She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

  He snickered, a sharp sound through the phone. “Do you want to come help? I have to mix it with corn syrup to make it stickier.”

  “Absolutely not.” I heaved a sigh. “Fine. I’ll just stay here alone and watch these guys play video games. Maybe I’ll go take some photos outside or something.”

  “Jesus, Veronica, enough with the abstracts.” He was right. I needed something more interesting for my senior portfolio, and the summer was already half over. All this photographing palm trees wasn’t going to get me into a good art school, and my grades were just okay. I needed a truly exceptional portfolio if I didn’t want to end up in community college being taught by my mom, who is a ceramics professor at San Diego City College. The idea was cringingly awful.

  The front door opened, letting in a cloud of smoke and the pungent smell of cheap weed. A pair of girls in matching Vans traded hugs with mismatched boys.

  And then she stepped through the door, and for the first time that night, my hands fell away from my camera.

  Which was ironic, because from that night on, I’d be desperate to take her picture.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MICK

  In the back seat of this random girl’s car, I’m still fuming at my mom, thinking about her threat to take the money from my savings account if I don’t do her modeling shoot. How is it my responsibility to pay our rent? I hate her. I really do. I feel hatred for my own mother. My eyes prick with tears, and I stare out at the dark suburbs, blinking hard until they clear.

  Liz pokes me hard in the ribs. I whip around. Silently, she mouths, What’s wrong?

  Nothing, I mouth back.

  “Oh my gosh, look how cute!” The girl in the passenger’s seat turns around to show us a GIF on her phone of a cat falling off a table.

  Liz leans forward to watch it and cries, “Awww!”

  They look at me. “What?” I ask. Was I supposed to say something?

  “O—kay,” the girl mutters. She turns around and faces forward out the windshield. She lifts her phone up and opens the front camera, using it to check her makeup. Over her shoulder, I watch her purse her lips and tilt her head to the side. Her thumb goes for the Capture button; she’s taking a selfie. I dive out of the way.

  Liz nudges me. “What are you doing? Sit up.”

  “I don’t want my picture taken,” I snap, sharper than I mean to.

  Liz glares at me, then says to the girl up front, “Hey, did I tell you about this guy who’s going to be here tonight? He plays soccer at Bonita. So hot. I think you’d look cute together.”

  That gets her attention. She whips around, brown hair flying. “Wait, you didn’t tell me this! What’s his name?”

  “Xavier. He’s, like, six feet tall and has these gorgeous green eyes…”

  We pull up to a two-story house that backs up to a hill. Liz and I follow her friends to the door. Pulsing music throbs from behind it, and I wrap my arms around my waist. Liz hisses, “Try to have fun. For once.”

  “I am.” The door swings open, and the music roars around us.

  It’s hot and loud inside the house. The girls we came with get their vape pens out and enter the living room in a cloud. I follow behind, a meet-and-greet smile plastered to my face. My eyes rest on the stairs.

  Always the stairs.

  They stretch up, reaching to a world I’ve never known, a world where everyone has their own bathroom, where people have two parents who will wait at the bottom of the staircase on prom night. These are Christmas-morning stairs; first-date stairs; making-a-dramatic-entrance stairs.

  A chorus of excitement howls around me. The girls have found their friends, a group of guys, and we’re drawn into a vortex of beer and bodies. My fitted T-shirt suddenly feels too tight, the material plastered to my skin. I feel like everyone can see my body. I tug at the neckline, the hem. Dude, chill. It’s just a normal T-shirt.

  I stay close to Liz and survey the room: couples sprawled out on couches; boys laughing in front of the TV; groups on the patio deep in conversation, wreathed in smoke. My gaze lands on a dark-haired girl sitting alone on the floor, petting a tabby cat, her mouth drawn into a disgruntled pout. Doesn’t she feel embarrassed? Doesn’t she have that pressure in her brain telling her everyone is watching, that she needs to get up and act like a human? I ache with envy, and I wonder if she could be someone to talk to if Liz goes MIA.

