Hold Still

by Nina LaCour

  I wait for him to finish, but he just shakes his head back and forth.

  “Let’s go,” I say. And I have him hold my mocha in one hand and his tea in the other as I walk my mom’s bike toward the theater. As we’re walking, Jayson keeps trying to explain.

  He says, “Everyone was really shocked. Well, you know they were shocked.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t know how anyone felt. After the morning it happened, I never went back to school. I missed finals week, and by the time this year started, hardly anyone said anything about it.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Well, they were. Everyone was sitting around wondering what happened, saying how they never would have expected it, how she was so talented, and they wished they knew her better. Stuff like that.”

  I think about this. I try to picture it. I want to ask Jayson, Who? Who was saying that? I want him to give me names, because it’s so hard for me to imagine. It’s not that Ingrid was unpopular, it’s just that we mostly kept to ourselves.

  We keep walking and soon the street turns to gravel and the cars stop passing, and it’s just Jayson and me by the theater.

  He turns to me and says, “I listened to everyone else talking, and I kept thinking that it was different for me. I mean, I felt like we were gonna have something . . . something was gonna happen for us one of those days. I thought about her all the time. I mean, all the time. She was just adorable. I knew that we were gonna be a thing one day. I was just waiting for things with Anna to blow over and then Ingrid died. And everyone was talking about her and I felt like telling everyone that it was different for me, but I knew that was stupid. I didn’t deserve it.”

  I know that if I could think of the right thing to say, I could make him feel so much better. I try to think of myself, of all the things I need to hear, and then I think of how it used to be when I talked to Dylan. Maybe there is no right thing to say. Maybe the right thing is just a myth, not really out there at all.

  I lean my bike against the ticket booth and head around the corner, Jayson’s footsteps behind me. When I get to the back, I try to open the door, but, as always, the old brass doorknob won’t turn. I try the single skinny window. Sealed shut.

  I look at the ground and find a rock the size of my fist.

  “What are you doing?” Jayson asks.

  What am I doing?

  I look at him and shrug.

  Then I smash in the window. The glass shatters and I get a shard stuck in my fingertip.

  “Shit!” I say, pulling it out. It starts to bleed and I stick it in my mouth.

  Jayson stands a few feet away from me, staring like I’m crazy.

  “Hold on,” I say. I kick the rest of the glass in and push the drape aside. Then, careful to avoid the remaining glass, I step in.

  Inside is cool and dark. It smells musty and familiar, like the science hall, like my grandparents’ garage. I stand for a moment and let my eyes adjust to the dark. When I can see well enough, I try to open the door, but it must have been locked from the inside with a key. I go back to the window.

  “I can’t open it,” I say to Jayson. “You’ll have to come in this way.”

  Jayson looks hesitant, but eventually swings a leg over to join me. We stand next to each other with our backs to the wall and take in what’s in front of us. It’s a small room with a tattered couch and a couple lockers and a coat hanger. A ladder rests against one of the walls.

  “This must have been the break room,” Jayson says.

  The break room leads to the lobby and its empty concession stand. The ceiling is higher than I had pictured, the dusty floor is tiled in gold, green, and blue, and the doors to the screening room are wide open and welcoming, as if a film is just about to start.

  Jayson and I walk to the top of the aisle and look down at all the empty red velvet seats and the blank screen.

  “Ingrid and I used to come around here all the time,” I say. “It was our favorite place to hang out.”

  Jayson turns to me. “You guys used to hang out here?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “This is crazy,” he says. “Every night I go running, and half the time I run by here. I always thought it was so cool, and I kind of thought that no one knew about it but me.”

  “We thought that nobody knew about it but us,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I can’t believe it’s gonna be torn down.”

  Jayson and I stay in the theater for a while, exploring. We find a cracked mug and a file of index cards listing the titles, directors, and running times of hundreds of films. We find the long narrow staircase to the projection room. Up there we find an umbrella, boxes and boxes of old film reels, a bag of black letters for the marquee, and a man’s hat. When our eyes begin to ache from straining to see in the dark, Jayson climbs out of the window and I climb out after him.

  We walk back toward the coffee shop without talking. When we get there, Jayson stops in front of his dad’s car. “Do you want a ride home?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “I have my bike.”

  He opens the car door but doesn’t climb inside.

  “So, does Taylor think I’m a complete loser?” I ask.

  Jayson looks at me, alarmed.

  I roll my eyes. “I’m sure he told you all about the other day.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” he says, but I can tell he’s lying.

  “I’m sure,” I repeat.

  He doesn’t say anything for a second and then he laughs. “Okay, he told me. But we’re best friends, you know, so don’t go thinking that everybody knows. It’s just me.”

  I look down at the concrete. “I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  Jayson grins. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” he says. “But it all sounded pretty hot to me.”

  “Well, thanks.” I laugh. “Thanks so much.”

  “No. But seriously, Taylor totally likes you.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “So don’t worry.”

