“Evie Hudson?” My response seems to come with a question mark, which is exactly the problem. I’m a person with top grades and an apparently “stellar future,” according to my latest report card. The announcement of my name should come with an exclamation mark, but when you’re the only girl in a room full of boys like this, it’s shocking how quickly your confidence plummets.
Kennedy looks like he’s seriously contemplating my idea. Of course, it’s the only idea anyone has suggested, but still.
“We could doGirls,” someone says from the back, “or we could do literally any other theme and it would be way more interesting.”
“Yeah.Girlswill get completely out of control,” another says. “Like the time Kaelan O’Keefe snuck his girlfriend into the school chapel and took photos of her with the Virgin Mary.”
More laughing and a couple of high fives. “Legend!”
Kennedy is even less impressed than he was when he walked in here ten minutes ago, and I watch as the spark I saw in his eyes dies out.
“Any other ideas for a theme?” he asks, with an apologetic glance in my direction.
11
Drew
It’s no secret St. Dominic’s has a reputation problem. Between a leaked video of a misogynistic war cry on the public bus to illicit photo sharing, the school has been in damage control.
TheGirlsexhibition idea is actually brilliant. The principal, Dr. Walsh, would probably go for it, and Evie is right—it could be the good-news story we need. The problem is, looking around the room, I have no faith that the members of St. Dom’s Photography Club are capable of the emotional nuance needed to pull it off. What theyarecapable of is handing another school scandal to the media when the exhibition is unveiled, revealing another sacrilegious threesome in the school chapel—or worse.
She hasn’t looked back at me once. She’s slumped in her chair, frown on her face, texting someone furiously, and I feel like I’ve caused this.
I’m already dreading next week’s session. I wouldn’t be volunteering to run this club except that I need leadership experience to try to offset my sliding marks in visual art. Academically, I was tracking well all through Year Eleven untilMum got sick again, but the art and photography school I’m striving for is mega-competitive, so this cocurricular club was meant to tick a box.
“I’m sticking this on the wall,” I announce, pinning a blank page to a pinboard. “Everyone add one exhibition idea before next week’s session.”
Evie sighs and looks at the clock above the door. I should be able to lead this thing with my eyes shut, but I didn’t expect to encounter Wonder Woman here, who’s threatening to ratchet up the work involved and wreck what was going to be a cruisy semester.
I have to get this club back on track, and it’s not like Mr. Dalgleish is helping. I need a minute or twenty or preferably the remainder of this meeting in solitude to get my head together.
“It rained this afternoon,” I tell them. “Maybe go outside and take some shots in the reflections?”
They pick up their gear and tumble out, Evie included, and once the door slams shut, my forehead meets the desk. Three slow and deliberate times. I don’t have the bandwidth for this girl.
I make sure the paper on the corkboard is secure and glance out the window. She’s the only one who’s really doing what I suggested, crouched on the asphalt, camera low to the ground, capturing red bricks and blue sky in a puddle of water. Ugh. I’ve got a weakness for earnestness.
“Evie, I’m sorry,” I say, catching up with her in the quad on the way out to apologize. “I think your idea is great.”
She frowns and keeps walking toward the bus stop.Something about her makes me want to straighten my tie and pull up my socks. “So great you immediately dismissed it?”
That’s not exactly true. I thought about it, listened to the boys’ views, imagined trying to supervise the whole thing, and started steaming toward a panic attack. “It would go badly in their hands,” I argue. “You heard them.”
She stops walking and faces me. Up close, she’s sort of terrifying. Bright. Intense. A “take no shit” attitude that’s at odds with the fact that she couldn’t even look at me straight in the classroom. And that had been fine by me. I don’t want a girl looking at me. I haven’t got time.
But that’s when the truth hits me in the gut. That life deals you a certain hand and you find yourself, at seventeen years old, with no headspace for friends. Especially girls like this—the type that makes you feel like you’re hovering at the starting line of a hundred-meter sprint, in those nerve-racking seconds before the gun goes off.
I don’t need this level of nervous energy. The fear that I’m going to mess this up before it’s even begun. I’ve known her only an hour and I’m already scared she’ll scale the wall I’ve built that’s kept all the others out.
“Walking past that behavior is as bad as doing it,” she challenges me, fierce blue eyes pushing the controlled burn of my life beyond containment.
Please make it stop.
Evie doesn’t understand. I’ve got nothing left in the tank. I just need everyone on board with some innocuous, paint-by-numbers exhibition—sunrises, trees, sports, I don’t care. Anything easy.
I can’t afford to unleash a wrecking ball in Photography Club. Or in my life.
I’ve seen the inside of the principal’s office three times in my five years at this school. First, at the introductory meeting in Year Seven. Next, in Year Nine when Mum was first diagnosed and we were signing off on an Individual Learning Plan for modified assessment. And now today, the morning after encountering Evie Hudson.
