My mom passed me the cranberries and said, What about Erika, did she buy anything? The jellied cranberry sauce from the can held its shape like a cylinder of Play-Doh. I remembered feeding scoops of Play-Doh into the plastic machine, getting a hold on the plastic lever and giving it all my strength until something gave and wormy tubes of gray-green spaghetti pushed out the holes. What did my mom care what Erika bought or didn’t buy? I said, I think she bought a bracelet.
Pledge came over and put her head in my lap. I felt her skull through her thin, soft fur. When the guy at Rich’s had caught me scoping Poolside and said I looked like a swimmer I should have said So what or I know or Tell me what you mean. When I’d felt the guy’s eyes crawling over my shoulders, I should have told him that he had it wrong. My brother was the swimmer in our family.
THE THING ABOUT the photo in the back of The Elephant Man book, which I hadn’t checked out of the library in years, was that you needed the photo to complete the story. It wasn’t okay to be willing to read about the Elephant Man and not look at him, though for me to look at the photo and think all the same messed-up thoughts people had thought when they looked at him in person, when he was alive, was wrong, too, maybe more wrong. Every time I looked at the photo of the Elephant Man, or thought about what he looked like in the photo, I wanted to not feel what I was feeling: nauseated, as if my head were a balloon, as if his skin, if I touched it, would feel like papier-mâché. If he offered his hand I would instantly drop it. The skater girl thing was entirely different: she was choosing to look the way she did, and the way she looked didn’t seem to be causing her any problems. Anyone who didn’t know her and who saw her with those boys in that skating getup would have no reason to think she wasn’t one of them. What was getting me was the moment when she went from being a boy fumbling skate tricks to a girl making out on a bench. It wasn’t a moment but a gap between moments, a face with no features. My head felt like a balloon.
I SAT IN the back of the yearbook room cutting out captions for the mock-up. It was a mindless task, and it was fine with me. I didn’t care about Yearbook. I didn’t aspire to take photos or be editor the way Erika did, and I was only there because she’d begged me to join with her. I took a piece of paper from the stack in front of me, lifted my scissors, and sliced the caption cleanly.
Erika said, Shit. She showed me the jagged cut she’d just made. She’d sliced the tip off an A again. She said, Can you fix it? She said, I’m going to tell them they need to give us something better to do. Don’t you think I should?
I said, I don’t mind doing captions.
Erika said, Those girls are so full of themselves. They should stick to soccer. She pointed her scissors at the editors, who were standing at Ms. C.’s desk. For Erika there was something particular to hate about Melanie and Alexis, about soccer girls in general, how they smiled and swung their blonde ponytails but bore down vicious on the field. She said they had fangs that came out when they needed them.
Melanie asked for a volunteer to go make copies. Erika volunteered. She always volunteered and did whatever they asked her to do and complained about it later to me. I didn’t mind. If she was out of the room I wouldn’t have to sit there waiting for her to bring up something about the skater girl — to say wasn’t that funny, or weird, and expect me to say something in response. I picked up the sheet of paper, lifted my scissors, and cut close but not too close to the typed letters.
Alexis said, Julie, right? She was over at my table. She said, Want some pretzels? She sat on the edge of the table and offered the bag to me. She was wearing a soccer sweatshirt that was perfectly oversized. It smelled like fabric softener. I didn’t know if I was supposed to put down my scissors or keep working. She said, You’re really good at that. She was making the rounds, or she had just come over to talk to me. She said, We were wondering who the one was who was cutting them so neatly. I guess it was you.
I said, Thank you.
She said, We should give you something better to do at some point.
I said, I don’t mind. Alexis’s hair was really more dirty blonde than blonde.
Alexis said, You’re modest. She took her hair out of its ponytail and shook it out a bit. Dirty blonde didn’t seem right either. She moved her hair from behind her left shoulder to the front of her left shoulder. She said, What would you like to do, take photos?
I put down my scissors. I had a Polaroid I pulled out every once in a while to take shots of nothing speciaclass="underline" Erika on my birthday, Pledge wet with a ball in her mouth, Pledge in the sun. Alexis was leaning on my table as if she had all the time in the world, as if she had nothing else to do. She had a million other things to do. I said, I’m not really a photographer.
Alexis said, Too bad. Are you sure? Her fabric softener smelled clean, like a field.
I said, I really don’t mind doing captions for now. If Alexis had offered to teach me how to take photos, I would have said yes, because she seemed as if she’d be a good teacher.
Alexis smiled at me. I didn’t see any fangs, or nubs of fangs. She said, Okay, let me know if you change your mind. I think you’d make a great photographer.
Erika came back with the copies. She delivered them and sat back down at the table. She picked up a sheet to cut and said, Ugh, I can’t believe we’re still doing these. She said, Where did you get those? I’m starving.
Erika had taken Photo and she had a real camera. She knew how to use the darkroom. She’d offered before to teach me, and I could ask her now but no part of me wanted to. It wouldn’t be fair, since she was the one who wanted to take photos and Alexis had only asked me. I held out some pretzels to Erika. I said, These? I brought them from home.
RICH’S SMELLED LIKE a million cigars. I picked up Swimmers’ World and started at the end, skimming backward through the pages — no real reason, maybe as proof that I wasn’t reading. Or as if I’d be more likely to find something if I snuck up on it. The photos I flashed past were blue and more blue: pool water, mostly, and the outdoor shots showed only blue skies. Swimmers in locker rooms dripped on blue tile. Near the front of Swimmers’ World was a section that paired photos of swimmers in and out of the pool. Here was Nelson Diebel tearing water apart to win the 100 breaststroke, and here he was eating a plate of spaghetti. Here was Anita Nall, her head lifted for a breath, and here she was cuddling puppies on a blue couch. The bells on the door jingled and an old man came in. The guy from the other day wasn’t anywhere.
There was one shot in the spread of a guy swimming freestyle. White water foamed around his face and it was impossible to tell the swimmer’s height or body type. Something was familiar in the crook of his arm, or how the top of his thigh lowered into a kick. If I were to pick up a camera and take a photo, this was the kind of photo I would take. It showed the swimmer doing what he was best at and made it look easy. It made me feel as if I could know the person in the photo.
The swimmer in the corresponding out-of-the-pool photo was patting a horse on its neck. He didn’t look like anyone. On my way out Rich looked up and said, Have a good night, sweetheart. It was dark and rainy at five o’clock. People wore raincoats if they had raincoats, soaked hoodies if they didn’t. I put up the hood of my raincoat. It was a thing people said and it was true, only tourists carried umbrellas. Thin nails of rain hit my hood. Something in me felt off, and I checked my backpack to make sure the zippers were closed. I touched my wallet in my front pocket. Maybe I was hungry. The pizza place next door put out a warm, salty smell. Skater kids with backpacks leaned against the counter and ate slices. There was a guy in a beanie who went to my school. He tossed down the crust of one slice and picked up another. It was as if he could stand there all evening eating pizza and not need to worry about getting home for dinner, or about being too full for dinner when he got there.