“I’m not going to lie. Sometimes your photos totally freak me out.”
“In a good way?” I asked.
“Let me put it this way,” she said. “You’re super great at action shots. And animals. Especially combined. But we aren’t going to take any pictures of leaping cats. Ever. I’m telling you right now that you can’t put your cat in the yearbook.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing that,” I said. It surprised me that I was even being accused of such a thing. I mean, I liked Mitten Man, but I wasn’t obsessed with getting him into print. I’d only included four pictures of him because my mom and dad and Venice had said they were prizewinning and amazing. It’s not like I was obsessed with Mitten Man. Did I look obsessed?
“We didn’t think any of our portfolio photos were going to be included in the yearbook,” Venice said. “We just turned in our best work.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Please don’t interrupt,” Anya said. “During critiques it’s best just to absorb all the comments.”
But I wasn’t sure I agreed with that. Because some of her comments felt completely wrong.
“Back to Perry. You’re pretty good with posed photos. These ones of Venice and her ridiculously cute brother are pretty fab.” She looked at Venice and made a kissing sound. I guess to let us know she would be interested in kissing Victor. “But your doll photos are beyond creepy. I mean, I’m taking them out of your portfolio and giving them back to you and you should never show them to anybody again.”
“Okay,” I said, totally embarrassed that I’d even included the doll photos. I thought they looked dramatic and showed my ability to zoom in on facial features at interesting angles. But clearly, that wasn’t what Anya saw. I took the doll photos from her, but I didn’t have a place for them to go. So I just held them.
“Are you like really into horror movies or something?” she asked. “Is that what your nails are about? Why do you have a war horn on your pinky?”
I looked at my pinky. Was my symbol for strength a war horn? Did Venice know that? Why had she suggested something so violent? “Um,” I said, suddenly feeling much weirder about myself than I had two minutes ago. “No, I don’t go to the movies much. And this is an African symbol for strength.”
“Right,” Anya said, nodding at me. “It’s a total war horn. Warriors blow it before they jump into battle and slaughter village people and/or other warriors.”
I glanced at Venice, but she just looked at me and shrugged. At this point, I was feeling pretty attacked and I sort of wanted Venice to defend me. I’m not sure what she could have said. But anything would have made me feel better.
“Do you stay home a lot?” Anya asked, sounding both suspicious and sympathetic.
“Not too much,” I said, covering my war horn with my thumb. “I go out. Movies aren’t my thing, I guess. Especially violent ones.”
“So what is your thing?” Anya asked. This question felt so intense. Like she was going to use my answer as a way to define me for the rest of my life. I had to say something interesting. Something that made me look smart. And curious about the world. And not creepy. Or war horn–obsessed.
“What’s your thing?” Anya said again.
I could feel her breathing on me. I saw Sailor and Sabrina scribbling on the giant school calendar fastened to the wall. They looked so happy and relaxed. I wished I had the confidence to feel that way in Yearbook. Because feeling unsure all the time sucked a ton of my energy. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And the answer just popped into my head.
“The Internet,” I said.
Anya blinked at me and then tilted her head. Like she was trying to figure out if that was a good answer.
“The Internet is your thing?” Anya echoed. “Okay.”
Venice looked so worried for me. But I thought that was a pretty good answer. Because it made me mysterious and hard to define.
Anya flipped through my pictures until she got to the third one of Mitten Man. When I submitted him curled up in the bathroom sink, I thought it looked adorable. But in this context it made me feel lame.
“Do you watch a lot of cat videos?” she asked, straight-faced. “Don’t answer that. Okay. I think we’ve covered the ground we need to cover. What I’m trying to say is that every single photo you submitted from Spirit Day is plagued with your weaknesses.”
“So we’re not using any of them?” Venice asked. Her voice sounded really tragic.
“Don’t be so depressed,” Anya said. “I’ve given you a road map to the future. Focus on your strengths and your photos will make the cut.”
I couldn’t believe she wasn’t taking any of them. Had she looked at them close enough? I had to say something.
“What about Venice’s flagpole photo?” I asked. That one felt really special.
“Everybody is too far away in that one. And she cuts two guys off at the shins. You can’t cut people off at the shins. Ever. We’d have to crop them at the knees. Then we lose the ground. Then we lose the pole base. It doesn’t work.”
She sounded so certain. And also sort of right.
“What about Perry’s picture of Derby?” Venice asked.
I watched Anya bite her lip as she closed the folders and slid them under her arm.
“Wow,” she said. “You guys really don’t take rejection well.”
But I didn’t agree with that. Because neither of us was crying.
“There was actually a lot of cool stuff in that photo. But here’s the thing: I don’t like Derby. I don’t think anybody really does. We’re not going to waste valuable space on people like him.”
And I was sort of in shock when I heard that. Because basically she hadn’t said anything negative about my photo. She hadn’t even brought up the booger. She just didn’t like Derby.
“So are you ready to go get some awesome shots?” Anya asked.
I felt a little stunned by what had happened, but I didn’t want to turn down the chance to leave class and take photos. That was the whole reason I’d signed up for Yearbook.