  Suddenly, the girl’s eyes fix on mine. I’ve been caught staring. Oh God. I twist my lips into a grimace-smile. Sorry, I think. I force my eyes away from her and onto the pair of boys talking to Liz. Liz is laughing; from what I can hear of their conversation, she knows them from middle school.

  I keep my eyes moving, afraid of accidentally staring at anyone again. When I let them roam past the girl with the cat, she waves at me. The pout is gone; her face is full of curiosity. Is she curious about me?

  I raise my hand just a bit and wiggle my fingertips at her. She motions me forward.

  A roar erupts from the crowd around the TV, and I jump, startled. Whatever game they’re playing is a bloody one. Someone’s avatar is laid out in what looks like a war zone, decapitated. One boy jumps up off the couch, controller in hand, and does a victory dance.

  The girl raises a camera from her lap and puts it to her eye. It’s old-fashioned, the kind with knobs and dials. I can hear the click from here as she takes the dancing guy’s picture.

  Cameras everywhere. The world is full of them. I feel weary, like I’m a thousand years old.

  The girl lowers the camera and beckons me again, more aggressively this time.

  I glance at Liz, but she’s still talking to the guys. I steel myself for potential social humiliation and approach. She leans her head back on the wall to look up at me as I arrive in front of her. A curtain of black hair falls away from her face, revealing dark brown eyes with winged eyeliner.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I am tongue-tied. She’s beautiful in an artsy, vintage sort of way, a fair-skinned Latina with glossy dark hair and full pink lips. Her jeans look intentionally worn out, like they were bought somewhere expensive. My jeans cost thirteen dollars at Ross. I wonder if she can tell. Her shirt is a V-neck, and I am not going to look at her cleavage.

  Her eyes flick down to my hands, which I’m wringing so hard they’re going numb. “You having a good night so far?” she asks.

  I force myself to pull them apart. “Sorry. But do I know you from somewhere…?”

  “You don’t know me. But I know your friends.” She points to the guys Liz is talking to.

  “They’re not my friends.” I sound like a bitch. “I mean—I don’t know them. My best friend does.”

  “Oh good. Because they’re assholes.”

  I laugh. “Wow. Okay.”

  “What? They are.”

  “You’re not, like, worried I’m going to tell them you said that?”

  She furrows her brows at me and then calls out, “Lucas. Lucas!” She waves a hand wildly until the guy talking to Liz looks over.

  “What?” he yells.

  “You know I think you’re an asshole, right?” His friends laugh loudly.

  “Fuck you, Veronica.”

  She blows him a kiss and looks at me deadpan. “There you go. He knows.”

  I’m stuck between awe and embarrassment.

  She pats the floor next to her. “Come and meet my new cat friend, Perkins. Help me find things to take pictures of. I’m so bored.”

  I search for Liz over my shoulder. She catches my eye, waves at me, and returns to her conversation.

  I guess that’s her giving me permission. I lower myself onto the floor. The cat shoots me a suspicious glare from its little cave beneath her knees.

  She smiles at me. “I’m Veronica.”

  “I’m Mick.”

  “Like Mick Jagger?”

  “It’s short for Micaela.”

  Her smile gives her a pretty dimple in her left cheek. “Can I call you Jagger?”

  I
can’t help but smile back. “Sure.”

  “Where are you from, Jagger? I’m assuming you don’t go to Bonita. I’d have noticed you.”

  “National City.” I wait for her to make a face or a joke, but she just nods like this is normal and interesting.

  “What brings you to Bonita? Do you know people here? Besides the assholes?”

  “I came with…” I try to point out the girls who drove us here, but I’ve lost them. “I don’t know where they went. Some girls Liz met.”

  She’s got her head cocked and is studying me clinically. “You have interesting bone structure. It’s unique. Your cheekbones are exactly even with the bridge of your nose.”

  Before I can come up with a response to that, she raises the camera. Reflexively, I duck, lifting my hands to cover my face.

  She lowers the camera. “Whoa, dude, you act like I pointed a shotgun at you.”

