Golden Hour

by Chantel Guertin

  I’m not sure I’m ready for this. We inhale and then as we exhale, the room fills with people’s words: Breathe, Focus, Finish, Calm, Think, Make. I hear Dace say Be beside me.

  It’s all so earnest and pure that it becomes hard not to be earnest and pure, myself. The word that pops into my head? Succeed. Now, more than ever, I need to succeed. That’s my word.

  Anisha chimes the bell again and then a second later the sounds of seagulls and waves fill the gym from the Bluetooth speaker beside her. I lower my head and stare at the chipped orange polish on my toes. Then close my eyes as Anisha’s voice fills the air. “Let’s begin this meditation by noticing the posture that you’re in. Tune into any sensations in your body that are present to you in this moment. There might be heaviness . . .”

  Heaviness? Understatement of the century.

  “Pressure . . . Weight . . .”

  It’s as though this sophomore is inside my brain.

  “These sensations may be anywhere in your body, and all you have to do is notice them. Notice what’s happening with curiosity and interest. Take a breath. Feel your lungs expanding.”

  But I can’t breathe. My throat feels tight, like it’s nothing more than a pinhole. And expanding? All I can think is how I’m supposed to be expanding my skills. Is this really going to count?

  “As you breathe, relax. There’s nothing you have to do in this moment; be present.”

  She’s totally wrong. There is so much to do. Doing literally nothing won’t get me off the waitlist and into Tisch. And will I even prove that I’m doing this without a photo of it? I open my eyes and look around. Everyone’s eyes are closed. They look peaceful. Not a care in the world. They’ve probably all received their acceptance letters and know what they’re doing with the rest of their lives. Or, like Anisha, have at least another year before they even have to start thinking about college. Of course they’re calm. They don’t understand the pressure, the weight, the heaviness I feel. Dace has her hands on her knees, palms up. Like a living, breathing skinny blonde Buddha statue.

  I can’t just sit here.

  As slowly and quietly as I can, I shift onto one butt cheek and reach into my jeans pocket and pull out my phone. I make sure it’s on silent and then hold it up at chest height and snap a photo of the three girls across from me. The rule of thirds. It would be even better if I could get just a bit closer. I rock onto my knees, off my mat onto the cold gym tile and hold my phone out as far as I can.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Anisha’s eyes flicker open. I freeze, off balance, and tip forward, my phone clattering to the floor. I reach for it, and all three girls in front of me stare at me. I don’t have to look around to know everyone is looking at me.

  “Are you taking pictures during our meditation session?” Anisha’s brown eyes narrow to slits.

  “I just thought . . . everyone looked so peaceful. It was such an inspiring moment. I wanted to capture it.”

  “Is this some sort of undercover Hall Pass project, Pippa?”

  “No.” I shake my head. Although an undercover project would have probably been a better idea than Monday Morning Meditation or taking a picture of Monday Morning Meditation.

  “It’s completely disrespectful,” Anisha is saying. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  For a second I think she’s kidding, but then the girl beside her is nodding and glaring at me. “You didn’t even ask our permission.”

  “Were you going to post that picture?”

  “Seriously.”

  Anisha holds up a hand to silence everyone. “Listen, Pippa, it seems like this isn’t for you. We get it: you’re into photography. But that’s not what this is about. Why don’t you come back when you’re less about documenting the moment and more about being in it?”

  All eyes are on me, including Dace, who looks 100 percent mortified. My face burns as I stand up, turn and hurry out of the gym, leaving my mat and Dace behind.

  TUESDAY, MAY 2

  “I don’t understand,” Lisa says. We’re in the photocopy room, a.k.a. Hall Pass headquarters. I’m sitting on one of the supply counters that houses photocopy paper, and Lisa’s pacing. Everyone else is pretending to mind their own business, but I know they’re listening. It’s too quiet. “I don’t understand how you just don’t have any Streeters this week? You’ve been doing Streeters forever. Every Tuesday you submit Streeters. Did you suddenly get amnesia?”

