“Does it require a camera?”
He hesitates. “Yes.”
“Then no.” I turn and walk away. “I didn’t mean to walk down here. I was distracted.”
“It might be good for you to pick up a camera again,” he said. “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
I keep walking.
He calls after me. “It’ll only take an hour. And you’ll get a volunteer credit.”
I keep walking. I can barely hear him. Like I give a crap about volunteer credits right now.
He shouts, “You can use my Leica.”
I can’t help it. My feet stop, just for a second. It’s an automatic reaction. Mr. Gerardi has an amazing Leica M digital camera. We all used to drool over it. He rarely lets a student use it, though he let me help shoot prom last year, so I’m familiar with it. It’s as nice as Mom’s field camera, which she never let me touch. She practically kept it on an altar when she wasn’t working.
Right now it’s sitting in a stained bag in the corner of my room.
My palms are suddenly sweating. I can’t do this. I start walking again, turning the corner as quickly as I can.
I’m late for lunch, and the line is obscene. I have no appetite anyway. I see Rowan in our back corner, sitting at the end of the table.
I fling my bag under the table and all but collapse across from her.
She stops chewing her sandwich and raises an eyebrow. “You’re not eating?”
“No.” But I fish under the table for my water bottle.
“Why not?”
I don’t meet her eyes. “It’s not important.”
“It kinda looks like it’s important.”
I heave a sigh, and it leaves my mouth with an edge. “Ro—”
But then I stop.
Sometimes you get to a point where it hurts too much, and you’ll do anything to get rid of the pain. Even if it means doing something that hurts someone else.
He’s talking about my father, but it makes me think of Rowan. Have I been doing that to her?
I fiddle with my water bottle and think about it. This is not a good feeling.
Rowan pulls open a bag of potato chips. “Does it have anything to do with Mr. Gerardi?”
My eyes flick to hers. “What?”
She nods toward the hallway. “Because he’s heading over here.”
I almost fall off the bench whipping around to see what she’s talking about. He followed me?
For an instant, I cling to the naive hope that he’s here to grab a soda or harass someone else. But no, Mr. Gerardi walks directly over and looks down at me. “At least let me ask you the favor.”
My brain is already twisted up, thinking about how I’ve been treating Rowan. A sharp reply dies in my throat. I shrug and poke at a stained spot on the tabletop.
“I need yearbook photos for the Fall Festival,” he says. “Spend an hour, take some pictures, and call it a day.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“I know.”
It seems ridiculous to have a Fall Festival when it’s still eighty degrees outside. We’re barely into October. But it’s a school tradition: Fall Festival and Homecoming game on Thursday, big dance on Friday.
“I wasn’t going to go,” I say. I wasn’t going to go to any of it.
Rowan takes a sip of her soda and doesn’t say anything.
Mr. Gerardi drops to straddle the bench beside me. “It’s your senior year,” he says quietly. “You won’t get another chance to be a senior in high school.”
I snort. “You think I’ll somehow regret not taking pictures of football players getting whipped cream smashed in their faces?”
“Maybe.” He pauses. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of picking up a camera again.”
Declan Murphy comes to mind. The strip of light over his eyes as he surveyed my car, making him look like an inverse superhero. His expression in the hallway after I spilled the coffee, all aggression and fury—and something approaching vulnerability.
“You have,” says Mr. Gerardi. “I know you have. You have too much talent to throw it away forever, Juliet.”
I don’t respond.
“Do you think your mom would have wanted that?”
“Don’t talk about my mother.” I slap my hand on the table, so hard that people nearby fall silent and tune in to our conversation.
He doesn’t flinch. “Do you?”
No. She wouldn’t want this. She’d probably be ashamed of me.
Oh, Juliet, she’d say, shaking her head. Haven’t I raised you to have some courage?
The words don’t inspire me. Instead, they make me want to shrink further into myself.
“You could probably find some freshman to do it,” Rowan says.
“It’s the yearbook,” I snap without thinking. “Not Insta-gram.”
She smiles and takes a drink of her soda. “Then you do it.”
My hands are sweating again, and I roll my water bottle between them. I don’t know what my problem is. It’s a stupid camera. A stupid hour of time. A bunch of stupid pictures that won’t matter after everyone has looked at them once or twice.
I think about dishes sitting smashed at the bottom of a Dumpster.
Mr. Gerardi is still waiting patiently. I look at him. “I can use your camera?” Because I sure can’t use my mother’s.
His expression doesn’t change. I like that about him. “Yep.”
“I only have to shoot for an hour?”
“Yes. All candid. Whatever you want.”
I take a deep breath. I feel as though I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, and everyone is urging me to jump, including my mother. They’re all telling me I’ll be safe, but all I see is a gaping chasm.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
I expect him to pressure me more, but he doesn’t. He rises from the bench. “Sleep on it,” he says. “Come see me before homeroom and let me know what you decide.”
Sleep on it.
That, I can do.