Beauty’s a ticking time bomb. I’m just clearing a path forward before it blows.
“Not here for relationships,” I repeat to Mom and Evie. So I don’t care how good he grew up, Lucky Karras can go sulk in someone else’s bookshop. “I just want to tough it out long enough to finish high school in one piece.”
But when I see the pitiful way Evie’s sad eyes look down at me, as if both my three-step plan and the future are spread out before her like a bad tarot card reading, I begin to wonder if I’ll even survive this town until summer.
BEAUTY HIGH, GO BREAKERS!: This quintessential 1980s plastic school sign molded into the shape of an ocean wave flanks the front sidewalk of the public high school. Last renovated in 1985, the building sits downhill from the well-funded Ivy League preparatory private school, Golden Academy. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 2
June
First impressions can be deceiving. Maybe I shouldn’t have kindled any excitement whatsoever about returning to Beauty, because it only took four months for my initial hope to drain, and now I’m basically functioning on low-power mode and praying my battery doesn’t die completely.
Between third and fourth period on the last day of school before summer break, I summon what’s left of my energy, make myself as small as possible, and head down the western corridor of Beauty High, music thrumming through earbuds that block out the discord of the hallways—all the lockers slamming and all the football players shouting out to their bros. The laughter and buzzy excitement about graduation parties. The freshman kid crying in the restroom. Summer plans being solidified. Drug deals being made.
I keep as far away from these people as possible. Some of them I used to know when we were kids, and some of them might be okay now, but I’m in a full-on survival mentality, and I can’t take any chances. Whenever Mom and I move somewhere new, I usually keep to myself and don’t make many friends. People aren’t disposable. It hurts when you get attached and have to leave them a few months later—something Mom doesn’t seem to understand.
But unlike in other places we’ve lived, the students at Beauty won’t leave me alone. They’ve poked and prodded me as if I’m a prize poodle who’s unwittingly stumbled into some kind of kennel club competition for Worst in Show. Since the day I registered for school here, it’s been one long series of invasive questions. Did you really live in a cheap motel for two months? Were you on food stamps? Is your mother a sex addict? Does your father really know Prince Harry? Why did your grandmother really go to Nepal to live with Sherpas? Is she involved in some kind of cult?
Leering eyes, the constant texted rumors zipping around school … sometimes just walking from one class to the next feels like I’m walking through a war zone. I might step on a land mine and lose a foot—or gain an illegitimate baby, you never know. I’m taking both my life and my flimsy reputation into my own hands every time the bell rings.
Everywhere else Mom and I lived, no one knew us. But here, people know just enough. Intimate details of our life are tossed around for entertainment. Not everything they say is true, but some of it is. And some of it hurts.
I’m starting to think that saving up for my exit strategy to LA to live with my dad might not be worth the torture of staying here for an entire year. But at least I have the summer to recharge. To retreat into the bookshop and my photography.
“Josephine?”
And I may have something else—this is the other thing, right here.
Please let me have this.
Pulling out my earbuds, I jog across the corridor to the journalism classroom to meet a bespectacled middle-aged teacher with a shiny bald crown, Mr. Phillips. He’s in charge of the Beauty High yearbook and the school paper. More importantly, his wife works at a regional magazine that’s published right here in Beauty—Coast Life. New England travel, food, lifestyle … that sort of thing. And it’s his wife’s job that interested me most, because where there’s a magazine, there’s photography. And where’s there’s photography, there are internships.
The summer internship at Coast Life is a good one.
“Miss Saint-Martin. See you made it through junior year.” Mr. Phillips smiles as he adjusts round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses that are, style wise, somewhere between John Lennon and Harry Potter. “Got any big plans this summer?”
I always have plans.
“Working at the Nook part-time,” I tell him, anxious for him to give me the news.
“Sounds fun. And what about your photography? Will you be taking more pictures of signs around Beauty for your portfolio?”
“Always on the lookout for a good sign. They’re humanity’s communications, and I’m just the messenger with the camera.”
“Love that,” he says.
Is he making small talk to let me down easy, or to withhold the good news longer? I can’t tell, but it’s making me nervous. Mr. Phillips is nice and one of the few teachers I actually don’t mind here. But the truth is, I need his help if I’m ever going to make it to Los Angeles next year.
The problem is that my famous father is famous for a reason, and he’s notoriously tough. I need to prove to him that I have what it takes. See, I know I can take pictures. I’m mostly self-taught—my dad’s given me pointers—but I’ve got a good eye, and I’ve taken thousands and thousands of photos over the years. I develop my own film, old-school style, in a darkroom. I’ve even got an online funding account—Photo Funder—a photography donation fan site on which I post exclusive photos for paid anonymous subscribers. Most months, it only brings in around a hundred bucks, and I’m pretty sure the majority of my subscribers are Mom’s friends and my grandmother. Not enough to prove to my father that I’m worthy.
For that, I need something more. Like a photography internship under my belt. I need to show him that other people think I’m talented enough to take me under their wing. And at the end of the summer, Coast Life takes on a Bright Young Thing to help them do fashion shoots for Regatta Week. Rich people partying on boats. To be honest, it sounds like a total nightmare—absolutely the opposite of my artistic interests. But it probably looks fantastic on a résumé, and the person shooting it is a semi-big-name fashion photographer. Someone my father respects.
“What’s the final word?” I blurt out to Mr. Phillips, unable to keep up the small talk any longer as my chest tightens.
He hesitates. “I’m sorry, Josie.”
My stomach sinks.
And sinks …
“It has nothing to do with your photo submission,” he assures me, “which they loved. The internship just normally goes to someone in college, and they just think you’re too young.”
“But I’m almost eighteen,” I argue. “And they know who my father is, right?”
I hate to throw around his name, but this is an emergency situation.
“Of course your father’s name doesn’t hurt. But …”
But.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he says in a low voice, “but if you want to know the truth, they were going to give it to you. However, the big boss who owns the magazine came into the board meeting. Mr. Summers is a stickler for rules, see, and you’re underage.”