Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Stella moved through the darkroom at school by muscle memory—safelight on, trays in order, the red glow and the vinegar-sharp smell of developer rising from the first tray.
She’d shot a roll Saturday afternoon during the lunch rush.
Eleven frames. Bernie four times, Margo twice, Anna once, Joey twice, the morning light through the front windows, and an unfinished plate of fries someone had abandoned mid-bite, which she’d taken because abandoned food was underrated as a subject.
The first Bernie print came up slowly in the developer. Tablet, coffee, his gaze aimed off-frame to the left. She lifted it with the tongs, let it drip, and clipped it to the line.
His mouth was softer than usual, slightly open, the lines at the corners doing something she hadn’t seen before.
She’d photographed this man a hundred times. She hadn’t photographed him doing that.
She moved on. Second print. Margo at the register, mid-transaction, counting change into a customer’s hand.
Stella clipped the Margo print to the line next to the Bernie print and stood back. Two faces under the red light, caught in the same afternoon. Like any other day at the Shack.
She looked at them for a while while they were drying. Then she took them down, slid them into a manila folder with the rest of the roll, and kept working.
“Walsh.”
Mr. Reeves was in the doorway, one arm across the frame, his mug in the other hand. The mug said I TEACH ART. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER? and the letters had been fading since September. By June it would just say I TEACH.
“Mr. Reeves.”
“You developed the Saturday roll?”
“Most of it.” She nodded toward the line, where three prints were still hanging—Joey mid-gesture at the pass-through, the coffee pot catching light, the abandoned fries.
He came in and looked at them without comment, the way Mr. Reeves looked at student work—long enough that you started wanting to explain yourself and then long enough that you realized he didn’t want you to. He glanced at the folder in her hand.
“Anything good in there?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe is usually yes, with you.” He finished his coffee and set the mug on the counter by the door. “Keep shooting whatever you’re shooting. Don’t try to name it yet.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know. I’m telling you anyway.” On his way out he turned back. “And don’t forget to turn the safelight off when you leave. Someone left it on all day yesterday and Mrs. Dorsey had an opinion about it. A long opinion. With follow-up questions.”
Stella finished the rest of the roll, rinsed the trays, and cleaned up. She turned the safelight off on her way out and pushed through the door into the hallway.
The light hit her like a personal attack.
It always did after the darkroom—the sun through the hallway windows turned the world into a white blast, and she had to stop at the door and blink until things started having edges again. She was doing that, one hand on the wall, the other shielding her face, when she walked directly into someone.
“Oh—sorry, sorry—”
“Stella?”
Lindsey. Standing in the middle of the walkway with a folder in one hand and a granola bar in the other, clearly in the middle of going somewhere and eating something at the same time, which was Lindsey’s default setting. Her lanyard was on crooked. WORLD’S OKAYEST GUIDANCE COUNSELOR.
“Hi. Sorry. My eyes haven’t adjusted yet.”
“Don’t apologize.” Lindsey tilted her head and smiled. “We haven’t gotten to really talk since you’ve been back. How was Sydney?”
“It was...” Stella stopped. Tried again. “It was good.”
Lindsey waited, unhurried, the granola bar forgotten in her hand.
“The twins are still annoying. Oliver put a Christmas ornament in the toaster to see what would happen. David unplugged the toaster for a week. Oliver tried to plug it back in secretly and got caught by the other twin, who is a snitch.” Stella shifted her camera bag to the other shoulder.
“My mom made me help with a birthday party at a trampoline park. Forty-five children. I took pictures of the parents’ faces, which Fiona said was mean-spirited but also wanted copies of. ”
Lindsey laughed. “She framed one, didn’t she.”
“A dad holding a juice box like it was a live grenade.”
“Oh, Stella. That sounds perfect.”
Stella had been planning to say something short and move on. That had been the plan. But Lindsey was doing what she did, which was stand in front of you and listen like she had nowhere else to be, and it made you keep talking even when you’d decided not to.
“I surfed Bondi the second day. Got absolutely worked. Forgot the waves were like that.”
“Did you go back out?”
“Every day for three weeks.”
Lindsey smiled, like she was picturing it. “Of course you did.”
“My mom taught me how to make pavlova.”
Lindsey’s eyebrows rose. “What’s pavlova?”
“Australian dessert. Like a meringue but more complicated. I failed the first four. The fifth was acceptable. The seventh was actually good.”
“You tried seven times?”
“Fiona has expectations.”
Lindsey reached over and touched Stella’s shoulder. “Hold still. You’ve got—” She reached into Stella’s hair and brought her hand back with a ladybug sitting on her fingertip, its wings folded tight. Her face broke into a wide smile, and she set the ladybug on Stella’s open palm.
“Look at that,” Lindsey said. “She’s perfect.”
The ladybug sat on Stella’s palm for a second, then it opened its wings and flew away.
“You’re back back?” Lindsey asked, watching it go. “Or just back for a while?”
“I’m back. I’m home.”
It came out before Stella thought about it. Just—I’m home.
Lindsey didn’t make it a moment. She just nodded. “Good. Your dad was pretty lost without you. He wouldn’t say so, because that’s Tyler. But I wanted you to know.”
“He was?”
“I’m not going to elaborate, because he’d kill me.
” Lindsey took a bite of the granola bar she’d been holding.
“But I want you to have it in your back pocket that when you were gone, your father missed you mightily, and also did not tell you he missed you mightily, because apparently that is what your father does.”
Stella smiled. “He was fine when I called.”
Lindsey winked. “For the record.”
She looked at her watch, then at the walkway behind Stella, then back. “Oops, I have a meeting in six minutes. Come to the house sometime. We’ll cook something. I’ll try the pavlova.”
“You’ll fail.”
“I’ll fail beautifully. And it’ll be fun trying.” She was already walking away, but she turned back once and gave Stella the smile again—the one she’d given the ladybug—and then she was gone down the hall.
The February afternoon had that bright flat quality it got when the sun was out but the air was still cold.
Stella pulled her sweater tighter and walked across the parking lot toward the flagpole wall where Tyler always picked her up.
She had fifteen minutes. She sat on the low wall, put her headphones in without playing anything, and let the quiet sit.
The flag line clinked against the pole in the breeze.
She thought about the prints. Bernie’s mouth.
Then she thought about Lindsey in the hallway, holding a granola bar and saying your dad was pretty lost without you like it was information Stella deserved to have.
She liked Lindsey. She hadn’t said that to anyone and wasn’t going to and that was fine.
Some things were for knowing and not for saying.
Tyler’s truck pulled in at four. She grabbed her bag and climbed in, and he reached over and moved it to the backseat without asking, which was Tyler.
“How was school?”
“Fine.”
“Elaborate.”
Stella reached for her seatbelt and shook her head. “It was fine with a darkroom in the middle.”
“That’s barely elaborating.”
“It’s all you’re getting.”
He laughed and pulled out of the lot. They drove home with the heat on and the windows cracked, the warm air from the vents mixing with the cold draft at Stella’s knees, and she watched the light change as they turned onto PCH—Laguna gold, late-afternoon, the kind that made everything look soft at the edges.
The Sydney light was harsher than this. She hadn’t minded it at the time and hadn’t known she preferred this until she’d come back.