From Bad to Cursed

by Katie Alender

  Mom, on the other hand, never changed out of her work clothes before 10 p.m. It was a habit leftover from the time when she ran back to the office at all hours of the night. Since her promotion to VP, she left the running back to her underlings, but the suits stayed on until bedtime. She’d even curl up on the couch to watch a movie in a skirt and panty hose.

  Her, dressed for the boardroom. Him, dressed like a highlighter. It gave our daily family dinners a lopsided feel. But I was used to it.

  “How was school?” Dad asked. The question was addressed to both of us, but everyone looked at Kasey.

  “Okay,” I said, taking a bite of lasagna.

  “Fine,” Kasey said. Mom and Dad were still staring at her, so she froze, fork in the air. “What am I supposed to say?”

  I could practically hear the gears turning in Mom’s head, trying to figure out how to coax some information out of her. I would never have said anything about Mimi, or even Lydia. But Adrienne was fair game.

  “Kasey made a friend,” I said. “They walked home together.”

  My sister shot me a stormy look, but Mom’s eyes lit up.

  “Sweetie, that’s great!” Mom said. “What’s her name?”

  Kasey looked at me sideways and breathed in loudly through her nose. “Adrienne.”

  “She’s a freshman, right?” I asked.

  My sister gritted her teeth. “Yes.”

  “Did you know her at your old school?” Mom asked.

  “What is this, an interrogation?” Kasey asked, dumping the food off her fork and setting the fork on the edge of her plate. “She’s normal. She has a dog named Barney and two brothers in college. Her parents are divorced. She and her mom moved here from Phoenix in June. What else do you want to know? Her blood type?”

  Dad chewed tranquilly, then swallowed and picked up his water glass. “Well, she sounds great.”

  “Alexis, how’s photography class?” Mom asked. I could imagine the line in the Harmony Valley discharge brochure: Ensure that the patient’s siblings don’t feel overlooked. Try to distribute your attention equally, when possible.

  “Oh!” I said. “Outstanding.”

  Her forehead crinkled happily. “Really?”

  “Yes, because I’m transferring out.”

  “After a week?” Dad asked. “You have to give it a chance.”

  “First of all,” I said, “I did. Second of all, it’s not a film class. Ninety percent of the kids are shooting digital. And I don’t have a digital camera.”

  “Maybe you should ask Santa,” Dad said.

  “I’m sure Santa won’t have room for a camera in his bag,” I said, spearing a bite of cauliflower. “Since it’s going to be filled with a car.”

  Dad smirked. “Or maybe eight tiny reindeer.”

  I twirled my fork. “Or maybe eight tiny cylinders?”

  “Or maybe a bicycle,” he said.

  “Great idea,” I said. “Then you could bike to work, and I can drive your car.”

  Dad laughed, his head tipping forward so the overhead light reflected off his bald spot.

  “Any more back-to-school parties?” Mom asked.

  Oh, Mom. You give her an inch, she’ll take a road trip. She’d been so astonished by my friendship with Megan and my coupleship with Carter that she expected me to vault to the top of the social standings any day.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Megan’s having one Friday.”

  Then Mom drew up all of her Mom energy and achieved a perfect Awkward Mom Moment. “And Kasey’s invited?”

  Dead silence spread over the table.

  Kasey kept a very close eye on her food.

  “I’m sure she…must be,” I said.

  “Thanks, but I have plans,” Kasey said, her nostrils flaring. “With Adrienne.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Mom said, beaming. Dad nodded along. It was a little pitiful, to be honest. “Is it a sleepover or a regular party?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Kasey said. “I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to eat. Can you pretend I’m not here?”

  Mom’s chest pulled back into her body, as if she’d been punched.

  “No problem,” I said. “We survived without you for ten months. I’m sure we can make it through dinner.”

  When second period arrived Tuesday, I reported to the library, where I found I was the only student enrolled in second-period study hall—and that “study hall” was a euphemism for “help the new librarian organize the whole entire library.”

