“You look fancy,” I say. “Very summer-house chic. Are you excited?”
But Willa doesn’t smile or laugh.
“How was the party?” she asks instead.
“It was so crazy,” I say, sitting up a little. “I ran into that guy Sam. The one I told you about who I met at the beach.”
“Why is that crazy?” Willa asks.
“’Cause,” I say. “It was just, I don’t know. We talked for a while. I feel like he really gets me. I think we are gonna hang out again. He took my number.”
“Wait, really?” she asks, focusing on me. “So, you’re gonna go on a date or something?”
“No, I mean, we’re just friends,” I say. “It was actually really funny. I told him I’d never had a guy friend before and he was like ‘I’ll be your guy friend.’ But it was kind of flirty, too,” I say, searching for the words.
“He said he was your friend?” she asks. “That doesn’t sound flirty.”
It’s like Willa is being deliberately obtuse and it’s starting to make me mad.
“Just never mind. I can’t explain it.”
Willa picks up a comb and starts yanking it through her wet hair. “Just be careful, okay, Sadie? I feel like you shouldn’t be so trusting of those people.”
“Those people?” I repeat, wanting to roll my eyes.
“Like that whole scene,” she says. “City kids trying to be badasses. All those rich kids my sister hangs out with. Phaedra and Noah and everyone.”
“Rich kids?” I ask. I hate when Willa calls people rich. It makes her seem so spoiled, like she doesn’t know that she is one of them. Or that in the grand scheme of things, pretty much everyone we know is.
“You know what I mean.” She sighs. “Those kids are just the worst. They’re obsessed with being hip or whatever and it makes everyone act so fake.”
I find my jeans on the floor and pull them on, yanking the zipper shut.
“What’s your problem this morning?”
Willa stops combing her hair and looks at me, and I can see her doing that thing she does where she formulates a complete sentence before she speaks.
“You left me at home alone last night to go to a party with my sister,” she says, putting her hand on her hip.
My mouth goes dry the way it does when I’m in trouble.
“But you told me to go,” I object. “You said, literally, ‘go to the party.’”
“Because you were sitting there sulking,” she snaps.
Hearing myself described like that hurts, but I try not to show it.
“I’m sorry, all right?” I say, knowing I don’t sound sorry at all. “I shouldn’t have gone.”
Willa sinks down into her chair and faces me. Half of her wet hair is combed into neat ruler straight lines and the other half is a tangled mess.
“It’s not a big deal,” she says. “I shouldn’t make it weird. We’re just . . . different about social things, I guess.”
Different. The word sizzles. I can tell Willa thinks she’s more mature than me, but I don’t want to argue with her now. “I’m really sorry,” I repeat.
“Thank you,” she says. “Apology accepted.”
After that, Willa packs for her weekend while I DJ music off of her laptop. I try to forget about the conversation, but I can’t help feeling bothered. How come Willa has to make me feel like any time I want to go to a party I’m being weak or a follower? It’s easy for her to say no to things: her big sister is Danielle Davis-Spencer. Even if she doesn’t care about any of that now, Willa can be as much a part of the elaborate social hierarchy of the city as she wants. Anytime she wants. Not everyone gets to have that privilege.
I think about what Izzy said the other day: the more you love someone, the more mad they make you. It hadn’t seemed true to me at the time, but watching Willa pack for her fancy Fourth of July weekend, I think I might know what she means.
Chapter 18
The first day back after the Fourth of July break is the Portrait Assignment critique in Photo. Izzy is going first. She walks up to the front of the room and pins her three work prints to the corkboard. Izzy is wearing a canvas frock with a blinding floral print and no shape. It’s the kind of if-you-don’t-realize-this-is-cool-you-aren’t-cool look that Izzy can pull off because she exudes so much confidence.
Benji blows his nose and walks up to the board, stuffing a dirty tissue in his back pocket. He has a cold and he’s in a bad, scary mood, the way that teachers always get when they’re sick.
“I see,” Benji says, examining the photos. I can’t see his face, but I can tell from his tone of voice that he’s not impressed. “What do you guys think about these pictures?”
In the three photos Izzy decided to print, Phaedra is sitting by a window. In one, she’s staring out of it. In the next, she’s looking at the camera, and in the third she’s standing up pressing her forehead to the glass. There are a lot of problems. For one thing, the way she cropped them makes her body look truncated and flat. Plus, Phaedra is lit from some ambient light behind her that makes her look gray. All the things that Benji tells us over and over again to consider—light source, composition, scale—have been neglected.
I’m feeling nervous and protective of Izzy, so I raise my hand. When Benji looks at me, I say, “I like them.”
Benji covers his mouth and coughs. “Okay. Why?”
“I think,” I start, searching for the right words, “I don’t know. I think they have an interesting . . . mood.”
“Mood?” Benji repeats.
“They’re just pictures of a pretty girl,” Cody says. “They’re not even really portraits.”
“What do you mean by not a portrait?” Benji asks.
“Because. There’s no, like . . . identity to the person in the photos,” Cody says.
