Pictures of You

Chapter 22

22

Drew

If I hadn’t set my camera to capture that star trail, I’d take pictures of her. She’s on the blanket, legs bent, her head resting on my jacket that she’s folded as a makeshift pillow. She didn’t ask. Just went ahead and helped herself to a piece of my clothing like we’ve been friends for years.

I have to stop. I can’t be sitting here imagining this is more than it can be.

She’s got a thing for Oliver. And if he has a thing for her, then that’s the start of that. And the end of this.

Mum is staring at her too. I can read her thoughts. Evie is lovely. How wonderful that Drew has met such an interesting girl, and she’s into all the same things. She tries to get up off the sand and struggles. I leap up and pull her to her feet, wrapping her jacket around her shoulders, remembering all the times a minor cold sent her to the hospital.

“I’m going for a little walk along the beach,” she announces, obvious as hell.

As I sit down on the sand again opposite Evie, she rolls onto her side and cradles her head in her hand, watching the fire. She pulls the beanie off and shakes out her curls, casting spiral shadows on the sand behind her.

“Pass me your camera,” I say. “And don’t move.”

It’s hard to get the right exposure with the brightness of the flames; I have to try a couple of angles. But she’s patient. She knows this is about the challenge of working out the shot. And she just lies there, watching me do it.

“Is your mum okay, Drew?” she asks, breaking my focus.

I take a shot, but it’s blurry.

Mum is probably even less okay than she seems.

Evie is looking directly down the lens. I’m looking directly into the viewfinder. The camera should be a barrier between us, but instead it only draws her closer.

“I don’t think she is,” I reply at last, clicking the shutter just as my words land and her expression softens. “No, she definitely isn’t.”

I’m grateful she doesn’t ask the obvious follow-up question: “Are you okay?” I haven’t been okay for so long. I haven’t told anyone how hard it’s been, or how much of a mess I’ve become. There’s always a risk it will get back to Mum, and it’s meant to be the other way around with us. I worry about her . Care for her, apart from the couple of times we’ve been able to arrange respite or her nursing friends have dropped in when she’s really bad. I’m not going to be the one to push her over the edge. This is why I keep to myself a lot.

I look at the photo. It would be perfect for the exhibition. I’d caption it Compassion .

But there are some moments that are too private for public consumption. And some unspoken conversations that need to stay that way.

When I put the camera down and look at her for real, I know that this one, small admission has chipped open a new friendship. She’s not pushing. Not prying. Not telling me she knows exactly how I feel and sharing some vaguely relevant personal anecdote of her own as if this is a problem competition. She’s just lying here on the beach with me, noticing my life.

News travels fast at school on Monday. And by “news,” I mean some bizarre mash-up of the truth involving Oliver stealing Evie right out of my arms—as if she was ever in them. Apparently, I’ve come out fighting, still taking her to her formal, which surprises everyone. Isn’t Drew Kennedy that loner?

And who is Evie Hudson anyway? Nobody heard of her until she stirred up the Photography Club and Oliver made her high school famous by asking her out. They can’t even find her on Instagram. Probably because virtually no one knows she only has a photography account. Oliver’s not even following it.

Saturday-night stargazing with her was beautiful. Sunday too.

Come over after lunch and we’ll edit the photos in Lightroom? I’d texted. It had taken me a full ten minutes to construct that sentence and another twenty to get the guts to send it.

She did come.

I shut the blinds and darkened my room, the cramped space feeling even smaller with her in it, while I hoped she wouldn’t notice the peeling cream wallpaper and creaky wooden floorboards. It’s a space I’ve shared with girls a couple of times, but never like this. Working on our photos together felt a thousand times more intimate as we crouched beside the screen, not touching unless she reached for the mouse to adjust something or I leaned in closer and brushed her shoulder as I tried to see a tiny detail in the frame. I focused on pulling out the whites in the images and upping the texture and clarity, bringing the universe alive together—not on the scent of her perfume, or the sight of her legs in shorts, crossed under my secondhand wooden desk, or the way they brushed my thighs whenever she got excited about the images and forgot where she was and who she was with.

“I can’t believe I took these,” she gushed, leaning closer to the screen, touching my arm for emphasis, marveling at the resolution. It had felt so good to watch her confidence come together in real time, beside me.

Mum brought in drinks and snacks. I showed Evie my portfolio.

“Sounds pretentious to call it that,” I said, “but I’m applying to the School of Contemporary Art next year.” Provided everything is okay with Mum.

“You’ll definitely get in with these,” she’d replied, taking her time to flick through the pages and analyze each image in detail. She might not have had formal training, but she has a strong eye and spouted technical terms like a pro.

“Look at the harmony in this one …” She pointed to an image I took of some boulders in the snow on a school excursion to Thredbo last year. We were supposed to be skiing but I couldn’t afford to rent the gear and had convinced the PE teacher that I should document the trip instead, for the school magazine.

“You know I have a darkroom set up in the garage,” I explained.

She was beside herself. She’d never been in one. “I’ve never even taken film photos!” she admitted.

I reached high on the shelf in my room and brought down an old camera and a fresh roll of film. “You feed it in like this,” I said, our heads close together over the open door of the camera while I showed her how to hook the roll onto the spool and move it along.

Next, we were rambling through the streets, taking photos of each other in the local park. Silly shots of her hanging upside down on the monkey bars and jumping off the swings. Semiserious artsy shots and gritty street scenes, while overnight freight trucks thundered underneath us on the overpass or streetlights flickered in alleyways.

Then we’d wandered home, where I set up the chemicals and we watched the images develop, playing music, talking, waiting for them to dry.

Standing in the red glow of the light with her, watching our faces materialize on the paper, seeing myself smiling, for real, after not smiling much for so many years … It’s the first time in my whole high school experience that I felt vaguely “normal.” In a way, it made me sadder about everything I’ve missed.

So now I’m stuck in math, trying to focus, looking forward to Wednesday’s Photography Club. Worrying about the fact that I’m getting too entrenched in this friendship. Hoping Oliver will lose interest in photography, fast, and just leave this one thing for us.

I’m used to everything being transient. I can’t get attached to ideas, or plans, or people. I’m used to the ever-present threat of things being swept away from me. It’s just easier not to depend on anything.

Getting to know Evie breaks all my rules.

“Why don’t we call the exhibition Pictures of You ?” she suggests on Wednesday. “And each photographer can write a caption to their subject, instead of to the audience—you know, in the style of an old-fashioned letter. In their handwriting.”

Predictably, the boys in the room groan at this idea, all except Oliver, of course, who is the Perfect Boyfriend and making a show of doing anything she asks. The dynamic has shifted in the group since his arrival—the boys in the younger years look up to him.

“I know we’re doing this as a school photography exhibition,” Evie adds, pulling herself up onto the desk to face the room, suddenly more confident in this setting than I’ve seen her before, “but we could turn this into a social media campaign. You know, people post their own photos and personal notes to the subject. Maybe a blog? Or a newspaper campaign. It could go viral.”

It could be a total mess.

“What if people start trolling the concept? Sharing horrible photos, bullying messages?” I ask, and her face falls. I don’t want to be the person responsible for her disappointment. “Just playing devil’s advocate.” Trying to protect her.

I wish I hadn’t said it.

“It’s genius,” Oliver says. “ Pictures of You . Poetic descriptions. A viral campaign.” She smiles and he spins her into his arms, kissing her as if none of us is there. I can practically see her goose bumps across the classroom.