The rest of the week at school seemed to pass in some sort of haze. I needed it to be Sunday. I worked, played lacrosse (scored two goals, no less), played nice with that Cammie, Carrie ... Cassie? broad from Monday night. I smiled at her, winked at her, that kind of shit. It pissed Sam off and made the girl smile, harmless, right? I started carrying the yearbook camera around with me and took pictures — photos — of things I saw during my week. I took photos of the guys running onto the field at practice, I even brought it on the bench during hockey practice and snapped a photo of Sean and Chris joking around.
"Dude, what's with the camera?" asked one of the captains from the lacrosse team. I didn't think he was trying to be a dick about it, I played box lacrosse with him one game this year in the spring when I got called up to Junior A.
"I joined the yearbook," I said, shrugging. "I'm trying to get a scholarship. Looks good on college applications to be well-rounded. Besides, there's never enough photos of the jocks in there anyway, it's always nerd shit."
He laughed. "That's true. Get some broads in there, too. The yearbooks are always slacking with the photos of good-lookin' broads. Here, take my picture," he said, holding out his lacrosse stick and playing keep-up with a ball. I snapped a few and admired my work.
There was no way in hell I was going to tell him I was doing this to impress my sexy neighbour. It sounded like something out of a porno, and not even a good one, but like one of those softcore ones that come on TV late at night.
Sunday came. When I got home from work, my old man had already taken off for the night. He was back on afternoons. Sometimes, those were my favourite shifts, that meant he wasn't going to be around after supper to fuck up my shit.
I changed into my classiest jeans, button down, even fixed my hair and threw on my favourite hat. I put the camera in the camera bag and slung it so it was draped just off my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie. It was going to get cold. "Go time," I whispered in the mirror to myself.
I walked out the front door, locking it behind me and ran down the walkway over to Chantelle's. I took a deep breath. I knocked.
"Just a minute," I heard her call. She looked like a thousand suns, shining in the night. I felt my throat begin to close and my chest swell with the pain of wanting someone so badly. "Matt," she said. It seared my insides as her reaction wasn't quite what I had hoped. She didn't even seem happy to see me.
"Hi, um, Chantelle ..." this was not going how I had planned. "Are you busy?"
"Matt, I'm going to be honest with you. Your dad doesn't think it's a good idea for us to be friends, and he asked me not to spend time with you," she said. Well, at least she didn't seem happy about it. Maybe she missed me.
"I know, he gave me a big lecture about how I shouldn't be bothering you. And I hope I'm not ... I just really need some help with something for school. My dad's on afternoons so he was gone when I got home from work."
She opened the door and I stepped into the foyer.
"What's going on with your school project?" she asked. I patted the camera bag.
"I'm on the yearbook committee," I explained. "I was going to get some shots of a sunset at the beach, I thought maybe I'd ask you for some help, maybe you could give me some pointers?"
She didn't say anything, just pressed her lips together. She didn't seem to have any makeup on, but her eyelashes looked so long and full, sweeping over her dark blue eyes. I watched a tiny line by her mouth, waiting to see if it would give away whatever secret she was keeping. I felt like my heart wasn't beating, like my feet weren't touching the floor. Everything was just stopped, waiting, stuck, floating ... my stomach flip-flopped and my head felt dizzy. "The beach is cool, you'll like it. It's where the locals go. Bring your camera," I said. My fingers and toes felt like there were shocks running through them.
"I was just going to make supper," she said.
"We'll pick something up on the way and eat at the beach. Like a picnic. It'll be fun." I searched her face again for clues. Her mouth twitched at the side and it looked like she was trying not to smile.
"Okay," she finally said. I almost gasped out loud with relief. I just tried a casual smile and offered to take her gear out to the car.
"It's upstairs, I'll just be a sec," she said. A moment later, she called my name. It felt like I was hearing my name for the first time, like it meant something completely new. I headed up the stairs I had climbed thousands of times in my childhood.
She was in her room. The moment I saw the four-poster bed, my heart skipped a beat. The things I will do to that girl in that bed ... my imagination started spinning into a dizzying blur of silk scarves, handcuffs and Chan's long, dark hair splayed all over her millions of pillows.
