Flash Burnout (12 page)

My dad studies his motor thingie and applies his wrench to it again. This seems to help him focus. "Anyway," he says, "I know you'll do the right thing. Just wanted to be clear on that. How
ever.
When you do decide the time is right, I want you to be prepared. I'll show you where we keep the box of condoms in a minute. I had this talk with your brother a couple of years ago."

Where we keep the box of condoms?
My head almost spins off my body. So does Garrett just shuffle in and grab a condom whenever he needs one, and my parents can tell when some are missing?

"In fact," says my dad, forging ahead, "in a perfect world, your girlfriend would be on some form of birth control, too. So you're protected from pregnancy
and
disease. Both of you."

"Dad." I so seriously cannot take any more of this. "Thanks. Really. But you don't have to worry. Shannon and I are not, um, ready."

A look of pure relief washes over his face. "Good! I'm glad to hear it. You're both very young. But even if it's not relevant now, it's important to get this stuff out in the open. And you can always talk to your mom and me. You know that, right?"

I nod. I look down at the screwdriver in my hand. I set it down on the workbench. "Can I go now?"

"Sure." He claps a hand on my shoulder, then pulls me close in a hug. "You're a good guy, Blake. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," I say into his shoulder. We break apart, and I head for the door to the house.

"Hey," he calls.

No no no no no.
"Yeah?"

My dad opens a cabinet above his workbench. "The condoms are in here, bud."

"'Kay, bye."

In fact..."

WHAT?!

"Take one to go, why don'tcha?" He takes one out of the box and tosses it to me.

Fear of what other people think should never dictate whether or not you get
your shot. So what if someone sees you crawling on your belly or hanging from
a tree? Do you think Margaret Bourke-White cared what other people thought
when she became the first woman allowed to fly on a combat mission?
—Spike McLernon's Laws of Photography

Mr. Malloy is in a bad mood. Not sure why. Maybe his beret is too tight.

"Rudimentary," says Mr. Malloy, examining my Hurtle photos.

Rudi-
wha
—? Does that mean I'm rude? And ... mentary?

He notes my blank expression and says, "Gritty as usual, Blake. I get that. You've mastered stark and startling. These subjects are easy to shoot. They're interesting in themselves. You don't have to work at setting up the shot or layering the elements. I'd like to see you take bigger risks with your work."

If Mr. Malloy doesn't think photographing some of these thugs was risky, he's out of his shiny head.

I just nod and slide my photos back inside my portfolio. If I get another C in photo, it's really going to bust up my GPA. Why didn't I take drama or some shit like that?

Mr. M. reaches for Marissa's homework, and I tense. He's not going to bitch her out, too, is he? Because I might come unglued
if he gets up in her face. This girl has enough trouble. A dead cat, a dad in jail for God knows what, and a meth-head mom. The last thing she needs is some asshat ripping on her work.

"Pretty," he says, examining her flower photos. He smiles. "As usual." He pauses over the shots of the ceramic angel in the nest. "Interesting composition," he adds.

Marissa shrugs happily. "It was kind of a weird idea," she says.

"I like it." He hands her back her photos. "Pretty-Gritty. What am I going to do with you two?"

After Mr. Malloy moves on to offend some other people, Marissa leans closer to me.

"My mom's home," she says quietly.

"She is? That's awesome. How's she doing?"

"Good, good." Marissa nods, but her eyes slide away from mine.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She fiddles with her notebook, extracting homework. "Well."

"Well what?"

"She's still, um, kind of down. It's a long process."

"What is?"

"Getting straight."

"But she was gone a month."

"I know. But getting straight takes longer than a month. Especially from meth. It's a whole life change. You can go to rehab and get clean, but you can't stay there forever. You have to come out and live your life. That's when the
real
hard part begins."

I can't help thinking to myself,
But she's alive. Dead is even harder.

"When do you want to come over?"

"What?"

"When do you want to come over and take some photos of my mom? Remember?" Marissa pins me with her stare. "You promised you would take some pictures of my mom when she got out of rehab."

I hesitate.

