“I guess he’s going to have to figure it out.”
“Have you ever thought of telling him what to think?” She tipped her head to one side and absently played with the ruffled hem of her dress. I looked at her ring: it was prettier than mine, more like an heirloom or antique, with a softer sheen and a carved braid encircling it.
Oh, sure, because Carter’s the type who’ll blindly go along with whatever anyone says to him. Even Aralt couldn’t pull that off.
“Sometimes you have to change people’s minds for them.” Tashi gave me a little smile as she turned back and pulled the brush out of the bottle, and then it happened:
The bottle tipped over.
One instant, I saw a giant drip of sparkly pink spreading into the carpet fibers, and the next instant, Tashi had reached her hand over it and closed her fingers.
When she opened them again, the bottle was in her hand, the cap neatly screwed on. There was no nail polish on the carpet, or her fingers, or anywhere except exactly where it was supposed to be.
MEET ME IN THE COURTYARD? I texted.
VERY BUSY TODAY, was Carter’s reply. A second later: BUT OKAY.
The election was that morning. He was staring at his watch when I got there, as if to remind me that he was taking time away from crucial Student Council activities to humor me.
“Still campaigning?” I asked.
“Yeah. By the bus loop.” He fidgeted with his cuffs, checked his watch. “What is it, Lex? This isn’t a great time.”
A word came into my head like it was written on a script: Listen.
I reached out and grabbed his arm. “Listen.”
Like magic, he stopped fidgeting and stood perfectly still.
I know this is a big change. “I know this is a big change.” But it’s not what you think. “But it’s not what you think.” I never saw the Sunshine Club as a long-term thing.
I repeated that, too, and saw his face muscles twitch.
“I joined for Kasey,” I said. “And I’m going to stick with it, for Kasey. Because she’s my sister, and she needs to know I’m there for her. I can’t just quit. But it’s not the kind of thing I’m going to be doing forever.”
Come on, Carter. “Come on, Carter.”
Do you really think some silly group of girls is more important to me than you are? More important than us?
Staring deeply into his eyes, I said it all, every last word. When I stopped speaking, he didn’t seem to know what to say.
I need you, said the voice. “I need you,” I said, “to support me while I’m supporting Kasey, and then this will all be behind us, and we’ll be back to the way we were. Most of all, I need you…” —to forgive me.
Inside, everything came screeching to a halt.
Forgive me? Why? What was I guilty of?
Carter was waiting, holding his breath. This was it, the moment that determined how things would be with us.
It’s not like you’ve done a brilliant job of maintaining this relationship on your own, said the voice inside me.
Only I knew better than to repeat that.
“I need you…to forgive me,” I said, looking at the ground.
“Lex,” Carter whispered, taking my hand and pressing it to his chest. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been a jerk. You’re trying to help Kasey, and I’m acting like a spoiled little kid.”
I felt washed clean, utterly renewed and reassured.
It was everything I’d wanted to hear him say.
“We’re okay?” I asked.
“We’re better than okay,” he said into my ear. He closed his eyes and kissed me.
We pulled apart and I gave him a tiny smile, my sudden happiness only momentarily shadowed by the fact that it felt like I was kissing a stranger.
“LET’S HEAR IT FOR ALEXIS!” Adrienne said. “Girlfriend of the Student Council President!”
Everyone golf-clapped as if Carter’s win weren’t his achievement, but mine, somehow—and therefore the property of the whole club.
It was our Wednesday meeting, and I was antsy.
I was driving over to Farrin’s office that night, to use her darkroom for the first time.
But before that, I had something important to do.
“Now,” Adrienne said. “Betterment?”
A couple of girls got called out for minor offenses—chewing gum, swearing, switching from heels to flip-flops after school.
Finally, collecting all of my courage into a ball inside my chest, I stood up.
“I think we’re all doing really well, actually,” I said. “I look around and everyone looks just as Aralt would hope.”
Complacent smiles and murmurs crossed the room.
“But…” I said. “Looks aren’t everything.”
I turned to my sister.
“Kasey, listen,” I said. “Yes, academics are important, but if you don’t act the part, you’re not being a good representative of this organization.”
Kasey stared up at me, drawing shaky breaths. On the surface, she was every inch a Sunshine Club girl—a pretty linen skirt, a soft blue shirt, tasteful makeup, and neat hair. It was hard to pinpoint what was missing. But there was definitely a difference between her and us.
Next to me, Lydia shot to her feet. “What do people see when they look at us?” she asked. “They don’t see smart girls.”
Kasey flushed to a fiery shade of pink.
“They see charisma,” Lydia said. “Charisma and physical beauty. Now, every kind of beauty is important to Aralt, but why would someone even bother getting to know you if you aren’t pretty enough to approach? If they admire you for this,” she paused and gestured to her whole body, “then they’ll stick around enough to see what’s in your head. But it doesn’t work the other way.”
“I know,” Kasey said, nearly a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“The thing is,” Lydia said, her voice breaking oddly, “I’ve tried to talk to you about this before. And you make excuse after excuse. So do you really know? Are you really sorry?” She inhaled and then let her hardest hit fly: “Are you truly committed to Aralt?”