  I get on my mom’s bike. “Okay. I’m not worried.”

  Jayson lifts his hand good-bye. I lift mine back.

  “Thanks,” he says, “for everything.”

  “No problem,” I say, and head back home.

  15

  Later that day, I head to Dylan’s house.

  When I get to her gate, she’s walking out the door in a gray jump-suit that makes her look like a fashionable gas-station attendant.

  “Oh,” I say. “Are you leaving?”

  She glances at me. “I’m on my way to the post office.”

  “But it’s Sunday. The post office is closed.”

  “I’m just using the stamp machine.”

  “Can I walk with you?”

  She looks up at the sky and squints, pushes her rolled-up sleeves over her elbows, shrugs, and starts walking.

  I follow her. We get to the end of her street and turn before I manage to make myself tell her that I’m sorry.

  “I’m kind of working through a lot of stuff right now, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

  “That’s true,” she says. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I say.

  We keep walking, and then suddenly we’re by the empty lot where I took my landscape, except it’s not empty anymore. The bones of a house are coming up.

  “Hey, look,” I say.

  Dylan glances at the house. “Yeah,” she says. “The owners already booked my mom to cater their housewarming party.”

  “I wonder how it’ll look when it’s finished.”

  We start walking again.

  “So, nice work on the treehouse,” Dylan says. “You’re making progress.”

  “Oh my God. Stalker!”

  Dylan laughs. “I had to ask you a question, so I went over to your house, but no one was home. I knew you were building one, so I walked down the hill and found it. Your parents have a ton of property.”

  “Wha
t did you want to ask me?”

  “Actually, it was Maddy who wanted me to ask you,” Dylan says. “She has the lead in a play. She’s a really great actor, you know. Anyway, she wants you to come. I don’t know if it’s such a great idea.”

  My stomach sinks. Maybe I really have ruined our friendship for good. “Why not?”

  “The play is Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t know if that’s something you’d really like to see right now.”

  “Oh,” I say, but I’m not sure what she means.

  We cross the street to the strip mall and head toward the post office. Dylan pauses outside the glass doors. “I’ll just be a second.”

  I walk over to a pole and lean against it. Why would Dylan think I wouldn’t want to see Romeo and Juliet? I’m pretty good at English. It’s not like Shakespeare’s over my head or anything. We read it freshman year. Actually, I think I can recite a few lines. I try to remember the different parts I know—the balcony scene, the part with Juliet and the nurse, the part when she realizes that Romeo drank all the poison . . . Oh.

  Dylan comes back out and sits on the curb.

  “Today is Ingrid’s birthday,” I tell her. “She would have been seventeen.”

  Dylan remains quiet, and even though I’m close to tears, I smile. Here she is, once again, never saying things just to say them.

  “I’d like to go to the play. When is it?”

  “Friday.”

  “We’ll go over together?”

  Dylan shrugs. “I don’t know.” She hugs her knees to her chest. I want to ask her a million questions about her life, but I don’t think it’s the right time.

  She smirks. “So what have you been doing lately? Just running into people?”

  “Mostly hiding in the bathroom, actually.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “Well, it’s a really nice bathroom. Oh, and you know Taylor Riley?”

  “Yeah, he’s in my chemistry class.”

  “I kissed him.”

  She stretches her legs out in front of her. “Oh yeah? Good for you.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean I threw myself at him. I mean I took off my shirt and attacked him.”

  Dylan squints up at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

  “It was undoubtedly the most humiliating moment of my life.”

  Dylan keeps squinting and then smiles wide.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “I know it’s not funny, I’m sorry. But why?”

  “I don’t know. I was just lonely, I guess.” I peel a strip off an old flyer stapled to the pole, advertising a garage sale that happened last weekend. I stuff the strip into my hand and peel another.

  I try again: “So, we’ll go over together, right? On Friday?”

  I don’t look at Dylan, just peel off another strip. It says HOUSEHOLD appliances! FURNITURE! KNICK-KNACKS! I wait for her to answer.

  She doesn’t say anything.

  I pry a staple out of the wood.

  “I really want to see Maddy act,” I say.

  I try to remember what Maddy said about the light, the aura. I crumple the paper into a ball and put it in my pocket.

  Finally, Dylan sighs. “Look,” she says. “I don’t want to make a huge thing out of this, but I like to be direct about things. I don’t know what happened to you at lunch that day, but I have a feeling that it had to do with Ingrid. So, I just want to make this clear: I’m not a replacement for her. If you’re trying to make that happen, our friendship isn’t going to work. It’s not what I want, and it shouldn’t be what you want, either.”

  I sit down next to her. She’s looking at me in the way only she can, with all this intensity, not self-conscious at all.

  “That’s not what I want,” I say. Dylan doesn’t respond, so I know I have to try harder.

  “Remember that day when I showed you the theater?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “You told me that you chose me to be your friend.”

  “Okay,” she says, half defensive, half embarrassed.

  “Well,” I say. “It’s my turn. I choose you.”

