Seventh period was gym, which I was, of course, excused from, and had been told to use for study hall until I could rejoin. I spent the period sleeping.
Last period was Advanced Photography Workshop. The teacher’s name was Mr. Weir. He didn’t look all that old to me (he might have still been in his twenties, though I’ve never been good at guessing ages), but he was completely bald. Whether it was elective baldness or compelled, I couldn’t determine. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pin-striped blazer. When I came into the room, he introduced himself. “I’m your favorite teacher, Mr. Weir. Fierce shades.” I liked him immediately. “You sit over there,” he said helpfully, pointing me to a table in the back.
Advanced Photography Workshop was for kids who’d taken two years of other photography courses, which I had (although I couldn’t remember them, of course). The main point of the class was to do one big independent project. It was basically supposed to be a series of pictures that told a story, preferably a personal one, and our whole grade was based eighty percent on the one assignment, and twenty percent on everything else, which, from what I could tell, mainly came down to class participation. It seemed like a breeze to me, the fat on the rest of my schedule, something I could put off while getting caught up with my more academic subjects.
On my way out of the classroom, Mr. Weir asked if we could talk. “I don’t know if I should mention this to you, but you came to see me in the summer before your accident. You told me you wanted to drop this class.”
“Why?”
“You said something about commitments to yearbook, but I’m not really sure. That may have been an excuse, so as not to hurt my feelings. Of course, you can still drop the class if you want, but I’d be happy to have you.”
I asked him if he knew what I’d been planning to take instead, but he didn’t. The one class I had actually liked (and that seemed like a small time commitment) I hadn’t even wanted to take. Who could make sense of any of it?
At least the day was over. Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everyone.
I decided to go to the bathroom. Not because I actually had to go, I just wanted to be alone.
I was sitting in the stall when I heard Brianna come in.
She was talking to someone.
She was talking to someone about me. “Oh, I know, it was so awkward at lunch,” I heard her say. “I mean, she looks the same, but she’s not all there. She used to be so…” She sighed. “But now…” Her voice trailed off. “So tragic. So, so tragic. And you know who I feel really awful for? Ace.”
She was an idiot, but I didn’t necessarily want to confront her either. What would I say? Besides, she was probably right. I stayed in the stall until she had left.
To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing pretty depressing.
I was still sitting there when my cell phone rang. I hadn’t even realized it was on. I looked at the display. It was Will.
“Don’t tell me you’re at school,” he said.
“Unfortunately,” I answered.
“Now I’m pissed. My mother called me, but I didn’t believe her. Why didn’t you mention you were coming today? I would have definitely gone to school.”
“Your mom said you were sick.”
“Nothing that major.” He said he’d had an ulcer when he was younger and now he had “this stomach thing” that sometimes acted up, so he’d stayed home. “But I would have shown up for you, Chief. And I’m here now anyway.”
“If you’re not feeling well, shouldn’t you still be at home?”
“I never miss yearbook,” he said. “You don’t either. Where are you? I’ll come get you right now.”
“Sure, Will. I’m in the ladies’. Come on in.”
“Um…you’re not serious?”
“No. I’m not.”
Will laughed. “Right. How about I meet you at yearbook, then? It’s the classroom next door to Weir’s. By the way, you should call your dad to let him know you’re with me.”
“Hey, Will?” I asked.
“What?”
“How come I was going to drop photography?”
“Photography. Photography. Okay, I think you said it was because you thought that the big project was going to take up too much of your time. Also, you didn’t think it was right for your grade to be based on a personal story. I think you thought it left too much to chance. And…that’s it, I think.”
I could tell he was leaving something out. My dad always says to listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone’s hiding something. I asked Will if there was anything else.
“Well. I’m theorizing here. But the first two years of photography are more technical. Like which cameras to use and lighting and processing and Photoshop. But advanced is more creative, more like what your mom does, if you know what I mean. So maybe that was the problem?”
I didn’t say anything, but it sounded like truth. “I’ll see you upstairs,” I said.
The staff cheered for me when I entered the room and everyone sang “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and shook my hand and patted me on the back, like I was some kind of hero. Someone held up a camera that turned out to be the camera, and said that I should have my picture taken with my old nemesis. They rounded up yet another camera, and I pretended to be having a fistfight with the camera, which made everyone laugh. I felt a little overwhelmed and maybe even touched, because it was clear how much these people really did like me, as opposed to the ones I had to eat with in the cafeteria.
All that was wonderful, until I started to realize what the actual business of yearbook entailed. It amounted to a succession of group photos, selling advertisements, and going to conferences about (you guessed it) yearbooks. All this required an endless series of meetings and debates. I wondered why in the world it could possibly take so much time, money, and effort to slap two hard covers around a stack of photographs.
The meeting lasted until around seven o’clock at night. There were photos to approve and copy to edit and schedules to arrange. On the way out, I asked Will how many times yearbook met each week. He laughed and said, “You’re joking, right? We meet every day. Some weekends, too.”
I did the math. That amounted to twenty (plus) hours a week of yearbook.
Seven hundred and twenty hours a school year—not including weekends or yearbook conferences.
Any way you looked at it: a hell of a lot of time.