  My chest feels tight. “I hate having my picture taken.”

  She pushes the hair out of her eyes. “How much do you want to bet I can take a good photo of you?”

  “No, no, no.” I push myself off the ground. “I should get back to Liz.”

  She grabs my hand. “Whoa, whoa, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you hated it that much. I won’t take your picture, I promise.”

  I look down at her hand on mine. My nails are short, always flimsy and dull from the chlorine in the pool. Her hand is elegant, artistic. She moves her knees aside to reveal the cat’s head. “Give Perkins a little pet. She’s feeling shy tonight. Maybe you have that in common.”

  I reach out to the tabby. Perkins has decided I’m not a monster and rubs her forehead on my knuckles.

  “Petting animals is therapeutic,” Veronica says. “They’ve studied it.”

  It’s true that I feel calmer. I’ve always wanted a cat. I sneak a look at Veronica. “What kind of camera is that?”

  “It’s a vintage Nikon. It was my dad’s. You want to hold it?” She pulls the strap over her head and hands it to me. I accept it cautiously, and she’s right, I kind of do regard it as a weapon. “It’s heavier than I expected.” I turn it in my hands to study it.

  “This is the aperture, the focus … This is the shutter, you know, where you take the picture.” She points out each part as she names it.

  I lift the camera to my eye and look through the tiny window. Inside the rectangle, Liz and the guys are laughing hard about something. Liz’s eyes are alive with excitement.

  Veronica says, “Go ahead and take a photo.”

  “Are you sure? It’s going to be blurry.”

  “Can’t be worse than the shit I’ve been wasting my film on all night.”

  I play with the focus dial, feeling like a professional, and take the picture with a satisfying snap. Veronica shows me how to advance the film with my thumb, which has an interesting clickety sensation.

  I like the feeling of control that comes with being on this side of the camera. I should torture Liz for a change, or, even better, my mom. I should take subversive unflattering photos of them, post the pictures on the internet, and say what they always say to me: “I don’t know why you’re being so sensitive.”

  I hand the camera back to her. “Thanks.”

  She loops the strap over her neck like she’s done it a million times. “You want to walk down to 7-Eleven and get something to eat? This is boring, right?”

  I don’t know Veronica, but I want to escape from this house. And if I’m being honest, she’s different, and cute. I want to talk to her alone.

  Liz is drinking a beer and looks happier with me off her hands. Besides, I’m starving.

  I smile at Veronica. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  VERONICA

  The stucco facades of the Spanish-style houses glimmered in the streetlights. The palm trees tossed in a breeze too high to touch us. The warm air smelled like the desert, a hot summer smell. We walked in silence at first, her hands clenched by her sides. Everything about her felt anxious and tight, like I was making her uncomfortable just by being there.

  “So you’re sporty,” I said, trying to get her talking again. “What do you play?”

  She looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

  Because you have great shoulder muscles. “I’m psychic.”

  “Wait, really?”

  I shoved her lightly. Yup. Great shoulder muscles. “It’s just a vibe, silly. You look sporty, I dunno.”

  “Well, you’re right. I’m a swimmer.”

  “Cool.” Why did I intro with this? There was literally nothing in the world I knew less about than sports. I may as well have asked her about astrophysics.

  More silence. My brain decided nervous chatter was the solution. “I’m not a great swimmer. And I won’t go in the ocean past my waist.”

  “Really? Why?”

  I hummed the Jaws theme song. She looked mystified, so I said, “Jaws? Have you never seen that movie?”

  “No. I mean, it’s really old.”

  “Dude, it is still so scary. You have to watch it sometime.”

  We reached the corner, and I pointed left. “The 7-Eleven is down there, by the stoplight.”

  I held my camera to my chest to keep it from bumping as we walked. She retreated into a moody silence, her brows drawn together. Her shadow flickered tall and short between the streetlights, looming beside us. It was one of those strange highlighted moments you get sometimes, where the whole day—sleeping late, working in my darkroom, wasting hours on Instagram—blends together into one high-speed, blurry memory reel, stopping short at this frozen, hi-res moment. Like a living photograph.

