a chance to throw me a bone, this has got to be it. I’m not asking for the world—I’m just asking to be the one in five people who gets David Westerly. If I had a one in five chance of winning the lottery I would definitely buy a ticket. I’d probably win, wouldn’t I? Well, there’s a one in five chance I would.

  I take a deep breath, recognizing the kind of overthinking I’m doing as the start of a downward spiral into a full-blown panic attack, which thankfully gets interrupted as Gabrielle calls my name.

  I walk to the front, each step feeling like I’m walking in quicksand. I breathe in and out, mentally repeating David’s name. David on the in breath, and Westerly on the out breath. David. Westerly. David. Westerly. And then the glass bowl is cold on the back of my hand.

  My fingers are trembling as I pull out a single card. I turn it over and focus in on the name. It starts with a D.

  “What does it say?” Gabrielle prompts me.

  I stare in disbelief. “Deena Simone.”

  “Great. You’ll love her. She’s one of Seventeen’s best photographers—been doing their fashion spreads for years. Go on and sit down. Michael Evans, you’re up next.”

  I walk, in a daze, back to my seat and slump down. Six months ago I would’ve loved to get a fashion photographer. But now I don’t want a fashion photographer. I don’t want any photographer except David Westerly. I stare, as three more students choose names. Finally, Ben is the last one up to the front. H
e reaches in, pulls out the last card and reads what’s on it: “David Westerly.”

  Of course.

  “Wanna go to Brad’s?” Ramona asks as we head out the front doors of the Tisch building onto Broadway. Everyone’s heading to the closest dorm caf—our meal cards work at any of the cafs, but Ramona says she knows a better spot. “All the Tisch students go there,” she says, and we turn left to head up the street, the Empire State Building in the distance. “And I figured you could use a break from Connor and Kai.” She shakes her head. “Don’t let them get to you. Being an asshole is typically a sign of insecurity.”

  “I guess,” I say, glad to have my coat covering my Tisch sweatshirt. “But they’re right—why did I wear this sweatshirt? My best friend is always making sure I don’t do dumb stuff like this.”

  “Forget about it,” Ramona says, looping arms with me. “I think it’s retro chic. Where’d you get it anyway?”

  I tell her it was Dad’s, that he gave it to me when I started to get into photography and she listens and mm-hmms sympathetically. “That sucks.” And then she tells me how her best friend’s sister died last year and then we talk about best friends and boyfriends and she tells me that she and her boyfriend broke up in September when he went away to college. I don’t want to think about Dylan and what’s going to happen next year when he goes to college.

  We reach the corner of Broadway and Waverly. Unlike Spalding, where most streets are four lanes—the curbside one for parking—here in New York, the streets are just one, sometimes two lanes wide, at most, and the cars seem to zip by much quicker, like we’re on some sort of closed-circuit track. Every other car is a yellow cab, which makes New York feel exactly like every movie I’ve ever seen that’s set in New York, and again, so different from Spalding, where the only time I’d ever taken a cab was when we went to Florida and Mom and Dad didn’t want to drive to the airport, but even then we had to call the cab. It’s not like we could just stand on the street and flag one down.