Pictures of You

Chapter 41

41

Drew

“The media has asked for two students to be spokespeople for the exhibition,” Dr. Walsh says, at the students-and-parents-only preview of Pictures of You . “Evie, obviously, as this was your idea …”

She looks sick at the thought. I can practically see the color drain from her cheeks in real time. “Oh, I don’t know?” she says.

“You’ll be fine! Take the credit,” Oliver says.

He has no real understanding of how much she hates being in the spotlight.

She glances at me, panic in her eyes. I send her a brief, encouraging smile, and a nod. It will be okay. I don’t like the idea of media attention any more than she does, but we’ve worked so hard over several months, curating this. She deserves to be the one to show it off.

“Oliver, as school captain, you should join her,” the principal adds.

Now it’s Evie who’s sending me a silent sign of her disappointment. We’ve been in each other’s pockets the last couple of weeks, putting this all together, making sure the photos are displayed in the most creatively logical order, the lighting is right, and the narrative story behind the exhibit makes sense. The argument we had in the kitchen seems to have been forgotten, but I’m aware for the future that Oliver is a hot-button topic.

“Should it not be Drew who’s interviewed?” she says emphatically. “He’s done all the work!”

Oliver pulls at his collar, as if it’s suddenly tightened around his neck, just as a team from Channel 9 starts pushing through the door of the atrium, with their cameras and tripods and big black bags bursting with lenses and reflector panels. There’s no time for anyone to argue.

“We’re on a tight schedule to get this to air at the end of the six-o’clock news,” a young reporter explains, while the camera operator fiddles with the lights. “We just need a quick interview and some B-roll footage of parents perusing the art. Who’s up?”

Oliver and Evie are pushed forward.

“Straighten your tie,” Dr. Marsh says. “Where’s your blazer?”

Evie fiddles with her ponytail, tightens the maroon ribbon in her hair, and smooths her dress down. She looks like she’s being swept out in a rip.

It all feels like complete chaos until the spotlight flicks on, the camera rolls, and the reporter says, “Tell me about the genesis of this exhibition.”

Evie rises to the occasion in a way that makes me want to punch the air for her.

“This is a joint exhibition from students from Saint Dominic’s and Saint Agatha’s. Drew Kennedy and I wanted to rewrite the script on the way girls and women are often seen through the male gaze,” she explains, looking in my direction. “It’s an opportunity to showcase images of the women in our lives without a filter and capture the stories behind ordinary moments.”

“The images are for sale,” Oliver adds. “All proceeds from this weekend’s exhibition will go to our local women’s shelter to help women and children escaping domestic violence.”

He looks good on camera, spotlights shining off his blond hair. The poster boy for women’s issues, apparently. And for the school. And for boyfriends everywhere.

“Boys from Saint Dominic’s have been volunteering at the shelter, packing emergency supplies for families, and offering manual labor in the gardens,” Oliver says. “Violence against women affects more than one-third of women globally, and this exhibition and the activities around it will raise awareness of these issues in our school community and more widely.”

It couldn’t be going better. Dr. Marsh is positively beaming as he watches the interview unfold. The reporter leads them to the wall of images and pauses at mine. A photo I took of Evie on the beach one weekend.

“This is you?” the reporter asks.

Evie squirms at the attention. She can’t bring herself to even look at the image, even though privately I think it’s my best work. “You should talk to the photographer, Drew,” she begins, pointing in my direction. But Oliver takes her elbow and sweeps her farther along the row of photos, drawing attention to any portraits other than mine, while she looks over her shoulder at me and has to give up on trying to get me involved in this.

Walking along the wall in their wake, I pause in front of my print. Below it, a red circle is stuck on the wall, meaning it’s sold. And I look up just in time to see Oliver’s satisfied, off-camera smirk. Simmering annoyance flashes into silent rage. I was intending to buy this portrait and give it to Evie for her eighteenth. He’ll probably stuff it in a drawer. To him, it’s probably not about her. It just represents everything he hates about our friendship.

Three weeks later, I’m in the garage sifting through a metal trunk of Mum’s old stuff, searching for my great-grandfather’s old army belt for the formal. I can’t stop thinking about Evie. The white poet shirt is on a hanger over my bedroom door, advertising how ludicrously far I’ll go to impress her, as lines from our argument persist in my head. Constantly aware. Forever checking in. Nobody else would love me the way he does.

Worrying about her distracts me from worrying about Mum. Her latest test results came back stable, so she should be in a good mood, but I feel like she’s slipping. I know the drugs she’s on to balance her hormones make her feel sick and sore, but a light has gone out. It’s like she’s letting them defeat her, while together we’re sliding down a cliff face and I’m furiously pulling on tree roots and grasping unstable rocks to break our fall.

She’s crammed so much stuff into this old trunk, it’s like a time capsule. Old receipts. Notebooks. Photos. A nice change from prescriptions, pills, and oncology appointment reminder slips. My memories of Mum revolve around her forever trying to make ends meet when I was little, and then always being sick. Her life since she left home at eighteen is still a mystery to me in many ways. I know she went interstate from Queensland to go to uni, but it was also to get away from her parents’ shouting. By twenty-two she was pregnant with me. Alone, and trying to work as a first-year nurse, she had virtually no support. All I know about my dad was that he was a specialist doctor at the hospital. Older. Married not long after they broke up, to someone else. He’s bankrolled my school fees, presumably out of guilt, but appears to have been unable—or unwilling—to be present in my actual life.

I find one of Mum’s nursing textbooks in the box. She’s stashed various things between the pages: old movie tickets, a couple of photos of her with friends. I turn the book upside down and fan it out, shaking the pages until everything tumbles into my lap—including a photo I’ve never seen before.

It’s of Mum with a man. She’s smiling and confident, and he has his arm around her while she stares up at him, enamored. I wish this was digital so I could zoom in. The sun is on their faces and they’re squinting, so it’s hard to make out his features clearly.

I go back to my room, get my camera, and take a photo of the image. Still, when I zoom in, the original is of too low a resolution to see details, so I take it over to my desk, wake up the computer, and feed the memory card into the slot.

In Photoshop, I tweak the image, crop it, and zoom in.

And I feel sick.

The way my mother feels about this man is unarguable—she’s practically fangirling over him. I check the date on the back of the photo. It’s about eight months before I was born.

But it’s the man himself, now that he’s more clearly in focus, that causes the bottom to drop out of my world. The blond hair. The penetrating blue-green eyes. The perfect bone structure. The expression of sheer confidence and domination. Even the way he’s standing is wildly familiar.

By the look on Mum’s face, and the date on the photo, I’m certain I’m looking at my father. But I’m equally certain I could be looking straight at Oliver.