by Rosie Somers
“So…” I start slowly. “Have you lived here all your life?”
He side-eyes me as he grabs another fry from my tray. “Here as in…the city?”
I nod and race him to a handful of fries. If I don’t keep up, he’s going to eat them all without me.
“Yep, born and raised.”
He doesn’t offer more, so I try a different tack. “Do you have a lot of family here? Any brothers or sisters?”
“Only child.”
He’s answering my questions but only just. He’s not offering anything extra. The professional in me suspects he’s doing it on purpose, but the teenage girl in me wants to believe he’s just being a teenage boy. Suspicion wins out.
“Do you have a job? What do your parents do?” Somewhere along the way, my tone has shifted into something more aggressive, less natural.
Will freezes with his hand halfway to my tray and turns in a wide move to face me. His brows are drawn, and he studies my face for a moment like he’s trying to figure me out. “My mom’s an accountant and my dad is a freelance consultant.” His tone is tight with unspoken tension, and I’m suddenly feeling very self-conscious about giving him the third degree.
I try to think of something to say to extricate us from the tense moment, but I’ve got nothing. Eventually, Will has mercy on me and says lightheartedly, “And I’m too busy being awesome to fit in a job.”
He reaches again for my food, and I playfully smack his hand away, then slide my tray a few inches from him. “Come on, man. For real! Go get your own food.”
Will sighs in resignation and pushes to his feet. With shoulders slumped and a look of pure dejection on his face, he says, “Fine. I can take a hint.” Before he ambles off toward the food line, he winks at me. “Enjoy your book. And your fries.”
For a brief moment, as I watch him go, I consider calling him back and offering him my entire lunch just to have someone to talk to. But even more distasteful than being alone is the idea that I could come across as desperate after being all weird.
Which is exactly why I’m going to photography club this afternoon. Maybe if I have a wider circle of friends, I won’t feel the urge to chase after Will and beg him to spend time with me. But some tiny part of me wonders if it’s more about Will and less about me feeling lonely. Even if that were the case, I’m not ready to face that truth. One thing at a time. I’ll start with photography club and maybe consider a crush on Will if it comes to that.
Chapter Six
I hesitantly approach the room where photography club is held. I almost feel like I’m trying to crash an invitation-only party. I don’t know what lies beyond the burgundy-painted metal door of A116, but I imagine a room full of students taking professional-quality photos against a studio backdrop and standing around critiquing one another like art connoisseurs. By the time I set my hand on the doorknob, I’m questioning my decision to join this particular club. I stand there far longer than I’ve intended, debating whether I should go in or turn tail and run home.
Eventually, I manage to work up the nerve to open the door and peek inside. A small group of students, maybe seven or eight, sits on stools grouped together at the far end of a row of tables pushed together at the center of the room. No one notices me at first, and this helps me work up the nerve to step fully into the room.
Several voices are talking at once, excitedly, quietly, kindly—several parts of one discussion, but by the time the words reach me at the doors, they’re all garbled together. I step closer, then closer still.
When there’s only a few feet left between the tables and me, a girl seated at the large table looks up at me. Her tight black curls bounce with the movement, and she brushes them away from her face with a dark, sparkly-manicured hand. “Hi! Are you here for photography club?” Her smile is bright and genuine and immediately puts me at ease, even when the other photography enthusiasts all turn to gawk at me.
I nod.
“Great!” She pulls out an empty stool next to her. “Here, you can sit next to me. I’m Trinity; you can call me Trin. That’s Leo, Davis, Jacob, Andrea, Karen, Matty, and this…” She motions around the circle as she names each person, then concludes with the petite girl seated next to her. “Is Lacey.”
I’m on the receiving end of a round of waves and greetings, and I reciprocate with a soft wave of my own while circling the table toward Trin. “I’m Marisol. Mari,” I say, and take the seat she pulled out for me.
