“Sure,” Matt says. He looks amused. “Actual film? You have a camera that uses actual film?”
“Yes,” I say, and I stop walking. Matt didn’t know about me taking pictures either. It makes me nervous, about what I’d been taking pictures of. “It’s . . . actually, you know what? We don’t need to go right now. They close at six, and I can come back tomorrow.”
He gives me a funny look. “It’s no problem. It’s right around the corner.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just come back.”
“But we’re here right now. Come on. We can make it.” He reaches for my hand with that smile, and those dimples, and against my better judgment, I take his hand, and in a few moments he’s opening the door to the shop.
The bells jingle.
“Sorry, we’re closing,” a voice calls from behind the printing machine.
“Okay,” I answer, taking it as an excuse to turn right back around and come back tomorrow, by myself.
Matt stops me. “We just have some pictures to pick up, that’s all.”
I hear a sigh from behind the machine, and then a girl comes out. “Of course. It’s no problem at all, why would it matter that we’re closing, it’s just a—Liv?”
She says my name at the same time I realize it’s her.
“Jules?”
“Hey,” Matt says. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
She doesn’t answer him, and she doesn’t take her eyes off me. I search them for the familiarity that I remember, half expecting her to come around the counter and hug me like Chloe did, but she doesn’t.
“Wow. I’m glad you’re okay,” she says finally. “That video was—that was pretty crazy.”
I feel Matt tense at this.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” I say, trying not to be shocked at how different she looks—even from this year’s yearbook photos. Her hair is a cut short and dyed a shocking shade of red, and there’s a tiny stud in her nose. “How . . . how are you?”
I sound awkward, stiff, I know it. But I can’t help it. I’m starting to freak out. I wasn’t expecting to see her here, and I still don’t know what happened with us, and she doesn’t know I don’t know, and I can’t start asking about all this with Matt standing right here while we’re waiting for pictures I took but didn’t tell anyone about.
“I’m good,” she says, keeping her eyes on mine. “Fine.”
We’re all quiet a moment, and I try to read what’s there.
“So . . .” Matt starts.
“Right. Your pictures. Lemme grab ’em.”
She goes in the back, and he turns to me. “You okay? You seem . . .”
“I’m fine. Just tired. I think I need to go home after this.”
“Sure, of course.”
Jules comes back out carrying the envelope of photos and hands it to me. It’s thinner than I expect when I take it.
“Sorry,” she says, “there were only a few that printed from that roll. The rest was blank.”
“It’s okay. I expected that.”
She rings me up, and I pay.
“Thank you,” I say. And then, “It’s good to see you.”
Her face softens the tiniest bit, and she almost smiles. “You too, Liv. Take care.”
And that’s it. Matt and I leave, and she flips the sign in the window to Closed, and seeing her for the first time is over. It happened that quickly, without me having a chance to ask about what happened with us. After a few steps, I steal a glance over my shoulder, half expecting her to still be in the window, but it’s empty.
“So are you gonna look at those?” Matt asks as he drives.
I’m looking out my window, holding in tears and replaying the tiny interaction with my former best friend, trying to figure out how things could’ve possibly changed so much between us, and hoping that it wasn’t something I did.
“Liv?”
“What? Oh.” I glance down at the envelope in my lap, and then at Matt. “No, they’re not anything. Just something for my mom.”
I wince inwardly at the lie, but I can’t look at these pictures right now, with Matt. Not when I’d been keeping it from him that I’d even taken them.
A knot starts to form in my stomach, and by the time we pull into my driveway, I have to tell myself to breathe, and smile, and talk. I thank him for taking me out, and we stand there awkwardly at the door for a second.
“So . . . I’ll call you tomorrow?”
I nod. “Sounds good.”
“And you’ll call Dana Whitmore?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Thank you.” He steps closer and looks me in the eye. “Good night, Liv.”
“Good night,” I say, and he leans forward and places the softest kiss on my forehead. It’s sweet, almost chaste, but I feel it there as I walk through the door into the living room. I feel it there when my parents stop me in the living room and ask too many questions about my day, and I feel it all the way up the stairs and into my room.
It isn’t until I finally sit down at my desk with the envelope and pull the pictures out that I feel something else entirely.
Surprise.
I flip past the shots I know—from the harbor, the two from the beach, the blurry one of me in my room, and the shot of Sam and Paige mugging next to each other on my bed.
There are three left after that. The first is of a sunset over the ocean. Nothing spectacular. The next one is of what looks like a natural pool in the rocks. It’s taken from above, and the water in the pool is so clear and blue it almost doesn’t look real.
The last one is a shot of me, and it’s recent.
My hair is wild, blowing around me in the wind, and lit up golden brown by the sun that gives the whole shot a warm glow. I’m looking almost beyond the camera, and I can tell I’m laughing. I look at ease, and so happy.
I spread the last three photos out on my desk and examine each one for any detail that could be a magical puzzle piece—the thing that clicks and brings something back to me. But nothing stands out. I don’t feel disappointed, exactly. Just more confused. I hadn’t expected a shot of myself. I’d always felt more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it, so it’s strange to me that I look so relaxed in this picture. Strange that I would’ve let someone else take a picture of me with my camera.
I look at it again, at the warm glow, and the smile on my face, and now, if I remember just one thing, out of everything I’ve forgotten, I wish it could be to know who took this photo. I tuck it, along with the others, into the thin frame of my chalkboard wall and look at them against the backdrop of all the other things I don’t understand.
I read it all, over and over, go back to the pictures again and again, but it doesn’t matter. Even with all this right in front of me, I’m still locked outside myself.
SIXTEEN