“I guess I’m ready,” Venice said, standing up.
I followed her lead and stood beside her.
“Cool,” Anya said. “I hate being late.”
Leaving the classroom with a lanyard that said STAFF always made me feel incredibly important. I loved walking past the classrooms and watching people look up as we passed by.
“Where are we going?” Venice asked.
That was a good question. Because on the schedule it said we were going to write Spirit Day photo captions. And we certainly weren’t doing that.
“Spirit Day photos,” Anya said. “Here’s the hit list.”
Venice and I both quit walking down the hallway to read it.
“Keep moving,” Anya said. “Reece will be by the vending machine any minute.”
Wow. This was a surprising list. Not only did it name about a dozen popular seventh and eighth graders, but it also listed locations of where to find them.
“Are there any sixth graders on the list?” Venice asked.
Anya unscrewed her lens cap and shook her head. “Don’t get all weird on me. We’re not building the perfect yearbook in one day. It’s a process.”
“But Spirit Day was last week,” I said.
“Yeah,” Anya said. “But we need some retakes. I just don’t love what we’ve got.”
I looked at Venice in horror. Anya was retaking photos of her friends. That seemed really slimy. Because if we gave everybody a chance to show their spirit a second time, maybe they could have made the yearbook too.
“Reece!” Anya cheered as she hurried to the vending machine. “Perfect shirt. We’ll shoot these in color. Yes. I love that face.”
Click. Click. Click.
Venice and I looked at each other.
“That’s exactly what she wore on Spirit Day, except her hair looks better,” Venice said.
“This feels so dirty,” I said.
“Maybe we should
fight harder for your Derby photo,” Venice said. “Maybe I should take a picture of you all dressed up again and submit that.”
I shook my head. Neither of those options seemed like the right way to fight back against what was happening.
“I feel so duped,” I said. “We’re making a yearbook that only has popular kids in it.”
Venice shook her head. “It’s not over. We haven’t even sent anything to the printers yet.”
We watched popular Reece Fontaine purchase several items from the vending machine, striking many exaggerated purchasing poses. I read down the list of names. Anya had scribbled notes beside some of them. Tate Lloyd—Volleyball. Nicole Salazar—Debate. Rocky DeBoom—Track. Pia Bell—British accent. Jeff Hannah—Dirt bike. Danny Wild—Snowboard. Darcy Hart—Ballet. It seemed that Anya thought people in middle school could be described in one or two generic words. I wondered what she’d scribble next to my name? I didn’t feel I could be reduced to two words. Seriously. I had about a thousand interests.
“Let’s go!” Anya called to us as she hugged Reece goodbye and began walking toward the gym. “Tate Lloyd’s up next.”
“We need to do something,” Venice said. “It’s up to us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But what?”
Home Life
One tragic thing about Venice was that she lived at 524 Falls Drive, which was almost two miles away from me (and school), which meant she had to take the bus home while I walked alone. Making my way home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Anya O’Shea. It bugged me that she’d rejected all my Spirit Day photos. It bugged me that she’d rejected all of Venice’s Spirit Day photos. And it really bugged me that she said she didn’t like dweebs or want them in the yearbook. But the thing that bugged me the most was that Anya had all the power.
As soon as I got home I took out all my photos. I spread them out on my bed. I pinned them to my walls. I taped them to my mirror. I arranged them on my floor. I probably looked like a crazy person. When I heard a knock on my door and my sister, Piper, walked in, I was sort of surprised to see her, but I wasn’t really surprised by her reaction.
“Dude, you look like a total crazy person,” she said. “What are you doing?”
The reason I was sort of surprised to see Piper was that she technically didn’t live with us anymore. She lived in Pocatello in a dorm room with three other college students. The only time she came home was when she needed to do her laundry or take our food.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. Because that was an easier conversation than talking about why I was acting like a crazy person.
“Mom called and said I had a package, so I decided to swing down and pick it up,” she said. She walked into my bedroom and started to really examine some of my photos.
“Are these from Spirit Day?” she asked, pointing to the photo of several band members arranging themselves on the gymnasium floor to form the letter M.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Some things in middle school never change,” she said. She leaned in closely and looked at the photos of Drea and Derby.
Piper had gone to Rocky Mountain Middle School too, years ago. She hadn’t been on Yearbook, though. I guess she was more focused on being an athlete. She played volleyball and ran track. She’d always had really powerful legs.
“What do you think? Do you like them?” I asked. I think it was pretty clear that I was bummed out and fishing for a compliment.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is there a reason why you only took pictures of the nerds?”
That question really surprised me. Because I didn’t think it was true. “That’s so rude,” I said. “Only about half of them are nerds.”
“Right,” she said. “Is that a mop on his head?” She tapped Derby’s photo with her finger.
I shook my head. “It’s noodle hair and it’s super judgy to say they’re all nerds.”
Piper shrugged. “It’s just that our yearbook focused more on the athletes, club kids, and school officers. People with obvious boogers and noodle hair weren’t really featured.”
