Dream Boy by Mary Crockett, Madelyn Rosenberg Page B

pictures, and across the room a few random guys huddled around a Goth chick who was drawing something with a fat, black marker.
    “Hey.” I took a seat next to Will.
    “Hey.” He nudged my knee with his knee.
    “This the stuff from earlier?” I asked, pointing to the computer screen.
    “Yep. A day in the life.”
    Each picture flashed on the screen for a moment in a sort of slideshow. A group of sophomore girls with too much makeup voguing in front of the trophy case. Mr. Stauffer sitting on the edge of his desk, his eyes squinting in that “I’m listening” face he makes. A kind of artsy shot of test tubes filled with different colored powders. The Lobmans’ Japanese exchange student, Akiko, smiling over her shoulder as she walked down the hall. Two guys running off the soccer field, a haze of blue mountains in the distance.
    “These are solid,” I said. “You have a great eye.”
    “Just one?” He looked at me, deadpan. “I always thought both my eyes were equally great.”
    I gave him a kick. “You are soooo smooth,” I said.
    “Smooth like ex-lax.”
    “Smooth and gross,” I added.
    “Like ex-lax.”
    The pictures from lunch flashed by next. I’d been there, right beside him the whole time, and it had seemed like he was kind of goofing off, so I was surprised by what he’d managed to capture. In his photos, all the confusion of the cafeteria seemed much more interesting than it had in real life. It was as if by freezing its motion and drawing a frame around its edges, everyday stuff had taken on some deeper meaning…truth, even. Each frame had a little story: Billy Stubbs tossing a crumpled milk carton toward the trash can in a high perfect arc while Trina Myers checked out his butt; Melanie Butler, whose hair color changed with the weather (orange today), puckering her lips as if she was just about to curse at Clive Porterfield, who was half-sitting, half-standing, trying to explain something.
    Will stood. “I need to work on some prints while these upload. Wanna come?”
    “In a minute,” I said. I was waiting to see the photo he’d taken of Martin, wondering if it’d be, I don’t know, there . But what I saw first was not Martin; it was me. I had a little jelly on my chin, as promised, and a huge grin on my face. I looked prettier than I thought of myself as looking. And happier than I was used to feeling. Then there was Martin in profile, beautiful as always, slightly out of focus, but even so, good-looking enough to be a high-end underwear model. There was another picture of Martin, too, this one from behind. He had a small tattoo on the back of his neck, two small, squiggly lines, like waves. I wondered why I’d never noticed it. But maybe I had; it looked somehow familiar. Before I was ready to stop looking at him, Serena appeared, a mahogany curl coiling over one eye as she offered Paolo a rutabaga chip.
    “Can you get me a copy of those?” I asked him. “I might want to use some for sketches.”
    “That’s quite a compliment, coming from Chilton’s resident artist.”
    “You’re an artist, too.”
    “I just like to take pictures,” Will said. “Anyway, the camera only sees what’s going on outside. Your drawings show what’s inside. It’s like you make this invisible connection between what you’re thinking and feeling and what the person who sees your work could be thinking and feeling.”
    I blushed. “Nick would love it if my head swelled up so much I couldn’t fit through my doorway. He’s always wanted my room.”
    Will nudged my knee again. “Come on,” he said.
    I followed him to the darkroom door, which was really this cylinder, with a piece cut out. Once inside, you stand on a circle and slide the door so that the entrance into the cylinder becomes your exit into the darkroom. That way you don’t allow in any light from the outside. Pretty much, it works the same way some of my mother’s spices work: saltshaker technology.
    “Voilà,” said Will,