Chapter 9: Ghosts and Vampires

IT WAS A BIT of a dry spell as far as school photography went the next week. I had a discussion with Miss Sullivan about taking photos of various clubs when they met. That would be more staged photos, but she thought I could get something better than the standard group shot sitting and standing in rows. She pulled out the previous yearbook so I could get a feel for what they all looked like. It was pretty bleak. Pretty much every shot was a row of girls sitting on chairs and a row of guys standing behind them. Sometimes, there was another row sitting on the floor, or a row of taller kids standing behind.

I’d managed one shot of the cheerleaders at the homecoming game, but it wasn’t very good in my opinion. Miss Sullivan said she was sure I’d get better shots of them during basketball season. She also reminded me that the yearbook covered elementary and junior high school, so I’d need to make some time for photographing in their classrooms.

“I don’t have to take, like school photos of each person, do I?” I asked.

“No. Don’t worry about that. School pictures are done by Jordan’s. They’ll be around in late October and set up on the stage with lights and a professional photographer. They are always good clear photographs that chart a record of the student’s progress through the years, but frankly, they are just one step above mug shots at the county jail. They run nearly 600 students through the photo mill in a week, so I don’t think we have any right to complain.”

“That’s a relief.” I had a sudden image of kids I’d come to know up against a backdrop with a measuring chart behind them, holding a card with their name and number on it. I started laughing, and Miss Sullivan wanted to know what was so funny. I told her and she started laughing, too.

“You see? That is what separates your photos from the usual school yearbook photograph. Find a willing group of kids and do a series of photos like that. Not all of them, of course. Just a few to get the idea. Then think of other settings you could shoot some of the clubs in. For example, get a photo of FFA all piled on and around a tractor. Get all the FHA girls to pose with aprons and cookware. You’ll come up with more ideas.”

“I will! I’m glad we can have a little fun with this,” I said. I left her office a little happier than I’d been when I first thought about class pictures.

Friday was the last game of our short season at the Sterling Panthers. I rode the team bus again and before the game started, I got Coach to line everyone up so I could get a group picture. They took off their helmets and I had a row in their down position at the line, a row leaning over them, and a row standing up straight with a hand in the air. I even got them to hold up one finger.

“We aren’t number one in anything,” Kurt laughed.

“Sure you are,” I said. “You’re the first football team at Tenbrook, ever. That’s a significant number one.” When they heard that, even Coach Hennessey and Coach Franks raised a number one finger. It was nice to get the photo on a real football field with grass and everything.

I got a few more action shots, including a good one of Steve Steiner flying through the air to make a tackle on the sideline. It was one of the plays that actually worked and the other team was thrown for a loss and had to kick the ball. This team was less experienced than even most of the B-Teams we’d played and the game ended at our closest loss, 6-0. The season was over.

On Saturday, I went through my usual routine of going to the darkroom, processing the negatives, and pulling a proof. Then I got the laundry ready and went to the laundromat. Mom didn’t see any reason to drive me when I could drive myself now. That was fine by me.

It was about one in the afternoon, after I’d had a sandwich and finished the ironing, when I headed back to the studio. Judy and Janice arrived almost at the exact same time I did and brought their dresses into the room with them.

“So cool!” Judy said. “Look at all this stuff!”

“I figured we could find a bunch of stuff to use as props with your Victorian outfits,” I said. “We’ll just need to rummage around a bit.”

That was the first order of business. We climbed all over the stuff in the store room and finally found a little table and chair and a tea service.

“You should organize this place,” Janice said.

“Someday, probably,” I said. “But right now, I like the thought of just going in here and discovering things. Like, it’s too bad that fake fireplace is so Christmassy. It would be a nice addition to this scene. But this will be more like a classic Victorian portrait. Let’s set it up over here and let me get some lights set up.”

We went to work and they tried a couple of different poses as I manipulated the lights. I thought I had something that would work pretty well.

