As we were walking back into the hotel for breakfast, Dad whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry. I know what you meant to say was ‘I will.’ As in, in the future. In the distant, distant future.” He winked at me conspiratorially, and I didn’t feel like an orphan anymore.
“Who’s Martha?” I whispered from the bathroom of the hotel room I was sharing with Rosa Rivera’s two daughters, who were already asleep. I didn’t have to say what I was talking about. It was eleven, and I hoped Will would be awake.
“Hold on,” he said, “I’ll look it up.”
I heard him breathing lightly and the rapid clack of his fingers on the keyboard. “She was the mother and daughter of the white person who discovered the island. They had the same name, and they both died,” Will reported. “The natives called it something else, of course.”
“Stupid white people,” I said.
“Good night, Chief.”
“Night, Coach, and thanks,” I said.
There was a pause where neither of us hung up the phone. It might have been five seconds; it might have been five minutes. I couldn’t say for sure.
“How was the wedding?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It all sort of blended together. You have to take a ferry to get here and I practically felt like an immigrant. I was the tired, the poor…” I whispered.
“The huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” he continued.
“Exactly. Rosa was pretty. Dad was so happy. I was presentable. It rained all last night, and the humidity made it so I didn’t have to press my dress.”
“Did you take pictures?”
“No. I thought about it, but it suddenly seemed like too much bother to take my camera out of my purse. There were other people taking pictures anyway.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asked.
“I can’t. My iPod died this morning, and Freddie snores.”
“When will you be back?”
“Around nine.” Will offered to pick me up. I told him that he needed his rest.
“It’s just a drive, not a marathon,” he said.
“I’d like that,” I said, “but Dad left his car at the airport, so I have to drive it home.” Rosa and Dad were leaving from Boston for their honeymoon. They were going to Bali, one of the few places he and Mom hadn’t wandered.
“Drive safely,” he said.
“I will.”
I felt brave in the darkness, lying on the cool tile floor of the hotel bathroom. “You know something stupid? I really missed you this whole weekend, Landsman. I’ve gotten used to seeing you every day.”
He didn’t say anything for a little while.
“I missed you, too,” he said. “I wish I could have come.”
15
WHEN I GOT BACK ON SUNDAY NIGHT, THERE WAS A minor yearbook crisis. The grandmother of the girl who was supposed to photograph graduation died, so she couldn’t be at the ceremony Monday night. I had to go in her place.
I was taking crowd shots when I spotted Raina through my camera viewfinder. She was sitting with James’s grandfather and a man who turned out to be James’s dad. She was fiddling with her camera, and she must have seen me looking at her because at the same time that I took her picture, she took mine. We both lowered our cameras and exchanged a weary sort of smile.
The band started to play the graduation march, a song which I’ve always found seriously depressing. It’s easy to imagine pallbearers carrying coffins to “Pomp and Circumstance,” and even more so when it’s performed by Tom Purdue’s out-of-tune high school band. They should play something more cheerful. Something like “Higher Ground” by Stevie Wonder. Or if it was serious, maybe “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve. Will would probably have a million better suggestions than any of mine.
I’d photographed two previous graduations, and they had all looked pretty much the same: same navy blue gowns, same hats, same auditorium. We practically could have used last year’s pictures without anyone having been the wiser. It was a cheat anyway—the ones I was taking wouldn’t get published until the next year’s Phoenix.
After the ceremony, I heard Raina call my name. “Naomi, come pose for a picture!”
I turned around and there was James, of course. He looked tall in his cap and gown. I thought about waving and not going over, but it seemed impolite.
“James, put your arm around Naomi. Now smile, you two. It’s a great day!”
Something happened with the camera, which was an old-fashioned film one with an enormous flash. James’s dad said he wasn’t sure if the picture had taken, would we mind posing again? We smiled a second time, and that time I’m pretty sure the picture took. James’s dad said he would send me a copy, but no one ever did.
James looked at the yearbook camera, which was still hanging around my neck. He ran his finger across the lens cap and asked me if it was “the same camera.” I nodded. James picked it up in his hand and tossed it shallowly in the air. “Hardy little bastard,” he commented just before he caught it. It was true. That camera had withstood a lot. Gravity. A trip down a flight of stairs. It had lasted a whole school year. Longer than James’s and my entire relationship, not to put too fine a point on it.
I raised the camera and took James’s picture.
We shook hands. I congratulated him again.
He was just one of one hundred fifty seniors whose pictures needed taking, and I had to get back to work.
On the walk home I called Will. “Songs for a High School Graduation,” I said. “You know, instead of ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ Discuss.”
“‘My Back Pages’ by Bob Dylan,” he said.
“‘Friends Forever,’ Vitamin C,” I suggested.
“Maybe a little cliché. ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by the Verve. You know, they never made a dime off that song, ’cause of a dispute involving the sampling of the strings.”
“I already thought of that one. That and ‘Higher Ground’ were the first two on my list.”
“Red Hot Chili Peppers or Stevie Wonder?”
“The latter, but you could really use either, right?”
“‘Song I Wrote Myself in the Future.’ John Wesley Harding.”
“You used that one on my second or third mix tape,” I reminded him. “I thought you didn’t like to repeat.”
“I don’t,” he conceded. “But the last time I used it, it wasn’t a commentary on the educational system, so it’s different. Also, ‘Ghost World’ by Aimee Mann.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“You’d like it. I ought to play it for you sometime.”
It went on like this for the whole walk home. It was dark out by now, and it was as if Will and I were alone in the universe.
“‘At Last.’ Etta James.”
“Clever.”
“‘Teenage Spaceship’ by Smog.”
“Or ‘Teenage Wasteland.’”
“It’s actually called ‘Baba O’Riley’ after composer Terry Riley.”
“I always forget that. But how about ‘Race for the Prize,’ the Flaming Lips?”
And then, up the path to my house.
“…Bob Marley, is it? There’re covers, too. Or is his the cover?”
Down the hallway.
“The tempo’s probably a bit erratic for marching, Naomi…”
I stopped in the kitchen to get myself a glass of water.
“…haven’t been enough fast ones. You don’t want to get bogged down in slow songs. Maybe Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ or ‘Road to Joy’ by Bright Eyes?”
In my room.