  “Kinda,” I say.

  “Kinda?!”

  “Whoa, Lisa, calm down,” says Colin, the copy editor, the guy who finds our typos and spelling mistakes. He rubs his shaved head, something he often does while talking. “No one’s going to die if we don’t find out whether people think we should serve sweet potato fries or regular French fries in the caf.”

  Lisa glares at him. “Can you go out now and do one, Pippa? We need to fill the space with something.”

  “Well that’s not technically true,” I say. We used to be a paper, but now everything’s online, so it’s not as if there’d be this blank space, anywhere. Just a page we don’t update. No one’s really going to notice. Or care, for that matter.

  “She’s right,” Colin chimes in.

  “We have standards,” Lisa says. “Expectations to meet. People rely on us. We’re an important part of this school and we can’t just not do regular columns simply because one of us forgot. We’ll just post late. Go out now and get something. Anything.”

  “I left my camera at home.” I bite my lip.

  “You what?” Lisa’s voice goes up an octave. “Use your phone.”

  “I . . . I think I need to take a break from Hall Pass.”

  “A break?” Lisa’s voice goes into an even higher register. “Six weeks before the end of the school year? That’s how you want to go down in Spalding High history? As a quitter?”

  “I’m not quitting . . .” I say, but of course that’s exactly what I’m doing.

  “I can take over,” Devyn says. Devyn’s a sophomore who writes the horoscopes as well as a weekly column about being adopted by two lesbians. She also often takes pictures at the basketball games because her boyfriend’s on the team.

  “Great,” Lisa says. “Devyn, you’re on Streeters till the end of the year. Colin, take Pippa off the masthead. That’s what you want, right, Pippa?”

  Is that what I want? I don’t say anything for a second, hoping that Lisa will tell me that I’m obviously having a tough day. That they can’t lose me as a photographer. But she just stares at me. I look around at everyone else in the room. All eyes are on me. “Yeah, that’s what I want.”

  And just like that, I’m no longer a photographer at Hall Pass.

  I hope Vishwanathan is happy.

  *

  I walk home, wondering what I’m going to do with my free time. Hall Pass meetings have been every Tuesday all year long. Mom always works the late shift on Tuesdays and leaves me something frozen to heat up for dinner. But with leaving school early, there’s a chance I’ll see her before she leaves for work. And I’m going to have to explain why I’m not in Hall Pass anymore.

  A golf cart zips toward me on the sidewalk, the driver beeping the horn like crazy.

  I step off the sidewalk but the cart screeches to a halt beside me. The guy behind the wheel takes off his New York Yankees ball cap and grins.

  “Ben! You are such a freak.” I smile. I haven’t seen Ben since spring break when he was home for a few days.

  “Freaking awesome you mean. I thought I was picking you up at school in, like, an hour?”

  “I totally forgot.”

  Seconds later I’m sitting in his passenger seat. Ben is looking good. He’s been home from the University of Utah a few times—the usual holidays—but I’m still caught off guard every time. Blond hair, blue eyes, golden tan even though it’s only May. It’s really suc
h a shame there is absolutely no physical attraction there.

  “What happened to hanging on the weekend?” Ben says as he hits the gas and we take off down the sidewalk.

  “Sorry. Long story—I got waitlisted for Tisch, went to New York and spent the rest of the weekend wallowing.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Oh you know, stop taking photos, and find other fascinating hobbies to fill my time and enrich my life to show how well-rounded I am in the hopes that they reconsider.”

  “At least you’re not bitter.” Ben gives me a long look, but I look straight ahead, then scream as a white ball of fluff crosses in front of the golf cart. I clutch on to the roof as Ben swerves, rumbling over a neatly manicured front lawn, but narrowly misses the dog. A woman glares at us, then scoops up the dog.

  “Close one,” he says, once we’re back on the sidewalk again.

  “Now can we talk about why you’re driving a golf cart? Beemer in the shop?”