“Okay. I guess it’s time for you to change into your costumes.”

I went over to my desk to get my camera and turned around to find both girls taking off their clothes. I’d thought they would use the bathroom to change in. Judy was in a black bra and panties and started pulling black petticoats on before her dress. Janice just unfastened her bra and tossed it on the bench. She was standing there in just her panties with bare boobs out on display. I know my mouth dropped open as she slid the skinny dress over her head and down to rest on her shoulders. That plunging neckline didn’t quite make it all the way to her navel, but the inside of both her boobs was on display. She walked over to me and turned her back.

“Get the zipper, would you?” she asked. Then she whispered, “Did you get a picture?”

“Um ... No. You kind of took me by surprise.” I got the dress zipped and she looked pretty spectacular.

“Then get your camera ready this time,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what she planned, but I got my camera ready. She grabbed both sides of the plunging neckline and pulled them out to the side so I could see her boobs again. I snapped a couple of pictures. She was so close that all I got was her boobs. I couldn’t get her face in the frame. Well, whatever she wanted out of it, I just photographed whack-off material that would last me weeks. Judy shoved her out of the way.

“Show-off,” she hissed. “Nate, could you zip me up, please? It seems Janice has her hands full.”

I quickly pulled at the zipper on the back of Judy’s dress. I have to tell you, though, Judy’s back was almost as tantalizing as Janice’s front. The zipper was all the way down at her butt and looking at her bare back as I pulled it up was great. And I noticed something as I approached her shoulders.

“You took off your bra,” I whispered.

“Yeah. Too bad you weren’t watching. I don’t need it for this costume.”

“You never need it as far as I’m concerned.”

She giggled and turned red, then they put on their hats and got into position.

With the hats, I had to make a couple of lighting adjustments. I tilted Judy’s one direction a little and Janice’s the other. Judy sat on the edge of the chair with the teacup and saucer in her hand. Janice stood beside and half a step behind her.

“Janice, you need to stand up straighter. You look like your boobs are about to fall out of the dress. That’s not the right look for this costume. Not for this picture, anyway. You need to look regal, as if your boobs never move. Chin up a little.”

She straightened up and really did look regal and proud. I went over and helped adjust Judy’s posture and the position of the cup and saucer. I went back and took a full-length picture with the camera turned to the side for portrait mode.

“Candle,” I said. “Just stay there for a minute. I saw a candle back here somewhere.”

I went hunting and found a taper and a candle holder. I brought it to the table and found a box of matches so I could light it. The flickering light called for me to tone down the other lights I had on them. I cut to just two of the mini theatre lights, with one focused on Janice’s face and one on Judy’s. The right side of Janice’s face just kind of faded off into shadow, but the light on her breast made it look even more spectacular. With Judy, the light didn’t fade out completely, but changed to a very different quality in the candlelight. I got shots from a couple of different angles and then closeups of each of the girls. We switched things around and I emphasized to Janice the importance of sitting up straight when she was seated in the candle light. I also experimented with bouncing the light off the ceiling to soften it further. It made it look like the candle was the major source of illumination and the left side of their faces was more shadowed.

Makeup was something these girls didn’t need to be coached on. They’d both applied a very Gothic look and I thought Morticia Addams had absolutely nothing on them.

I took up two rolls of film and was happy with every single pose.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” I said, snapping on the overhead light and blowing out the candle. “I think we got some great pictures.”

“One at least,” Janice whispered. She immediately started unzipping her own dress and shrugging out of it. Judy turned her back to me, watching her friend expose herself.

“Zipper,” Judy said. I immediately complied.

“You have a really pretty back,” I said as I ran a trailing finger down her spine.

She turned toward me and shrugged her shoulders out of the dress, letting it drop below her breasts. She looked at me while I scanned down and breathed deeply. Somehow, the deeper I breathed, the harder her nipples became.

“And a very pretty front,” I added and she turned to get her regular clothes on.