  “What?”

  “I choose you. You’re my friend now. If I have to stalk you at your locker and, like, beg you to go eat with me after school, and trespass in your backyard, I will.”

  Dylan rolls her eyes, but when she smiles, her intensity fades into something warmer. “Fine.”

  “So we’ll eat lunch together tomorrow. Preferably not in the bathroom, because even though it’s really nice in there, I could use a change of scene.”

  “But wait,” Dylan says, all sarcastically. “If memory serves me correctly, school bathrooms are some of my favorite places.”

  “If Maddy comes out here one day, you guys can make out in there all you want, but I’d like to eat on the soccer field.”

  “Okay, fair.” Dylan nods.

  “And we’re going to the play on Friday.”

  “Fine, but you should ask Taylor because Maddy and I are going to want to hang out after.”

  “Oh.” I nod knowingly. “Hang out.”

  “You may need to be entertained.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay.” She nods. “Good.”

  16

  After dinner on Sunday night, the phone rings.

  “Hello, is this Caitlin?” a woman asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “Caitlin, this is Veena.”

  The phone suddenly seems heavy.

  “Veena Delani.”

  “Oh,” I manage. “Hi.”

  “I wonder if I could schedule a meeting with you for Monday. Before class, or during break. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

  “I’m sorry about sneaking in,” I say. “I won’t do it anymore.”

  “That’s not what I want to meet with you about.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, I didn’t want to look at myself like that.”

  “Sorry?” she asks.

  “That’s why I didn’t turn in a self-portrait.”

  She says, “Yes, I had noticed that you missed the assignment. To be honest, I’m worried about your standing in the class in general.”

  I don’t really know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. “So, when can you meet?”

  “I guess before class would work,” I say.

  “Seven-thirty?”

  “Okay.”

  I hang up the phone. I stand in my room and look at my walls, at the picture of Ingrid by the reservoir, at all the magazine ads I cut out because I thought the photography was amazing.

  17

  When I walk into advanced photo early Monday morning, Ms. Delani looks up from her desk and actually smiles.

  I want to say, Just tell me, just get it over with: I’m actually going to fail photography.

  She gestures to the chair on the other side of her desk. I do as told, and sit.

  She says, “Caitlin, we’ve gotten off to a rough start this year, haven’t we?”

  I shrug. She’s looking at me, patiently. I’m starting to wonder where this conversation will go.

  “To be honest, I was hoping that you wouldn’t take my class again.” Her eyes are intent behind her thin-framed, red glasses, and as her words register I feel completely numb, like all my blood is being replaced with ice. There isn’t anything I can say to her. I want to disappear.

  “Have you ever wanted to be a teacher?” she asks casually, as if she hasn’t just ripped my heart out.

  I manage to shake my head no. I don’t know if I will ever speak again.

  She leans back in her chair. I want her to stop looking at me. I want to sink into the floor, find somewhere dark and cold, and never come out.

  “As a teacher, you dream of finding the perfect student, the most promising student.” I stare at the floor and nod. “It’s partially selfish, really. We, as teachers, like to think that we play an integral role in our students’ development. We dream of being that one teacher that people remember all t
heir lives, the one who inspired them to achieve great things.”

  I keep nodding.

  “I found that student in Ingrid.”

  I stop.

  “Then I lost her.”

  I feel like dirt. My face burns.

  “I’ll drop the class if you want me to. I can transfer into study hall.”

  She shakes her head. She says, “Let me finish. I was lucky. I found two students.”

  She’s leaning on her desk toward me. “The other one was you.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “You think my work is shit.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Just look up,” I say. “You stuck my picture in the corner, as out of the way as possible.”

  “I see that my lesson on how the eye moves through a piece of art wasn’t very memorable,” she says. “When someone looks at something, the eye is immediately drawn to the top left corner. Ingrid’s three photographs are in the center because they are the most complex and evocative. I wanted people to linger on them. But yours is in the left corner because it is immediately striking, and I wanted people to see it first when they walked into the classroom.”

  This lesson sounds vaguely familiar, but I still don’t know if I believe her.

  “Ingrid’s natural talent surpassed that of any student I’ve ever had. She turned photographs in to me all the time, almost every day, photographs that weren’t even assigned. She had passion, ambition. I was certain that she would make it in the art world.” I want to say, So was I, but Ms. Delani doesn’t pause long enough to let me.

  “But you,” she says. “You are growing so much. Even though you don’t want me to see it. I went back to the darkroom on Saturday, after you’d gone. I saw the print you left drying. That was excellent work, Caitlin. Not only was it technically impressive—that you could capture the house at night, show the darkness without compromising the detail—but it told a story. In the dead of night, two lights are on in a house. In a window, a woman’s silhouette. It makes me wonder what is happening in that house, why the woman isn’t sleeping, who is taking the photograph, why she isn’t inside . . .

  “Stay here,” she says, and retreats into her back office. She comes out carrying a large frame. I can only see the back.