Chapter 16

Thursday morning, I met Laura outside the doors at school and we walked in together. Dana, as she often was now, was waiting for me the moment I walked inside. Surprisingly, Laura didn’t just walk away grumbling under her breath.

“See you in class,” she called out, never missing a step as she continued walking.

I smiled and watched her walk away. I was excited about meeting her after school at the mall. It wasn’t my favorite place to be, but here in Lincoln, there weren’t a whole lot of options this time of year for teenagers.

“Josh, hello!” Dana yelled, inches away from my ear.

“What?” I asked, shuffling away from the loud noise of Dana’s voice in my ear.

“You were off in la-la land,” Dana smirked. “You have the hots for her, don’t you?”

I don’t know what it was about Dana, but she could read me like a book. There was absolutely no reason to hide anything from her. She would call me on it the second I tried, but I did anyway.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said and started walking down the hall that led to Mrs. Petersons’ class.

To my utter shock, Dana didn’t call me out on my lie. She actually smiled, brightly. That put me even closer to the edge of collapse. I was off balance and already leaning into what I thought she was going to say, but it never came. It wasn’t until after Social Studies that I finally relaxed.

By the time the lunch bell rang, I had nearly forgotten about the exchange this morning. I was feeling a quiet confidence burning in my gut that I wasn’t used to. When I met Dana and Jo at the door to Mr. Watts’ classroom, I was all smiles. I was looking forward to seeing Jo’s reaction to her pictures, and I honestly thought she was going to be thrilled. So would her boyfriend Danny. If he didn’t like the picture, someone needed to take him to the emergency room because he didn’t have a pulse.

“Hi, Josh!” Jo called out excitedly as I walked up to her and Dana.

“Hey, Jo,” I grinned proudly, and Dana looked at me questioningly. “Let’s go get your pictures, sound good?”

“I can’t wait.” Jo was hopping in place and the gleam in her eyes was almost blinding.

“For Gods’ sake,” Dana groaned. “Go in already.”

When I handed over the pictures to Jo, she immediately looked them all over and then clasped them to her breasts. She was still smiling, but her posture had changed and redness around her eyes told the real story. She was getting emotional. Not knowing what to do to help her, I handed her the negative image Mr. Watts and I created.

“No, you keep it,” Jo said, her voice a tad bit shaky as she pushed the image back towards me.

“I can’t,” I said, pushing it back towards her. “Please, it’s yours.”

“It’s okay, really. You might need it later. I want you to have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Jo smiled and a tear that had welled up in her eye slowly cascaded down the curve of her cheek. “It would make me happy if you kept it. Thank you for everything.”

Dana and I watched as Jo left the room still holding the small pile of pictures tight to her chest.

“Does that mean you can show it to me now?” Adam asked.

“No, you jerk! Gross!” Dana answered before I got a chance.

I was going to say something similar, just without the jerk part.

“Adam, what is wrong with you?” Laura chimed in from her spot at her desk.

“Oh, shut up, all of you. I was just asking,” Adam responded with his arms crossed and a grimace on his face. “I am getting out of here. It’s obvious I am not wanted.”

Adam stormed out of the room and slammed the door as he went. He was lucky Mr. Watts wasn’t in the room when he pulled a stunt like that. I looked at Dana who was still staring daggers at the door as if it too had offended her. I turned and saw Laura watching me, and more importantly, looking at the picture I was holding in my hands. I need to put this away before people start asking more questions.

When I came back out of the darkroom, there was a strange tension in the air. Laura was looking everywhere but Dana’s direction, while Dana was looking at Mr. Watts’ desk as if it held the secrets to eternal life. It was really, really weird. There was something between those two, and I had no idea what it could be. I also wasn’t stupid enough to open my mouth either, so I just stood there until either Dana or Laura acknowledged me first.

I was not sure if it was better or worse that it was Dana who noticed me standing there first, but she did. Laura was still staring off into the corner where there was a pile of rolled up posters and stuff Mr. Watts had stored.

“Josh, hey,” Dana said and gave me a strained smile. “So, tomorrow? Are we still on?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?” I asked, suddenly confused.

When Dana glanced over to Laura, luck would have it that Laura had looked at the same moment and then two girls’ heads snapped in different directions as if they were both slapped by some invisible force at the exact same time. Fucking Weird!

Dana, thankfully, didn’t stay and hang out any longer. We said our goodbyes and Dana let me know she would see me tomorrow to go over the shoot. I nodded in agreement, still not sure what was going on and why she was being so bonkers.

“So, more pictures on Friday?” Laura asked me when Dana was well out of earshot.

“Yeah,” I replied, and I was shy and uncertain in an instant.

“That’s cool,” Laura said as she got to her feet and walked towards me. “Are we still meeting at Gateway after school?”

“Of course!” I grinned. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I was just checking. I didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting there if you weren’t going to show up. You know?”

“Yeah ... no! No, I don’t understand that ... I mean—”

“Settle down, it’s fine.”

“Sorry...”

“Stop apologizing. We are going to have fun.”

The rest of the day was a blur. I was only thinking about getting home, changing, and having Mom drop me at the mall to meet Laura. When I got off the bus, I was grinning ear to ear because Laura sounded excited about meeting me in a couple of hours. I was just as excited to meet her, but I tried to play it cool. I’m sure she saw right through me, but if she did, she didn’t say anything. Thank God for that!

Mom was on me the moment I walked in the front door, telling me I needed to go shower and change. I thought I looked fine. Laura had seen me several times throughout the day, and she didn’t seem put off by what I was wearing.

“Go on, go take a shower. I left something for you on your bed when you get out. I think it should help,” Mom said insistently before she literally pushed me down the hall towards the family bathroom we all shared.

I wasn’t about to start arguing with her, even though I thought she was making a bigger deal about this than it actually was. Not that it wasn’t a big deal to me, it was. Admitting that to Mom would have opened the floodgates to all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for; I was better off leaving well enough alone.

When I got out of the shower, I wrapped the towel around my waist as I normally did. I headed across the hall to my room, leaving my old clothes on the floor in a pile. Leaving a mess like that would drive Mom crazy when she found it later, but still she’d pick up the pile without saying anything to me about it. I shut my door when I got to my room and sure enough, just as Mom had said, there was a big white plastic bag sitting on my bed.

I had too much curiosity to not open it and I was thankful that I had: inside were two pairs of jeans and two new shirts. Well, one wasn’t a shirt, it was a dark gray Nebraska hoodie, but the other was a polo style shirt with a collar and everything. Not that my jeans and shirts didn’t fit, but these were so much nicer than anything I already had in my drawers.

I couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on my face. Mom was a bit ridiculous, but right now, she was my hero. The first pair of jeans I pulled from the sack was a pair of stone washed Lucky Jeans. I had asked for a pair of these this summer, but Mom told me they were too expensive, and I didn’t need them. Instead, she bought me Silver Tabs. The Levi’s jeans weren’t bad, if anything, they were actually nice, but they weren’t cool like Lucky Jeans. Seeing the Feeling Lucky sign sown into the fly of the jeans made me smile.

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