December 14, 2009 - 3:20 PM

Leo Kelly

“Mr. Kelly. Come here.” Mr. Laennec called to me as I passed his office on the way out of the shop class.

I stopped dead on the spot like I stepped on a glue trap. For such a chill teacher, Mr. Laennec had a voice that could shoot icicles down your spine. It also didn’t help I’d been slacking off, and just welded dicks into my metalworks project with Jared for most of the class. So I prepared myself for the worst as I walked into his small office, the only place in the shop you didn’t choke on sawdust. I could only hope he wouldn’t me after class when the day was about to end.

“Mr. Laennec,” I said, matching his severe tone. A move that only elicited a glare from him—which wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for.

“Leo,” He said. I saw the axe about to fall. “have you ever taken a picture before? And I don’t—”

“Clothed or unclothed?” I practically froze him mid-sentence. Mr. Laennec grimaced, but I continued anyway. “Follow up question, do selfies count?”

“Ughh. Please.” Laennec said, holding a dirt blackened hand in front of me. “Can I take that as a yes?”

“Yeah, Laennec, it’s not like it’s the eighties anymore. Of course, I’ve taken a picture. My sister’s got a little digital camera that she gave to me forever ago.”

“Marcie did, huh?” Each word he said was wet with satisfaction when he thought about my sister. Who, thankfully, was also in her thirties as well. My skin crawled like I was covered by a plague of locusts, but I did my best not to give him the satisfaction of bothering me. “And don’t even get me started with how much better the eighties were. I was a baby. Life was good. No annoying teenagers bothering me. Good times.” I tried not to smile, but I broke after a few seconds. Smirking in triumph, Mr. Laennec continued. “Alright, here’s the deal. I’ve got a photographer who’s off sick from the comms club for a while, and I know you’ve got nothing better to do for the next two weeks other than… hang out,” He said, meaning dripping from his tone, “so I want you to go with one of the other guys in the comms club and take some photos.”

“And there’ll be a $100 per photo fee?”

“There will be wonderful memories made at once-in-a-lifetime events?” Mr. Laennec said, countering my offer.

“How about you—” I stopped myself just short of asking him to buy us a beer, so I settled on the next best thing “—buy us lunch or dinner or something.”

“Yeah, here’s the rub, I’m not comin’ with ya’ll. So can’t do that neither.” The moment he said that I felt half excitement and half annoyance. Of course, he wouldn’t be joining us at some random event over the winter break meaning no buttering him up. But it also means that we can goof off and no one's going to get on us about it. “How ‘bout I make it up by…” Laennec hesitated a moment while he thought of the right wording. “Let’s just call this extra credit. And if you don’t disappoint me, let's just say I’ll overlook a few ‘past-mistakes’.” He clasped his hands together. “How does that sound?”

“That sounds great!” I didn’t hesitate to take him up on his offer. If I understood him correctly, and by his low conspiratorial tone, I think I did, he offered to take away the couple of ‘youthful-indiscretions’ that I had near the beginning of the year. Or, at least, that was how we finally settled on wording it when he had to write me up for my September in-school suspension. Principal Aino had wanted blood for what we did, and I didn’t mind getting thrown to the sharks. Mr. Laennec appreciated it then—like I knew he would—and now he was looking to help me to make up for that. I mean, what was the use for the both of us to get thrown under the bus when he could actually lose his job. What did I have to lose anyway?

“Alright.” Mr. Laennec said, extending a hand to me. I shook it as he continued. “That’s a deal then. I’ll need you out front on the 18th,” The last day of school for winter break. Great. “and on the 22nd.”

“Seriously?” I said, dropping his hand.

“Serious as the clap. There’s a Christmas concert on the 22nd, and the snowball dance is on the 18th. I would’ve thought a young… strapping…” Laennec slowed down as he began to laugh. “Who are we kidding. It’s no surprise that you’re not going to that dance other than to work it.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t high on my priority list.” Wren already decided for me when we started going out that we wouldn’t be attending any dances, formals, or graduations because “there’s no way in hell I’ll be caught at one of those fucking retarded dances.”