“Hi Mari, we’re just talking about our pictures from last week and what our theme should be this week.” Lacey points with a delicate, caramel-colored fingertip toward an array of pictures spread out across the tabletop. “Last week, we did reflections.”
The evidence of last week’s theme is spread out in front of me: pictures of reflections in water, in glass, in mirrors, in shiny objects. “So you guys pick a specific theme every week and then share what you come up with? Like a book club?” I’m immediately self-conscious about my own lack of skill.
“Only if you want to. There aren’t really any rules here. We all just want to have fun and encourage one another in our mutual hobby,” the dark-haired boy with glasses across the table says—I think Trin called him Jacob. “If you’re not comfortable sharing your work, you don’t have to.”
Relief makes me feel a little lighter.
“What equipment do you use, Mari?” Trin asks, and my lack of answer pulls me down like gravity.
There’s no point in beating around the bush. If I keep coming back after this meeting, they’re going to find out eventually that I’m a fraud and know next to nothing about photography. I pull Mom’s camera out of my bag. “I, uh, borrowed my mom’s camera. I don’t really know a whole lot about photography. I’ve definitely never done anything like this”—I hover my hands palm down over their pictures—“before. I just saw the flyer and thought it looked interesting.”
I wait for them to laugh at me, or shame me, or tell me to leave. But no one even bats an eyelash at my admission. “Whoa, is that the Mark III?” One of the boys across the table reaches out tentatively, picks up the camera, and turns it over in his hands. “I’ve been saving for one of these.”
Looks like my mom’s statement that it was a pretty good camera was pretty spot-on.
“I just read the reviews on that one!” a brunette with a light smattering of freckles across her cheeks pipes up from her place next to Jacob. “You’re definitely going to get some good shots with that. And Mrs. Conners could probably show you some of the controls if you need. She knows pretty much everything about cameras.”
“Mrs. Conners?” I look around the room for a teacher, surprised that I missed her when I came in. I’m usually good at picking out details like the presence of people. I need to be in my line of work. But there’s no one here except us students.
“She’s at a staff meeting right now. Technically, she organizes and runs the club, but she says it’s more enriching for us if we do things ourselves. Something about peer review or whatever,” Trin explains.
“Makes sense.” Things tend to stick with me better if I’ve done the legwork myself.
“So now we’re talking about a theme for this week. Davis thinks we should do a carnival theme, but Karen wants to do animals. No one else is sold on either of those, though. How about you? Do you have a theme you’d like to try?” Lacey leans around Trin to speak directly to me, though she talks loud enough for the whole group to hear.
It’s a weird feeling, being the center of attention, and all I want to do in that moment is to fade into the shadows. And there’s my theme—for the club, for my life. “Shadows?”
“Oh, I like that,” Trin chimes in immediately.
“Yeah, me, too.” Jacob leans forward with interest.
“Shadows.” Lacey chews on the idea for a moment, then says, “I know exactly what I could do with that. Okay, guys, what do we think? Wanna vote, or is everyone good with shadows?”
She’s answered by a chorus of voic
es, some more enthusiastic than others but all responding in the affirmative.
“Shadows it is then,” Jacob decrees.
After that, the group slowly starts to break up. The club members collect their respective pictures from the table, most tucking them into folders. I make a mental note to get my own for next time. One by one, the other clubbers leave, until it’s just Trin, Lacey, and myself.
Lacey busies herself pushing stools in under the tables and collecting loose items. “So, are you new to school, Mari?”
I nod while I mentally race through what to say. “Yeah, my mom and I just moved here a couple of weeks ago.”
“Where did you live before?” Lacey asks as she bends to pick up a paper from the floor.
Do I tell her the truth? Maybe it would have been a good idea to stay friendless, so I wouldn’t have to answer questions about my past. But what harm can it do to tell her where I moved from? “France,” I finally answer.
Both girls turn to look at me in surprise.