I hoped that I would get my memory back, so that I would remember what I had liked about yearbook in the first place. I didn’t want to let all these nice people down.
In the car on the way home, Will couldn’t stop talking yearbook. The guy was obsessed, and I guess with seven hundred twenty hours a year, you’d have to be. I mainly found myself ignoring him. I’d nod every now and again and that seemed to be all the response that was required on my part.
I wanted to ask him why he (I) liked yearbook so much, but I thought it might hurt his feelings.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he said.
I told him I was tired, which I was.
“I’ve been talking too much,” he said. “I guess I just got excited that you were back. It’s not anywhere near as much fun without you, Chief.”
We were halfway to my house and stopped at a red light when I spotted James Larkin walking along the sidewalk. It had started drizzling, and even with whatever strangeness had passed between us in the greenhouse, I felt like we should offer him a ride. I asked Will if he would mind pulling the car over, and he replied, “The chap looks like he wants to be by himself.”
I reminded him how much James had helped me in the hospital, and how I had never had a chance to really thank him. “Plus,” I added, “he was nice enough to return the yearbook camera.” I knew that last part would definitely get Will. He sighed like it was really putting him out and muttered something about it “costing a lot of money to keep starting and stopping the car all over the place.” So I told him he could just drop me off, that I’d walk the rest of the way home. “Yeah right, I’m really going to leave my injured friend in the rain,” he said. “I don’t have all day to chauffeur you and your buddies around.”
I got out of the car and called James’s name. “Do you need a ride?” He turned real slow, and for a second after he saw me I was pretty sure he was just going to keep right on walking. Finally, he ambled over to Will’s car. He didn’t look all that enthusiastic about seeing me again. I was starting to wonder if I had hallucinated the boy I had met in the hospital.
“Still cold?” he asked politely.
“A little,” I replied. “Your shirt’s in my locker.”
James shrugged.
I was about to say how I’d been hoping we’d run into each other again when Will decided to get out of the car. Will edged himself between James and me and stuck out his hand. “Larkin, nice to see you, and thanks again for dropping off the camera. Naomi’s the other editor of the yearbook, not that you asked.”
“I did not know that,” James said. His mouth threatened to smile for a second. “Well, it was…good seeing you both.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I was sort of hoping I’d run into you again. I didn’t get a chance to thank you for all your help at the hospital—”
James cut me off. “Really. Don’t mention it,” he said. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and turned to walk away.
“Wait!” I called out. “Can’t we at least give you a ride?”
Will pinched me on the arm and muttered, “He doesn’t want a ride.”
But Will shouldn’t have worried, because James just shook his head. “It’s not raining that hard.”
We got back in the car, and Will started chattering about yearbook again. “It would be really great, for once, to have some decent artists on staff.”
“Is he an artist?”
“Who?”
“James.”
“I think he does something with video, I’m not sure. The point is, all the good ones go over to newspaper or lit mag or even drama, but none of them ever want to work yearbook. And it’s so stupid when you think about it. ’Cause no one’s even gonna see the lit mag or the newspaper like a week after it comes out. But everyone’s gonna have their yearbook when they’re really old. You know? Hey, Chief?”
“What?” We were stopped again at that same light, and I was watching James cross the street.
“Forget it,” Will said.
“What’s his story?” I asked.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Aren’t you supposed to know everything? He was kind of rude, don’t you think?”
Will shrugged. “No, he just didn’t want a ride.”
At that moment two things happened. The traffic light turned green, and it began to pour. “I suppose we should offer him a ride. Again.” Will sounded about as unenthusiastic as it is possible for a person to sound. He drove up alongside James.
“James!” I leaned over Will and yelled through the driver-side window.
“I don’t mind the rain!” he yelled. His hair was already soaked.
“James,” I said, “get in the car, would you?”
We locked eyes for a second. I raised my eyebrow. He shook his head the tiniest bit.
“I’m fine,” James repeated.
“But it’s storming,” I protested.
“Listen, Larkin, she’s not gonna give up, and I’m wasting gas. Just get in already,” Will barked.
James obeyed Will.
“Thanks,” James said to Will.
“Where to, sir?” Will asked.
“Just my home, I guess,” James said. He gave a few directions, and Will indicated that he knew where that was. In the rearview mirror, I watched James take off his jacket, which had gotten wet. I could see that leather cord with the ring on it again.
Will had noticed the ring, too, and he asked, “What’s the ring?”
“Oh, it’s my brother’s,” James said, slipping the ring under his T-shirt.
“Why isn’t he wearing it then?” Will asked.
“I guess that’d be”—he paused to dry off his hair on his shirt—“’cause he’s dead.”
“Hey,” Will said, “I’m really sorry about that, man.”
James shrugged and said something about it having happened a long time ago. It was clear to me that he didn’t want to talk about it, so I changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking. You never came to visit me in the hospital.”
“Yeah…I meant to. But I don’t really love hospitals.”
“I was waiting,” I said, turning around to look at him through the gap between the headrest and the front seat. “And you could have visited me at home, too.” My sunglasses slipped down the bridge of my nose a bit, and James reached into the gap to push them back up. He let his finger lightly graze the space above my brow before returning his hand to his lap.
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