“Of course I am!” Kasey cried. She shot me a helpless look, but I averted my eyes.
“Then you need to make the effort,” Lydia said shortly. “Because to some of us, it doesn’t seem like you care at all.”
This set the whole room buzzing.
“I’m sorry!” Kasey said, not to anyone in particular. “I—I didn’t mean to let anybody down.”
She was petted and cooed over like an injured kitten for the rest of the meeting. In the car on the way home, she kept her head tucked down, staring at her folded hands. She didn’t even give me an angry look.
I was annoyed with myself for feeling a stab of sympathy. She was the one choosing to ignore Aralt. So she had to live with the consequences.
Nobody liked to be ganged up on, but sometimes you have to break something down so you can build it up stronger.
And if Aralt thought Kasey needed breaking, who was I to question him?
I ate an early dinner and borrowed Mom’s car so I could be at Farrin’s studio by seven. All the doors had been left unlocked for me. I looked around the workroom for Farrin, but there was no sign of her. Next to the conference room was another door, marked PRIVATE OFFICE. It was closed—but not locked.
Parking tickets, dress code, spilled nail polish—these things ran through my brain like a flip book labeled “Things We Get Away With.” I pushed the door open and added barging into people’s private offices to the list.
The office was a perfect reflection of its owner—graceful, spotless, and decorated in clean, modern lines. There were so few objects lying around that I was able to make a quick visual sweep of the room. Perfectly normal, no creepy talismans or other dark supernatural things.
The only thing that didn’t seem to fit was a framed photograph on top of the bookshelves. It was old—from the seventies, judging by how faded the colors were—and it was a posed group pictu
re of about twelve or thirteen girls who looked a little older than me—college, maybe? There was a unity to them that resonated deep inside me.
Aralt’s girls.
I leaned closer and found Farrin—young and intense-looking. Next to her, with a square jaw and ruler-straight posture, was a girl who had to be Barbara Draeger.
Before I could look at the rest of the girls, I heard a click behind me and turned around, ready to apologize.
“Alexis,” Farrin said. “It’s a real pleasure to have you here. Did you bring something to work on?”
Not a word about snooping around her private office.
“Yes, film,” I said. “But I can just develop…I don’t need to print tonight. I don’t want to keep you too late.”
She smiled. “I can stay as late as you need. I don’t require much sleep.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“Come along,” she said, leading me through the workroom.
We stepped into a black cylinder about three feet in diameter with a two-foot-wide door cut into it. Farrin grabbed a handle inside the cylinder and rotated the whole thing so the opening was on the other side, releasing us into the darkroom.
“Everything you need is in here,” she said, indicating a giant wall of shelves. The dim red light was bright enough for me to see package after package of different types of paper, filters, and tools. An entire section of shelves was dedicated to immaculately labeled bottles of chemicals. Across the room were the enlargers. There were five of them, in different sizes.
“Changing bags and processing canisters are over here,” she said. “And there are timers all over the place.” She scooped one off the counter and handed it to me. “Smocks and aprons by the door, but I think you’ll find that we don’t tend to spill.”
We.
“Go ahead and get started.” In the dark, her eyes looked black. “Call if you need me.”
The cylinder closed around her, and I was alone.
The darkroom was so airy and clean that I felt like I was on some sort of spaceship.
As the film processed, I set the timer and wandered around, enjoying the way the rubber mats absorbed the sound of my footsteps, and wondering if I could ever stand the crowded, dirty community college darkroom again after working in this faultless place.
When the film was dry, I cut the negatives into rows of five and made a contact sheet.
Farrin came in without making a sound, picked it up, and motioned for me to follow her back to the workroom.
She set the contact sheet on the light box. Then she took a loupe—a small handheld magnifying glass—and began studying the pictures of Megan by the pool.
“Which of these would you print?” she asked, handing me the loupe.
I studied them, trying to get past the fact that I was basically getting a private photography class with Farrin McAllister.
Megan pouting. Megan glaring. Megan looking like a little girl who’s mad she didn’t get the last piece of cake.
“This one,” I said, pointing to the sulkiest photo.
“Why?”
“Because…it’s edgy, I guess.” And edgy was my kind of picture.
She stood back. “Any others?”
I’d missed something. I leaned forward and looked again, more carefully. On the first pass, I’d disregarded the ones where Megan was smiling. I looked over them again.…
“Here,” I said, putting my finger over one near the end of the roll.
“Why?”
I bent down again. Megan’s dark hair, carefully set in large, loose waves, whipped wildly out to the side where the wind had caught it. The rippling water in the foreground seemed to echo the pattern. Her skirt hung in smooth, graceful folds, the wet edges sticking to the tiled side of the pool. On her mouth was the tiniest touch of a smile, and her posture was relaxed, and her eyes…
“She looks like she has a secret.”
Farrin smiled.
“Can I grab something?” I asked.
