At some point, he realized that the drugs weren’t working anymore. He started feeling jumpy all the time. Kids were looking at him funny; he was pretty sure they were talking about him, too. James cursed out one of his teachers. Sera broke up with him.
He stopped taking the pills to try to get Sera back, but she’d started going out with this other guy.
One night, he crawled into her bedroom window. She wasn’t there. James said he was so lonely, he had just wanted to be with her things. He saw a packing knife on her desk, and it suddenly seemed like a really good idea to slit his wrists.
After that, things got hazy.
In the hospital, they said Sera’s mom was the one who had found him. James still felt bad about this. Sera’s mom was a nice lady, he said. Sera, too, for that matter. James saw now that none of it had been her fault.
James was sent to the East Coast, where his mom lived. He was in an institution for about six months, which was not something he liked to talk about. When he got out, his parents said James could go back to his old school in California, but he didn’t see the point. James was eighteen by then, and had been held back a year, and anyone who remembered him at his old school thought he was crazy.
That’s when James met me. That day, he’d only been there to drop off his old school records. He hadn’t been planning or wanting to meet anyone. If he hadn’t stopped for a smoke, he wouldn’t have met me at all. He patted the pocket where he kept his smokes. “Always knew these would be the death of me.” He smiled when he said this.
My phone rang. It was Dad; he said he was staying at Rosa Rivera’s for the night on account of the snow.
“My dad can’t get back tonight,” I said to James.
“I should probably walk then. I don’t want my mother to worry.”
“Call her,” I told him. “Let her know you’re staying with friends.”
“I don’t lie,” he said, shaking his head.
“Are you saying we’re not friends?”
“I’m saying we’re not just friends.”
“Still, you can’t go out in this.”
“My mother worries,” he repeated. It was like that day in Will’s car when James hadn’t wanted a ride even though it was pouring. He had a stubborn, tough, even masochistic streak, and he insisted that he leave then. All I could do was stand at the window and watch as he disappeared into that whitewashed night.
7
OF ALL THE STUPID THINGS TO BE FAILING, I WAS failing photography.
The last school day before Thanksgiving, Mr. Weir held me after class. I knew what he wanted to talk about. I still hadn’t turned in a project proposal, and the semester was more than half over. Most of the classes were structured very loosely, with Mr. Weir showing slides of work by famous photographers like Doisneau or Mapplethorpe and us discussing them. The rest of the time we’d critique each other’s work, though I hadn’t brought in anything to critique all semester. Whenever Mr. Weir asked about my project (about once a week or so), I’d just B.S. something or other. The nature of the class made it easy to get away with doing nothing.
Mr. Weir handed me a slip. “I’m sorry to have to do this right before the holiday, Naomi,” he said. “I’ve got to give this to anyone who is in danger of receiving a D or below. It requires a parent’s signature.”
“But, Mr. Weir, I thought our grade was based on the one big project.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m giving this to you now. You still have time to make it work.”
James was waiting for me outside of Weir’s class.
“Wondering if you need a ride?” he asked.
I had yearbook, of course.
“Do you have to?” James asked. “Everyone’s gone for the holiday already.”
Actually, there was tons of work to do in yearbook, not to mention that Will was pissed at me already. It had started just after my birthday.
“Did you get my mix?” he’d asked.
“Which one?”
“The one for your birthday.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t had time to listen to it yet.”
“Well, that’s rude,” he’d said finally. “I spent a lot of time on that.”
But what I had thought to myself at the time was: How much time could he have possibly spent? The kid gives me a mix like every freaking week.
Anyway, Will had been pretty icy to me since then, but I hadn’t had time to deal with him.
“So,” James was saying, “why don’t I just take you out for coffee before you go to yearbook? I’ll have you back by three-thirty, I swear.”
James was wearing this black wool peacoat, which he looked particularly tall and handsome in. Some girls like suits or tuxedos; I’m a sucker for a guy in a great coat. I knew I couldn’t refuse him. Plus, after my talk with Mr. Weir, I really needed to get out of school.
We drove into town. James had a cup of black coffee and I had a glass of orange juice, and then we took our drinks outside and walked down the main strip of town. Even though the day was gray and moist, it was nice to be outside instead of where I was supposed to be: cooped up in that yearbook office where every part of me felt dried and tired, my hands always covered with these oppressive little paper cuts.
“I don’t want to go back to yearbook,” I said.
“So don’t” was James’s reply.
“I don’t just mean today. I mean ever.”
“So don’t,” he repeated.
“It’s not that easy,” I said. “People are counting on me.”
“Honestly, Naomi, it’s only a stupid high school yearbook. It’s just a bunch of pictures and a cover. They make a million of them every year all around the world. I’ve been to three different high schools, and the yearbooks always look more or less the same. Trust me, the yearbook will get published with or without you. They’ll find someone else to do your job.”
I didn’t reply. I was thinking how if I quit yearbook, I’d have more time for everything else: school, my photography class that I could no longer drop, therapy, and James, of course.
“It’s three-thirty,” James said after about ten minutes.
I told him I wanted to keep walking awhile, which we did. We didn’t say much; above all, James was good at keeping quiet.
James dropped me off at school around five.
Since it was the night before the holiday, I knew most of the kids would be gone early. Except, of course, for Will.
From the beginning, the conversation did not go well. I tried to be nice. I tried to explain to Will about my schoolwork and my photography class. I tried to tell him how he could run the whole show without me, that he already had been anyway. Will wasn’t hearing any of it, and before too long I found myself making some of James’s points, which had made so much sense when I was outside in the daylight.
“It’s just a stupid yearbook.”
“You don’t think that!”
“It’s just a stack of photos in a binder!”
“No, this is all wrong.”
“You said you’d understand if I had to quit!”
“I was being polite!” He was silent for a moment. “Is this because of James?”
I told him no, that I’d been unhappy for some time.
Will wouldn’t look at me. “What is so great about him? Explain it to me.”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Will.”
“I really want to know what is so f’n great about him. Because from my point of view, he looks like the moody guy on a soap opera.”
“The what?”
“You heard me. With all his moping around and his brooding and his cigarettes and his cool haircut. What does he have to be so upset about?”