  Then it slipped away, and I was just walking down a suburban sidewalk a few paces behind a pretty girl who looked more distressed than the situation warranted.

  I reached for her arm and said, “Hey. Stop. Hang on.”

  She turned to me. “What is it?”

  It was the first time I got to see her face straight on, and her features were sharper than I’d imagined. I wanted to put my finger into the groove between her pointy upper lip and her thin, high-bridged nose. Her brows were straight, a natural scowl.

  And I forgot what I was going to say. I fumbled for words. “I’m glad you showed up tonight. I’m always alone at those things if my friend Nico doesn’t come.”

  She smiled a little sadly. “I’m always alone too, just tagging along with Liz. It feels so good to be outside. Like we escaped from prison.”

  She was right; it did feel like that. What was pulling us back to the party, anyway?

  Inspiration struck. “What time do you need to be home?”

  She shrugged. “My mom doesn’t really care. And we’re in a fight.”

  “Perfect. Do you want to go have an adventure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, maybe go downtown, to the Gaslamp Quarter?”

  A little smile crept across her face. “Can we still get a snack first?”

  I laughed. “Of course. First food, then adventure.”

  “Oh thank God. I’m starving.” The words tumbled out of her, and for the first time, she didn’t look shy or avoid my eyes. The snap of personality crackled, sweet and warm. My hands crept toward my camera, but I held them back. If I wanted a photo, I’d have to earn it.

  That was fine with me. I loved a challenge.

  * * *

  The Uber smelled so strongly of cherry air freshener, I was sure we were going to asphyxiate. I rolled down the window an inch, letting in a hissing snake of wind that ruffled my hair into my eyes. Outside, the freeway flowed past, smooth in a stream of lights. My camera bag nestled tightly against my leg. I always carried it instead of a purse, but I never kept my camera in it. That went around my neck.

  “You girls warm enough back there?” the driver, a balding man, asked over the seats.

  “We’re fine, thanks,” I replied. “Are you using Google Maps or Apple Maps or Waze or what?”

&nbs
p; He shot me a surprised look in the rearview mirror. “Google Maps.”

  I pulled up Google Maps and started tracking his route, making sure he wasn’t a serial killer taking us somewhere off-grid. Mick was glowering at her phone, thumbs flying across the screen.

  “Everything okay, Jagger?”

  “Liz is mad that I left.” Her thumbs jab-jabbed and she hit Send.

  “She doesn’t feel unsafe, does she?” I’d thought Liz had plenty of female friends to back her up, but maybe I’d misread the situation.

  “Oh, nothing like that.” She lifted her eyes from the screen. It lit her face up from the bottom, giving her a spectral look. “I guess she … It’s complicated. She likes me to be there, but she wants me to be … different. More fun. Less shy.” She slipped her phone into the small blue purse resting on her lap, and I felt angry with this Liz I didn’t even know.

  Her purse buzzed. We both snapped our eyes to it. “Do you want to answer it?” I asked.

  “I think I’ll talk to her tomorrow at swim practice. It’s always better to let her cool down.”

  I remembered my ex, a hot-tempered girl named Brianna who got pissed off every time I stopped shadowing her like a puppy dog. Obviously it didn’t last; I’m not an easy person to keep on a leash.

  Mick relaxed back into the seat, stretching her legs out in front of her and folding her hands behind her head. I could see the line dividing her abdominal muscles through her T-shirt, which made me dizzy. Oblivious, she said, “Forget about my friend drama. Tell me about you. You go to Bonita, you like to take photos, and you’re scared of sharks. What else?”

  It was like having the camera suddenly turned on me. I couldn’t think of a single thing about myself, not with her freaking ab muscles visible through her freaking shirt. I looked up at the roof and tried to collect myself. What did I like? I had to like something, for God’s sake. Inspiration struck. “I like old movies,” I cried, relieved. I sounded like a kid who’d figured out the answer to a math problem in class.

  “Oh yeah? Any in particular?”