Golden Hour

by Chantel Guertin

  And then the song ends, and the guy beside me is nudging me out toward the door. I glance back up at the stage at the same time as Dylan looks down. Our eyes meet, and I smile.

  “How do you think you did?” Jaime asks as we walk back through to the foyer.

  I make a face.

  “It’s intense, huh?”

  “Definitely.”

  “All right, I’ll see ya around.”

  Clipboard Dude is beside me, hand out. “Pass.” I pull the lanyard over my head and place it in his hand. He gives a half smile. “But you can go in there and see the rest of the show.”

  RFBR play another few songs and walk off the stage to the sound of real applause—not polite clapping, but killed-it applause. It has nothing to do with me, but my heart swells with pride.

  A minute later, my phone buzzes.

  Dylan: Meet me by the merch booth?

  People jostle against each other as they make their way to the bar or the bathroom, but a few minutes later, Dylan grabs my arm, and pulls me over to the edge of the hallway.

  “You were amazing,” I tell him, knowing it sounds like a cliché, but it’s also totally true.

  “You get any good shots of me?” That dimple.

  “Maybe,” I tease, patting my camera, which is slung over my shoulder.

  He puts an arm around my waist. “Come on, I’ve got a spot where we can watch the Cherry Blasters.” He leads me down the hallway and up a set of stairs, holding my hand, then down a dark hallway. A second later, colored spotlights illuminate the stage in front of us. We’re at the stage, hidden by a dark curtain. The band walks out on the stage, from the opposite side. “Pretty good vantage point, huh?”

  I nod and quickly delete more old photos, then raise my camera to my face. For the next few songs, I move around a bit, focusing on the band, getting the best shots until my memory card is full again. I sling my camera back across my body and turn to him. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” Dylan’s breath is hot in my ear.

  “For tonight.”

  Dylan’s hands move down to my hips, and he pulls me close to him. Then we’re swaying together, to the music. Our bodies close. And we stay like that for the rest of the song, until it ends. As the band starts up their next song, Dylan turns me to face him, my body brushing his.

  His hands move from my hips, up my body, to my face, and he’s pulling me into him and our lips are pressing against each other, hot and damp from sweat. Finally we pull apart and I catch my breath.

  “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?” he says. “Kiss you, like that, for real?”

  My voice catches in my throat.

  And then he’s kissing me again.

  When we break apart, I smile. “Um, no. No clue. How long?”

  “A long time.”

  An hour later we’re heading out of the venue, when I hear someone call my name.

  Jaime is out of breath, behind me. “Pippa. Someone stole my camera, in the bathroom. Which, I know, I’m such an idiot to even leave my camera on the counter, but I’m screwed. I have nothing and I’ve got to get a photo in to my editor tonight. I’ve already asked three other dudes but no one can or wants to share with me. Please say you’ll sell me one of yours?”

  “I didn’t shoot the Cherry Blasters.”

  “Yes you did,” Dylan interrupts.

  I give him a look. “Not officially.”

  “But you got something?” Jaime says. I nod and turn my camera toward her, and she flips through the shots. “These’ll do. Can I take three? I’ll pay you what I would’ve made.”

  “And make sure I get a credit?”

  She nods. “It’s a deal.”

  THURSDAY, MAY 11

  I refresh Rotate’s website a billion times before bed, give up, then check again when I wake up. It’s there. My photo. My name. I send the link out: to Dace, Dylan, Ramona, Ben, David. My phone rings.

  “I thought 6 a.m. wasn’t morning to you?”

  “It’s not—but my daughter gets a photo published? That’s worth getting up for. Plus your text woke me up.”

  “Daughter, huh?” David’s never called me his daughter.

  But he avoids the question. “So you gonna tell me how you got your first credit?”

  I fill him in.

  “Well, good for you, Greene.” He clears his throat. “Listen, I’m proud of you. Whatever happens. If this Tisch thing works out, great. ’Cause then I’m going to force you to see me once a week. At least. But if it doesn’t and you want to come chill in the city for a bit, you can always stay with me. As long as you like.”

  “Thanks, David.”

  After we hang up, I head downstairs, where I can hear Mom making coffee. I show her my phone. The pic. My name. She wraps her arm around me. “Oh Pip. I’m so proud of you.”

  I feel proud of myself too.

  At lunch, Lisa lines up behind me as I’m waiting in line for chicken nuggets. “Hey Lisa,” I say, and she looks up from her notebook, where she’s scribbling something.

  “Hi,” she huffs and then puts her head down.

  “How’s everything going?”

  “How do you think things are going?” she says. “Devyn’s taken over Streeters but now she’s not writing her column. So now we’re OK on photos but short on words. What a way to go out of this place.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about bailing on the site.” But even as I say it, it occurs to me that I haven’t for a second missed doing Streeters. I missed taking pictures, but not the kind I was churning out for Hall Pass or Instagram or photo club.

