Candid (True Images Series) (6 page)

I went back over to look for myself, and he stepped out of the way. He moved about three feet away though and all heads turned towards him.
“For heaven’s sake, Lee, stand next to me so they’ll all look where they’re supposed to.”

“No problem.”

He obeyed me literally, standing so close that if I moved at all, I bumped into him. I have to admit I didn’t mind too much.

 “Ok, everyone, listen up,” I called. “Courtney, put your chin down a little. That’s it. Elise, turn your head more to the left. I’m sorry, blond girl on the bottom row, I don’t know your name, but can you sit up a little straighter? Thanks. Ok, now, everyone smile.
On the count of three.
One.
Two.
Three.” I took the picture and immediately called. “Don’t move! I’m going to take two more. Marta, your eyes were shut in that one. Try and keep them open this time.”

I ended up taking three more pictures of just the girls, then dragged a protesting Mrs. Jenkins into the pose and took two more. By the time we were done, everyone was relieved to relax and get out of the bright sun.

Lee stood waiting as I packed up my camera, and several of the girls stopped to talk to him as they passed by. He smiled and listened in his easy going way, of course, and the girls probably would have stayed there all day if Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t told them to get a move on so they’d have time to change before the period was over.

We were the last ones to leave the field, so Lee and I paused to put the padlock back on the gate before walking slowly back to class. After standing out in the heat for so long, I longed to find a water fountain somewhere.

Lee turned my attention away from my parched throat, however, when he said, “You’re really good at that.”

“Huh? Oh, you mean posing pictures? It’s not that hard when you’ve done it dozens of times. I have to say, it’s easier when the girls aren’t so distracted. Do you ever get tired of so much female attention?”

“Not if it’s from the right girl,” he answered.

Everything about him, his voice, his eyes, his expression, seemed to be trying to say more. I stared up at him, knowing instinctively what he meant, but the logical part of my brain refused to accept it. It would lead to nothing but heartache for me. And what if I was reading too much into things, like Marisol said?

When I didn’t say anything, though I knew he was waiting for me to, he continued, “I’ve had to get used to it though. Girls just can’t seem to get enough of me.”

It was true, but I knew he was joking. “You’re pretty full of yourself, you know that?” I took a step sideways and bumped him with my shoulder. He didn’t move an inch, but I stumbled a little when he returned the favor.

“And you are way too modest,” he replied. “Maybe we’ll rub off on each other if we spend enough time together.”

“Maybe,” I said, purposely keeping my answer vague. As we walked back to class, we continued to talk, though I couldn’t have said what about later. My mind seemed more focused on exploring what he meant by spending time together. It could mean nothing or everything.

What did I want him to mean?

Chapter 4

The number of followers on my blog tripled by the following week.
Word went around that there were more pictures of Tyson like the one on my poster, and soon all the girls in school were logging on to see them. By the following Wednesday, Tyson had a group of girls waiting for him at his locker every morning and they stuck to him the rest of the day. Every day he seemed to be more popular. I was super excited about this, but he wasn’t as enthusiastic.

“Thanks a lot,” he said to me as we passed in the hall one day.

Apparently, I had underestimated how annoying lovesick girls could be. It hadn’t taken him long to get tired of it. He’d enjoy his new popularity more when it calmed down a little though. In the meantime, I would take some of the focus off of him with a new picture.

I decided that since I’d had so much success with Tyson, I would do the same thing for Katie Edwards. So far though, I hadn’t had a good opportunity to take her picture. The last football game had been an away game, so I hadn’t gone. Luckily Mr. Greeley was friends with the journalism teacher from the school we had played. She’d agreed to get a few pictures for him, but that hadn’t helped me any. It had been almost two weeks since my last post, and my blog was losing momentum.

But it was Friday again, and tonight’s game was at home. Surely I could get something there, even if the nights were getting dark sooner. It would be best if I could take a picture of Katie in better lighting though. She’d be wearing her uniform at the pep-rally later, but I doubted I’d get the kind of picture I wanted there.