“See you next time,” Janice said as the two girls left.

I sat down and tried to recover my composure. I’d just seen two exquisite pairs of boobs and I just wanted to think about them for a while.

Second period Monday was a little tense. I took my place between Patricia and Judy at our biology lab table and Judy wouldn’t turn to look at me. She blushed hot pink whenever she even glanced my way. Mr. Franks had a selection of dissected and dried creatures that he passed around. They had numbered pins in them and we were supposed to identify what part of the animal’s organs or skeleton or muscle the pin was stuck in. Gross.

I used the opportunity to lean over to Judy.

“Judy, please continue to be my friend. You don’t ever need to feel you have to keep up with Janice or do something just because she did. Don’t let that spoil our friendship.”

“I flashed you,” she whispered.

“You’re beautiful. But you don’t ever have to do that again. I will like you just as much.”

“Really?” she looked at Patricia who was trying to understand what we were talking about. “I lost Patricia as a friend because I couldn’t keep up with her and what she was doing. I don’t want to lose Janice, too.”

“Hey, wait!” Patricia whispered to us. “I thought you stopped hanging out with me because you didn’t like Tony. I didn’t know I was doing something you thought you had to do to. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Judy said. Tears were running down her cheeks.

“Touching though this seems,” Mr. Franks said, “what is pin number five pointing at?”

I glanced down at the piece of dried meat in front of me.

“Stomach,” I said.

“Number two?”

“It’s a little shriveled, but I’d say heart,” Patricia answered.

“Number seven?”

“The big muscle in the thigh. Is it still called a quadriceps on a frog?”

“Adductor magnus. Hug each other and get back to the lesson,” Franks said.

Judy and Patricia jumped off their stools and hugged each other behind me, then caught me in the middle of a hug. Franks nodded and we started writing down the parts of a frog, checking with the picture in our textbook when we didn’t know something.

I took Anna bowling Saturday. That was okay for once in a while but too expensive for a frequent date. Man! You even had to rent shoes! I tried not to notice she wore a size nine. But we got to talk a lot, which we hadn’t had time to do much in school lately. I told her about some of the ideas I had for group and club photos and she got all excited about them, with ideas of her own. Monday, she joined the yearbook staff as my assistant.

One of the first things we did was spend time creating our mugshot background with heights drawn clearly on a piece of poster board. We got permission to hang it in the hall for a few days, just to get people curious about it. Lots of people stopped by and measured themselves on our chart. Friday, though, we caught Ted Johnson standing in front of it. Anna quickly made a little sign that read ‘T. Johnson: Tardy.’ That was our first criminal photo. He was a little embarrassed because he was habitually late for school.

We also presented our idea for photos to the Future Farmers of America and the Future Homemakers of America. They got into it. Wednesday afternoon, one of the guys drove his tractor to school and after school we went out and arranged the entire club in their blue jackets on and around it. They brought some other implements with them, including a hay bale and pitchfork, farmer caps, and a cow. One of the dads actually brought a cow to school and led it up to the group to pose! Thirty guys and a cow. An epic photo.

Not to be outdone, the Future Homemakers of America posed in the Home Ec classroom around a stove Thursday afternoon. They had aprons on, true, but they’d baked a pie that looked delicious. One girl held the pie. One had a doll wrapped up as a baby and had it on her shoulder. Two seniors held out their left hands with engagement rings on them. And two others held a clothesline between them while a third pinned a shirt to it that was bigger than any I could imagine a student at Tenbrook ever wearing. She said it was her father’s. Some of the girls had bandanas wrapped around their heads and had brooms and feather dusters.

There were almost as many girls in FHA as there were boys in FFA. Everybody thought it was a huge joke, even though they all knew home economics and future housewives meant a lot more than keeping house and having babies. I was amazed they were willing to poke fun at themselves like that.

