Two Summers

by Aimee Friedman

  Monday, July 10, 8:48 a.m.

  I’m early.

  I walk under the arched gate of Hudsonville College, realizing that I underestimated how quickly I could walk from my house to the campus. Now, I have extra time to fill before class.

  I slow my pace and wave to Max, the sweet security guard who sits in the booth behind the gate. I’ve known Max Siegal since I was a kid. Everyone knows Max. He’s a campus fixture—always in his blue uniform with his paper cup of coffee, his shaved head and trim brown beard unchanged over the years.

  “Good morning, Summer!” Max calls, his brown eyes twinkling. “You’re here for your aunt’s photography class?”

  I nod, tugging on the straps of my bookbag. I feel the weight of my Nikon camera and my notebook inside. “How’d you know?” I ask, wondering if I’m giving off a collegiate-type vibe. I’m wearing jeans and flip-flops and the gray Hudsonville Hawks hoodie Mom bought me from the campus store last year.

  Max shrugs, sipping his coffee. “Lucy—your mom—told me. It sounds pretty great.” Something flickers across his face—an expression that seems to suggest that he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. Suddenly, I wonder if he knows about France; he and Mom are friendly, so maybe she confided in him. I bristle a little.

  A car is pulling in behind me, beeping its horn, so I nod to Max and stroll forward onto the campus.

  I head for Whitman Hall, flip-flopping along the flagstone path. The morning is cool and crisp, like July is flirting with September. The rolling green grounds and redbrick buildings of the campus look bright and scrubbed clean.

  I pass through the quad, where a few early-riser students are sprawled out in the grass, reading and texting. Others are stepping out of the dorms and yawning, tennis rackets in hand. The college remains pretty active over the summer, with courses and sports programs.

  I pause in front of Sagan Hall, which houses Mom’s office. Mom won’t be coming onto campus until later this afternoon. But I remember visiting her at her office when I was little. I used to daydream about attending Hudsonville College myself. Now the campus feels small and predictable to me; I want to go someplace far away—like the Sorbonne, in Paris, so I can see Dad more often.

  Although maybe it’s time to rethink that plan.

  My phone buzzes in the pocket of my hoodie. I take it out to see that the minutes have zipped by—it’s now almost nine o’clock—and that I have a new text from Ruby.

  Good luck in class! she’s written. Headed to Better Latte now. Austin is meeting me here for my lunch break!!!! Eeep! PS Any progress on Operation Convince Dad??

  I frown and keep walking. I’ve felt unsettled about my best friend ever since the Fourth of July. But we’ve both been acting as if nothing is out of whack. Ruby texted me the morning after Skye’s party, saying it had been amazing—there’d been a band, and a chef, and she’d talked to Austin Wheeler all night. I’d played along, writing Wow! as if I hadn’t witnessed all that with my own two eyeballs. Then, when Ruby and I went to the movies with Alice on Thursday night, none of us spoke of the party at all.

  My fingers hover over my phone as I climb the stone steps of Whitman Hall. I want to write back and ask Ruby: What is happening? Are you really going to date Austin Wheeler? Are you popular now? But I don’t. Instead, I write, Good luck to you, too! Then I add, No Dad progress, which at least is true.

  Dad had emailed me the night of the Fourth. He’d apologized profusely for canceling on me “like that,” but said he was still very busy in Berlin, and intended to speak to me very soon, sweetheart. I’d deleted the message.

  I pull open Whitman’s heavy wooden door and hurry down the hallway. When I reach classroom 122, I draw in a deep breath.

  I don’t feel ready to meet a whole class of new students. I didn’t interact with another human being all weekend, except for Mom. Ruby had been off visiting her dad in Connecticut, so I’d retreated to my room, reading the South of France guidebook. The second best thing to being there! the book’s subtitle promised. But the glossy photos of sunflower fields and cobblestones, and the descriptions of quaint cafés, seemed like the number one worst thing for me to see in my state.

  Trying to quell thoughts of France, as well as my anxiety, I walk into the classroom. It smells, not unpleasantly, like musty old books. The desks and floors are all dark wood, and big windows face the campus. It feels so different from the fluorescent-lit, carpeted classrooms of my high school. I hope I’m not in over my head.