  “You’re looking at the hottest summer employee at White Water World.”

  “Ben Baxter has a summer job at the water park? What happened to working with your dad?” When Ben and I last talked summer plans, he told me he was going to be working in one of his dad’s production company’s satellite offices just outside Buffalo for the summer.

  “Turns out he ‘forgot’ he was going to be in San Fran all summer. But Oksana was going to be in the office so I could see her every day,” he says sarcastically.

  “Ouch.” Ben and his dad have had a hot and cold relationship that seemed to be in the lukewarm temp—his dad came to visit him in Park City in the winter, and they had a great bonding weekend snowboarding. But then a few months ago his dad got the clichéd twentysomething girlfriend who Ben doesn’t like. Still, Ben’s taking video production in college, following in his dad’s footsteps, like I want to follow in my dad’s.

  “Whatever. How bad can it be, relaxing in the sun, right?”

  “I guess,” I say, still thinking how he’s not exactly following his dream. “It’s probably not too late to find something film-related. The park can’t be opening for at least another month, can it?”

  “Today was my first day. It’s just maintenance stuff for now, until the end of June.” He slows as he approaches an intersection, and waits for a bunch of cars to pass. “It’s only one summer. I’ve got years till it really matters. What about you? What’s your plan again?”

  “Dace and I are supposed to be backpacking in July, but . . . I should probably get a job actually. Only I’m dreading telling Dace because she’ll be so mad at me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Well, I can hook you up, you know, serving cotton candy or something.” He winks.

  “I still don’t get the golf cart.”

  “They use these golf carts to get around the park and I thought, why not just take one home?”

  “How many times have I told you not to listen to the little voice in your head with the terrible ideas?”

  “I’m sorry, didn’t you just tell me that you’re supposed to be doing wild and crazy things? You could learn a thing or two from me. Borrow a golf cart, drive it around town. It’s actually really fun.” Ben slams on the brakes and hops out, then points to the seat. “All yours. It’s like riding a bike. Only without the wedgie.” He comes around to my side.

  “For the record,” I say as I scooch over to his side, “I didn’t say wild and crazy and I’m not sure why everyone seems to interpret doing non-photography stuff as wild and crazy.” I look at the controls in front of me—way simpler than a car.

  “Now you hit the gas. Except. I think this thing is electric. So you press the pedal or whatever.”

  “Or whatever? Not helpful.” I press my foot down lightly on the gas pedal and we lurch forward. I slam on the brake and we skid to a stop. Finally I get the feel for the pedals and soon we’re zooming forward.

  “See?” Ben asks. “Easy. You can barely tell you don’t have your license yet.”

  “It’s on the to-do list.”

  Ben points down the street to Scoops. “Pit stop for ice cream?”

  I shrug. “Sure.” There was a time when I couldn’t come to Scoops, because of what happened here, with Dad. Each time I caught a glimpse of the ice cream place where I used to spend hours working, I would think about that day he died. It was both the best afternoon and the worst all rolled into one. As though having this perfect date with my dad had to be followed up with the worst moment of my life—seeing him in pain, having to take him to the hospital. The beginning of the end of his life. I guess time does heal, because it feels like so long ago. Like I was a different person. In therapy, Dr. Judy told me that when I feel a panic attack coming on, I have to block out the past and focus only on the moment. To remove the association of what’s causing me to panic. I’m pretty good at that now, but it means that I block out all of the past a lot of the time—the bad times, when Dad was sick, but also the good times, when it was Dad and Mom and me. The three of us. I barely think about the vacations we took, or games we used to play on Friday nights together, because even thinking about happy stuff makes me sad. I can’t remember Dad’s voice anymore, or the funny turns of phrase he would use. I can’t remember which side he parted his hair on, or what his hands looked like. It’s all fading away.

  “Pippa?” I turn to see Ben standing beside the golf cart, hands on the roof, leaning over to look at me. “You OK?”

  I nod, blinking back tears, and get out of the cart.

