I told her I didn’t understand, and it seemed to take a great deal of restraint on her part to keep from telling me exactly how stupid I was.
She handed me the flyer for the photo contest I’d folded into my portfolio.
“This doesn’t have to be unpleasant. We can help each other. I’m trying to create some imagery for someone who deserves to be punished,” she said. “I want to work with you to stage some photographs that we can use to teach him a lesson.”
“What kind of less—?”
Her eyes darkened and I stopped talking. There was something oddly powerful about the way she commanded silence. The confidence that surrounded every movement. It was awe-inspiring. Like she saw everything I was trying to hide and was embarrassed for me.
Evey flipped through some of the pages a little more aggressively than I would have liked and landed on a familiar brightly colored page in a sea of black-and-white. She pointed to a set of photos where there was yarn draped over two trees and wrapped around a bench. In my head, I’d always called them my Colorful Death collection because it was the first time I’d taken pictures at the cemetery. And the first time I’d yarn-bombed.
I wanted to reach out and grab the portfolio back, not necessarily because that photo was so personal but because I’d taken it at the cemetery near my house, where Yia Yia is buried.
I actually took a bunch of them there, and I wasn’t really in the mood to be told how morbid it was to take artsy yarn pictures next to tombstones and mausoleums.
I also wasn’t prepared to hint at how much time I spend there just knitting and taking pictures. Knitting with dead people is weird. I get it.
“What is this?” she asked, pointing. “You knit?”
Maybe she hadn’t noticed the tombstones in the back of the black-and-white shots.
“And crochet,” I told her.
“Interesting. That works nicely,” she said.
She continued to flip through my portfolio, and I hated how quickly she moved her fingers over every picture, but more than that, I hated how much I held my breath while she did it. No one had ever seen my work before. Not my dad. Not my Yia Yia. No one.
Showing my dad would have been a little bit like offering him a macaroni necklace.
“There’s a lot in here that doesn’t interest me,” she said. She wasn’t even trying to be mean; she was just stating a fact. Like she was conducting business.
I tried to think up some response to that. Something clever and direct that I wouldn’t stay up all night regretting later, but then she interrupted my thoughts.
“These are exceptional.”
I didn’t expect that response and was annoyed by how much I perked up at her approval. My eyes traveled down to where her index finger tapped the page. It was one I’d done right after Yia Yia died. Yarn everywhere. Brilliant colors cascading down her tombstone and over the park bench facing her grave. I frowned.
“It’s yarn-bombing,” I told Evey, reaching out for the portfolio. It was something I’d discovered by accident after Yia Yia died. I’d been knitting at the cemetery, working on a yellow beanie, and it wasn’t until I’d made it halfway home that I realized I’d left it behind.
What was even more annoying was that it wasn’t on the bench where I’d been sitting, or on the ground either. I wandered the cemetery for over an hour looking for it because I was pissed that I’d somehow managed to lose it. Also, I didn’t want to go home to a fridge full of food from church people. Eventually I found it on the head of a statue near the entrance. Before I yanked it off, some guy with flowers who must have been visiting a grave walked by and shook his head, saying, “Who yarn-bombs a cemetery?”
That’s when I Googled it and found all the pictures of yarn covering random crap. Benches. Lampposts. A tank. People did other amazing things with it too. I’d seen photos online of giant yarn spiderwebs hanging across public buildings.
I reached out again for the portfolio.
“And that photo is private. It’s—”
“Your grandmother. I know,” she said softly, tugging it back. “So are you in or not?”
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked, and before the words even left my mouth, I knew I was stuck.
She smiled, and even though she didn’t say it out loud, her narrowed eyes said very clearly: I’ll make sure your dad finds out about yoga.
Whatever tiny bubble of happiness had formed in my stomach popped. I wasn’t sure exactly how she knew that would be devastating for me. Probably my expression when I asked her to move me on the first day. Maybe it was the way my voice cracked. That was probably really obvious to someone who looks for other people’s weaknesses.
The awful thing is, she was right. She saw my weakness immediately and exploited it.
The thought of being sent to Greece to live with my fart-throwing cousin who likes to tangle all my yarn and “pretend” to drop my camera equipment filled me with a hot, sticky feeling of dread. The kind that forces my stomach to clench over and over again.
When I said nothing, her smile was cold.
“Like I said, this doesn’t need to be unpleasant. We can help each other. And there are a few things I’ll need from you….”
She pulled out the photo contest flyer and highlighted the portion I hadn’t completed yet, the part that asked for a theme for the portfolio submission.
Before I could open my mouth or tell her I was out or do anything other than stare at her, she said, “Your theme can be revenge.” She leaned back in her chair, waving her hands enthusiastically as she spoke. “And the photos are going to be creative and devastating, with hidden messages. But visually stunning, of course. And when we’re done we’ll post them all at the same time.”
She smiled at me again as if she’d just handed me some dream assignment, but I couldn’t wrap my head around being an accomplice to this. Jordan Swansea was probably an asshole, but he’d never done anything to me. Weren’t people usually pissed after a breakup, and how could I possibly get in the middle of this epic shitstorm?
I stared at my portfolio and the flyer that had been hanging out of it, trying to reason my way out of this. Then Evey leaned in and whispered, “E tan e epi tas.”
Even non-Greeks know that means “Return with your shield or on it.”
Again I was annoyed at how that lifted me ever so slightly. It was the only time she’d mentioned some kind of connection between us. We’re both Greek. We both speak the language. Technically. Even though there’s no doubt that Evey is way better at speaking it than I am.