"Well, it wasn't a promise," she says hastily. "I asked, and you said okay. But I'd really appreciate it."

Sure," I say. "When's a good time?"

How about tomorrow?"

Tomorrow?
I was thinking she would say this weekend or something. Hmm. Shannon will be at soccer practice. It could work. I wonder if I
have
to tell her I'm going to Marissa's.

***

Marissa's mom still looks sad, if you ask me.

She may be clean and sober, but she's not very happy.

And truthfully? She reminds me of twigs and dried leaves ... like a strong breeze could blow her away.

Marissa bounces around her mom, saying, "Come on, Mom—it'll be fun."

"I don't want my picture taken." Marissa's mom is on the
couch, staring at the TV. She's surrounded by empty candy wrappers.

"Why not?" A whine enters Marissa's voice, and she grasps her mom's arm with both hands, giving it a slight tug.

"Well, my teeth, for one thing," says Marissa's mom. She bows her head and—oh, here we go—starts to cry.

Marissa shoots me a look, like,
I know this sucks, just bear with me.

I shoot her back a look that says,
Can I please go now?

"Mom," she says gently. "Come on. You don't have to smile with your teeth showing. But I want a new picture of you to go with your new life."

Marissa's mom heaves a sigh that comes up from the bottom of her scraped-clean soul. "I don't see why you had to drag your friend into this." But she stands up. "And I don't even have any makeup on. Why don't we do this another time?" She's almost pleading.

Marissa doesn't bend. "No. You know we'll never do it another time. And it's important to me. Okay? Can't you just do this for me?"

Marissa's mom turns to me, but her head remains bowed. "Where do you want me to stand?"

I unlock my lips to say, "Um, how about—"

"Let's go outside," says Marissa. Keeping hold of her mom's arm, she heads for the door.

I'm reminded of a mother dragging a stubborn little kid along, but this time it's all backwards. The kid is dragging the mother. I
follow them outside.
Let's
do
this,
I think.
The quicker I get the shot, the quicker I'm out of here.

"Over there," I say with some authority, pointing to a big tree trunk. "I like that texture of the bark. It will make a nice contrast with your skin."

The truth is, I don't give a flying monkey's ass about texture and contrast. I just want this over.

Marissa's mom steps off the grass and goes to stand next to the tree. It's a big evergreen. A fir or something.

"Isn't it too dark under here?" she asks.

"No," I say sharply. "I'm going to use some fill lighting, anyway."

"What's that?" she asks.

"Uh, it just means I'm going to turn on the flash to light up your face so the tree doesn't add shadows."

I shoot a few photos of Marissa's mom. She doesn't smile until Marissa prods her, but that's almost worse. She stretches her pinched lips into a parody of a smile. The most colorful part about her is the purple streak in her hair, but even that is faded and washed out. All of her tattoos are covered up.

I review my shots on the tiny screen. Even with the flash, Marissa's mom has shadows under her eyes. Whatever. "Looks good," I say. "Thanks. I'll e-mail these to you."

"How about some over by the birdbath?" asks Marissa.

I don't even answer. I just walk in the direction of the birdbath and wait. Marissa positions her mother next to the gray birdbath
like some life-size garden sculpture, and I snap a few more shots. "Okay!" I say. "Great. Thanks. I've got to get going. Mariss, see you tomorrow at school." I smile in the general direction of Marissa's mom and turn to leave.

"Blake," calls Marissa.

I keep walking. "Yeah?"

"Thank you."

I pause and glance back at her. She looks so grateful that I can't stay mad. "No problem, dude," I say.

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
—Richard Avedon, American photographer (1923–2004)

Of course Shannon found out.

Because if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Like the song says.

We had one whole day of peace before my trip to Marissa's house came back to haunt me.

Why didn't I just tell Shannon about it? A smarter man would have.

We were all cozied up in the soccer beanbag at Ottomans. No soccer practice or sick grandmas for Shannon. No bitchy tricksters or troubled buddies for me. Just a squeezable honey with her hair tickling my arms and her eyes magnetized to mine. Isn't love like a drug? I know: a song says that, too.
Somebody
has already said everything.