“If I recall correctly, Marcie was the same way.”

“Sure she was. They never did teach formal dancing over at Rivercrest. Guess the apartment’s grand-hall was always booked!”

Mr. Laennec rolled his eyes. “You done?”

“Yeah probably. So, what time? And who am I meeting anyways?”

December 18, 2009 - 6:15 PM

Standing outside of the school, collecting a light coating of snow, was a guy that I vaguely recognized.

“Sully?” I asked. Laennec had told me little about my partner in crime for the next couple of days. So this entire time, I fully expected some brace-faced nerd who couldn’t walk two steps without sucking on his inhaler.

Not Sully, who was built like a Greek god. He was tall, seriously tall—rich, I know, coming from a short-stack like me— but this guy had an extra foot on me. Although Sheridan didn’t really have any tracks that divided the town, he was definitely from the better side. He had on a jacket that was probably as expensive as the camera he had with him.

“Hey! You must be Leo, right?” There was something about how he talked that set me on edge. I think it was the fact that it was so affable and kind, but whatever it was it caught me off guard.

“Yeah.”

“Alright, so, this is for you.” He handed me a small cloth camera’ case. I looped the strap around my neck. “They’re not gonna let us in until around 6:45 so if you want to take a few practice shots out here, do it now. It’s not gonna be much brighter in there.” I curled over a little to protect the camera and the extra lens in the bag from the snow. I pulled out the camera and quickly found the “on” switch. “Do you know how to change the ISO? Shutter speed? Also, I think they’ve got the place lit up really blue, so you might want to change the colour temp while you’re at it.” I stared blankly at Sully, while I tried to decipher the foreign language he had suddenly begun speaking.

“So, there’s this setting called AUTO? I was just gonna use that.”

Sully took a second but eventually, he started grinning. To go along with his personality, he also had a knock-out smile—practically movie-star quality—forcing me to realize that I was going to have to work really hard to hate this guy later.

“Let me guess, you’re not from some photography club that I’ve never heard about?”

“I’m gonna say no. Not unless Mr. Laennec decided to start one without consulting me.”

“Okay, well then that changes things. Keep it on AUTO tonight, and just focus on keeping things in focus. And if possible, try and get some good pictures of people dancing and having a good time and all that boring shit.”

“That’s funny,” I said, looking back down at my camera.

“What?”

“I just didn’t take you for the jaded type is all. I took you more as a ‘go dance with the head cheerleader type but got caught juicing before the game’ kind of guy.”

“Thanks, but I don’t play sports.” He said, losing the movie-star smile.

“What? Really? I’d think at least basketball.”

“I’m sure you say that to all the tall black guys, don’t you?”

“Oh shit, that’s not what I—”

“Don’t worry dude, I was just fucking with you,” Sully smirked as he spoke. “They’ll be grabbing us pretty quick here. So, if you want to just take a couple of practice shots, it’ll be easier for me to give you pointers out here before everything turns to shit inside.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment. After a few practice shots, I couldn’t hold it in. “Hey Sully, I’m—”

“Dude, seriously. It’s fine. I’d know if you were being a dick, and I know you can’t help it sometimes.”

What the fuck does that mean? Without me even realizing, my blood began to boil.

“I mean, it’s in your DNA.” He said while scrawling something in his notebook. “The shortness, I mean.” And with that, he flashed that same smile. “Gotcha.”

“Har, har,” I said, bringing the viewfinder to my eye. Alright, I’ll really have to work hard to hate this guy.

I took a couple more photos of the school building, trying my best to work with the classrooms that still had light in them. The camera had a hell of a time picking them up, but after Sully gave me a few pointers, I managed to snap a few good ones.