I wish I didn’t, but I know what he means. If I took Phaedra’s picture, I’d want to capture so many things about her. Not just the planes of her face and the shape of her eyes, but the way that she can seem simultaneously so nice and so cold. I wonder if it’s possible to capture something like that in a photo.
Benji rubs his eyes. “Did you use the light meter?”
Izzy nods.
“What were your settings? Where’s your middle gray?” Benji asks.
Izzy fidgets. “I think it was her tank top, but I wanted it to be more contrast-y because—”
Benji slams his finger down on Phaedra’s tank top. “That? That’s your middle gray? It’s practically black.”
Izzy tosses her hair.
“Look, I know this is the point in the semester when everyone starts to slack off. But this photograph does everything I’ve told you not to do,” Benji says. His finger is pressed so hard to her picture that it begins to turn white. “The light is sloppy. The composition is sloppy. And you broke my number one rule. I said on the first day of class the one thing I never want to see is pictures of you hanging out with your friends. This isn’t beginning photo. Save the photos of your friends for Instagram. This is an academic class.”
A heavy silence rolls through the classroom. Everyone is frozen, not shifting in the foldout chairs or even breathing.
I glance at Izzy. Her face is bright red. Finally she manages an imitation of a casual eye-roll. “Fine.”
Izzy stands up and walks with forced calm to the board to take her pictures down, her ugly-chic frock not moving. Her hand trembles as she yanks the thumbtacks out of the board.
—
Benji’s bad mood is a weight that doesn’t lift. Normally, he wraps all of his criticisms in thoughtful compliments. But today, he just stands up there and tells people what they could do better. He even takes out a red pen and circles three different areas on Alexis’s prints where the light settings were off.
Finally, it’s my turn. I’d been excited to share my phot
ograph, but now I’m really nervous.
For my portrait, I took a picture of my mom sitting on our couch, underneath this framed photograph of her that hangs on the wall. The framed photo is her headshot from when she was a dancer. It appeared in the program next to her name when she performed, and in it, she looks strangely blank and doll-like.
She’s nineteen in that picture. Nineteen. I remember being little and looking at that picture and thinking I would never reach that age. But now, I’m seventeen, which touches eighteen. And eighteen touches nineteen. Plus, Danielle and Noah are nineteen and they don’t seem old. Realizing that an age that I thought was grown-up is actually really young gives me a weird queasy feeling like vertigo.
“A picture within a picture,” Benji says, gesturing toward my work. “What do you guys think that tells us?”
“The picture on the wall looks really different from Sadie’s picture,” Sean offers.
“Can someone add to that comment? How would you describe the difference between the two pictures?” he asks.
“The one on the wall is clearly taken by someone who doesn’t know the woman in the picture, and in Sadie’s picture, you can tell they know each other,” Alexis says.
“How can you tell?” Benji asks. “I agree. But I wonder if you can describe that.”
“Maybe it’s because the woman on the couch looks less perfect,” Alexis adds. “Her hair is a little messier and there is a hole on the sleeve of her sweater. So it looks like they’re comfortable together.”
Benji steps closer to the picture and stares at it hard, as if it’s an ancient artifact that he’s trying to decode, instead of just a picture. “You’re right. There is a real sense of intimacy here, between us and the woman on the couch.”
“It’s her mom,” Cody scoffs. “Of course she’s comfortable.”
Benji looks at Cody and his expression grows serious. “People don’t necessarily feel comfortable with their parents.”
For the first time, I wonder about Benji’s family.
“Ultimately,” Benji continues, “whether or not there is intimacy between these two people in real life doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not the photograph makes us believe that there is.”
Benji is still looking at Cody, but I feel like he’s talking to me. “One of the things that’s interesting about photography is that intimacy can be faked. Film gets exposed in a fraction of a second, so if you can capture even one fleeting moment of connection between yourself and someone, it becomes preserved, and to an outsider, it will look real.”
After that, Benji talks about my technique and tells me I need to work my shadows better. But I keep thinking about what he said: a fleeting fraction of a second can be preserved and turned into something that lasts forever. I wonder if that’s a good thing at all.
—
“Benji was being such a dick today,” Izzy says on the sidewalk after class. She already put her sunglasses on so I’m forced to look at her mouth instead of her eyes. “He doesn’t get me at all. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”
“You don’t think he’s smart?” I ask.
“My teachers at the RISD Summer Program last year knew so much more than him and they were really into my pictures. Benji is very old-fashioned.”
“Oh,” I say dumbly.
“Anyway, when is your dad’s opening?” Izzy asks. “Is it this weekend?”
“Next weekend,” I tell her.
“Okay, good, don’t let me forget,” she says. And then she blows me a kiss and walks in the opposite direction.
—
After we’ve parted, I walk home and think about what Izzy said about Benji. I agree with almost everything Benji says, even the critical things. Does that make me old-fashioned, too?
Waiting for the light to change on the corner of Fourth Street, I notice three identical yellow taxis lined up behind the crosswalk. To my left, a man in a white chef’s apron smokes a cigarette near the entrance of a restaurant, the smoke unfurling like a white ribbon. Overhead, a weave of delicate black telephone wires slices through the thick blue summer sky. There’s a pair of dirty sneakers draped from one of the wires, and a pigeon swoops in and nips at the laces, mistaking them for food.