She made a gracious gesture, and I went past her to my backpack, where I kept a binder of all of my negatives, neatly filed in plastic sleeves. Behind each sleeve was its contact sheet. I flipped through them to find that first roll of self-portraits.
The disgruntled photo of me with my new camera, the one that had been blown up for the party, was the tenth one on the roll. But I kept scanning, past that one, past a dozen or so more. All the way to the final exposure.
I remembered that picture. I’d finally gotten a sense of the new camera, but I thought I was out of film. I’d been sitting there and accidentally squeezed the bulb.
My head was turned so you could see the full, scalded-off, jagged side of my hair. There was a haughty half-smile on my face. In a way, it was an edgier picture than the other one could ever hope to be, because who sits in front of a camera with burned hair and a broken collarbone and wrist—and smiles?
I stood up and found I’d been holding my breath. I took a gulp of air, like I’d been underwater.
“That one,” I said, and Farrin took the loupe from my hand.
A moment later, she stood up. Some strange light seemed to flicker behind her eyes as she turned her body squarely to me. “Brilliant,” she said.
For a moment, I saw stars.
“Let’s blow these two up,” she said, and I looked to find her tapping the photo of Megan.
She stood over my shoulder, mostly watching but occasionally offering a bit of advice, like recommending a high-contrast filter. We processed the print of Megan and hung it to dry. Even in the dim red light, I could tell it was extraordinary.
Then we printed the picture of me. Blown up, the image looked old-fashioned, gothic. Like something that would be hung in a haunted house—and when you walked past it, it would turn into something horrifying.
And all because I was smiling.
When we were finished, Farrin pointed to the corner of one of the shelves. “You can just set the timer right up there.”
When I reached up, something stabbed my finger, and I yelped and jerked away.
“Oh, dear. What happened?” Farrin asked. “Are you bleeding?”
In the low red light, my finger looked like it was dripping chocolate sauce. “I guess so,” I said. “There was something sharp.”
I blinked furiously to suppress the tears that came snapping up behind my eyes. Finally, the sting went away, and the danger had passed.
“How strange,” Farrin said, leading me to a sink, where I washed the wound, a deceptively deep little scrape. “I take a lot of care to make sure the broken bulbs get thrown away safely, but sometimes the assistants get careless.”
“Do you think it needs stitches?” I asked.
“No,” she said, handing me a piece of gauze to press against it. “I’m sure it doesn’t.”
While she taped the gauze to my finger, I watched her face, lit richly red. Her eyes were black dots rimmed by thick black lashes. Her lips were washed out, almost skin color.
But there was no reason for there to be a broken lightbulb on that shelf. And—what was more—I’d never said that was what had cut me.
It was almost like Farrin had known there was something up there. Something dangerous.
Was this a test? To see if I’d cry?
I jerked my eyes away just as she looked up at me. According to the clock, it was almost ten.
“I should go,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll walk you out,” she said.
“No, that’s fine,” I said. “Thanks again. Tonight was an honor. Once-in-a-lifetime.”
“Well, that’s silly. It doesn’t have to be. I’m at your disposal,” she said, nodding in a way that was almost a bow. “You’ll call me in the morning and let me know how your finger is, won’t you?”
Good morning, Farrin. My finger is slightly less bloody today. I knew I wouldn’t call her, but I tried to smile, and said I would.
* * *
When I awoke the next day, my pro
mise to Farrin was the first thing that popped into my head. Still groggy from sleep, I unpeeled the bandage from my finger.
Nothing. Not a cut, not a scratch, not a mark.
I sat up, checking my other fingers, thinking that maybe Farrin had somehow wrapped up the wrong finger.
But there was nothing wrong with my fingers—any of them.
I called Farrin.
“You see?” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “We are a very healthy bunch.”
We.
I hung up and stared at my now-uninjured finger for a long time.
All that week, Carter was chivalry personified; he even sat with me at lunch. He seemed a little zoned out—but then, who wouldn’t be, in the middle of sixteen chattering girls?
He’s trying to save our relationship, I told myself. It certainly had nothing to do with the lines dictated to me in my head, whole conversations that I got through by parroting that sweet, cajoling voice.
Tashi told me to give myself credit for Carter’s change of heart. She compared it to pouring water on a neglected plant so it can bloom and thrive.
There was certainly no denying that he’d undergone a transformation. Gone were the pointed remarks about the Sunshine Club; gone were any hints of sarcasm or cynicism.
Totally and completely gone was Zoe.
After school Tuesday, he drove Kasey, Lydia, and me to our house. My sister and Lydia went inside, and I stayed in the car.
“Call me later?” he said.
I tilted my head. “I might not have time.”
“Then I’ll call you,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, taken aback. “If you want to.”
As I reached for the door handle, he leaned over and took my hand.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, gazing into my eyes. “Have I told you that yet today?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling gently on my hand. “Three times.”
But he didn’t let go right away. He got in a little more gazing first.
I looked away. There was something about the adoring stare that made me uneasy. I mean, yes, I wanted things to work out with Carter and me. Yes, he was being the ideal boyfriend.
But to be completely honest—I could see it getting a little dull.