  I grab my chicken nuggets, two chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of water and pay using my student card. “Well, good luck,” I say half-heartedly, and Lisa rolls her eyes at me.

  *

  In Writer’s Craft that afternoon, the prompt is Time. I turn to a blank page, and at the top I write Future. I stare at it for a minute and scrawl What next? And then think about next year. How I have no clue what’s next for me. I’m still writing when Mr. Jonescu tells us the time is up. After class, I’m walking to my locker when I bump into Lisa again.

  “You said you were short on articles, right?” I say.

  Lisa rolls her eyes. “You have no idea.”

  My essay for Tisch is due in six days. Writing for Hall Pass could be a good way to work through some ideas before the deadline. “Would you want a personal essay? I know I’m not a writer, but I have stuff from Writer’s Craft and, I don’t know, it’s probably not great, but I was thinking if I cleaned it up a bit maybe—”

  “Yes, sure, great,” Lisa says. “Send it to me.”

  “I still need to work on it.”

  “Fine. Send it by Sunday night.”

  SATURDAY, MAY 13

  I wake up early, but Mom’s already downstairs drinking coffee at the kitchen table. “I’m going to go garage saling. You want to come?”

  “You haven’t been garage saling yet this spring.”

  “Time to fix that.” I hold up my camera.

  She stands. “I’m with you.”

  We head out to the end of our street, which is often where people post signs for garage sales, and I do my usual thing of taking a picture of all the sale signs, so it’s easier to find them later. Then we head down Waverly to the first sale. Mom heads to the table of books, and I run my hands over the old dishes, thinking about the fall. Will I need my own plates if I’m living on my own? I pull my camera up to my face and take a shot of the plates, lined up. I look around for Mom to see if she’s ready to go and see she’s by the garage, talking to someone.

  “Pippa, do you remember Eleanor McKeown?” The woman’s she’s talking to smiles at me. “She was one of the nurses who took such great care of your dad in the hospital.”

  I nod. Eleanor has this thick wavy orange hair and fr
eckles all over. She would sit with Dad forever, and any time we needed anything, she would get it. She would bring me drinks, and she would explain what the doctors had said in a way that I understood. “I volunteered at the hospital last year,” I say.

  “Ahh,” she says. “I retired last year. I miss the hospital. The early mornings and overnight shifts? Not so much.” She smiles. “You look so much older than I remember.”

  I shrug. “I feel the same.”

  “You must be graduating from high school soon? This year?”

  I nod.

  “And then what do you have planned?”

  “I’m—” and then I say it. “I’m not sure.”

  “Ah well, you’ll figure it out. I remember your dad thinking you might be a lawyer or a detective.”

  “Uhhh, like Sherlock Holmes?” I say, thinking she must have me confused with someone else. “Dad knew I was going to be a photographer, like him.”

  She tilts her head, then shakes it. “No dear, Evan and I talked about your future a lot.” She looks over at my mom, maybe seeking permission to keep going. “I think, when he knew that the end was near, it was so hard on him—thinking about how he wouldn’t see you graduate from high school, wouldn’t know what you’d go on to do, who you’d become.” She glances to her left, where a woman has approached a table full of glassware, then winks at us. “I’ve got my eye on those sherry glasses. I better get over there before they’re gone. It was lovely to see both of you.”

  “Eleanor’s right,” Mom says when it’s just the two of us. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, your photography. You threw yourself into it so wholeheartedly that I almost forgot a time when you weren’t so focused on taking pictures. It wasn’t always your passion.”

  “Of course it was,” I retort.

  She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t have that same intensity before he died,” Mom says, putting a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Oh sure, you were always interested, but it felt like you were interested in photography because he was. And then he left you his Nikon. And it’s almost as though you needed to find a tie to him. Something to hold on to. It’s not a bad thing. I think it probably is what helped you get through everything, but maybe it doesn’t have to be everything anymore.”

  “You’re just saying that because I didn’t get into Tisch,” I say. “You wouldn’t be saying that if I had gotten accepted.”

  “Maybe,” she concedes. “Maybe not.”

  I start down the driveway, onto the street, steps ahead of Mom. Is Mom right? I replay the timeline. I got the Canon for Christmas before he died, but it wasn’t until after he died that I got serious about photography. What did I want to be when I grew up, back when I was 12, 14? Before everything changed? Did I only start dreaming of Tisch after he died? I kick at a stone with the toe of my sneaker and watch it rattle down the street.

  And if Tisch hasn’t been my forever dream, then is it my dream at all? Mom catches up to me but we walk in silence, past the next garage sale, Mom taking her cue from me. I just want to go home. But when we get to the end of our driveway, I stop.

  “Do you mind if I just go off on my own for a bit?”

  She looks surprised, but nods. Then she reaches out to grab my arm. “Honey, I think you’re probably working through some stuff right now, but I want you to know, that this time of your life—trying to figure out who you are, what you want to do—it’s hard. It masks itself as an exciting time. And it is, of course. You finally have control over your life, to make your own decisions, to choose your path, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Most of the time, it’s really, really hard.” She lets go of my arm.

