Exposure (27 page)

Craig fidgeted awkwardly, no doubt aware that my parents weren't too keen on the fact that I was madly in love with a would-be convict. A few days ago, I'd sat down with them and told them everything I knew. They expressed concern and sadness about Craig's situation, but I'm sure they weren't exactly thrilled. I'm not sure parents
ever
approve of the men their daughters fall for, but in my case, there was definitely some extra cause for alarm. Thankfully, they were extremely polite as we attempted some idle chitchat before Craig's own parents turned up to greet their son.

I hadn't seen Mr. MacKenzie since prom night at the Hurlyburly. Man, was the guy imposing. But today, he was dressed in an expensive-looking gray suit and he seemed surprisingly relaxed. Craig's mother was tall and graceful. I'd met her a few days ago at Craig's house. She now gazed at me with gratitude, as if thanking me for making her son's graduation day so normal and untainted. No one dared broach the topic of Craig's legal woes. Instead, his parents exchanged pleasantries with mine, until the topic of my senior art project came up.

“You guys have
got
to see Skye's photography,” Craig said to his mom and dad.

“I'm intrigued,” said my dad. “She wouldn't say a word about what she was working on!”

I got butterflies in my stomach at the mere mention of my senior project, which was on display with the other submissions in the art room. There was a notice in the graduation program inviting all the students and their families to check out the exhibition. We began the pilgrimage from the football field back to the art annex, and I couldn't help but notice that Craig's dad seemed particularly chatty, in a good way, with Craig. It surprised me, given the trouble he was in, that Mr. MacKenzie would be acting more teddy bear than tyrant.

As we crossed the parking lot, I heard someone yell my name. My mom's roomie, Margot, was exiting her car and waving her keys at me.

“Sorry I'm late! I couldn't find someone to take over my shift at the studio,” she said.

“You only missed the boring part, anyway,” I said. “We're just on our way now to go see it.” I'd called Margot the day before and extended the invite, because I'd wanted her to see my photographs. Not only was I curious to hear her constructive feedback from an artist's perspective, I also needed her moral support in a big way. As it was, my hands were completely sweaty as we neared the art building, and I had nervous goosebumps running up and down my arms.

Stepping into the art room, I didn't even recognize it. Mr. Richter wasn't kidding when he had hyped our senior projects to be a big deal. It looked like a gallery now, not a high school classroom! The desks and shelving had been removed from the room, and all of the artwork was on display against white walls and white standing screens that had been set up at various spots in the room. There was even new track lighting on the ceiling that allowed each grouping of art to be spotlighted. Wow. The whole thing looked extremely professional, making me more relieved than ever that I hadn't turned in my amateurish posterboard collage.

We started at the entrance and worked our way around the perimeter of the room. Oil paintings and graphite sketches made up the bulk of the submissions, and they were truly impressive.

Jason Stern's drawing,
The Evolution of an East Anchorage Student
, was hilarious. It depicted a series of teenage male figures standing in profile. The first, on the left, was a depiction of a freshman Jason looking like a Neanderthal man, stooped over with a huge backpack, knuckles dragging on the ground. The final figure, on the right-hand side, showed Jason standing tall and proud in his graduation gown and cap, diploma in his hand.

“Now
that's
funny!” Mr. MacKenzie said.

Megan Riordan passed me as she was on her way out. “Skye, your pictures are fantastic, oh my god!”

I swallowed hard and thanked her, feeling anxious but proud at the same time. I had glimpsed my pictures on the back wall when we'd first entered the room. The anticipation was building as we slowly edged our way back to that area. Cat was standing with her parents in front of her own submission, describing her pen and ink drawing, a framed circle that was filled in with black tribal designs. It was a very arresting graphic at first glance, but when you gazed within the circle at the pattern itself, you could see various figurative representations worked into the detail. It was almost like looking at a puzzle from which images slowly emerged.

“See — there's an open book, and there are four figures dancing … and there's a raven — ”

“Go Ravens!” said Craig.

“Hey, you guys!” Cat introduced us all to her parents, who were extremely cordial.

“And you are obviously the young lady associated with the photo project,” said Cat's father. “I was very impressed.”

“Yeah, Skye, there's a mob scene around your pictures over there.”

I glanced behind me and Cat was right — I couldn't even see my photographs because they were blocked by a semicircle of students and parents. Oh god. This was freaking me out. We continued to wend our way through the crowd, each new painting or sculpture garnering new oohs and aahs.

“I love this one here,” said Craig, pointing to a simple sketch by Ashley Davis, a petite brunette whose locker was next to mine this year. “Do you see how fine the crosshatching is here on the shading? That's not easy to do.”

“It looks like you could just reach out and touch it,” agreed his dad. “Practically three-dimensional.”

“Exactly.” I smiled to see Craig looking genuinely happy as he looked at all the art projects, and I was further encouraged to see him getting along so well with his dad.

We finally reached a bottleneck near the back of the room and had to actually wait our turn to inch our way in to see my pictures.

“Great job,” said one stranger — someone's mom, I presumed — as she squeezed her way past me.

“Oh wow!” said Margot, who was the first to get close enough to see my wall of work. We all finally closed in upon my series of twelve framed black-and-white photographs. A small white index card near the bottom right of the grouping stated my name and the title of the series:
Exposure
.

“Skye … you look … stunning,” said my mother. “This is amazing!”

My dad was speechless, but Ollie, still perched on my dad's shoulders, piped up, “Kye! Kye!”

