“Who’s Elizabeth?”
“She’s the lead photographer on this project. She’s supercool and she personally picked me for the internship after she saw my portfolio. I didn’t even know.”
I wanted to ask him how old she was and if she was pretty. “I’m so happy for you, Matt.”
He yelled, “I’ll be right there!” to someone in the background. “Hey, Gracie, I had to take a bus three hours to get to this phone. There’s nothing down here so I don’t know when I’ll be able to call you again.”
“Okay, no worries.”
“I gotta go. The next bus is leaving soon, and they’re holding it for me. Hey, I miss you.” The last part sounded like such an afterthought that it made my stomachache.
“I miss you, too. See ya.”
“Bye.” He hung up.
It’s not good-bye. It’s not good-bye. Never say good-bye.
Staring at my bare feet, I thought about how he didn’t ask me what I was up to. I never even got a chance to tell him about the band gigs.
Tati stood there, leaning against the doorjamb of the front door with her arms crossed over her chest. “Where are your pants?”
“That was Matt.”
“I figured. Are you gonna get dressed today? I’ve come to pick you up for lunch. You can tell me all about it then.”
“Yeah.”
“Come on.” She motioned with her head toward the door.
“Okay,” I said. “Sandwiches?”
“Anything’s better than ramen.”
Tati and I met for lunch every Wednesday for the next month. Sometime in early July, she asked if I had talked to Matt, and I told her no.
“How come he hasn’t called?”
“I might have missed him. I don’t know, he’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to coordinate these things. I’m sure he’s fine.”
When I got home that day, one of the summer RAs had taped an envelope to my door with a note that said,Way to go, Matt!I had told her all about Matt’s internship since she was a photography major at Tisch, plus I was always checking in with her to find out if Matt had called.
I opened it up to find an article from a photography magazine. The cover was a photograph of Matt taking a picture of a woman taking a photograph of herself in a mirror. The headline said, “The Beauty Behind the Camera.”
I swallowed hard and tried to fight the nausea as I read all about the young, beautiful Elizabeth Hunt, who was making a huge name for herself atNational Geographic. And then, at the very end, I read three sentences that changed the course of my life forever.
Hunt points out that her partnership with Matthias Shore, a promising young talent who recently emerged from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, has proven to be a fruitful union. Their next assignment includes a six-month expedition off the coast of Australia, exploring the Great Barrier Reef and the great white shark’s breaching behavior while hunting. “Matt and I are thrilled about this opportunity and excited to take our partnership to the next level,” Hunt said.
We were so young, and life was already offering so many twists and turns. But did I have to accept what I had just read without arguing my case?
No way.
I immediately called Aletha in a daze. “Hello, Aletha, it’s Grace.”
“So good to hear from you, dear. How are you? Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I said with little emotion. “I wondered if you had heard from Matt?”
“Oh yes, sweetie, I just talked to him yesterday.”