A few hours into the dance, Sully waved me over to him. He was standing near the doors that led back to the atrium of the school. Beside him, there was a pretty brunette girl, looking at me very expectantly. Or was she annoyed with me? It was hard to tell.

“What’s up?” I shouted over the loud music.

“Let’s talk out here!” He said as he opened the door.

A bright beam of fluorescent light hit me like a wall as I followed behind him. I couldn’t help but notice that the pretty girl followed closely as well.

“Hey, so…” Sully said, aimlessly flipping through the pages of his notebook. “Do you—”

“You done already?”

“Is that a bad thing?” He asked, grimacing slightly.

“God no. I don’t care, dude. There are only so many ways I can take a picture of people trying not to get caught dry humping.”

“Really? Oh, thank you, God.”

“You can really just call me Leo,” I said, flashing a smile.

“Thank you so much, Leo. You’re literally a lifesaver.” I couldn’t help but notice that he glanced back at the girl as he said that. “Could you come with me to my locker real quick? I just gotta get the camera off you.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said, falling in line behind the pair of them.

The brunette girl started walking in line with Sully. I assume that she’s his girlfriend. She definitely had the whole impatient girlfriend vibe about her, but they weren’t holding hands or anything.

At Sully’s locker, I handed him the camera bag, but after looking back at the girl, he sucked on his teeth.

“Would you mind doing me one last favour? If it’s not too much.”

Honestly, if it was a little more work or something easy like that, Sully was a cool enough guy that I didn’t mind so much doing it for him.

“Sure, I guess. But you’ll owe me.”

“What’s your price?” He said with a smirk.

“Your firstborn?" I said with a laugh. "I dunno. Buy me lunch or something when schools back in sesh.”

“That I can do. Thanks, man.” He gave me one of those bro hugs—the kind that all the normies make a habit of doing too often—then handed me the camera bag alongside a plastic case full of spooled cords. “Just go through these and choose the best ones. Make sure to delete the shit ones too. I can make the final decision on which photos we pick so don’t worry too much.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard. I mean, I am practically a professional photographer-man after tonight.”

“Sure! Not even close at all but sure!” He said flashing the movie-star smile.

“Go on and be the generic protagonist, and I’ll just go deal with this,” I said, pulling the camera bag over my shoulder. His expression twisted a little bit before he chuckled.

“Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”

So did the girl too, I bet. “No worries,” I said.

The two love birds went back into the dance while I started off towards the parking lot, but a slight buzz in my pocket stopped me. A text from Marcie. She was getting held late at work and wouldn’t be able to pick me up until after 10. An hour later than originally planned. Great.

I contemplated walking home in the below-freezing weather, but I decided to get a head start on these photos instead of braving the cold. Looking out the windows, the light dusting of snow that we were having over the last few days had finally graduated to a full-on blizzard. A part of me was worried about Marcie because I could barely see the lights that ran alongside the highway. And another part of me was still peeved that I had to do school work this late at night.

I walked back to the east hall and found the comms-lab key tucked alongside the cords in the plastic case.

Jesus. That guy was way too trusting. What the hell would he have done if I was a piece of garbage like Teddy?

After taking a few minutes to log in and set up all the cables and whatnot, I finally was able to open up the SD card. Then, like the harsh god that I was, I quickly got to culling all the shitty photos I had snapped that night. Starting from the most recent and working my way backwards was sort of reverse cathartic. The most recent photos were by far my best. I finally figured out how to focus the damn camera and other basics like how it was best to stand between the light and my subjects. Further into the file, I deleted more and more shitty photos. Then, once I reached the near-black photos I had taken outside, I hovered my finger above the delete key when I noticed something odd in one of the still-lit classroom windows.

It was a blurry photo, taken in the dark, by an amateur photographer, in a light snowstorm, but in the upper corner of the photo, two people stood close to one another. The photo was too distorted to make out anything, but their body language said it all.

A short, curly-haired girl, was being embraced by someone with a black mop-top haircut, the guy looked more like a man than any student, even that was obvious.