It might have been because Halloween was approaching and everyone was getting a little squirrelly with costume ideas. In the first big event of the year for our youth group, we were having a joint Halloween party with the Catholic kids the next week. I asked Anna to go and she shook it off.

“Our church doesn’t do stuff with the Catholic church,” she said. “You’re Methodist. That’s different. You go and have fun. Not me.”

Well, that was big of her, I guess, but I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. Our youth group met during Sunday School on Sunday morning before church. We were pretty laid back and a lot of the time there was just Andy and me anyway. The other kids in our church barely made it to church on Sunday and getting there an hour early to meet up with kids they saw at school wasn’t on their program.

When I went out to get my bike Friday afternoon, Tony and Patricia were waiting beside it.

“Hey, guys. What’s up?” I asked.

“The guys are blowing off school Monday and are headed up to Wisconsin for a rally this weekend,” Tony said.

“I can’t go,” Patricia said. “We were thinking maybe this would be a good time for me to do another photoshoot with you. You available Sunday afternoon to fill the time of this poor lonely girl?”

“Just the time,” Tony said. “Don’t go filling her with anything else.”

“Right.”

“Oh, Tony. You know I wouldn’t cheat on you. But you want that sexy Halloween picture, don’t you?”

“You know I do. You’re a Playboy bunny in the making, Babe.”

“You and Playboy! You know that’s what they’re doing, Nate? Playboy is building a new resort up at Lake Geneva and the guys want to see if they can get jobs there when school lets out.”

“It’s going to be sweet, man. An entire resort Playboy Club.”

“Anyway, can we take photos Sunday? Pretty please?” Patricia asked batting her eyes at me. Oh, hell, yes.

“Uh ... Sure. You know I’ve got a new studio? Let’s make it about one o’clock in the afternoon. Go around to the back of Center Marketplace and climb the stairs to the top. Bring anything you need, like costumes or make up. There’s a bathroom and you can change as many times as you want. I don’t have anything else going that afternoon, so we can do as many poses as you want,” I said.

“I’ll get that sexy picture for you, honey,” Patricia said, kissing Tony and getting on the back of his bike.

“Get some good ones, Nate,” Tony said. He kicked his bike to life and headed out of town.

Other than developing and printing, I hadn’t done anything in the studio since Judy and Janice. I did have a couple of really good prints of those two, though. The candlelit scene was fantastic. I’d given both girls a copy and had one hanging in the studio. I’d printed a nice 8x10 of Janice’s tits, too, but I kept that one in my private collection for use when I needed to stroke one off. Maybe someday I’d get to touch them, too.

I had Chris’s glamour photo hung in the studio, too, along with her picture in the cemetery. Of course, my fair entries were all hung on that wall as well. I thought I had a nice-looking gallery in the making.

After getting my chores done Saturday morning, I headed to the studio to do some printing and to clean things up. The last time I’d taken pictures of Patricia, it was just in the garage with a work light. But she was a natural model with the way she moved. I kind of wanted the place to be extra clean and presentable to her. I did a lot of sweeping and cleaning and making the photo area look more professional.

One thing I didn’t do was hang any school photos. I’d gotten a call from Miss Ludwig at the library a week ago and she said she had ordered a copy of that book Guide for professional artists, musicians, and dancers. If I had just seen the title of that book, I wouldn’t have picked it up because I’m a photographer. I checked it out of the library, though, and it opened my eyes to seeing that I was an artist and that I produced works of art.

Not every photo, certainly, but I’m sure even Picasso doodled. You just couldn’t tell.

One of the main things that the book stressed was the difference between art owned by the artist and art for hire. For example, if you see an artist selling watercolors on the street and buy one, you own that painting. You don’t own the image. Buying the painting doesn’t mean you can photograph it and make prints of it for sale. The image belongs to the artist. On the other hand, if you hire that artist to create a logo for your company, the artist has no further rights to the image when it is turned over to you. It’s yours. You hired the artist to create it.