I was amazed at how quickly the days were passing. Usually the school week was slow torture as I bounced between stressing out and yawning till my jaw cracked, but spending two hours every day around Lee made the time fly.

 I still hadn’t gotten used to how good looking he was, but that wasn’t the only thing that attracted me. An aura of energy surged around him wherever he went, and I’d never known anyone so awake and ready to live life. It wasn’t long before he seemed to be friends with everyone at school – and I mean everyone. Whether you were popular or the butt of jokes didn’t seem to make any difference to him. Yet, with all his friends, he still had a way of looking at me that made me feel I had his undivided attention.

Finally, I gave up trying not to like him. I’d never stood much chance with that anyway considering how I felt around him – vivid and bright, like someone had finally turned the flash on in my life.

Having surrendered to the inevitable, I joined the masses of girls crushing on him, and hoped, as they all did, that maybe he felt something special for me.

I was determined not to hang all over him though, or act pathetic like some girls did. We’d probably never be anything more than friends, so I treated him like one. I teased him about all the girls who liked him, laughed at his mistakes in yearbook, and gave him a hard time over his old fashioned manners. I actually adored the way he held doors for people and spoke to teachers with respectful courtesy, but I decided to torture him over it to hide the fluttery feeling it gave me.

Yesterday in yearbook, Lee had actually pulled out a chair for me. Pretending to look scared to death, I’d said, “Oh
my gosh
! I know what you are.”

“What are you talking about?” He’d looked as confused as I’d meant him to be.

In a low whisper, I’d told him, “You’re a really old vampire – just like in all those books. There’s no other explanation. Are you going to suck my blood?”

Lee had looked at me like he didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. “I hadn’t planned on it. Where did that come from?”

“Well, you’re, like, a total gentleman. You have to be from some other time or something,” I’d pointed out in dramatic accents.

“You equate being a gentleman with being a vampire?”

“Only good vampires of course.
What other explanation is there for a guy who has manners now days?”

He’d shrugged and looked embarrassed. “If you knew my parents, you wouldn’t be surprised.”

Hoping to fix the sudden awkwardness in what I’d hoped would be a flirtatious conversation, I’d said, “Oh wait, you have a zit. Whew, that’s a relief. I think it’s impossible for a vampire to have a zit.”

As soon as I said it, I’d wanted to take it back. I mean, why in the world had I pointed out his zit? It was so small I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t been staring at him as we sat close together working on a project in journalism earlier. I’d felt awful as a deeper shade of embarrassment swept over his features and he touched the red bump on the side of his nose.

“I think this humidity is making me breakout. I’m sweating a lot more than I did Arizona.”

“It’s probably just that it doesn’t dry off. I’ve had to deal with it my whole life. Look, I doubt anyone’s even noticed it. Stop messing with it.”

“It feels like it’s the size of mountain now that I know you’re looking at it.”

“I’m not. I promise. Besides, it’s kind of nice to know you’re human like the rest of us.”

“Well, at least you won’t accuse me of being a vampire again.”

“Don’t count on it.”

We’d been interrupted then, which was probably a good thing. How many girls accused a crush-worthy guy of being a vampire and pointed out that he had a zit in the same conversation?

Lee had gone to work on his layout for one of the yearbook’s football pages as Mr. Greeley came over to talk to me. He’d asked me if I would mind spending my lunch hour the next day taking some pictures for the student life section of the yearbook.

So, at least I was official today. Since that first time I’d used my camera to spy on Lee during lunch last Thursday, I’d kept my camera with me every lunch hour. I’d gotten some good photos, but I hadn’t given them to Mr. Greeley yet. An embarrassing number of them were close ups of Lee. Those would stay secret on my external hard drive at home. Today, I needed to concentrate on getting some pictures of other students.

I was glad I had my own camera to use because I preferred it to any of the school’s cameras. Not only was it a better camera, but I was perfectly familiar with its functions and capabilities. Besides, it gave me access to take pictures of almost anyone I wanted.

