Liz’s name lights up the screen along with the words You almost done? We’re all waiting for you.
She knows I’m at dinner with my mom. What does she expect me to do? I imagine my mom’s anger if I took off. Do I care?
The image of me on a pool deck surrounded by cameras, trotting around obediently in a bikini while my mom and Andrew simper with glee, makes me want to piss my mom off.
To Liz, I type, Come get me.
CHAPTER THREE
VERONICA
The first night I met her was the first time I took her photograph.
The living room was crowded and noisy. I was curled up with my back against the wall and my knees to my chest, fidgeting with the aperture ring on my Nikon. The house cat, my new best friend, was sitting in the little cave under my knees. It was Saturday at Ricky’s house, and the night had only just begun. The house would be full of drunk almost-seniors by the stroke of midnight. Eventually, I’d probably photograph them piled on top of each other like bodies on a battlefield.
The crowd around the TV roared; someone had done something in the video game that was either good or bad. I raised the camera to my left eye, squinted my right eye shut, and twisted the focusing ring until the backs of the upraised fists resolved into sharp contrast against the white of the TV screen.
Click. An image was forever burned into film. My thumb twisted the film winder, and I lowered the camera.
I don’t understand digital photographers. When you’re confining photos to negatives and each shot costs money and can’t be undone, you’re a lot more careful with the pictures you take. I love how my camera makes me commit to every shot.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I wrestled it out. It was Nico, calling instead of texting. Weird.
“Hello?”
“Hello, wife.” His voice was tinny, like he was on speakerphone.
“Where are you? You were supposed to be done driving your stupid Uber an hour ago. I’m dying of boredom with these peasants.” I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and lifted the camera to my eye again.
“I have to do an errand.”
I sat straight up. “No! You’re flaking on me? What kind of errand?”
“I have to pick up those buckets of blood from the butcher before he throws them out.”
It took me a few seconds of blinking at my phone, and then I remembered what he was talking about—the blood was for this upcoming installation. “I’m getting ditched so you can drive a bunch of blood around? Wow. This is a new low for me.”
He snickers, 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 was 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 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 solitary 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?