Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Stella stood at the developing station in Laguna Beach High’s photography lab, watching Bernie materialize in the chemical bath.
She’d shot it yesterday at the Shack — Bernie at his corner booth, tablet propped against the sugar dispenser, coffee cup at exactly the angle it always sat.
The window light fell across his weathered hands.
The print came up slowly. Shadows first, then midtones, then the details she’d been hoping for. Bernie’s fingers on the tablet screen. The coffee cup, still steaming. The concentration lines around his eyes.
And his gaze, aimed somewhere off-frame. Somewhere to the left of the shot.
She clipped the print to the drying line and reached for the next negative.
Mr. Reeves appeared in the doorway, mug in hand. The mug read I TEACH ART. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER? in block letters that were starting to fade from years of dishwasher abuse.
“Walsh. You’re in here early.”
“Free period. Figured I’d develop yesterday’s roll.”
He crossed to the drying line and studied the prints she’d already hung. Three of Bernie, taken across three different days. Two of the Shack’s exterior. One of Joey mid-gesture, a napkin in each hand, apparently making a very important point about fold patterns.
“These are from your community series?”
“Starting to be. The assignment’s portraits documenting community, right? The Shack’s kind of the center of everything in Laguna.”
“Good instinct.” Mr. Reeves leaned closer to one of the Bernie prints, pushing his glasses up. “This guy’s interesting. What’s his story?”
“Bernie. He’s been coming to the Shack basically since it opened. Corner booth. Every single day. He runs betting pools on his tablet and claims his knee predicts the weather.”
“Does it?”
“He was right about the last three rainstorms. My great-grandmother says it’s confirmation bias. Bernie says Margo’s just jealous his knee has more meteorological authority than the Channel 7 forecast.”
Mr. Reeves smiled and moved to the next print. He tilted his head, looking at all three Bernie shots together. “Keep shooting him. There’s something consistent here I can’t quite name yet.” He tapped the edge of the most recent print. “A pattern. Show me more when you’ve got them.”
He disappeared back into the main classroom, leaving Stella looking at the three prints. Bernie in three different moments, three different days. Same booth, same posture, same angle of attention.
Keep shooting. She went to rinse the developing trays.
Bea was waiting at their usual spot — the bench outside the creative arts wing that got afternoon shade and was far enough from the cafeteria to avoid the chaos of underclassmen who hadn’t yet learned to eat without throwing things.
“I’m having a crisis,” Bea announced. She was surrounded by college brochures arranged in a semicircle on the bench like tarot cards. Rhodes Island School of Design. CalArts. SAIDPratt. Each one bristling with sticky notes in four different colors.
Stella sat down and reached for her lunch bag. “Which kind of crisis?”
“Existential. CalArts wants a portfolio that ‘demonstrates artistic evolution.’” Bea held up the brochure and pointed to the offending phrase. “How do I demonstrate evolution? I’m sixteen. I haven’t evolved. I’ve barely hatched.”
“You lived in Florence for a year.”
“Exactly. I peaked early. Where do you go after Florence? Cleveland?”
“Nothing against Cleveland.”
“Stella. Focus. How do I write about my artistic philosophy in five hundred words when it requires at minimum three thousand and a live interpretive dance?”
Stella unwrapped her sandwich — grilled cheese on focaccia, still warm from the Shack.
Anna had started packing their lunches, which meant they ate better than anyone else in the building.
Teachers gave them envious looks in the hallway.
Bea’s sandwich sat untouched beside the brochure army, sacrificed to the college gods.
“Just write what you told me last week,” Stella said between bites. “About how art’s about seeing what’s already there.”
“That was profound in conversation. On paper it sounds like a fortune cookie.” Bea gathered the brochures into a pile and laid her forehead on top of them. “I’m going to live in the Shack forever. Mom can teach me to make focaccia. That’s a career.”
“You’d be terrible at it.”
“I’d be magnificent at eating it. That’s close enough.”
Stella watched a group of freshmen attempt to skateboard down the amphitheater steps. Two of them made it. The third went down in a spectacular cartwheel of limbs and backpack.
“Ten points for commitment,” Stella observed.
“Minus five for execution.” Bea pulled her own sandwich out and finally took a bite. “Oh, wow, this is good. How does Mom make bread this good? She burned toast last year.”
“Meg’s recipe. Anna just follows it now instead of improving it.”
“Growth.”
“Enormous growth.”
They ate in comfortable silence. A pigeon investigated Bea’s dropped sticky note with great seriousness and moved on.
“So,” Bea said, after a while. “The croissant girl. Third date?”
“Friday. Fish tacos on Coast Highway.”
“Fish tacos is a good sign. Low pressure. No one’s trying to impress anyone with fish tacos. Good for Tyler.” Bea picked at the edge of her sandwich. The pigeon had returned, apparently reconsidering the sticky note. “Does it feel weird though? Having someone new around?”
