Margo buttoned her coat. “I’m not worried. I’m asking.”
She pushed through the kitchen door and walked home. The hill was the hill—uphill, the way it had been for years, the ocean getting quieter behind her with every block. Her own knees working but wanting her to know they were working, a conversation she’d gotten used to ignoring. Didn’t seem like the conversation Bernie was having with his.
The February afternoon was cool and gray. She thought about the cerulean paint she’d squeezed onto her palette that morning, which by now would have formed a skin and would have to be scraped off and thrown away. She thought about walking back down the hill tomorrow on her day off and checking whether Bernie was at the counter or the booth and decided she’d wait until tomorrow to decide.
CHAPTER THREE
Stella moved through the darkroom at school by muscle memory—safelight on, trays in order, the red glow and the vinegar-sharp smell of developer rising from the first tray. She’d shot a roll Saturday afternoon during the lunch rush. Eleven frames. Bernie four times, Margo twice, Anna once, Joey twice, the morning light through the front windows, and an unfinished plate of fries someone had abandoned mid-bite, which she’d taken because abandoned food was underrated as a subject.
The first Bernie print came up slowly in the developer. Tablet, coffee, his gaze aimed off-frame to the left. She lifted it with the tongs, let it drip, and clipped it to the line.
His mouth was softer than usual, slightly open, the lines at the corners doing something she hadn’t seen before.
She’d photographed this man a hundred times. She hadn’t photographed him doing that.
She moved on. Second print. Margo at the register, mid-transaction, counting change into a customer’s hand.
Stella clipped the Margo print to the line next to the Bernie print and stood back. Two faces under the red light, caught in the same afternoon. Like any other day at the Shack.
She looked at them for a while while they were drying. Then she took them down, slid them into a manila folder with the rest of the roll, and kept working.
“Walsh.”
Mr. Reeves was in the doorway, one arm across the frame, his mug in the other hand. The mug said I TEACH ART. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER? and the letters had been fading since September. By June it would just say I TEACH.
“Mr. Reeves.”
“You developed the Saturday roll?”
“Most of it.” She nodded toward the line, where three prints were still hanging—Joey mid-gesture at the pass-through, the coffee pot catching light, the abandoned fries.
He came in and looked at them without comment, the way Mr. Reeves looked at student work—long enough that you started wanting to explain yourself and then long enough that you realized he didn’t want you to. He glanced at the folder in her hand.
“Anything good in there?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe is usually yes, with you.” He finished his coffee and set the mug on the counter by the door. “Keep shooting whatever you’re shooting. Don’t try to name it yet.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know. I’m telling you anyway.” On his way out he turned back. “And don’t forget to turn the safelight off when you leave. Someone left it on all day yesterday and Mrs. Dorsey had an opinion about it. A long opinion. With follow-up questions.”
Stella finished the rest of the roll, rinsed the trays, and cleaned up. She turned the safelight off on her way out and pushed through the door into the hallway.
The light hit her like a personal attack.
It always did after the darkroom—the sun through the hallway windows turned the world into a white blast, and she had to stop at the door and blink until things started having edges again. She was doing that, one hand on the wall, the other shielding her face, when she walked directly into someone.
“Oh—sorry, sorry?—”
“Stella?”
Lindsey. Standing in the middle of the walkway with a folder in one hand and a granola bar in the other, clearly in the middle of going somewhere and eating something at the same time, which was Lindsey’s default setting. Her lanyard was on crooked. WORLD’S OKAYEST GUIDANCE COUNSELOR.
“Hi. Sorry. My eyes haven’t adjusted yet.”
“Don’t apologize.” Lindsey tilted her head and smiled. “We haven’t gotten to really talk since you’ve been back. How was Sydney?”
