The Downside of Being Charlie (28 page)

The rest of the day is excruciating and all I can think of is being in bed tonight, when it is all over, when everything that's going to happen just happens and it's done. By the time I get home, it's become my mantra:
Tonight when I'm in bed, it will all be over. Tonight when I'm in bed, it will all be over
. As long as I keep saying it to myself, I can make it through the rest of the night. As a distraction, I start wondering how my
first appointment with my therapist will go tomorrow. I wish it were today instead.

When I get home, I take a long hot shower and get ready. When Dad gets home, he does the same, and an hour later we're in the car headed to Rennington. The bits of snow on the side of the road make me think of Mom, so I don't talk much, which Dad interprets as me being nervous because he keeps telling me not to worry, that everything will be fine. But I'm not worried about my collection or winning or losing. I'm worried that Mom will show up. And even though I feel like we're making progress somehow, this stresses me to no end and makes me feel like everything is still the same.

“You got something prepared in case you win, Sport?” He bites his lip when he realizes how he just called me Sport.

“Uh, yeah,” I lie.

Dad starts whistling, the way he does when he doesn't know what else to do, and I wonder why things still seem so weird and uncomfortable with him. I wonder if it will get better because I know I didn't used to feel this way all the time. I remember feeling close to him, but I can't remember when that was. I look over at him. He turns to look at me, then back at the road, then back at me.

“What?” he asks.

I want to tell him he looks different to me somehow. I want to tell him that I'm pissed about what he did, and that hating him and Mom and especially some stupid lady I don't even know takes a big toll on me. And I want to tell him how I'm scared Mom will show up tonight. I want to warn him about my photo collection.
I want to tell him that even though I tried not to, I threw up after school today.

“I'm just worried. I hope everything goes okay,” I say because it's better than totally lying.

He nods. “It will,” he says, and I pray that he's right.

Mr. Killinger meets all of us in the lobby. The other finalists are there, as well as several other kids from my photography class, and Ahmed.

“Great, you're here,” Mr. Killinger says. “Are you ready?”

No, I'm not, but I nod. Ahmed comes up and gives me a big slap on the shoulder. “Let's go, player.” I take a deep breath. Mr. Killinger starts telling us that the department head is eager to meet all of us and keeps commenting on what fine photographers we are, blah, blah, blah. He leads us down the hallway and into a big open room that has several paintings on display.

This main room opens into three other rooms. In the center, encased in glass are two sculptures, one very large and the other medium sized. The smaller one is odd. It looks like a bunch of twisted tree limbs roped together with delicate birds perched on top, but then these weird tree hands are attached to the ends of the limbs and they look like they might attack the birds.

The larger sculpture is of a woman sitting, a robe or sheet draped across her from the waist down, but the rest of her is exposed. The detail to her body makes me look away quickly, but not before I notice that her face is
practically featureless. I want to go look at it closely, study her face and see if it really is as blank as it looks, but I'm too embarrassed that people will think I just want a cheap thrill or something. Ahmed's eyes open wide, and he chokes out a half laugh/half cough. He looks over at me with a stupid grin on his face, but I pretend not to notice and study the smaller sculpture instead.

The crowd is a strange mix of well-dressed adults and concert T-shirt, jeans, and beanie-wearing college kids. I scan the room. No Mom. I loosen my tie, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in my button-down shirt and khakis. I wish I'd worn jeans. I decide to ditch the tie altogether and shove it in my pocket.

An old, bald man comes up to Mr. Killinger. I am so intrigued by the twirly white mustache on his face that somehow draws even more attention to his shiny, bare head, that I barely pay any attention to what he is saying. His mustache twitches and moves with every word he says, and it looks exactly like the kind you see on cartoons. It loops upward and curls perfectly on both sides, giving him the strange appearance of having an unusually gleeful grin.

“Ah, Luka, these must be your prized students,” he says and his mustache twitches. He smiles, I think, as he looks at us.

“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Killinger says proudly. He introduces all of us to Dr. Hoyt, the head of the Fine Arts department, professor, and his mentor.

We shake hands with the man, who continues looking at us. He reminds me of the Monopoly guy. Then I think of how Mom used to play Monopoly with me sometimes.

Mr. Killinger walks us over to one of the three smaller rooms, where each of the three walls holds one of the collections from our class. My collection is on the far wall, directly opposite of the arched entrance we'd just come through.

“There they are,” Mr. Killinger says, holding out his arm as we all walk into the room. Steve-O and Lisa walk to their collections with their different groups of friends and family.

I stand still. I suddenly get the urge to turn around and run. I can't believe I did this; people are not going to understand why I did what I did. Dad . . . God, Dad would hate me forever, and if Mom showed up, this would just set her off. What the hell was I thinking? Not to mention Charlotte who would never speak to me again once she realized I didn't use the pictures of her.

“Come on, my man,” Ahmed says as Dad comes up behind us. They start walking toward the photographs, but I stay where I am. I don't think I can move.

I stare at them from here because each image is already etched in my memory. I don't have to get any closer. I watch Dad and Ahmed as they make their way over to my exhibit.

Instead of having the story progress with each picture, I wanted the viewer to get the whole story at once, so I arranged my frames for that effect. I see Dad slow down as he processes the images. I can't see his face, only the back of his head. I watch him run a hand through his hair. What's he thinking? What if he doesn't understand? I keep my eye on his back. His shoulders slouch. I had justified these pictures to myself so many times, but now
I really think I made a huge mistake. Ahmed looks back at me with a look that lets me know he gets it.