There’s so much going on around us all the time that we don’t see. I wonder if that’s what Sam meant about not being able to describe somewhere you’ve lived your whole life because you’re too close-up. But with my camera on, I feel like I can see everything. I can see things that are so mundane and familiar that they are invisible to everyone else.
I take out my camera and photograph the pigeon and the shoes and the knotty, sagging wires and instantly, everything I was thinking about Izzy disappears. There’s just me and this fleeting, mysterious everyday-ness of the world.
Chapter 19
The night before I’m going to see Allan at his gallery, I can’t sleep. Outside my window, the sky is clotted with clouds. We’re in a cycle of hot muggy days and even hotter stormy ones.
It’s been a week since the party at Justin’s and I haven’t heard from Sam yet. I wonder if he changed his mind about wanting to be my friend. Every night, I stare at my phone and will it to light up with his name, but it remains dark.
I told myself I wouldn’t do this, but I can’t help it. I login to Facebook. I don’t know Sam’s last name but I find a Sam who is friends with Justin Chang pretty quickly and his hometown is in New Hampshire.
Sam’s profile picture is a sloppy, low-res picture of a figure from faraway in the snow. I can’t tell if it’s a picture of him or someone else. And the rest of his profile is equally lazy and untended. He doesn’t have any other pictures of himself and it looks like he never logs in, because the posts on his page are a mix of spam and advertisements. But there is one girl who has posted a lot to his wall. The most recent post is dated in January, but as I skim down his timeline, I can see that they span back in time for years.
I click on her name and find myself on her page. Amanda Muller from Newberg, New Hampshire.
She has tons of pictures and tons of friends. She has strawberry blond hair and big dark brown eyes. She has her septum pierced with a shiny dumbbell, but other than that she has sort of a plain style. The more pictures I look at her though, the prettier she gets. Even the nose piercing sort of grows on me. It’s so hard and tough looking that it makes her face look even more angelic in contrast.
And then I see something that makes me stop.
I’m staring at a series of webcam pictures of Amanda and Sam together. In the first one, they’re sitting side by side. Sam looks a lot younger. His hair is blonder, probably from the sun, and so long that it’s tucked behind his ears and a little natty. I look at the date. These were posted two years ago. Sam was fifteen. Amanda is looking right at the camera and Sam is staring off into space. In the next one, Sam is leaning so close to the camera that the computer lights up all the crystals in his eyes. In that one, Amanda is behind him, laughing and covering her face with her hands. She has peeling black nail polish on her pale fingers and a woven bracelet on her wrist. In the next photo from the series, Amanda is sitting on Sam’s lap. I can’t see their bodies, but I can tell because her head is higher than his, and his chin rests on her shoulder. And in the last one he’s holding her head in his hands in a play-fighting move, and she’s squirming and laughing.
I know Sam said they broke up, but you can tell that at the instant that this picture was taken, they were in love. I think about what Benji said earlier: photography can fake intimacy. A half a second of love can turn into something that lasts forever. Looking at this picture, I know I might be seeing something that didn’t really exist, but it looks so real it’s blinding.
I snap my computer closed and stare up at the ceiling, neon bulbs floating around my field of vision.
What am I trying to find? When I’m walking around w
ith my camera on, I feel this constant itch as if I’m longing for something I’ve never seen. Something I’ve only dreamed of. But with the Internet it’s the opposite, the way it sucks me into holes instead of leading me to new parts of the world. So often, I go online and scroll around until I find something that hurts me enough to turn it off. I wonder if that’s what I’m looking for: someone to pinch me and wake me up.
—
The next morning I get ready with a zinging flutter in my chest. Today, I’m going to see Allan at his gallery after class.
My mom is making coffee when I emerge from the shower.
“I’m done early today if you want to do something,” she says. “We can go to the movies. Or I could take you to a museum? You could show me what you’ve been learning.”
My hands grow hot and sweaty in my pockets as I try to casually shrug. “I can’t, actually. I have to stay late today.”
In the stairwell outside our apartment, I sink against the wall and close my eyes. Lying makes me feel sick. I know I should go back inside and tell her the truth.
But I don’t.
—
The neighborhood Allan’s gallery is in, Chelsea, is quiet and bright when I arrive there after class. Some galleries boast big flashy signs, and some are discreet, unmarked.
Allan’s gallery, Kaplan and White, is an old, prestigious gallery, with a location here and another one in Switzerland (thank you, Google). The only other time I’ve been here was when I was nine, when my mom and I came to see a screening of the film I narrated. I don’t remember the art, or even Allan from that night. I just remember the stuffy room packed with too many people. I remember black high heels and red lipstick and sweat. I remember burying my face in my mom’s dress when she tried to introduce me to someone.
Now that I’m here, I see it’s bigger than I remembered. The gallery takes up almost half of a block on Twenty-Seventh Street, stretching all the way to the corner of Eleventh Avenue, where the city gives way to the wide highway.
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