  Arranging thousands of books in numerical and alphabetical order might not seem like a good time, but compared to wandering around campus with Daffodil/ Delilah, it sounded like heaven.

  And Miss Nagesh, the new librarian, was practically drooling about having someone to help her. Though, from the way she kept talking about how desperately she’d begged for help, and how great and generous it was of Mrs. Ames to send me, I started to get the feeling I’d been played. Still, I was too relieved to care.

  I promised I’d start organizing the next day if she’d let me work on my Young Visionaries contest application that day. Miss Nagesh was all for it.

  And as soon as Mom got home from work, I borrowed her car and hit the road.

  It was 5:17. The deadline for entries was 6 p.m., and the address was about twenty miles away. Even if I ignored Mom’s “the speed limit is the limit, not the starting point” rule, I would be cutting it a little close.

  A surge of adrenaline and apprehension buzzed through my body as I glanced at the bag containing my application and portfolio. I wasn’t even sure if you were allowed to drop your stuff off in person. The application said, “SEND MATERIALS TO…”

  The freeway was busy with commuters—impatient, cranky drivers headed for home. When I noticed that it was 5:47 and the exit was still two miles off, I started to worry. I didn’t think I’d win; photography-wise I might hold my own, but get me in an interview and I was sure to destroy my own chances—but I was doing something real with my pictures, for the first time ever. I really wanted to enter, and not just for the money.

  I pulled into the parking lot of a sleek glass and steel building at 5:54. I grabbed my bag and headed for the giant metal entry door. Inside, the lobby was cavernous and dimly lit. I approached the receptionist at her huge semicircular desk in the center of the room.

  “Hi, I’m dropping off my application for the Young Visionaries contest?”

  She spared me less than half a glance. “You were supposed to mail it.”

  My breath stuck in my throat.

  She pointed toward the endless white hallway to my left. “Down the hall. Suite six.”

  I was glad I’d worn a black sundress and blue cardigan instead of just jeans and a T-shirt. Even my shoes were decent—a pair of Megan’s grandmother’s hand-me-down gray suede ankle boots.

  The door to suite six was closed, and there was no doorbell or sign, apart from the metal number six. I knocked a few times, but nobody answered.

  Finally, I pushed the door open a couple of inches, revealing a miniature version of the main lobby with a partition dividing it from the rest of the office.

  “Hello?” I called. No answer.

  Off to the side was a table covered in stacks and stacks of envelopes, even a few small boxes. I wandered closer, checking the to on one of the address labels: “Young Visionaries Contest.” I did a quick sweep and guessed there were seventy, maybe eighty entries. Way more than I’d imagined.

  I almost turned around and walked out, taking my portfolio with me, but I stopped before reaching the door. I’d already gone to the trouble of filling out the application. Even if they hated my work, even if I was ranked seventy-nine out of eighty, it wasn’t like they’d be rejecting me in person.

  I could handle long-distance rejection. I grabbed the padded envelope from my bag and looked at it.

  Unopened, it was a pretty good-looking entry, top ten at least. Mom works for an office supply company,
so she gets all the freebies she can handle. I’d printed up a nice quarter-page address label with the to address on it and stuck it on a pale blue mailing envelope. And mine hadn’t been knocked around by the postal service.

  So I had that much of an edge.

  Before I lost my nerve, I dumped my envelope on top of the stack and hurried out to the hall. In the ladies’ room I used a handful of toilet paper to dab the beads of sweat from my forehead and tried to imagine what the judges would think when they looked at my pictures.

  I’d lost almost everything in the fire the previous October—not only my camera, but years of negatives and prints. Portfolio-wise, I’d started in November with a blank slate. And now I began to worry that none of it was particularly interesting. It was just stuff I’d found around town, some pictures of my family, and—

  That “and” threw my world off balance. The floor seemed to slide out from underneath me.

  I shut the water off and raced out of the bathroom, back to suite six.

  The door was locked. I pounded on it. “Hello?” I called. “Hello?”

