Second Chance (31 page)

D
ylan
is
sitting
cross-legged
on
the
floor with a mess of photos
spread
out
around her
.
She’s wearing a
pink
tank top
,
gray
sweatpants
and bright
blue
, fuzzy
socks
that look like fur
.
I already feel my
mood lightening, just walking into her world.

“What
’s up
?”
she ask
as she turns
down the stereo
.

I
point
at her socks
.
“How many Muppets did they have to kill to make those?” I wonder
.

She gives me one of her killer smiles
and it makes me shrink back. W
hy can’t Kari have this e
ffect on me
?
It would be so much more convenient
.
But if love w
ere
convenient there wouldn’t be millions of songs and movies and book
s
obsessing over it
, or
therapists and doctors consoling
all the
people falling in and out of it
.

I
walk around the edge of the room, taking in the simple, open space
,
and
tell her I was in the neighborhood
.
She scoots over and makes room for me on the rug
.
I stare
at the space next to her
.
What happened to my
brilliant avoidance plan
?
That idea lasted a wh
ole twenty-four hours
.
Amazing
self-
discipline
, Gray
.

I slump down
on the floor
and lean against the edge of
the futon
.
I notice her critiquing my outfit.

“Fancy date?” she asks
.
I ignore her question and pick up one of the pictures
hogging
the
floor space. I
t’s just a shot of a tree
trunk
.

“What are all these f
or?” I ask
,
and she tells me she’s making a scrapbook for her grandma’s birthday
.

“Cat helped
me get a few baby-sitting jobs
so I could afford to print them out.”

I
examine the
black and
white photograph. A
t first I’m not very impressed
,
but as I look closer, it appears Dylan climbed the tree and
took the shot from inside
the branches,
angle
d up to the sky to catch the ov
erhanging
leaves
.
A
ll the knots of t
he bark are
exposed and
textured by sunlight
,
and it looks like old, leather
y
skin, wrinkled with age
.
It gives it this human quality
.
Something about the picture is
tranquil
.
Fantastical
.
I want to walk inside
the shot
and lie
underneath
all
th
e
contrasts
of
light
and dark
.

“It’s taken from
a squirrel’s
point of
view
,” she says.
I ask her what she means
and sh
e tells me it was
a creative
challenge she gav
e herself. F
or a day she tried to
capture images
from a squirrel’s perspective
.
She climbed trees
.
She took picture
s
from the ground
.
She ran
out
in front of moving cars
.
The more I look at her photos the more I see what she means
.
She hands me one and
explains how she crawled underneath
a
dog’s head
to take a
picture of the bott
om of
its
mouth
.
Its droopy jowls take
up most of the shot and a shiny, quizzical eye peer
s
down at the camera lens
.

I look at her and smile
.
She flinches
a little,
like I
jolted her with
an electric shock
.

“What’s wrong?” I ask
.
She’s just staring at me, all wide-eyed
and surprised
.

“That’s the first time you’ve smiled at me since I’ve been back,” she says
.

I wrinkle my eyebrows at this
.
“
That’s not true.
”

“
Believe me, I
would
know
.
I thought I’d get
at least a grin from t
he crack I made
about bull testicles.
”

I smile again and she stares at my mouth like she’s never seen my face look happy before
.

“
Wow,
”
she says
.
She touches my face
.
The motion
is so fast it
takes me by surprise and before I can lean away, she lightly runs her fingers over my cheek, to the edge of my lips.
Something catches in my chest
.
I stare back at her
and my entire body heats up
.
I feel the heat of her fingers
travel
through my skin,
between
my
bones
,
t
ugging
on the tissue around
my
heart
.
 
 

“
Sorry,
”
she says
and drops her hand
.
“
I just missed that
.” 
We both sit there, quiet, the air in the room electrified
.
Something inside of me is shifting again and this time I can’t fight it
.

N
ot good
.
I
suck
in a deep
breath
.
She looks away and
clears her throat. I
t sounds as tight as mine feels
.

She
picks up a few more photos
and starts to explain them to me
.
I try to focus on what she’s saying, not on this feeling in my stomach, this suffocating feeling like if I don’t touch her
I’ll die
.

She hands a picture
to me
that she says
was staged
.
It’s taken from a gravel road with
a car heading straight for her
.
Her camera is aimed
up
at the fende
r and tires and
there are two guys in the front
seat
.
They
have these surprised looks on their faces
,
like they’re about to hit her
.
It’s perfect.

“These are really great,
Dylan.
”
 

“It was a fun way to spend a day,” she says
.
I try and imagine her
wasting a single day
.
I don’t think she
could
.

“Have you ever tried selling these?”

“I’d feel bad charging my
grandma.”

I roll my eyes
.
“No, I mean in a gallery.”