Chapter 27

Monday morning, I was rudely and suddenly awoken out of a deep sleep. I was in the middle of a particularly... nice dream involving Laura and myself. My eyes blinked open in shock, but I couldn’t make out the person who was suddenly shaking me awake so violently.

“Wha--!” I complained loudly, his arms flailing in an attempt to push the sudden weight of the grip holding him away. “I’m up, I’m up! Stop it!”

“You’d better be,” a familiar voice barked close to my ear, “or we’re going to be late.”

I rubbed my eyes and turned to the voice. Dana was kneeling over me, her hands gripping the skin of my exposed shoulders.

“Dana? What are you—”

“Waking you up!” Dana grinned evilly.

“Is he up?” I heard my mother’s voice, but she wasn’t in the room. Instead, she was standing in the doorway watching over the two of us.

Dana’s eyes flashed, scanning my body quickly. I saw the look on her face when she took in my midsection, which was still safely under the covers but wasn’t hiding my morning erection. I tried to shift in an attempt to conceal myself from her scrutiny, but the position of her knees held me firmly in place.

“Yeah, if you can call it that,” Dana looked over her shoulder and answered before returning her gaze back to me and winked.

“He was up late last night,” Mom explained. “I’ll get the milk and cereal out for the two of you. Then you can head off to school.”

“Thanks Mrs. Davis!” Dana replied cheerfully, but her eyes held mine as she did.

I started to panic.

I had never wanted my mom to be in the room more than that very moment. There was no way I could get out from under the covers without some sort of chiding from Dana. If, and that’s a big if, Mom was still there, Dana wouldn’t dare make any snide remarks about my ... condition.

“Hurry up, Josh. You still need to take a shower and brush your teeth before you go,” Mom called out, her voice retreating further down the hall towards the kitchen.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky.

“Good dreams?” Dana said softly. “Or is that for me?”

To emphasize her point, she looked right at my crotch to make absolutely certain I knew exactly what she was referring to and then waggled her eyes at me teasingly.

“Dana!” I hissed, freeing my arms, and my hands instantly rushed to cover myself.

“Fine, fine,” Dana giggled, lifting her left leg, and sliding off my bed. “You do need a shower though. That way you can take care of that.”

“Ugh!” I groaned and rolled over onto my side so that I was facing away from Dana, feeling the heat grow in my cheeks that were already near blazing.

“You should have seen the look on your face when I woke you up,” Dana chuckled.

“What did you expect?” I snapped.

“Pretty much everything that happened.”

I tried to hold off the embarrassment that I knew was vividly displaying itself on my face. That only made Dana bark out a genuine laugh and I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn’t wait to make it to the school’s parking lot, the sooner the better. Then I could get out of this car and ... do something else.

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad.” I turned and spread my fingers enough that I could see her with one eye. “Seriously. It’s not like I yanked you out of bed or ripped off your covers. That would have been interesting.”

“You still haven’t told me why you felt the need to wake me up in the first place,” I growled. “It’s not like I was actually going to be late to school. Mom could have taken me.”

Dana gave me a hurt look and I felt bad for a second, before her saddened, pouty face quickly turned into her usually teasing smirk.

I rolled my eyes.

“Are you going to explain what the hell you were doing or not?” I asked again.

“I wanted to tell you that April’s surprise should be ready on Friday.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“What fun would that be?”

“Dana, come on!” I groaned, dropping my hands at my sides dramatically and slumped back into the passenger seat of Dana’s Beretta.

The dramatic display I had intended was ruined by the clinking of empty Coke cans. I did my best to ignore them, which was a lot harder than one would think.

Dana just grinned proudly, completely happy with how things this morning played out.

“Whatever. Did you get to see them?”

“Yeah, they looked really cool. When they’re done, they will look amazing!”

With that bit of information, I was feeling a lot better about the way Dana rudely woke me up, ripping me right out of my dream, which was just getting to the good part. I had been nervous our little surprise for April wasn’t going to be done in time. Now knowing that it was, I was even more excited to get to work in the studio. I wanted everything to be perfect. Besides, this was going to be my first official shoot in my own studio. Laura and Dana’s sessions didn’t count, not really, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.

Dana and Laura came over to my house right after I got out of my photography class downtown. They immediately got to work trying to organize or just straighten up the studio. There wasn’t that much to do honestly, but the girls seemed extremely motivated, and I didn’t want to do anything that might change that fact.

Mom didn’t even blink an eye at the fact the girls had come over. The only thing that changed for her was dinner. Instead of making enough for the three of us—Mom, Dad and me—she made enough for five. There was even enough left over for Dad to take to work for lunch if he wanted to. He always wanted to. There were few certainties in life, death, taxes, watching Husker football, and Dad polishing off any leftovers from the night before.

Laura couldn’t stay late; she had a lot of homework to get done. Dana did as well, but her careless, or carefree attitude, as she preferred to call it, towards school wasn’t in the forefront of her mind. I was willing to bet it was nowhere near her mind at all if I had to guess. More than likely, it was in the bottom of her locker at school.

Nonetheless, the girls left an hour or so after dinner. I had my own homework I needed to get done myself, but I was too focused on my upcoming appointment with April to concern myself with homework.

I spent the next hour working on my new pinhole cameras.

“Mom?” I called out when I came out of the dark room, two freshly made and loaded cameras in my hands. “Mom!”

“What is it, Josh?” I heard her reply from the top of the stairs.

More than likely she was sitting on the couch with Dad watching something on TV. This might be trickier than first thought. I never stopped to think that we might not be able to do what I had planned with Dad at home upstairs.

“Can you come down, it will only take a second?”

“Sure, give me a second.”

I heard the floor creaking ever so slightly, signaling she was indeed sitting on the couch. I met her at the bottom of the stairs, holding a finger in front of my lips, staving off any potential questions she might voice within earshot of Dad and waved her to follow me.

Mom gave me a questioning look but followed on my heels. She paused in the open studio, but when I kept going to the spinning door that led into the darkroom, she didn’t follow.

“Come on, you don’t want Dad to hear this.” I spoke as quietly as I could but still loud enough for her to hear me.

Her eyebrows furrowed as she processed what I had just said before her eyes suddenly widened and grinned.

Safely inside the darkroom, I turned on a little boombox Dana had brought over. The music wasn’t loud, not even close, but it helped to cover up our discussion. Mom didn’t let that little bit of insight go by without comment.

“Whose idea was that?” Mom asked as she looked at the maroon boombox and then at me.

“It’s Dana’s,” I answered plainly. “She thought it would be cool. You know, listen to music while we are developing pictures and stuff.”

I had no idea what Mom was thinking, and I wasn’t about to ask. So, instead I started talking to her about why I had asked her to come downstairs.

“I made two new cameras and was hoping we could test them out.”

“Okay, sure. When?”

“Can we do it this week?” I asked. “I was also kind of hoping I could use them this weekend for April’s project.”

“Oh! I completely forgot that it was this weekend.”

“Yeah, and I need to test them before then...”

“I see,” Mom answered. “I think we could do it on Thursday after you get home from school.”

“Or tomorrow?” I asked sheepishly.

There was nothing wrong with doing it on Thursday, but if we did it tomorrow that would give me a little more time to fix anything that was wrong. I was pretty sure everything would be fine, but better safe than sorry.

“We’ll have to see about tomorrow. I’ll let you know when you get home from school.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“No problem, honey.” Mom smiled and wrapped me in her arms. “Anything else or can I go back upstairs with your father?”

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Pinhole - Higher Learning

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