  Mid-knock, a woman pulled the door open. She was in her fifties, about my height, and beautiful, with thick, wavy black hair that rested on her shoulders. “Can I help you?”

  I glanced past her toward the table where I’d left my envelope.

  “I dropped off my stuff a few minutes ago,” I said, “but it was a mistake. I need it back.”

  She didn’t move. “Are you Alexis Warren?”

  I nodded and stood there panting until she took a step back.

  “Come in,” she said, with a sweep of her arm.

  I went straight for the table, but the blue envelope was gone.

  “It’s over here,” she said, walking to a worktable with a daylight lamp shining down on my portfolio. “It’s the first one I opened.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  The woman gave me a pointed look. “Generally, if you want your work lost in the crowd, you don’t submit it in an eye-catching envelope.”

  The book was open to the very last picture, a close-up of the grille of a rusted old car. I’d cleaned the hood ornament and grille until they were as brilliant as the day the car was made, but left the rest of the rust, grime, and cobwebs.

  “That’s nice,” she mused. Never before had the word “nice” stung so sharply. What she meant was: Nice—but forgettable.

  But that was the least of my worries. If she’d seen that photo, that meant she’d seen the others. The ones I’d never meant to show anyone—much less a judging panel full of strangers.

  I grabbed the book and pushed it back in my tote bag. “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s been a mistake. I withdraw.”

  The woman gazed down at the table where my pictures had been, almost like she was still looking at them. “What a shame,” she said. “All right, then. Good night.”

  If she’d pressed for details, I wouldn’t have given them to her. But her easy dismissal bugged me. “It’s just that there are pictures in here I didn’t mean to include.”

  She glanced at me sideways. “Which ones?”

  “Some that are…personal.”

  “All of your photographs should be personal,” she said.

  “I guess I could take them out,” I said, “and leave the rest of the book.”

  “You’d lose.”

  I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open right about then.

  “Bring it here,” she said, motioning me over. Something in her manner made me obey. She flipped directly to the first of the photos I would have removed. “Do you mean these?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “This is you?”

  Yes. It was a self-portrait, taken in a mirror: me sitting next to my new camera as warily as the bride and groom in an arranged marriage. It had taken forever to set up that picture, because my collarbone and wrist were broken. I was all bandaged up; there was a cut on my cheek, and some of my hair had been singed off, but I hadn’t been to the salon to get it trimmed yet. I’d spent a frustrating hour trying to understand all of the camera’s fancy automatic settings, and I still wasn’t sure if I’d gotten it right.

  I looked wild, battered, exhausted—but it was a good picture.

  She flipped the page.

  The two facing pages had pictures of my parents. I’d based them on that old painting, American Gothic, of two farmers just standing there. For the first one, I’d made them stand in front of the town house, dressed in their work clothes. It was about forty degrees out, and neither of them had a jacket. Mom is trying to smile through the cold. Dad is stoic, favoring his right leg the way he does when his leg injuries bother him (yet another Because of Kasey). They look miserable but determined.

  The second one is the same pose, but they’re standing in front of the burned out shell of our old house. The pillars that once held up the roof of the porch jut out of the ground, looking like they fought their way to the surface, zebra-streaked with ash and scorch marks. Beyond lies all that remained of the grand front hallway—the first couple of stairs, the frame of the basement door, the fireplace against the back wall.

  I waited for a reaction, but she wordlessly turned the page.

  The next photo was a close-up of two naked wrists, lit sharply from one side, causing the crisscrossed scar tissue to stand out in vivid relief. I had to fight the urge to hold my hands over the image, to hide it.

  They were Carter’s wrists. His wounds, from when he tried to kill himself during his freshman year at All Saints. I remembered the day we shot that picture, how Carter’s arms shook as he held them under the lights. And how I wondered why he was okay with my taking a picture when he never showed his scars to anyone but me and his parents. He’d worn nothing but long-sleeved shirts since the day I met him.