"Here," she said, passing me a couple blankets. The dark purple paint was probably named after a fruit or flower. Her dresser was the same dark wood as the bed and had perfume bottles and photos on it, but I didn't want her to catch me looking. That's okay, I'll be back here soon enough, I told myself matter-of-factly.
She grabbed her camera bag, tripod and followed me down the stairs. I didn't say a word as we got into the car. I took out my phone, punched in a number. "Here, just head towards the mall," I instructed as the phone rang on the other end. "Hi, Danny, It's Matt Monteleone. Good, you? Can I get two specials for take-out? No, no, Dad's on afternoons. I'm with a friend... a first-timer!" Dad and I got takeout from Danny's all the time when I was younger. Fish and chips was our Friday night meal, if dad was home. He's not exactly the cooking type. I'm not bad, Mrs. Murphy started teaching me when I was about 12, she said it would impress girls.
"Make a right up here," I pointed out so Chan could stop at the restaurant before we headed down to the beach. I grabbed the food from inside, and Danny said, "What, I don't get to meet your date?"
"Not this time, Danny, maybe next time," I said with a joking laugh. I couldn't have Danny accidentally rat me out to dad.
When we got to the beach, the sun had started to go down, but the sky hadn't started turning colours yet. We sat on one of Chan's blankets and ate, watching the waves smashing against the shore.
"I like the ocean," she said.
"Me, too. You never feel lonely at the ocean," I agreed.
Chan set up the tripod and let me put my camera on first. She showed me how to set the camera's exposure to drink in the sunset. I watched as she blazed through the process. "Sorry, am I going too fast for you?" I shook my head.
We were quiet. The sea did the talking.
When we had gathered our things and got back to the car, I felt strange. I never did things like that. I never shared intimate moments with women.
"Thanks, Matt," Chantelle said as we headed for home. "That was fun. I hope you got some good shots for your yearbook."
"Me, too. I guess I'll have to take a look and see. I didn't realize I had taken so many," I said, scrolling through the hundreds I had taken.
"You always shoot more than you need, and then look through them after to choose your best shots. It was easier before newspapers all wanted photo galleries for their websites, you needed two, maybe at three, good shots to send to an editor. Everything is so different now," she said. She looked serious. I listened intently. I wanted to absorb everything about her. "What made you decide to join the yearbook?"
"Well, I'm trying to get a scholarship for school down in the states, and I'm really good at lacrosse, but I'm good at hockey, too. I'll probably be playing Junior next year and I won't have time for stuff like yearbooks, so I figured I'll do it this year so I have it for my college applications," I explained. "People sometimes think I'm some kind of dumbass because I'm good at sports, but I'm a pretty good student."
"Very responsible of you," she remarked, easing around a curve on the highway.
"Yeah, well, kinda have to be responsible when I'm 16 and basically parent myself," I said in a dull voice. I didn't mean to say it, but that's what came out.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I think that's why your dad doesn't want you spending time with me. He thinks you'll get too attached."
"I think he's jealous," I said. "I'm not sitting at home feeling sorry for myself or hiding myself at work. I'm trying to get out there and make a life for myself instead of dwelling on something that happened over ten years ago."
We were home. Thank fuck, that conversation got awkward really fast.
"Chan, can I run home for a second and grab my computer? I can't stay late, but I was wondering if you could show me that ... thing you were talking about with the editing?"
"Batch editing? Sure," she said.
When I returned with the computer, she set it up on her coffee table, and I plugged my memory card in. When the folder full of photos opened up, the first photos were the ones of Cassie in my bed.
"Jesus, Matt, what the fuck is this shit?" Chan was pissed. I had never heard her say that many swear words in one sentence before.
"Oh, sorry, some girl, she was over, and she wanted to do it, I don't know." I was embarrassed. That was not how I had planned for that to go.
"You know that's illegal for you to have, right? Doesn't matter if it's you, or you know this girl or whatever, that's kiddie porn, dude. Get them off the card, and get them off your computer. Format the card, or just get a new one. This is really bad, Matt."
"Sorry," I said. I closed my computer. "I think I'm gonna go ... I have school in the morning." I felt like a total and utter douchebag. How did I go from feeling like the king of the world to an entire bag of assholes in a matter of a few minutes.
I showered and went to bed. I felt miserable. I curled up in a ball and fell asleep before dad got home from his shift.