Shannon has my camera and is taking photos of me. "You be the subject, Blake. I will immortalize you."

I strike some goofy poses, and she snaps away, giggling. I get out of the beanbag and do a couple of big pratfalls.

She laughs so hard that other people can't help looking at us and smiling. I feel like I've scored a hundred points with Shannon's beautiful belly laugh.

"Here, I'll show you how to do a mini-movie kind of thing," I say. "I'll do a bunch of poses where I move, like, an inch at a time, and you shoot the photos, then we'll review them really fast and it'll look like stop-time animation. That's how they do clay-mation, like
Wallace and Gromit.
"

We screw around with that for a few minutes, laughing at the movie of me pretending to trip and fall.

"Hey!" she says. "Let's get someone to take our picture." She climbs out of the beanbag and asks a girl nearby to take a picture of us. The girl nods and waits for us to snuggle back into the bean-bag. She takes a couple of photos and hands the camera back to Shannon. We peer into the review screen; we look shockingly cute.

I turn the camera on her. "Do Mr. Burns for me."

She goes shy. "What?"

"Your Mr. Burns impersonation. Come on. I'll take some shots. In fact," I say, flipping the button to
movie
, "I'll even make a movie of it!"

"Nooo."

"Why not?"

She shakes her head. "You have to earn Mr. Burns."

"What?!"

She's laughing now. "I don't do Mr. Burns for just anyone."

Shannon!"

"Nope." She's really getting into this now. "Mr. Burns is reserved for my most trusted inner circle."

"
I'm
not in your inner circle?"

She's laughing so hard she can hardly speak. "I'm reviewing your application."

I tickle-attack her. "I'll review
your
application!"

While we're engaged in beanbag battle, a few of our friends breeze in—Riley and Caitlin and Dez and Bald Jake.

I stroke Shannon's arm. She may not be curvaceous and bodacious like Dez, but I wouldn't change her. Guys are constantly ogling Dez. I would hate it if guys were doing that to my girl.

Riley pretends to climb into the beanbag with us. "Move over, Shannon," he complains. "You're hogging the sweet spot."

She giggles and pushes him halfheartedly. He does a big pratfall, just like me! I taught him that.

It warms the cockles of my socks to see my best friend and my girlfriend joking around. Shannon has always felt a little shy around Riley, so it's cool to see them starting to become friends.

I'm floating along in blissful ignorance when it happens.

"Did you get some good photos at Marissa's yesterday?" asks Caitlin.

Shannon stiffens.

I blink. "Yeah," I say.

"Her grandma is really nice," Caitlin adds.

Houston,
I think.
Oh shit.

Houston maintains radio silence.

I don't think Caitlin has any idea that she's ruining my life. She probably thinks Marissa and I were innocently working on a photo assignment together; I doubt she even knows about Marissa's tweaker mom.

"Yes. She is. Mary," I say, stumbling along. "Her name is Mary. She
is
nice."

A rigid smile is fixed on Shannon's face, and her body has gone wooden.

Everyone hangs for a while, eating and drinking and goofing. Shannon does her best to act normal, but her body is no longer curved against me. She has gone stiff and spiky.

Finally it's time to make our way home. I struggle out of the beanbag and hold out my hand to her. She takes it without smiling.

We walk out to the bus stop. Not talking.

Finally I say, "You're mad, aren't you?"

No," she says.

But she doesn't look at me, and even though I may not work at the Genius Bar, I can tell she
is
mad.

We walk in silence for a minute.

After what feels like a year, I ask, "Are you sure?"

I'm not mad." She pauses. "I'm wondering."

Wondering what?"

More walking in silence.

Finally she says, "Wondering whether or not I can trust you."

Ow! I get an image of the Mr. Burns Circle, with me standing outside of it. "You
can
trust me. I've told you a hundred times that Marissa is just a
friend.
"

"I know. But I can't help wondering."

I clutch my head.
Houston, please translate ... Stat!

Shannon watches me for a moment, then puts her hand on my arm. "It's just, I don't understand why you wouldn't tell me you were going over to another girl's house. Don't you see that it looks kind of sneaky?"