I couldn’t believe she’d zeroed in on Derby’s nose so quickly. It was like he had the most visible booger on the planet.
“I can image-edit anything unflattering,” I argued. I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. Couldn’t Piper just tell me they looked awesome? That was what Venice would do.
“You’d have to remove this girl’s entire mouth,” Piper said, pointing to Drea’s upside-down-handstand-grimace face.
And that was when I completely lost it. It’s one thing to have an unkind eighth grader tear me down, but it’s a totally different ball game to have my own sister show up unannounced in my bedroom and judge my work so harshly.
“Holy, holy, holy,” she gushed as she hurried to my side and gave me a hug. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I thought maybe there was a nerd feature you were working on.”
And when she said that I started shedding way more tears. Because I realized that until I started taking flattering pictures of popular kids, none of my photos were going to get picked. Ever. And that seemed so depressing.
“Stop,” Piper said. “Don’t melt down on me. Did you have a rough day? Tell me about it.”
But I didn’t even know where to start. So I just focused on upsetting stuff that popped into my head and felt important.
“How much do you know about crocodile accessories?” I asked with a sniffle.
“Um,” she said, stroking my hair. “You mean, like, stuff made out of crocodile, or stuff people use to dress up their pet crocodiles?”
I sniffled and thought about that. “You know somebody with a pet crocodile?”
She shook her head. “No, but Bobby’s uncle raises them on a farm in Florida. I’ve seen a ton of videos on his phone.”
Of course Piper had seen that. She had a pretty interesting life. She even had an interesting boyfriend named Bobby, who showed her interesting things on his phone and also took her to all kinds of amazing concerts in Utah and Nevada.
“I think killing animals for accessories is cruel,” Piper said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
“But what does that have to do with your day?” Piper asked.
I sniffled a little more and wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve. “Anya O’Shea wears a white and frightening crocodile belt and she’s the yearbook photography editor and she basically has rejected all my photos and it’s because the people in them aren’t popular enough.”
Piper nodded. “Well,” she said. “I think that’s how the yearbook mostly works.”
I was shocked to hear my sister say that. I mean, it sort of seemed like she thought it was okay to do this.
“But that’s wrong,” I said. “Yearbooks should include everybody.”
Piper glanced over at the photos spread on my floor. “Wow. You’ve taken a ton of pictures of Mitten Man. Was that an assignment or something?”
That remark made me feel even more self-conscious. I mean, didn’t everybody take lots of pictures of their cat?
“None of these were assignments,” I said. “I mean, I guess the Spirit Day photos were sort of an assignment.” I looked over at those pictures longingly. Maybe I should have snapped a few photos of athletes and class officers.
“Right,” Piper said, giving my leg a sympathetic pat. “They look great. They kind of buck the trend.”
By now, I’d stopped crying and was trying to formulate an argument for why my pictures belonged in the yearbook as much as Anya’s did. “I think the yearbook is about taking a snapshot of the school. Doesn’t that mean the entire student body?”
Piper smiled at me and gave me a hug. “You are so adorable. And you have a strong sense of justice.”
Finally, it felt like Piper was on my side again. “Right,” I said. “So what should I do?”
“Well, if I were you, I’d probably just do what Anya said and get the best possible grade in the class. Then, next year when you h
ave more power, you can build the yearbook the way you want it.”
What a terrible answer. I mean, I understood what Piper was saying. But it felt like a very fake and wrong way to handle things.
“But I want to make the yearbook fair this year,” I said.
“In my English class we’ve been reading a ton of Walt Whitman, and he has this line, ‘Peace is always beautiful.’ And I totally believe that.”
“So what are you telling me?” I asked. Because it sort of seemed like Piper had suddenly just started talking about her homework instead of my problems.
“Anya sounds fierce. I’d go along with her and be peaceful. Anything else sounds like too much work,” Piper said.
I took a hard look at Piper. She wasn’t like me at all. She streaked her dark-blond hair with lighter blond highlights and lined her lips with a pink pencil every morning to accentuate her delicate mouth. She always had a boyfriend and had recently become a vegetarian. Of course she wouldn’t fight against injustice. Dating Bobby, learning yoga, wearing makeup, making three salads a day…Piper didn’t have time.
“Well, I’ve got to do something,” I said. “I can’t sit by and watch Anya stomp on the little people.”
Piper frowned. “She’s probably not a villain. She’s probably just trying to make the best yearbook she can.”
And that statement really offended me. Because Anya was attempting to build that yearbook without using any of my great photos.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to hear my own sister defending Anya O’Shea. “Where’s your package?”
“What package?” Piper asked.
“Didn’t you say you came home to pick up a package?” I asked.
Piper exhaled really dramatically. She sounded almost like Anya, and it made my skin break out in goose pimples.
“It was just junk mail,” Piper said, standing up and walking to my closet.
It seemed like a complete waste of gas to drive all the way from Pocatello to pick that up.
“So, let me be totally honest. The package isn’t the only reason I came,” Piper said as she poked through my folded jeans. “Mom showed me something last week and it got me worried about you.”
Project (Un)Popular Book #1 Page 2