  This time, I head to the water. Normally, I’d walk the path, take pictures of the trees, the leaves, the flowers. But today, I just sit on the grass, legs dangling over the dirt cliff that leads down to the water’s edge. I close my eyes and listen to the water rushing down the river.

  When I get home, I run straight upstairs to my room and open my desk drawer, then pull out the framed photo. “Here,” I say to Mom, finding her in the kitchen, watering her herbs in the windowsill.

  She turns. “What’s this?”

  “I was saving it for tomorrow, for your Mother’s Day gift, but I want you to have it now. I know that this year has been all about me, and I’ve been so busy trying to figure out my life, I haven’t really thought about how my life is affecting yours. I’ve been pretty much oblivious to your life, actually. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh honey. You’re the kid, I’m the mom. I think we’re doing all right.” She takes the paper off the frame and looks at the photo that I captured of her and Hank in the backyard. That golden hour moment, of just the two of them together. The light glinting off their wine glasses, casting long shadows in the grass.

  She studies it. “I love it. But was this—is this hard for you to see? Me and Hank?”

  I shake my head. “I’m happy for you. Really.”

  SUNDAY, MAY 14

  On Sunday night, after a day hanging out with Mom and Hank and Charley, I head up to my room to work on the piece for Lisa. I read over what I wrote three times, making little tweaks here and there, then delete the whole thing. And start again.

  Photographers spend a lot of time waiting. You have to to get a good shot. As a person obsessed with photography, I’ve spent a lot of time waiting. Waiting for the ideal light. Waiting for someone to relax. To forget I’m there. Waiting for rain to stop. Waiting for a cloud to pass. This kind of waiting—it’s out of my control. It’s nature, it’s someone else’s emotions. It’s time. I have patience.

  But this year I’ve been waiting to hear if I got into the only college I applied to. And this kind of waiting? The worst. Because I thought it was all under my control. If I just ticked all the right boxes—grades, SATs, portfolio—I’d sit back and wait to be accepted. But I got waitlisted. I got waitlisted at the only college I’ve ever wanted to go to. And it’s also the only one I applied to. No one except my best friend knew this. She tried to tell me it was a bad idea. That I needed a backup plan. But I told her she was wrong. Turns out, she was right. I didn’t get into Tisch. My whole life I’ve wanted to go there—at least, that’s what I thought.

  But the other day I was reminded that I wasn’t always so obsessed with photography. It’s like I had written my own history and memorized it. My life after my dad. I guess I did it because I missed him. Because this story I told myself was a way to bring me closer to him. It gave us a story, and one I could continue. Which is better than the alternative—a few key memories of shared moments, the details fading with time. Having this shared calling to be photographers, even if it was just a made-up story I told myself, gave me a sense of control over my past and my future. Isn’t that what we all want, as our futures—this infinite unknown—lie ahead of us? We just want to feel like we have some say in what’s next. Accepting that parts of my life—huge important parts—are beyond my control? It’s maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever had to learn. But maybe the best memories, the ones that last, are the ones that happen when you stop anticipating and start participating. The photos that don’t turn out, or the ones you even forget to take.

  MONDAY, MAY 15

  As I’m putting my bag into my locker, Dace comes up to me and wraps her arms around me. “Your piece on Hall Pass? I feel the exact same way. Loved it.”

  “Wait, it’s up already?” Lisa didn’t even reply to my email when I sent it to her late last night.

  I pull out my phone. There it is. On the website. My byline.

  I read it over, and realize Lisa didn’t change a thing. Then I read the comments. There are already a bunch of comments—people all saying how brave I was to write the piece or that they were surprised to hear I got waitlisted. But the best comments are the ones where others share their own experiences about what really emerged as the theme of my piece: control.

  Lisa and
I bump into each other before third period. “You ran the piece.”

  “I told you I needed content.”

  “So you liked it?”

  “Of course I liked it. I ran it, didn’t I?”

  “Well, OK. I didn’t know. You didn’t reply to my email or anything.”

  “No news is good news. When can you have the next one done?”

  “The next one?”

  “Yes. I need you to write as often as possible until graduation.”

  “Um . . .”

  “Send me the next one tomorrow. Oh, and thanks, Pippa. It was just what we needed.”

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 17

  When I was applying to Tisch the first time around, there was a formal application, with questions and blank spaces for answers. Not that the answers were always easy, but it felt kind of like a crossword puzzle. Read the clue, write your answer in the allotted space. Not sure, skip it and come back. Writing the waitlisted essay feels like a game with no rules.

  I start and delete my first sentence multiple times, and then realize I’ve already written what I really needed to say.

  Dear Mr. Vishwanathan,

  The last few weeks have been difficult, to be honest, and I can definitely say I’ve been doing things I wouldn’t normally do. But I’ve also been taking pictures. Because without photography, I feel like a part of me is missing.