The photos are black and white. The first picture is of Dad blindfolded, and the last one is of me blindfolded. They remind me of hostage pictures, which I guess in some ways I felt like they were. Dad had lipstick on his otherwise crisp, white shirt, and even though you can't see his eyes, you can tell how he's feeling.

I made sure the distance of my picture with the blindfold was the same as Dad's, so the dimensions of the picture would be the same if they were lined up next to each other. I look at the one of myself, in that chocolate smeared T-shirt and my stuffed mouth. It's still really hard for me to look at it.

In between my picture and Dad's, there are five pictures of Mom. I struggled trying to find a way to show she was gone, but that she was still there—always there. I had some photos of her stored in my camera, so even though I hadn't been able to photograph her, I was able to use this close-up I had taken of her when I first got my camera. I cropped bits of her; her mouth, her forehead and hair, her eye and eyebrow, and her cheek, and I used them individually, so there were four pictures that were little pieces of Mom. And in the very center, there's the full picture of her intact, but I blurred and manipulated the image so you can't see her well, so it looks like she moved at the last second. The message of her photographs is that you never get the full picture of who she truly is, not even those closest to her.

I played around with the shading of each, so while
you can definitely make out each photograph, they still have a dark, foreboding look. Perhaps even then, I knew something bad was going to happen.

I turn my focus back onto Dad. He shakes his head now. What had I expected?

He finally turns back and looks at me. It's not the expression I had expected to see on his face. In that one look he gives me, I can tell all the things he wants to say but can't, and has never been able to say. I realize how alike we are, how we can't say the things we want to say. And I suddenly feel this surge of sympathy for Dad. I know he sees things in those pictures he had previously chosen to not see, had ignored, and had purposely missed, because I had too.

“Hey, you.” I hear a voice from behind me. I turn around and it's Charlotte. She's here.

“You're here,” I say. And she looks so good that my heart feels as crushed as the night I lay in the falling snow on her front lawn. Her hair is pulled back, and she looks all soft and gauzy in the white sweater she's wearing that I just want to lay my head on her chest and see if she feels like a cloud. I have to stop. I can't keep falling for this girl.

She gazes over my shoulders and sees the photos behind me.

“Where's your . . . is that it?” she asks, walking past me. And I wish I had explained to her why she's not up there, but now it's too late. She looks back at me, and I don't know if that's shock or betrayal or confusion on her face, but it unnerves me. I look back at Dad who is still standing in front of and staring at the images, and
I suddenly feel like I've done the worst thing possible to both of them. How I have set them both up in a way. I look at all the people in the gallery, the strangers I'm sharing my darkest secrets with and realize what an idiot I am. I need to get out of here.

I start heading out of the room just as Dr. Hoyt comes in, adjusting some kind of small microphone attached to the lapel of his jacket.

“Can I have everyone's attention, please?” he says as his voice comes through hidden speakers. I need to get away from here. But Mr. Killinger spots me making a getaway, and he makes his way across the room and follows me.

“Charlie? Hey, Charlie!” I walk faster, but he catches up with me right outside the main gallery room, and he grabs me by the elbow. The hall is now empty as everyone makes their way to the room with the photo collections. The speakers are in every room, including the hallway, so we hear Dr. Hoyt's voice everywhere. Most people are making their way toward the photo exhibits.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Killinger asks. “He's about to announce the winner of the scholarship.”

“I know,” I say. “I . . . I just can't go through with it. I'm not going to win anyway, but I can't be in there.”

“Charlie, you deserve to be in there,” he says.

“No, it's not that, it's just, those pictures, my pictures, I . . .”

His face softens. “Charlie, I know it's easier to hide behind the lens, trust me. I know you feel vulnerable,
exposed, but, man, what you did. That's amazing. That's the kind of rawness only a true artist can capture.”

“But . . .”

“No, listen to me . . . putting yourself out there, that's the kind of thing that's going to make things better. Being honest and reaching out like that, Charlie, that's what you have to do.” And the way he says it makes me believe him.

Dr. Hoyt's voice is still booming over us, explaining the contest and the difficulty of choosing just one winner, but that the photographer they had chosen displayed a rare honesty in his collection that was apparent from first glance.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce the winner of our first novice photography contest and the first recipient of the Robert Koster Young Photographer scholarship. And the winner is . . .” Killinger keeps his gaze on me and doesn't let go of my elbow.

“Mr. Charlie Grisner and his collection, entitled
Us
.” Applause follows his announcement.

I look at Mr. Killinger, sure I didn't hear right. He smiles and says, “You did it Charlie. Did you hear that? It's you.” I shake my head because this can't be real. He nods. “That applause? That's for you, Charlie. Now get in there. Go.” I don't move. “Go!” he yells.

My brain isn't functioning, and I just do what he says. I run down the hall, through the main gallery, and into the room where Dr. Hoyt is speaking, and the applause is slowly dying down as people start looking around confused.

“Mr. Charles Grisner,” Dr. Hoyt repeats, right before
he spots me making my way to my collection. “Ah, there you are. And now perhaps Mr. Grisner will say a few words.”

Even though Mr. Killinger had told me to be prepared to make a speech in case I won, I hadn't thought I would really win and after everything with Mom, I never came up with a speech. And now, here I was, in front of all these people, out of breath from running here and from the disbelief of actually winning, with nothing to say. But I know I have to go up there and talk. I find Dad in the crowd, and he's applauding like crazy. My feet keep moving and I feel like I'm not even really me as I head toward the small lectern that has suddenly been placed next to my collection. I take a deep breath and step up on the podium.