With the wind out of Becky’s sails, I locked my phone and attempted to pay a bit more attention to our inaugural yearbook meeting. School didn’t start for another eight days. But Becky couldn’t wait to get her power back as head of the committee. Yearbook was supposed to be a simple after-school activity that didn’t take up that much time, but ever since Patti Salvatore graduated and left Becky in charge, she’d demanded meetings more often.
Thankfully, our faculty advisor, Ms Novak, wouldn’t let Becky kick anyone out for not attending meetings. So as long as I showed up every once in a while and made sure my assigned pages were all good, I could still list yearbook committee as an activity on my college applications.
Speaking of which, there was another, more important reason I’d showed up to this meeting, and if it didn’t end soon, it all might be for nothing. I shot Lara a text.
Ask her if she cangive us our assignments already so we can leave. If I do it she’ll just drag things out longer.
Lara smirked at her phone before putting it away and raising her hand.
Becky glared but called on her.
‘Can we talk assignments? I think the photographers are good with splitting the activities on our own, right?’ She turned to the other five photography club members – including her girlfriend, Helen Fink – who had also signed up for yearbook. All of whom nodded.
Becky looked disappointed, but she flipped to another section of her five-subject notebook of death. ‘Fine. When I call your names, write down which pages you have so you don’t forget.’ She gave Anna Wheeler a death glare, reminding her about the Faculty Page Faux Pas last year, when she had reviewed and verified the faculty pages instead of the after-school clubs, and Becky’s first year as yearbook committee president went undocumented because we forgot to put our group photo in.
‘Tommy and Lara,’ Becky said after giving out most of the good stuff to her friends. ‘You two are on athletics, and, Tommy, you’re reviewing the freshman pages.’
Great. Checking that the right names are next to the right freshmen took forever because there were always so many, and they were new, so I didn’t know any of them. Maybe once classes started and some freshmen joined yearbook at the first official meeting, I could pawn it off on one of them.
I kept my mouth shut, and when Becky dismissed us almost a half hour later, I told Lara I had to do one more thing, then asked if she or Helen needed a ride.
‘Nah, we’ll walk,’ she said. ‘What do you have to do? Stalk that dude on your phone inreallife?’
Okay, so I guess I know where that line on cyberstalking is after all.
I had spent most of my summer at work, but the days I wasn’t working, Ava and I were brainstorming ways for my La Mère application to stand out. A lot of applicants had vo-tech courses or were lucky enough to go to schools that had cooking classes. Our school didn’t, so I needed something to put me on par with the other applicants, other than ‘passion for cooking’.
Working at Sunset Estates would do that. And so would Ava’s idea, which had come to her after I made her watch a few YouTube cooking channels. I’d make a supplemental video to submit with my application.
Problem was, video taken on my old phone camera didn’t look professional enough. And while my school, Green Ridge High, didn’t have cooking classes, they did manage to have film classes and a TV studio.
There’s something about the school’s TV studio that just creeps me out. Everyone in the studio is nice enough – except for Mr Taylor, the school’s tech guy/studio faculty advisor, who is very intense and gets pissed off at every minor inconvenience that uschildrenbring him – so maybe the creep factor just comes from the lighting and how it always seems like someone is in there, regardless of the time of day.
Take Monday, August 30, eight days before school was officially back in session, for instance. There were four people in the TV studio, and Mr Taylor wasn’t one of them. Did he just give these students keys to let themselves in? I knocked politely on the doorjamb, and the four kids on the couch talking about whatever movie was on the TV turned, clearly surprised to see someone enter their lair.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just looking for Mr Taylor?’
One of them stood, a chubby white kid with light-brown hair. His name was Grant Feldman, I thought – I recognized him from a few classes we’d had together. ‘He’s out at the elementary school fixing some network issue.’
The other three on the couch went back to discussing whatever weird movie they were watching.
‘What did you need?’ Grant asked.
‘Oh, so … I actually wanted to know what the process is for checking out the video equipment?’ I pointed to the opposite side of the room – past the morning show set where the TV studio crew delivered announcements every morning – to the cameras and lights that could be checked out. They were packed into yellow plastic briefcases that looked like props from a political thriller movie set.
‘Are you taking one of the film classes?’ Grant asked.
‘No, I just needed to film a supplemental thing for my college application. I want it to look better than what my phone can do.’ I held up my phone to show him that, yes, it was four years old.
Grant shook his head. ‘Only the film classes are allowed to check out the cameras. Two of them disappeared last year, and Mr Taylor made the administration agree to only let film students use them.’
Shit.
‘And no way I could even bribe you to let me borrow one in your name if I promise to bring it back?’
‘Sorry. You can probably still try to add a film class to your schedule.’
And change all my electives around and possibly lose my free period? Hard pass. I’d just have to use my phone after all. Or borrow someone’s better phone. Ava’s was one generation ahead of mine, at least.