  Aunt Lydia isn’t here yet. Some students are still trickling in behind me, while others are taking their seats. There are a bunch of college kids, a few people around Mom’s age, and I recognize a couple of elderly women who frequented the bookstore last summer.

  And then—I do a double take. There, in the last row, is an even more familiar face: pale complexion, short scarlet hair, slash of black lipstick. It’s Wren D’Amico, who is in my grade. I hadn’t expected to see anyone from my school here.

  I give Wren a feeble wave, and she studies me warily from beneath her thick bangs. Wren is flagrantly, aggressively weird. She’ll scrawl song lyrics on her arm with a Sharpie, and blurt out non sequiturs about time travel in the middle of math class. Wren herself seems like she was beamed in from another time (except for the hair dye); she wears floor-length skirts and dresses, is always reading some nineteenth-century novel, and she doesn’t have a single social media account or, rumor has it, a cell phone.

  Skye and her clones love making fun of Wren. When she got the flu last spring, they dubbed her “Typhoid Wrenny,” and created a fake “Typhoid Wrenny” Instagram account, which I’m sure Wren was never aware of. If she had been aware of it, she probably would have been flattered.

  I consider texting Ruby: Typhoid Wrenny is in my photography class! Ruby and I never overtly pick on people, not the way Skye and her clones do, but the two of us might occasionally laugh at someone in private, feeling secure in our own, Switzerland-y social status. But now something seems different, as if the known borders have shifted. I put my phone back in my pocket.

  There are two empty seats beside Wren. I’m tempted to take the one farthest from her, on the aisle, though that would be too obvious an avoidance. I sit down next to her, but she shifts her desk away from me. I hope Aunt Lydia won’t be big on partners.

  “Welcome, welcome, burgeoning photographers!” Aunt Lydia exclaims, entering the classroom with a giant box in her arms. Everyone sits up straighter in their seats. “I’m Professor Lydia Shapiro,” she goes on, setting the box down on the desk at the front of the room, “but if you don’t call me Lydia, I will feel as ancient as a daguerreotype. If you don’t know what that is, you will learn about it this summer, I promise.”

  She smiles and surveys the rows of students. When she spots me, her smile grows the tiniest bit wider, and I tense up. I don’t want anyone to know I’m her niece, to assume I’ll be the teacher’s pet. Especially since I have no idea what a daguerreotype is.

  “Fourteen of you signed up for this class,” my aunt goes on, checking a sheet of paper on top of the box, “and yet only thirteen of you are here now. Maybe someone chickened out.”

  The class titters, but I think, Bad omen.

  “In here,” Aunt Lydia adds, patting the box, “are the cameras you’ll be using for the summer. I’ll hand those out at the end of class.” She reaches up to adjust the chopsticks holding her bun in place. I’d imagined that my aunt would dress more formally for class, but she’s wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt and jeans, like she would if she were hanging out in our kitchen. “First, I have a … ” She trails off when the door to the classroom swings open.

  Aunt Lydia glances at the person in the doorway. “Hello, latecomer!” she says. “You must be our fourteenth.”

  The person steps inside, and my heart stops.

  I mean it actually stops, as in ceases pumping blood to the rest of my body.

  Because the latecomer, the fourteenth student, is Hugh Tyson.

>   He stands there, impossibly, his hands in his pockets, his bookbag on his back. He looks like he always does, with his close-cropped dark hair and light-gray-green eyes behind black-framed glasses. Hugh is here. How? Why? Shouldn’t he still be in New York City? Or helping out his mom in the mayor’s office, like he does every summer (thank you, Instagram!)?

  “I’m sorry,” Hugh tells Aunt Lydia in his low, slightly scratchy voice. He rubs the back of his neck. “I wish I had a better excuse, but the truth is, I lost track of time.”

  A couple of the students chuckle, and Aunt Lydia shakes her head. “Well, you get points for honesty,” she tells him. “There’s an empty seat back there.”

  And she motions toward the desk next to me.

  My heart starts working again, sending all the blood straight to my face. I watch in disbelief as Hugh starts down the aisle.

