An hour and a half before school starts the campus is a ghost town—no cars in the parking lot, no buses in the front circle, no people anywhere.
I break into the photo lab.
Ingrid and I used to do this all the time. There’s only one window. It’s along the back of the building where the shrubs are overgrown, and nobody ever goes. I guess the custodian just doesn’t know about it. Once, Ingrid and I unlocked it from the inside, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been locked since.
I pry it open and drop my backpack over, hoist myself up, and climb into the room. I shut the window and, for a minute, I just stand in the complete darkness. Then I feel my way to the darkroom.
Maybe it’s because I hardly slept last night, maybe the darkness is putting me in a dream state, but as I shut the darkroom door behind me, I can see Ingrid clearly. She flips on a safety light and stands in the red glow, takes a roll of film from her bag. In her yellow dress, with bare feet, she is the only thing illuminated, surrounded by blackness. Her back is to me. Each time she turns, I can see her profile. I want to touch her, but I stay on my side of the room. If I stay completely still, this moment might last forever.
Without turning, she says, I shot an amazing roll yesterday.
Of what?
I was just sitting in my room and this little bird landed on a branch by my window.
Just sitting? What were you thinking about?
Oh, I don’t know. Nothing. The little thing stayed there for me, hopped from branch to branch as I took picture after picture.
I found your journal. You meant for me to find it, right?
Then, when he started to fly away he lifted up, and flapped his wings so fast that they were just two blurs on either side of him.
I didn’t know you were scared.
It was like he was waiting for me, like he knew it would make a great picture. I got at least three shots of him hovering in the air like that before he flew away. She finally turns to me. Her clear blue eyes, her crooked smile. She brushes a blond curl away from her face with her wrist, careful not to get the photo chemicals on her cheek. A sharp pain shoots up my chest. I’ve forgotten to breathe. Of course you knew I was scared. There was just nothing you could do.
It hurts to look. I shut my eyes. When I open them, the room is quiet and empty. She is gone again.
I guide myself to the counter, pop open my film canister. The long negative strip tumbles into my open hands. I grope for the reel and slide in the film, fill the plastic canister with developing chemicals.
I barely have time to process this and wait for the negatives to dry. My landscape is due at eight o’clock.
2
All through fourth period the popular girls in the back corner write urgent notes to one another, the teacher sits over our quizzes with a red pen in his hand, a man’s deep voice wavers from the television speakers about the vastness of the universe, and I feel something poisonous in the pit of my stomach. If I could think of any way to make it sound rational, I’d meet Dylan at our lockers like I said I would and explain what I realized last night: it’s a huge responsibility to be a friend, and I just can’t handle it right now.
But when the bell rings, I grab my notebook and stick it in my backpack and try to make it out the door before anyone else. I think about hiding in a bathroom, but I’m too nervous to stay in one place, so I keep going until I reach the back parking lot, headed toward the bus stop. I’ll just ride the bus all the way through one route, till it takes me back here, and by then lunch will be over. Before I make it through the parking lot, though, I spot the hall monitor patrolling the edge of campus, bullhorn in hand. He sees me, lifts the bullhorn to his mouth. I make a sharp left and walk fast toward the baseball field. And that’s when I remember Melanie.
She’s sitting with some other kids on the bleachers, just like she told me. Usually, I wouldn’t even consider approaching a group of kids I hardly know. It takes a certain kind of person to do that. But this is a moment of desperation, and they’re already looking at me through the fence. It would seem strange if I turned around now. I step through a hole in the fence where the chains have been cut; my backpack snares on a wire. I have to slip the strap off my shoulders to get loose.
“Who’s that?” I hear a guy say.
Then, Melanie, “That’s Caitlin.”
“Caitlin Madison?” asks a girl.
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” the guy says.
My face burns. I get my backpack loose and fight the urge to step back through the fence. Instead, I turn around and climb the bleachers.
“Close one,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds different, but that’s not entirely bad. Five skeptical faces turn to me. I keep talking. “Nails almost caught me ditching. I was walking straight toward him.”
They don’t say anything.
I set my backpack down next to a girl with a Metallica shirt that’s so worn it must be a decade old.
“I’m gonna stay here for a few minutes. I really don’t feel like having a chat with him right now.” I say it so confidently that for a second it makes me feel confident, too, like I’m the kind of person who has near brushes with danger every day.
Then I sit down, and no one says anything. The Metallica girl bites a nail. The guy who asked about me earlier braids a chunk of his oily hair. I glance at Melanie—she’s violently digging through her backpack. Two silent boys with glasses resume a card game.
“Shit,” Melanie says. “Caitlin, do you have a cigarette?”