“Oh, how awesome! I’ve always wanted to visit France! I’m even taking French as my elective this year.” She sits a little taller on her stool and clears her throat before continuing. “Bonjour! Je m’appelle Trinity. Comment t’appelle tu? Well, I mean, I already know your name, but that’s basically all I know. Oh, or I can give you directions to ma maison or ask where to find les toilettes.”
“Do you speak French? Maybe you can teach poor Trin here so she can do more than just ask where the bathroom is.” Lacey pats Trin on the back in a teasing show of sympathy, and Trin gives her a melodramatic pout in response.
“We weren’t really there very long. So I don’t know a whole lot,” I answer honestly and pray they let the subject go quickly.
The door opens, and a thin, older woman walks in. Judging from the professional cut of her clothes and the stack of papers in her arms, I assume that this is Mrs. Conners.
“Hi, girls!” she calls to us as she circles toward her desk. “Is club over already?”
“Yeah, it kind of broke up early today; I think everyone was excited to get started on the new project theme,” Lacey answers. “Hey, Mrs. Conners, this is Mari. She’s new—to the school and to the club.”
“Welcome, Mari! I hope you stay with us. It’s a fun club, and we have some great kids.”
Lacey and Trin both agree while gathering their things. Then they make for the door, and I follow. Trin calls a goodbye over her shoulder, which Mrs. Conners returns.
A few minutes later, I exit the main building behind Trin and Lacey. I’ve never given photography a thought, beyond getting pictures of target pieces, until I made the decision to join the club, but now my brain is racing with a million ideas for pictures of this week’s theme.
I pull my phone out and check to see if I have any messages from my mom, but I’ve received no response to my texts from earlier, not the one from that morning letting her know I’d arrived to school safely and not the one from after school letting her know I was going to photography club. Nothing. A tickle of dread, a tiny niggling worry for my mother’s well-being, bubbles into something larger, something more obtrusive in my gut.
“Hey, Mari.” Lacey turns to face me when she hits the bottom of the steps. “Trin and I usually go to my place on Friday afternoons to bounce ideas around and take some pictures—”
“And to talk about Jacob, ’cause Lacey is, like, totally in love with him,” Trin interrupts.
Lacey blushes but otherwise ignores Trin’s teasing. “Anyway, if you wanna come over, too, you can. It’ll be fun. And we can answer any questions you may have about photography.”
“And you can listen to Lacey talk about Jacob.” Trin pats Lacey on the head like she’s a puppy.
“Whatever.” Lacey shakes off Trin’s attention.
“That sounds like a lot of fun, but I can’t today. I gotta give my mom notice on stuff like that,” I tell them. The truth is I’m anxious to get home and make sure she’s okay. We might be well away from Petrov’s eyes and ears here, but deep down, I’ll probably always harbor worry that he could find us. I can’t quite shake the fear, however irrational it may be, that he’s going to come looking for the loot from that French museum.
Trin nods in understanding
“No worries. Next Friday, then?” Lacey asks.
“Yeah, totally!” I can’t decide which is greater, my excitement at being invited to hang with my new friends or my nervous worry that something may have happened to my mom.
Lacey produces a phone from her back pocket. “What’s your number? I’ll text you.”
I tell her my number and wait while she and Trin program it into their phones. Mine buzzes almost immediately with messages from each of them.
“Cool, see you later, Mari!” Trin says.
“See ya!” Lacey echoes, and we part ways, heading in opposite directions away from the school. I’m a little disappointed they don’t live in my direction, but at this point, I’m just happy to have potentially made a couple of new friends.
I wait until Trin and Lacey are out of sight. Then I dial my mom and wait for her to pick up. When she doesn’t, I try again. And a third time. Finally, heart firmly planted in the pit of my stomach and cushioned by a mountain of worry, I give up, tuck my phone back into my backpack, and head for home. The whole way to my apartment, I’m doing my best to convince myself I have no reason to freak out, but I’m failing. With every step, I’m picturing some new possible danger or injury that could have occurred while I was at school. By the time I hit the landing outside my front door, I’m in full fight-or-flight mode, convinced any number of horrible things lay in wait for me just beyond the entryway.
