I look at the door. It’s still closed. “I have no idea. Is he still out there?”
Mom squeezes her hands at the air like she’s trying to squeeze my brain. “I don’t want anyone in the house. I didn’t do my hair this morning, and the kitchen is filthy.”
“He doesn’t care about any of that,” I say.
She growls. Like, actually growls. “I don’t want people in my house judging me. Do not let him inside, Kiko.”
I guess whatever mood she was in when she invited Emery in has passed. She’s back to her old self and her old rules. Our house is once again wrapped in yellow tape.
And she wonders why I think she has ulterior motives when she’s being nice. Even when she promises it’s sincere, it only lasts for a short while. Sometimes I feel like I’m living with two completely different moms. Other times I know better—I know her better. Her mood swings aren’t an accident; they’re a reaction to whether or not she’s getting her way.
With a sigh, I move toward the door. She scurries out of the hall to hide in the living room, probably listening to make sure I send him away.
I open the door. Jamie looks almost as flustered as I feel. I’m pretty sure he heard everything.
“Sorry,” I say meekly. I step onto the porch and pull the door shut behind me. “What are you doing here?”
He laughs. It’s an adorable laugh—a perfect blend of awkwardness and optimism. “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the fair with me. I drove past it this morning. All the games are rigged and the rides are pretty lame, but they have funnel cake.”
“You’re selling this incredibly well,” I say.
He shrugs, smiling. “We all have our strengths.”
I smile too. Maybe he really does want to be friends again. Maybe Emery wasn’t completely wrong.
The skin at the back of my neck prickles. I can feel Mom back there, somewhere, spying on me.
“Let me grab my bag.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The fair takes up a huge section of the mall parking lot. It doesn’t look anything like the carnivals in movies. There’s no grass, for one thing, and it isn’t dark enough for any of the flashing lights to seem quirky or romantic. The loudspeakers are playing a horrible mix of pop songs from when I was in elementary school. All the stands are surrounded by chain-link fences, and the prizes look like they came from the reject crane machine pile.
But the air smells like toasted marshmallows and funnel cake and Jamie Merrick is here, so this is already one of the highlights of my life.
We play a game where you’re supposed to throw these little red plastic rings onto glass bottle tops, but all the rings keep bouncing off.
We shoot air rifles at paper stars and barely get two of the legs off.
We throw darts at balloons that never seem to stick, but on the last try I manage to pop one balloon. It doesn’t matter, though, because the carnival worker tells me you have to pop three balloons to win anything.
Still, I’m having so much fun I’m starting to get a headache. I’m not used to being around so many people. I’m not used to laughing so much. I’m not used to being so happy.
Jamie’s been carrying a camera around his neck the whole time. The way it hangs over his checkered blue shirt makes him look like a tourist. Dark eyebrows, eyes like ice, and a fading tan—he looks like he comes from someplace completely magical.
He tells me he’s majoring in photography and that one of his professors told him to take as many photographs as he could over the summer. He says even photographers have to practice.
I’m not surprised he decided he wants to take pictures for a living. When we were kids, Jamie was always playing with his dad’s camera. I think one of the reasons we always got along so well was because we both saw the world as a series of moments that needed to be captured—we just captured them in different ways.
The flash of his camera startles me.
Jamie laughs from behind the lens. “That’s what you get for zoning out. What were you thinking about?”
I reach for the camera. “Please delete that. I wasn’t ready for a picture.”
“Those are the best kind,” he says simply.
I don’t want him to have a stupid picture of me. What if he looks at it when he gets home and realizes what a weird face I have?
“Please delete it.”
“If I show you the picture and you absolutely and truthfully think it’s terrible, then I will delete it. But if there’s even a part of you that recognizes what a good picture it is, I get to keep it. Fair?”
I nod, and he steps so close to me, I’m breathing in the cologne on his neck. He’s so handsome. Like a European model and one of Tolkien’s elves all molded together. It makes it so hard to concentrate.
Because he’s not just good-looking—he’s nerdy, and funny, and nice, and he actually seems to enjoy talking to me. And I’m just—
I look at the picture. My almost-black hair is flat against my head, and the tips of my ears poke through all the heavy straightness. My eyes—something between Mom’s and Dad’s—are staring past the lens and straight into Jamie’s soul. They’re dark, too, like my hair, and I’m so pale I look like a vampire. My nose—my grandma’s nose—is too round, and my face is too round. My lips are full, except they’re always crooked, as if my face never knows whether it’s serious or smiling or about to speak. Oh my God, no wonder Mom has been telling me I’ve been going through a “funky stage” since I was ten. There are a million things wrong with my face.
“Please delete it.” My voice is a whisper now.
Jamie is looking at me like he doesn’t understand. He must not have looked at the picture well enough. Either that or he’s so used to my weird face that a photograph of it doesn’t even faze him.
His mouth starts to move. He wants to argue. He wants to ask if I’m kidding, if I really can’t see what he sees. He wants to change my mind.
But I look at him with hard eyes, partly to hide how embarrassed I am, but also to remind him of our deal.
We had a deal.
He lets out a very small sigh. I hear his camera beep twice. “There. It’s gone.”
We walk toward the funnel cake stand. Jamie takes photographs of lots of things—kids eating cotton candy, a toddler crying when her shoe falls off, a couple hugging next to the fence. He doesn’t show me any more of his pictures, but I have a feeling they’re good. I can see the way Jamie’s eyes move across the crowd. It’s like the world is clay and he’s shaping them within his mental frames.
As I’m watching him, I realize he’s not talking to me. My chest starts to pound—not because I’m a needy person, but because I’m worried I’ve upset him. This is the problem with telling people “no”—I always feel bad about it immediately afterward.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask softly.
His camera drops to his waist. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because I made you delete that picture.”
I see his jaw clenching. “That would be a ridiculous thing to get mad over. You know that, right?”