There I was staring back at me in twelve different frames lined up in four rows of three. Under each individual portrait was the name of the student who took the picture. The first photo was a shot of me in the parking lot. The photographer, Brett Sanders, had lain on his back on the asphalt when he took the picture, so I looked about twelve feet tall because of the unusual perspective. I laughed to myself, remembering Brett rolling around and getting dirty on the ground as he aimed for just the right angle. The second picture was cropped tightly on my eyes. I had heavy eyeliner and smoky shadow on my lids, which made my light irises look sharp and piercing — cat-like, almost. The photographer, Kristy, had convinced me to add the makeup at the last minute, and I'm glad she did. It made all the difference in the shot.

“Not bad, if I do say so myself.” I heard Lenny's voice behind me. The picture he'd taken of me was slightly out of focus, but the way my hair was blowing behind me in the breeze, it gave the image a mystical, surreal quality. “See,” Lenny explained to Megan who was standing next to him. “I
meant
to be out of focus. This was exactly the look I was going for.”

“Skye, these are … perfect,” said Craig, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

“Looks like something you'd see in
Vanity Fair
, that's for sure,” agreed his dad.

“And, my dear, you look just so
lovely
,” added Mrs. MacKenzie. My dad just stared at me with eyes wide open as if he was thoroughly bowled over.

“My sentiments exactly,” said a friendly, familiar voice from behind me. I turned to see Mr. Richter introducing himself to my mother. “Wonderfully creative, Skye, and well executed.”

“Really?” I said. “I was a little nervous, because, well … I obviously didn't take the pictures and I know it was supposed to be our own original work.”

“But you conceived the concept and chose the final shots, and that's just as important. Great art is about thinking outside the box and putting yourself on the line. That's what I was hoping to get from you, and you didn't disappoint me.”

He was right that I put myself on the line. As much as I knew the photos were visually stunning, I was still uncomfortable seeing these blown-up representations of myself on display for the entire world to see. I couldn't hide from them, and that was a scary feeling. It was equally uncomfortable having to trust other people with each shot. Giving up control was always tough — heck, it was tough even approaching some of the people I'd asked to take the pictures. There was the shy kid, Neil Banks, who had Asperger's syndrome and tended to stick to himself. I'd never said a word to him before this, and we didn't talk much during the shoot, either, but the picture he'd taken of me in front of a window turned out to be a huge surprise. I hadn't even known the streaming rays of sunlight were surrounding me until
after
I'd developed the film. The effect was downright awesome. Then there was Corey Parkman, the dude everyone chalked up as being a neo-hippie stoner. He was actually quite hilarious, and it was his brilliant idea to take a picture of me towering in the middle of a group of the shortest freshmen girls we could recruit. I looked like a giraffe lost in a herd of gazelles — too funny.

In just a few days time, I'd managed to meet dozens of new people at my school as I rushed to complete the photographs. With each new picture that was taken, I became more comfortable talking to new people; more comfortable in my own skin. I'd only ended up choosing twelve of the best photos for the exhibition, but I had posed for over forty different students in all. The project went a long way in helping to distract me from worrying myself sick over Craig, and as much as I had dreaded playing “model,” in the end, I actually wound up having a lot of fun.

“Craig, when did you take this one?” his mother asked, pointing to a framed portrait of the two of us in the middle of the wall. In the shot, he and I were standing in front of a mirror in his house. He had my bulky old camera lifted up to his eye, obscuring his face, but I smiled peacefully next to him, resting my chin on his shoulder and gazing thoughtfully out of the frame.

“I took it just the other day when she was over at the house,” he said. Nobody said much more as we continued to look at Craig's photo. Perhaps we were all thinking the same sad thoughts about his future. I sighed, feeling a mixture of pride, grief, hopelessness, and contentment. It was amazing that so many mutually exclusive emotions could cohabitate inside my brain at the same time. Craig's picture of the two of us wasn't the most unusual or the most artistic shot of the bunch, but I liked it best of all. The face looking back at me was reassuring, in a weird way. It's like the “me” in the photograph was speaking directly to the “me” who was in the art room and saying, “Everything's going to be okay after all.” I didn't exactly know what made her the arbiter of my fate, but I decided to trust her. Like the Mona Lisa, she looked like she knew something I didn't.

AS THE ALASKA AIRLINES JET MADE ITS ASCENT above Anchorage, seeming to float between the clouds and the town that had been my home for all of eighteen years, I looked down at the streets and buildings below and then out at the awe-inspiring, mountainous landscape that spread beyond the borders of the city. How perfect — and how perfectly calm — everything looked from up above. It was a gorgeous day; billowy cotton-candy clouds hung in the bright blue sky as if suspended by invisible thread. At this speed the air practically cradled the plane. I loosened my grip on the charm I'd been clutching when the plane took off. Leaning back in my seat, I held up the crystal, and the glinting rays of light refracted, spraying across my lap and the seatback in front of me. Craig had pulled it from his pocket at the airport, saying that he'd gotten it as a reminder not to forget him. As if I ever could. I smiled to myself, remembering our last few moments together.

My parents and baby brother had been there to see me off. I said my goodbyes, kissing Ollie on the top of his fuzzy head, wondering how many words he would learn before I saw him again. It was everything I could do not to cry, but Mom was bawling enough for the both of us as we parted ways at the entrance to the security line. Even Dad looked like he was moments away from busting up.

“See you later, kiddo. Call us when you land,” his voice wavered, before they headed back toward the airport entrance.