Pinhole, Higher Learning
Copyright© 2024 by Fanlon
Chapter 22
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I just stared at my mom in absolute horror. I didn’t move, I didn’t say anything, frozen in shock.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mom asked with a confused look on her face.
I blinked. That was all I could do. In that moment, if I had to tell my heart to beat, it would have stopped.
“What’s wrong with you, why are you acting like—” she cut herself off suddenly, leaving an awkward silence that seemed to hang in the air as if it were a physical presence.
I could actually see each turn of the wheels in Mom’s head as she replayed what had just happened. When she finally realized why I had reacted the way I did, she gasped, and her hands flashed up and covered the lower half of her face.
“Oh my God!”
Her eyes looked wild. Her eyebrows shot up and she slowly turned her head left to right, as if she were trying to deny anything had just happened. “No, no, no, no!”
My lips moved to respond, but I failed to say anything. My mouth was suddenly dry as a bone. I had to forcibly swallow, hoping that would create much needed moisture, but it wasn’t enough.
“You want me...?” My voice was more of a croak than actual words.
Instead of answering me, Mom just dropped her head into her hands, shaking her head no in quick, jerky motions.
I could see Mom’s shoulders start to tremble and I instantly panicked thinking she was crying. Then I heard what could only be a muffled laugh which grew and grew and eventually Mom was laughing hysterically.
I had no idea what to think. It was crazy enough earlier for me to lose all my faculties, but this was something else entirely. If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed she had lost her mind completely, which wasn’t exactly impossible, just not likely.
“What?” I asked, truly concerned. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because...” Mom replied, completely unable to pull herself out of her own predicament. “You thought I wanted to pose, naked, for you!”
“You said you wanted—”
“Not like that!” I could see tears pooling in her eyes as she tried to wipe them away with her hands. “I want a normal portrait for God’s sake. Your father doesn’t need more naked pictures of me.”
“More nak–!”
“Oh, stop it,” Mom cut in as she rolled her eyes. “You think you’re the only one who likes to take naked pictures of women?”
“You mean...?”
Mom nodded, her shoulders still shaking from the laughter she was trying to contain.
“Holy shit!”
Dad had taken nude photos of Mom!
“Josh!” Mom snapped. “There is no need for that language!”
“Sorry,” I quickly apologized. “I’m just ... surprised—”
“What’s going on down here?” Dad’s voice cut me off before I could say anything more.
From the startled look on Mom’s face, she hadn’t heard him come down the stairs either. I suddenly wondered how long he had been there. Had he heard Mom talking about him not needing any more nudes of her? From the subtle grin on his face, I wasn’t sure.
“Nothing, honey,” Mom replied smoothly. “Just telling Josh about how you were a pervert back in college with that stupid Polaroid camera.”
I wasn’t sure what Mom was going to say, but it definitely wasn’t that!
“Wait a minute,” Dad was quick to reply. “I seem to recall someone asked me to—”
“That’s not the point!” Mom fired right back, cutting off what I assumed was going to be a damning statement against Mom. “What are you doing down here anyway?”
“Well, if you must know,” Dad replied. “While you two were telling lies about me, Josh got a phone call. I was just coming down to give him the message.”
“Sure, you were.” Mom rolled her eyes, not believing Dad for a second. “Where’s this so-called message?”
“Right here.” Dad smirked, waving a small piece of white paper in the air for us to see.
“Oh...” Mom murmured so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.
I didn’t waste a moment. I was up on my feet, racing to where Dad was standing and taking the proffered message.
I read the note...
Call me as soon as you can, please.
April
There was a phone number I didn’t recognize written just below the message.
Who the hell is April and how did she get my number?
“Why don’t you run upstairs and call her back,” Dad spoke with a playful lilt in his voice. “Your Mom and I need to talk and remember a few things.”
“You!” Mom complained, her eyes bulging at some unspoken promise I didn’t understand.
“Hurry up, she sounded a little anxious on the phone.”
“Did she say what it was about?” I asked.
I was hoping he could at least give me a hint as to what was going on. All I got was a shrug and a wink before he shooed me out of the studio towards the stairs.
I picked up the phone, checking the note in my hand and typed in the number listed there. I paused before hitting ‘talk.’ I was suddenly nervous for a reason I didn’t fully understand. I tried to wrack my brain over who April was, but nothing jumped out at me. The more I thought about it, the more confounding it became.
Finally, I just hit talk when the idea I would know in a moment, and it wasn’t worth getting all flustered for no known reason.
The phone only rang twice before a high, soft, energetic voice came through the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Uh, is umm ... April there?” I managed to stammer out.
“Speaking!”
“Oh!” I locked up. “Umm, I was uh, supposed to call you.”
“Who’s this?”
“Josh, err, Josh Davis.”
“Josh!” she squeaked. “Hi, umm...”
Then it got weird. Awkward silence filled the line for a moment, and then two, and three. It was almost a minute before either one of us finally dared to break it.
“Hi, my dad gave me a message to call you,” I finally said.
There was another moment of silence. I started to wonder if we had gotten disconnected or the cordless phone had died out of nowhere.
“I umm. I was hoping you might be willing to uh ... help me?”
“Help ... you?” I asked. “With what?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Shit! She was right, I had no idea who this girl was. I didn’t recognize her voice and had no idea what she was talking about.
“Umm, no?” I replied weakly.
“I didn’t think so.” Her voice sounded more confident now for some reason. “I posed for you.”
“For me?”
“Well, not just you,” April answered. “I know Jeff.”
“Jeff?” My brain raced to figure out who Jeff was and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. “April!”
“That’s me.” April giggled.
“Holy shit! Umm, wow. You’re the one that Jeff wanted me to help, but I was an asshole and left in a hurry.”
As it turns out, there was a specific reason April, and Jeff, were hoping I could have that private shoot with April after the club meeting weeks ago.
From the way April talked about it, she was excited, hopeful, and frankly, extremely nervous about the whole thing. It wasn’t until she explained why that I truly understood the reason Jeff was so furious with me that night and all of the days since. There was more to that story, and I really wanted to hear it.
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