  I’ve known Hugh Tyson since elementary school, but I’ve only had this debilitating crush on him for the past two years. Growing up, he was just another boy—albeit shy and bookish, not rowdy like many of the others. I knew that his mother was Hudsonville’s deputy mayor, and then the mayor-mayor. Hugh himself lacked any sort of politician-charm. He had a few similarly smart guy friends—one of them recently invented a studying app (no joke)—but he mostly kept to himself, reading or writing alone in the cafeteria. I never paid him any mind.

  Then, one day in freshman year English class, we were presenting our poetry projects, and Hugh stood up to give his report on Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” I’d been daydreaming, looking up at the fluorescent lights. Then I heard Hugh say something so insightful—about regret, and second chances—that I’d glanced over at him. And I saw him, as if for the first time.

  He’s cute, I’d realized, taking in his bright eyes and broad shoulders as he read from his piece of paper. Really cute. My face had warmed up. How had no one else seen it? I felt like I’d discovered a planet or something.

  As soon as I made my discovery, I became incapable of talking to Hugh—not that we’d chatted a lot before, but asking him to borrow a pencil hadn’t required a second thought. Suddenly, I clammed up in his presence, and took it one step further, regarding him with a coldness that I hoped would hide my true feelings. Ruby had termed it my “Hugh face”—the studied, almost-cruel, I-don’t-care-about-you expression that I put on whenever I passed him in the hallway.

  Hugh reaches the desk beside me and sits down. I stare straight ahead, acutely aware of his nearness as he slides off his backpack and takes out a notebook and pen.

  “You’re late,” Wren D’Amico whispers teasingly, leaning across me.

  “I got that,” Hugh whispers back to her, and I hear a smile in his voice.

  I stiffen. Are Wren and Hugh friends? I don’t think I’ve seen them together at school. I guess they both like to read. Oh God. Are they more than friends?

  “Okay!” Aunt Lydia calls, clapping her hands. I blink, coming back to earth. “As I was about to say, I have a question. Who here has taken a photography class before?”

  Three students raise their hands—one of them is Wren, who looks proud of herself. I glare at her.

  “Great,” Aunt Lydia says, pacing back and forth. “Maybe you guys already know some of the basics. And we’ll get into all those nuts and bolts. Over the next four weeks, you’ll learn about shutter speed, aperture, lens settings. We’ll manipulate digital images, and develop old-school prints in the darkroom.” She pauses, and I feel overwhelmed. “However, today, there’s something more important to discuss.”

  I’ve never seen my aunt in professor mode until now. I’ve watched my mom give lectures, and she’s always very solemn and exacting. Aunt Lydia is more animated and passionate. She makes you want to lean forward and listen closely. I’m almost forgetting about the fact that Hugh is sitting right next to me. Almost.

  “Do you realize,” Aunt Lydia goes on, perching on the edge of her desk, “that all we do, all day long, is take pictures?” No one responds, and I’m mystified. “Not literally,” Aunt Lydia says, grinning. She taps the corner of her eye. “But we are all viewing the world through our own private lenses, taking quick mental snapshots of every person we meet, every landscape we see, everything. Right?”

  “Right,” the class choruses, and I nod, too. I’ve never thought of things in that way before. I dare a glance over at Hugh, my pulse pounding, and I’m relieved to see that he’s focused attentively on Aunt Lydia. Maybe he doesn’t even know I’m here.

  “Summer?” Aunt Lydia calls out, and I jump in my seat. Oh no. “Do me a favor?” my aunt continues, smiling at me. I can only hope it’s not a smile that screams That’s my baby niece! to the rest of the class. “What color is your hoodie?”

  I know that my face is the color of a beet with a bad sunburn. In my peripheral vision, I can see that Hugh is looking at me. Everyone is. I want to kill my aunt. I glance down at my hoodie, then back up.

  “Gray?” I mumble.

  “Thank you,” Aunt Lydia says, going over to the whiteboard and writing Perspective in big letters. “The hoodie could be described as gray, yes. It could also be described as a pale charcoal. Or maybe slate-colored. Everyone who sees that gray hoodie will see the gray in a different way. It’s totally a matter of perspective!” She turns around, her eyes sparkling. “And that’s what photography is. Photographs allow us to share our perspectives with others. And since everyone experiences the world in a unique way, every photograph is like its own unique world.”

