He’s the one who helped me with my car. That’s who you saw.
His name is Declan Murphy. Do you know him? Don’t answer that. Maybe that’s too close to us figuring out each other. But even if you don’t know him, I’m sure you know of him.
He’s kind of notorious.
When he knocked on my window in the pouring rain, I was terrified. I thought he was going to steal my car or murder me or use me to smuggle drugs or something I don’t even want to imagine.
Okay, I almost went back and deleted that last sentence because I feel so terribly guilty about thinking those things. Now, in retrospect, those assumptions feel ridiculous. You want to know what kind of egregious crime he committed after knocking on my window? He let me sit in his car and warm up while he got down on the ground in the rain and fixed my car. Then he followed me home to make sure I got there safely.
Mom used to tell me how her goal with photography was to tell a whole story in one picture. I’m not sure if Mom ever felt she accomplished that. She came close—I know she felt pride about much of her work, and in many of her pictures, you really can see several different layers of what’s going on. It’s all in the details, like with her Syria photo. The joy in the children, the fear in the men. The sweat and the blood, the motion of the swings. Something terrible has happened, but the children can still find joy. But is that the whole story? Of course not.
The more I think about it, I wonder if that was a crazy goal altogether. Can a picture ever tell the whole story?
When I was sitting with Declan, he said something that I’ve been thinking about all weekend. He made a comment about how vulnerable people are protected by rules and guidelines, but people like him can be attacked without question, because people assume he deserves it.
Do you think there’s any truth to that? If a rich kid taunts a poor kid for wearing old hand-me-downs, that’s obviously cruel. If a poor kid mocks a rich kid for failing a test, is it a lesser cruelty because of their stations in life? Is everyone a one-dimensional target in some way?
And if we are, is there a way to show more of ourselves? Or are we all trapped in a single photograph that doesn’t tell the whole story?
Notorious. Her words jab at my pride and tug at my heart simultaneously.
I wish I had told her.
I’m glad I didn’t. Maybe.
This space, with one of us knowing, feels uncomfortable. I don’t like keeping a secret from her. It feels wrong, like now I’m tricking her. Before we had a level playing field. Now I don’t know what we have.
What I have.
I remember her sitting in the rain, crying behind the steering wheel of her broken-down car. At the dance, I’d seen another beautiful, spoiled girl with nothing better to do than sneer at me, the lowlife who might tarnish her shine and sparkle. In the letters, I know a girl who peeks from beneath a glitter overlay, hiding the torment. It’s hard to reconcile. It’s hard to wrap my head around it.
I know what it’s like to need to strike first. I wish I’d seen through her bravado when we were standing by the punch bowl. I wish I’d known it was just a front.
Rev has this saying that he likes, something about how a gentle tongue can break a bone. Knowing him, it’s from the Bible. This is the first time it’s ever made sense to me.
What did she say to me in the car last night? You’re pretty confrontational.
I wish I’d been more patient with Juliet. How could I have missed the turmoil that simmered just below her surface?
How could she have missed mine?
Alan is alone in the kitchen when I come downstairs around lunchtime. He’s reading something on his tablet while eating a sandwich. Sunlight pours through the window behind him, and I’d say he looked like a normal suburban dad if he were any other guy.
We both stop and look at each other. If we were wolves, there’d be raised hackles and cautious circling every time we interact, but we have to do the human thing and glare.
Alan looks away first, which is usually the case. He’s not intimidated by me, though. That would be too easy. Instead, he looks away like I’m not worth his time.
We weren’t always like this. I can’t imagine Mom marrying him if we were. He made a few attempts to play the father figure in the beginning, but we must have been operating on different frequencies because I missed the signals. More likely, I ignored them. He’d try to have man-to-man conversations about school and responsibility and—well, I really have no idea. I’d plug in my headphones and tune him out. I basically thought he was another transient boyfriend who’d be sent packing sooner or later, so why waste the time?
Now I feel like Alan skipped stepfather and went straight to warden.
Really, I can’t decide which bothers me more: that he plays the heavy or that Mom lets him.
I head for the cabinet and dig around, looking for cereal. Mom is on this new health kick, so everything is organic and full of fiber. Maybe protein. I would kill someone for Froot Loops, but instead I grab a box of strawberry Power O’s.
When I open the refrigerator for some milk, I realize Alan is still watching me.
I don’t like him watching me.
I think about Cemetery Girl’s line—Juliet’s line, I remind myself—about being trapped in a single photograph. That’s how I feel right now. Alan saw one side of me, one moment of my life, and that’s all I’m reduced to now. That’s all anyone sees. Declan Murphy, drunk driver, family ruiner. My snapshot, captured forever in time.
It’s a depressing thought, and my hackles go down. “Where’s Mom?”
“Taking a nap.”
I hesitate with the milk poised to pour. “In the middle of the day?”