I try the knob first, but it’s locked. My fingers are clumsy and heavy with anxious energy, and it takes me longer than I like to dig the key out of my bag. The door unlocks easily, but I take an extra minute, and an extra deep breath, to prepare myself before turning the knob and stepping in.
The apartment is quiet. Sunlight streams into the gallery from the doorway to the parlor and from the kitchen at the far end, creating intersecting rectangles of light on the herringbone floor. I step slowly into the light from the parlor and into the room itself a second later.
“Hi, honey, how was your day?” My mother greets me from her place on the sofa. She’s cozily ensconced under a velour throw, and a book is open on her lap.
I ignore her question and ask my own. “I tried calling you. Why didn’t you answer?” I don’t mean for my tone to sound as confrontational as it does, and I immediately bite my lip.
She looks at me with a blank expression for a moment. Then her eyes brighten, and she says, “Oh, I’m so sorry. My phone died this morning while I was getting groceries, so I put it on the charger in my bedroom when I got home. I forgot all about it. Is everything okay, mija?”
My nerves are still frayed from the three-block jog and ten-story elevator ride, but I’m relieved beyond belief that all my worry was unfounded. I paste on a smile and tell her, “Yeah, everything’s fine. I was just a little worried when I couldn’t get ahold of you.” I cross the room and wrap her in a loose hug. I want to curl up on the couch next to her and not let her out of my sight until all the lingering adrenaline is out of my system, but I don’t want her to think anything is wrong. So I release her and stand back, busying myself by twisting my backpack straps at the shoulders.
“Lo siento, Mari. I did not mean to worry you. I will keep my phone close by from now on.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in my room doing homework if you need me.” I adjust my backpack on my shoulders and head for my bedroom, but when I get there, I don’t start on homework. I grab my journal and curl up on my window seat instead. This day has been a full one, and I just want to get it all down so I can process it.
Between photography club and school and Will, I’ve got a lot of material to write about, but instead of focusing on my journal, my mind keeps drifting to Will. As much as I don’t want to admit it, he’
s gotten under my skin…in a good way. Instead of coherent sentences, I end up doodling his name, hearts, flowers, his name again. This is what I’ve been reduced to. I’m not even capable of a solid journal entry anymore. My preoccupation with Will is undeniable.
Chapter Seven
Shadows are everywhere, and I’ve spent most of my life trying to blend into them, most times succeeding in doing so. But I can’t for the life of me think of a good photo op for our shadow pictures. It was my idea, and I can’t even get the right shot. Or any shadow-themed shot for that matter. I’ve carried the camera with me everywhere for the last three days; I had all weekend to come up with something. I’ve taken at least a hundred photos, but I can’t make a single one of them work for the assignment.
Monday morning looms like one giant shadow. It doesn’t help any that the morning is a chilly, drizzly one. I suspect we’re in for snow soon, because the temperature seems to have dropped quite a bit just since I woke up two hours ago. I wrap my coat tighter around me and hunch my shoulders to help cover my ears.
Will is a bright spot in my gloomy morning when I meet him at the corner where our two streets intersect on the way to school. He is pacing back and forth on the sidewalk today, looking entirely too awake and energized for a Monday morning. I’m almost surprised he hasn’t worn a permanent groove into the pavement. Maybe something is bothering him.
Between my heavy navy wool coat and light-blue knit cap, Will must not immediately recognize me, because I’m practically on top of him before his eyes land on me and his expression softens. And his pacing stops. “Morning.” His breath mists out with his words.
I nod and offer him a tiny wave as he falls into step beside me. “Morning.”
The silence is heavy this morning, weighted with tension, and I’m not sure what’s causing it. Finally, Will says, “So, I didn’t see you after school on Friday.”