Dear My Childhood Friend

The first thing I saw when I opened my curtains was Weston Pierce's tongue in Jessica Alverez's mouth. I stood there, frozen for a second, coffee cup halfway to my lips, camera dangling from my shoulder where I had just slung it, trying to decide whether this was worse than accidentally snapping a picture of a freshman vomiting behind the gym. It was a close call. At least the freshman had had the decency to look ashamed about it. Jessica's hands were tangled in Wes's hair while his hands were–well, I didn't want to know. His bedroom light was on, a glaring inconvenience to the entire neighborhood, and my window provided a most convenient, unimpeded view. I yanked the curtains shut, the rings skittering noisily along their track. Gross. That was the word. Gross and inconsiderate, a blatant, gaping violation of the unspoken neighbor code that stated that if you were going to French kiss your cheerleader girlfriend, you were going to do it with the blinds drawn like a proper human being. I turned away from the window. My room, my sanctuary. My fortress of solitude, if you will. It was a controlled explosion of my personality, all carefully curated chaos. I had shelves upon shelves of well-loved paperbacks. My camera–my beautiful Canon–stood on my desk beside stacks of developed photographs that I somehow always seemed to mean to organize but never did. My walls were plastered with movie posters and concert flyers, peeling slightly, mingling with my own black-and-white shots of rain-streaked glass and the gnarled old tree in my backyard and my mother's flour-dusted hands. The important things. The real things. Not the terrible things currently transpiring across the yard. I sank onto my desk chair and picked up the camera, flipping open the top. It was a lovely thing, all sleek and black, the 24-70mm lens gleaming slightly under the overhead light. I had bought it myself, with two summers' worth of cupcake frosting and pastry boxing at my mother's bakery, Sugar & Spite. This strap was frayed from hundreds of hours of use; the shutter had a certain soft click to it that I had come to know intimately. I scrolled through the photos on my computer, my last few days' worth of landscape shots. The creek behind our development, the old tree in the hollow at sunset, the usual suspects. Freshmen clutching their schedules at the beginning of the school year, sophomores goofing off in the halls, seniors trying (and failing) to act like they weren't terrified of what came next. Safe, tame little pictures. Precious. Perfect. This was my life, after all. I was supposed to be working on something else entirely for my art school portfolio, something called Facades, a study in contrasts of people's exteriors and interiors, but I couldn't seem to get past the sheer embarrassment of it all. I scrolled through the photos, searching for something suitable, something that screamed of hidden depths, and every single time I found something that could have worked–a tear-streaked face in the girls' room, a boy staring morosely into his phone, a pre-period teacher massaging her temples right before the bell rang–I found myself unable to click the shutter. It was like invading their privacy, somehow. Wasn't that the point? I deleted the photo of the freshman projectile vomiting. I saved the rest. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text from Courtney. First day of senior year. How are we feeling? Like I'm counting down the days until graduation, I replied. That's the spirit. See you at lockers. I have news. I pocketed my phone and stood, casting one last wistful glance out my window before shutting it. My room suddenly felt stuffy, claustrophobic. Downstairs, the kitchen smelled of rosemary and roasted chicken. My mother stood at the stove, her back to me, turning something on the burner with a spatula. "Hi, sweetheart. Dinner will be ready in a minute. Go wash up." This was my mother, Caroline Kelly, owner and creative genius behind Sugar & Spite, the bakery that everyone for miles around had gone crazy for. The name was her favorite part, if I had to choose. She had opened it two years ago, right after she found out my father had been cheating on her with some receptionist from his office, and she had absolutely no qualms about telling the entire town about it either. She had turned all of her pain and misery and heartbreak into something beautiful and amazing, and the Break-Up Brownies were legendary. I sat at the little table in the kitchen, where we always ate when my father was still home. It was too quiet. The ghost of the third seat lingered, the echo of laughter, the sound of a family that wasn't there. "First day of school tomorrow," my mother said lightly, her voice almost too chipper. "Senior year, baby. Are you excited?" "I'm excited to not see those people anymore," I said honestly. "Oh, come on. Senior year is the best part of high school. There are more parties, more time with your friends." My mother paused a beat too long. "Your godmother and I used to sneak out almost every weekend to that drive-in two towns over. It was the best time of my life." I pushed my broccoli around on my plate. "Okay, I'm done eating." I stood, pushing my chair in with a soft screech, and felt guilty all over again. I hated hearing her go on about high school, it was like another universe to me. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, Mom. Love you." I pecked her on the cheek, she smelled like vanilla. She caught my hand before I walked away. "Ellie." And suddenly she didn't sound so happy. "I know things have been difficult for you lately, with your father, with the divorce. I know you've been... keeping to yourself more than usual." She squeezed my hand. "But you have one year left. One. Don't waste it being so secretive behind your camera." I wanted to tell her that being secretive with my camera was the only thing keeping me sane. Instead, I nodded. "At least try to sneak out once for the memories!" she called after me as I walked up the stairs. I didn't reply. In my room, I sat cross-legged on the floor and sighed. What was so great about high school, anyway? It was a social experiment to test how much awful teenage drama a single human could stand. These were the same people who had eaten glue, cried over scraped knees, and gotten their horribly awkward phases fixed over the course of ten years. They had watched each other grow up, slowly, impossibly, into these judgmental, clique-y monsters of their former selves. And they in turn watched me with wide, horrified eyes, wondering why I didn't fit into the mold they had so meticulously crafted. This was all so very unfair, but at least I had a camera to stand behind. I turned my gaze back to the window. Safe behind the thick, navy-blue curtains. And then I thought about Weston Pierce. We'd had an unbreakable friendship once, a bond so strong that we had made up an intricate series of hand gestures to use when we were sneaking around the neighborhood. We'd even once built an entire LEGO city in his basement that we dubbed Pierce-Kellyopolis. But then middle school had happened. He had grown impossibly tall over the summer, gotten on the football team, and in the span of a few months, become popular. He had traded his old clothes and hand gestures for protein shakes and a group of snotty new friends who didn't know about his nerdy past.Now he was just another one of them. The golden boy, a shining star with a perfect life and a bedroom window that faced mine like an open invitation. It was gross, and I tried not to watch, but sometimes I found myself staring, wondering what would happen if I climbed over the fence and into his world. I sat back down at my desk and turned on my laptop. The application for Vanguard Summer Photography Intensive was still open from the night before. Ten photos, twelve students, one from each school. A full scholarship and personal portfolio review with the admissions director at my dream school. It all came down to this , really. I needed to prove I could do this , prove I could tell stories with my camera, not just capture pretty scenes. I needed to prove that maybe, just maybe, I could live up to my mom's expectations. I turned to my Facades folder, searching for something that screamed, something that stood out, something I hadn't deemed "safe." The curtains on my window shifted, just slightly, a breeze brushing against the fabric. Nothing more. For a moment, I thought about opening the curtains. About looking. About seeing. I closed the file instead and turned off the light, my shadow stretching across the ceiling like some kind of twisted monster. Tomorrow was the first day of the rest of my life. I just had to survive it. One day at a time. And definitely no more sneaking looks at Weston Pierce through his window.