“She’s not really around yet. It’s only been two dates.”
“Still.” Bea set her sandwich down and looked at the brochure pile rather than at Stella. “I still think it would be weird. If it were my mom. Someone new just — in your house. In your life. Someone you didn’t choose.”
Stella looked at her. Bea’s expression was neutral in the specific way it got when something wasn’t neutral at all.
“It’s different when you’re the one who pushed him to do it,” Stella said. “I basically told him he had to.”
“I know. I just—” Bea picked up a brochure, put it back down. “I don’t think I’d handle it as well as you.”
“I haven’t had to handle anything yet. Ask me again in six months.”
“Sure.” Bea straightened the brochure pile with more attention than it needed. “She has the mug, right? World’s Okayest?”
“World’s Okayest Guidance Counselor. That’s all I needed to know.”
Bea laughed, the tension going out of her shoulders. “Okay. That’s a good sign.”
“Very.”
The bell rang. They gathered their things, Bea corralling the brochures back into her bag the way she did every afternoon. The skateboarder made it down the steps. A small crowd of freshmen cheered.
“Write the essay about Florence,” Stella said.
“Fortune cookie.”
“Write it anyway. You can make a fortune cookie sound like Hemingway if you try.”
Bea slung her bag over her shoulder. “That’s either the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me or a deeply questionable compliment.”
“Probably both.”
The Shack was in its afternoon lull when Stella pushed through the door. Two tables occupied—a couple sharing a basket of fries by the window, and Bernie in his corner booth with a fresh coffee and his tablet.
Anna was behind the counter, restocking cups and humming something off-key that might have been Fleetwood Mac or might have been a hymn.
The off-key humming was genetic, apparently.
Margo did it. Tyler did it while editing photos.
Meg was the only one who could actually carry a tune, and she mostly used the skill to harmonize sarcastically.
“How was school?” Anna slid a plate of fresh focaccia toward her with a ramekin of butter on the side—the good kind, from the farmers’ market.
“School was school. Bea’s having a college essay crisis. Mr. Reeves likes my portrait series.” Stella dropped her bag into her usual booth—third from the door, power outlet on the wall — and pulled out her calc textbook. “The tomatoes come in okay?”
“Roberto was very apologetic. Sent twice as many, which I think was guilt produce.”
“Guilt produce. That’s a new one.”
Stella settled in with her homework, but her camera sat next to the textbook, and she kept glancing at Bernie’s booth through the viewfinder out of habit.
He was absorbed in something on his tablet, coffee halfway to his mouth and forgotten there, which meant he was either running odds on something or reading about knee surgery options again.
She framed a quick shot without thinking. Click.
Bernie didn’t look up. His coffee stayed frozen in midair.
The door banged open and Joey appeared, backpack over one shoulder, looking like he’d sprinted from his car.
“I left my laminated prep sheet in the back office,” he announced, already heading behind the counter. “The one with the updated napkin fold diagrams. Version four-point-two. Not four-point-one, which had the wrong crease angle for the dinner napkins—”
Anna moved aside to let him pass. “You were here yesterday, Joey.”
“I know, but I needed four-point-two specifically because I’m training Brian on weekend shifts and he’s still doing the tri-fold when I clearly specified the fan pattern for tables one through six and the classic fold for seven through—”
“Joey.”
He stopped. Took a breath. “Yeah?”
“You’re twenty minutes from campus.”
“It feels farther.” He disappeared into the back office and emerged thirty seconds later clutching a laminated sheet that had been color-coded within an inch of its life. “Also, how’s the ice situation? Brian doesn’t understand the ratio.”
“The ice situation is fine.”
“Define fine.”
“Joey. Go back to school.”
He tucked the laminated sheet into his backpack like it was a sacred text and paused by Stella’s booth on his way out. “How’s the portrait thing?”
“Good. Want me to shoot you for the series?”
His face lit up. “For the series? I should prepare. What angle works best? I’ve been told my left side is more photogenic, but I think that’s subjective—”
“Joey. Just be normal.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I know.” Stella smiled. “That’s why you’re interesting.”
He beamed, adjusted a napkin on table four that was apparently at an unacceptable angle, and was gone, the door swinging shut behind him. The Shack settled back into its afternoon quiet.
Stella opened her calc textbook and tried to focus on derivatives. Failed. Tried again. The numbers blurred.
She picked up her camera instead and looked through the viewfinder at Bernie’s booth. He’d set his coffee down. Picked up his tablet. Scrolled something. Smiled at whatever he was reading.
Then his eyes drifted. Left. Away from the tablet, away from the coffee, toward the counter. Toward the spot where Margo always stood when she was working—the section between the register and the grill where she’d spent fifty years directing traffic.
Margo wasn’t there. Hadn’t been since this morning. Was probably at Eleanor’s right now, suffering through petunias.
But Bernie’s eyes went to that spot anyway.
Stella raised the camera slowly, adjusted the focus.
Click.