  Bells chime as Ben pushes open the door to Scoops and holds it for me. The place is empty except for a girl behind the counter. “Hey guys,” she says, and I recognize her: Callie.

  Back when I volunteered at the hospital, Callie worked at the cafeteria. I thought there was something going on between her and Dylan, but it turned out they were just childhood friends. I think about this now, and how my relationship with Dylan seemed to be continuously fraught with my jealousy and misunderstandings. Callie, then Ben and Muse . . .

  “You’re not working at the hospital anymore?” I say, walking up to the counter.

  She sighs. “I needed a change. This is pretty good except for the fact that my hand is always so cold.”

  “I remember that feeling,” I say. “I used to work here. Oh, hey, this is Ben. Ben, Callie.”

  Callie gives a quick smile to Ben, then turns back to me. “You worked here? Maybe you can help me. All my waffle cones have holes in the bottom and everyone’s complaining that the ice cream drips out.”

  I nod. “You just have to roll them tighter than you think.”

  “Who knew serving ice cream could be such a challenge.” She rolls her eyes.

  “And on that note, I think I’ll have mine in a cup,” Ben says. “Chocolate chip. You?”

  “Tiger tail. Cup too.” I smile.

  The bells chime and I turn to see my old boss, Rita, come through the front door. She glances our way but either doesn’t recognize me or can’t be bothered to acknowledge me, walking straight into the back through the Employees Only door. She was my least favorite part about working at Scoops. Seriously, how can you be grumpy when you own a shop that makes customers so happy?

  Callie must feel the same way because she seems to tense up as she scoops our ice cream, handing it to us then moving over to the cash. “Would you like six muffins with that?” Callie asks as she punches the buttons on the cash register.

  “Did you just ask us if we wanted muffins with our ice cream?” Ben laughs.

  “Yes, I did,” Callie says, smiling broadly, and her voice is overly cheerful, sort of like she’s on an infomercial. “They’re freshly baked today. Blueberry or carrot. Perfect for the morning so you don’t have to think about what to have for breakfast!” She’s not blinking, but she’s s
till smiling. Then she leans over the counter and talks super quietly, without moving her lips. “Shut up and don’t make fun of me. My boss is watching and I’m not upselling the muffins enough. Please buy some muffins?”

  “What? No one wants muffins. It’s an ice cream shop. People want ice cream!” Ben slams his hand on the counter, laughing.

  “I’d love six muffins. Blueberry. Please,” I say extra loudly. Callie exhales and smiles at me. “Thanks.”

  I hand her a twenty.

  I pull Ben away from the counter and we move to a booth. “That was mean.”

  “That was ridiculous.”

  “I feel bad for her. I’m glad I didn’t have to do that when I worked here.” I think about Callie, working at the ice cream shop now, two years after graduating from high school. Is this what’s going to happen to me if I don’t get into Tisch? Am I going to be back working at the same place I worked when I was a sophomore, making minimum wage for the rest of my life and serving my friends when they’re home from college for the summer?

  “I bet she wishes she went to college,” I say aloud.

  “Not everyone wants to go to college,” Ben says, sliding in beside me. He selfies us and taps the screen a few times. A few seconds later, my phone vibrates. “Take the tag off me,” I say. “I don’t do selfies.”

  He gives me a look. “Lighten up.”

  “What? I like to keep my online persona professional.”

  “You mean boring. I noticed. How many likes do your pics get?”

  I roll my eyes. “Not everyone cares about likes. I care about having curated work.” I think of my color theme, how since the meeting with Vishwanathan I haven’t posted a single photo. Not even the great golden hour pics that I’d planned to post this week.

  “My stuff’s curated too. I post hot selfies, shirtless selfies and drunken selfies. See?”

  “Ben, I’ve seen your Instagram.”

  “The difference between our feeds? Mine looks like it’s me. Yours doesn’t look like you. Yours looks like a museum. Bunch of boring shots of stuff. It wouldn’t kill you not to take everything so seriously.”