Most kids had cameras on their phones, but when I came around with my big DSLR, they knew the pictures could end up published somewhere. I usually got a lot of people calling to me to take their picture. From some though, I got a completely different reaction.

Most of the students who didn’t eat in the cafeteria hung out on the lawn in front of it. There were shade trees, benches, and a few picnic tables. Several of the schools cliques had their turf long claimed, but there were a few places where the unassociated could hang out. One of these was the bench under the oak tree where I often ate lunch. Usually, some of the yearbook staff hung out with me, but since I hadn’t claimed it today, the bench had been taken over by a group I tried to avoid.

I’d had a run in with them once when I’d taken a picture of them. I think they were doing something wrong, and probably illegal, because they’d threatened me with just about every form of violence you could imagine if I didn’t delete the picture. Eager not to get my earrings ripped out, I’d quickly complied.

So, I skipped them today, as I always did now, and made my way over to where most of the nerds hung out. I have to admit that I liked this group best of all of them. They were the most uncritical of all the cliques at school. Some of them were straight ‘A’ students, some were gamers, some were tech junkies. As I took a few pictures of them, they welcomed me like I was one of them. Maybe I was, and it didn’t bother me.

My friend Parker Higgins was one of them. He was the unofficial audio-visual guy at school. Whenever the teachers had a problem with their computers or Smart Boards, he was the one they wanted because he could usually fix it. This caused some problems for him with the school’s actual AV guy who thought Parker was trying to show him up, but it wasn’t true. Parker just loved all things electronic or digital, and he was good at it.

“Hey Sienna,” he said, coming to stand next to me while I took pictures. “Do you want to come eat lunch with me? I’ve got an extra snack cake.”

I laughed at him. He had a thing for processed junk. “No thanks. I’m supposed to be taking pictures and I haven’t covered everyone yet.”

He followed the direction of my eyes as I glanced over to where the pretty people were. “Are you really going over there? I mean, don’t they annoy the heck out of you?”

“Yes, but if I don’t get some photos of them, I’ll hear about it later.”

Sounding a little awkward, Parker asked, “So, what are you doing tonight? Do you want to come over and help me with my latest video montage? You’ve always got some great ideas.”

“Sorry, I can’t tonight. I have to take pictures at the game.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Well, I’ll be up late if you want to come over afterward. If you want, we could, um, go to a movie or something.”

Was he asking me out? “Parker, that would be great, but you know how my mom is.”

He put his hands up in a defensive gesture. “It wouldn’t be a date or anything. But anyway, wouldn’t your mom trust me? I mean, she likes me doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does. She just doesn’t trust your hormones – or rather, any guy’s hormones. It’s the one rule she has that I absolutely couldn’t get away with breaking – no dates until after graduation.

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe, but I don’t mind so much. I can still hang out. I just can’t date anyone. Anyway, what’s the point? Once we graduate, we’ll all go our separate ways, and I don’t need any relationship drama getting in the way of my future.”

“Does that count for Lee Franklin too?”

Whoa! Where did that come from? “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, walking away.

Was I really that obvious? Then I remembered that Parker had come into the journalism class the other day to help Mr. Greeley with something. What had I been doing? Flirting with Lee? Staring at him like the sun rose and set in his eyes?

With my thoughts focused on Lee again, I couldn’t help looking for him as I walked towards the popular kids. He wasn’t around though. I would have found him if he was. He sort of stuck out to me. Oh well, it was probably a good thing. I would be able to take pictures without constantly turning my camera his direction.

The cheerleaders were wearing their uniforms because there was a pep rally scheduled for right after lunch. I was kind of bummed about it because it was going to cut into my time in journalism with Lee, but I would have to get used to it. The same thing would happen every Friday for the rest of Football season.

On the upside though, the principal shortened all the classes for the rest of the afternoon, so I wouldn’t have to be tortured for so long in my trig.
class
.

I snapped a few pictures of some of the football players standing around in a group. They had their jerseys on, and they were laughing at something I didn’t catch. Caleb Murphy stood out in the crowd as always.