  The one after that was Megan, sitting on her mother’s grave, the first time she was ever allowed to visit it. She slumped against the tombstone, her eyes closed, her face turned toward the sun. She’d forgotten about me, about everything except her grief.

  And the last one was my sister in her Harmony Valley loungewear, smiling wanly over her fourteenth birthday cake in the visitors’ lounge. Except we weren’t allowed to light the candles, and we weren’t allowed to have knives, so the cake was an uneven grid of presliced pieces with unlit candles sticking out at crooked angles. The scene was drab, joyless. The bite came when you looked into Kasey’s eyes—which were like the eyes of a caged animal.

  I’d betrayed myself and the people I loved most, letting those photographs be seen. It was almost as if I’d posted their naked pictures on the Internet or some-thing—only this was worse, because these moments were more private and painful than being caught naked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, picking the book up—more gently this time. “I can’t.”

  “If you take those pictures out, you won’t win,” the woman said. “If you leave them in, you have a chance. They’re excellent. You’re very talented.”

  I turned to look at her. “Excuse me—who are you?”

  She switched off the work light. “I’m Farrin McAllister. This is my studio.”

  I took an involuntary step backward.

  Farrin McAllister?

  The Farrin McAllister? The photographer who’d shot every major celebrity and half the rest of the important people and events in the world? Who had thirteen Vogue covers and who knows how many Pulitzers?

  And she’d said my photos were…excellent.

  I felt a little queasy.

  “I’m closing up for the night,” she said. “You’d better make your decision.”

  I hugged the portfolio to my chest. “But…if I enter, who will see these pictures?”

  “Quite a few people.”

  “But I don’t know if it’s okay with my”—I gestured at the book—“for other people to see them.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “What did they think you were doing—bird-watching?”

  I swallowed hard.

  �
��Am I even still eligible?” My last escape hatch. I wasn’t sure which answer I wanted. “Since we’ve talked?”

  “This is a competition based on talent,” she said, grabbing her purse from the counter. “Not a bingo game. You have until I reach the door to decide whether you’re in or out.”

  But she was walking so fast!

  Without thinking, I stuffed the book into the blue envelope and set it on the table.

  Farrin—Farrin McAllister—held the door open for me and gave me a little wave as she stayed behind to lock up.

  I’m not sure I exhaled once, the entire drive home.

  THE WEEK WORE ON. Miss Nagesh and I cleared the 000s and were most of the way through the 100s—philosophy and psychology. She was young and cool, and while we worked, she told me all about the novel she was writing. I told her about the photography contest, even though I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else. Not my parents—not even Megan or Carter.

  Kasey and Adrienne continued to eat with the Doom Squad, but Lydia didn’t seem to be outright mocking them, so I didn’t interfere.

  Friday night, Mom and Dad were going to dinner with Mom’s regional managers. Mom put on her swishiest dress, with her blond hair in a low bun; Dad wore his only suit and gelled his hair back. Mom kept calling him her trophy husband. I thought it was sweet, but Kasey huffed back to her room, muttering about having embarrassing parents.

  I wiped down the kitchen while I waited for her to finish packing her overnight bag. Finally she came out and sank onto a barstool.

  “Almost ready?” I asked.

  “I think I’m going to tell Adrienne I can’t come,” she said, dragging her fingertip along the countertop.

  “But you said you’d go.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, but…I don’t feel like it.”

  “Kasey, you can’t do that to people—back out when you say you’re going to do something.” I wrung out the sponge and set it on the edge of the sink. “This probably means so much to Adrienne. If you had a party, how would you feel if everybody canceled?”

  “Ugh, fine! Quit nagging!” She heaved an enormous, woe-is-me sigh and went back to her room.

  To be perfectly honest, my reaction was probably as much about me as it was about Adrienne. If Kasey didn’t go to the sleepover, I’d have to figure out what to do with her. Leaving her home alone wasn’t an option, and—selfishly, I’ll admit—I didn’t want her at Megan’s house. I just wanted to relax with my friends, and having my sister around virtually guaranteed that wouldn’t happen.