  Even though I’m still mad at my aunt for calling me out in front of Hugh and the entire class, I have to admit that what she’s saying is kind of cool.

  Aunt Lydia laughs, shaking her head. “Sorry,” she says. “My sister”—her gaze darts over to me and I shift uncomfortably in my chair—“is a philosophy professor, so I’m influenced by her. You guys will have to stop me if I’m ever rambling, okay?” The class laughs and I sigh. “Now,” Aunt Lydia says, capping the whiteboard marker, “I want you to partner up with the person sitting next to you, and write down—don’t draw—a brief description of what they look like to you.”

  The class is murmuring excitedly but all I can think, dread seeping through me, is: Partners? I peek over at Wren, then at Hugh. Hugh is looking at Wren, clearly about to ask her to partner up, and I’m sure she’ll agree, and then I’ll be stuck between them, wanting to die. But then the elderly woman sitting in front of Wren turns around, saying, “We’ve both taken a photography class before, dear. Shall we?”

  Wren nods, and the woman swivels her desk so that they’re face-to-face, and in that terrifying moment, I realize that everyone in the class is partnering up, and fourteen students means there are even sets of two, so the only person left to be my partner is—

  “So,” Hugh says to me, his tone flat, “I guess it’s us?”

  Agh.

  My adrenaline spikes. For a second, I consider springing up from my seat and running out of the classroom forever. How would I explain that to Aunt Lydia?

  “I guess,” I reply coolly. I turn in my chair, putting on my best “Hugh face.” My mask of indifference. My defense mechanism.

  Hugh looks similarly reluctant: frowns slightly and drums his fingers on the desk, as if he’d also rather be anywhere but here. My heart hammers in my ears. I will have to stare right at Hugh Tyson while he stares back at me. In retrospect, having him gaze lovingly at Wren while I sat in between them would have been heaven.

  All around us, people are studying their respective partners, and then scribbling in their notebooks. There are a few nervous laughs.

  Hugh’s gaze sweeps over my face—I’m frozen like an ice cube—and then he lowers his head and begins writing in his notebook.

  What?! I wonder wildly. Frizzy hair? Eyes of different sizes? Off-center nose??

  I half want to peek but Hugh is protecting his notebook with his hand.

  “I thought,” he says a little gruffly, still writing, “that you were in France.�
�

  I’m so startled by his words that I forget to feel the sting they normally elicit. Hugh knew about my trip? I suppose I did discuss France a lot in school, probably loudly and excitedly, with Ruby and Alice and Inez, and he might have overheard me. I cringe.

  “I—” My voice comes out croak-like. I try to compose myself, and I sit up straighter. “Yeah. No,” I say curtly. “That’s not happening.” I swallow hard.

  “Too bad,” Hugh tells his notebook. Probably because if I were in France, he wouldn’t have to endure this awkwardness with me.

  Almost without thinking, I lean over my notebook, my hair curtaining around me. I grip my pen in my fist.

  I wish I could tell you more, Hugh Tyson, I write, letting my thoughts spill onto the page. I wish I could tell you about my dad’s phone call, which is how I ended up stuck in Hudsonville, which is why I’m taking this class. I wish I could tell you that I like you, which is why I act like I hate you. I wish I didn’t have to do this assignment, because I already know your face: I know your long lashes and full lips and the small birthmark next to your right ear. I wish I could talk to you, to boys in general. I wish

  “All right, time’s up!” Aunt Lydia calls.

  I stop writing, horrified. What if Aunt Lydia is going to make us give our notes to our partners? I put my hand on my page, ready to rip it out and tear it up if need be.

  “You don’t need to do anything with your description at the moment. Save it for later,” Aunt Lydia adds as people begin turning their desks back around. I let out a huge breath of relief. “But,” Aunt Lydia adds, and I listen in growing terror, “the person you paired up with will be your partner for the summer.”

  Excuse me?

  “I’ll be giving you individual assignments every day,” she continues, setting up a laptop and a projector on her desk, “as well as biweekly projects that you’ll do with your partner. The final assignment for the class will involve the exercise you just did. Now, let’s look at this slide show I’ve put together of famous photographs … ”