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“Here’s some instructions from the Internet, ” Claire went on. “But I don’t know, they seem pretty complicated. ”

“I might be able to help you figure them out, if you need. ” Josh nudged me with his elbow again, and in three seconds I pictured our entire lives together: taking pictures in our yard, hanging them in our house, inviting our couple friends over to see.

The others at the table had lost interest quickly after I’d opened the gift, and I could tell by the way Claire kept picking at the table that she felt unsure of whether to keep focusing on me or turn her attention to them.

I gave her a nod to let her know it was okay if she ignored me now, but instead she said, “I know you don’t like being in front of the camera, or onstage. . . ” She flipped her hair and that garnered the attention of the girls at the table. “But you’re the perfect person to meld into the background and capture everything around you. ”

My hand slipped on the edge of the camera box and I gave myself a paper cut. Sucking on my finger, I tried to process her words. Did she really just say I might as well just fade into the background? In front of everyone? Okay, I knew I was no match for her talent and grace and beauty, but was I that unimportant?

I looked over at Josh and he was nodding, but I couldn’t tell if it was at me or at Claire or at the story Jasmine had just started telling.

The bell rang, and I swallowed my embarrassment. I didn’t want Claire’s words to end my birthday lunch. “Thanks for the camera! ” I said, forcing some volume as they all stood and the din in the cafeteria rose. “And for saying I was creative, ” I added, practically shouting, but I don’t think a single one of them heard me.

Before I could think of another way to get their attention, they were gone.

CHAPTER TWO

When I arrived at my locker, the quiet guy assigned the one next to mine was hunched over, struggling with his lock. I knew of him from my drama class, but he was one of those quiet nonparticipators who always sat at the back.

It seemed he’d slipped his padlock on backward and was having an awful time with it. Something about his tall, lanky frame bent over, his tongue wedged out to the side, and his big hands fumbling over the small lock made me smile. He looked like a little kid trying to untangle the chain on his first two-wheeler. An exceptionally tall little kid.

“Here, let me try, ” I said, placing my camera box at my feet. “I’m short. I can probably get right underneath it. ”

He laughed, but at five feet nothing, it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. He gave me the combination one number at a time, and it occurred to me as I dialed to the last number that he was putting a fair amount of trust in a stranger. I was the opposite. I kept things private, never even giving Shayleen or Deirdre my combination, and we’d been friends for years.

I popped off the lock and passed it to him.

“Thanks. ” He took it and met my eyes, but only for a second.

“No problem. ” When he slung the lock through the open latch, I saw the 1492 stamped above it. I sang the little Columbus rhyme I’d learned in elementary school in my head. “You must be Christopher, ” I said playfully.

He hesitated, looking lost. “Uh, no. Marcus. ”

“Mmm. I think I’ll call you Christopher. ”

Marcus studied my poker face, furrowing his brow slightly, then nodded.

“I’m Loann. ” I slid the camera into the bottom of my locker and reached for my books for next class.

I didn’t expect a reply, so his voice surprised me. “Yeah, I think I’ll call you. . . Curly Fries. ”

I suppressed a cringe. My ü bercurly (read: frizzball) hair was the most noticeable thing about me. Shayleen avoided talking about my hair but she often glanced up like there was something really wrong with it. Marcus’s blunt recognition of the state of my hair—I didn’t quite know what to do with that. But I shot him a grin anyway. He seemed nice, and I wondered why I’d never talked to him before. Well, besides the fact that I rarely talked to boys.

“So is that yours? ” He motioned to the pink tank top draped over the camera box.

“Um, it was a gift. ” Even though it was folded and he couldn’t see the Kleenex size of the thing, my face flushed.

He scrunched up his face, looking between me and the tank. “Hmmm. Pink? Really? ”

A small part of me loved the fact that this total stranger could figure out this one thing about me: No, pastel pink is not my color—thanks, Mom. And Shayleen. Maybe you should take lessons from Marcus here.

He finished with his things and shut his locker. “See ya, Curly. ”

As he fed his lock through its hole in the proper direction, I replied, “Going to sail the ocean blue, Chris? ”

I tapped his locker number, and suddenly the 1492 registered. He coughed out a laugh and walked away.

Art class was next, and since I didn’t want to run into Shayleen quite yet, I cut through the cafeteria to the electives wing. I hoped to ask Mr. Dewdney if he’d marked my portfolio before class started.

Eagerness to check my grade may give the impression that I’m Artiste Extraordinaire. I’m not. I mean, I try. I’ve always loved the way the slightest change in shadow and light can give drastically different effects, but I only seem to recognize this in other people’s projects. I can’t accomplish it myself. Besides, a few of Mr. Dewdney’s tightly structured projects this year have killed my creativity.

Still, I worked really hard on the portfolio. It wasn’t like I expected a college scholarship from it, but maybe an A.

When I rounded the corner into his room, Mr. Dewdney emerged from a supply closet at the back.

“I was wondering if you’ve marked any of the portfolios, ” I said, breathless.

He waltzed toward his desk at the front, his eyebrows knit together. “Yes, I’ve marked a few, but I haven’t seen yours. Are you sure you handed it in? ”

Am I sure I handed it in? No, I just spent five hundred hours making it perfect and then left it at home. I cleared my throat and held back the sarcastic comment that was practically nose-diving off of my tongue about how mine was the very first portfolio handed in, well ahead of the due date.

“Positive, ” I told him, keeping my face straight.

He flipped through a pile of portfolios on the table behind him. When he uncovered my bright-red folder, I yelled, “That’s it! ” as if he had just found my missing arm. He flipped through it, and as he did, I could see sticky notes throughout with red-pen scratchings. His comments.

Finally, he shut it. “Um, no. I haven’t had a chance to give it a final grade yet, I’m afraid. ” He glanced up to the clock. “I’m working my way through the pile and will have to go back over some of them again. ” The way he motioned toward the pile, you’d swear it reached the ceiling.

I swallowed, and walked to my seat, suddenly noticing the room was full. I was too stunned to say “Thanks for checking, ” or anything at all to anyone.

It’s not like I needed to be a natural performer or good with boys, like Shayleen. Or multi-talented and popular like my sister. All I’ve ever wanted was to be kind of good at one thing. Worth a second look. Maybe a compliment.

But not only was my work not good enough for an A, it wasn’t good enough to remember.

CHAPTER THREE

At home after school, I had only my nagging mind to keep me company. I questioned whether Claire was right about me. If she thought I should just fade into the background, is that what everyone thought? Was I just a vase or knickknack on the shelf of the rest of humanity?

It wasn’t like I needed to be in the spotlight. I’d never be the star of a ballet recital or step-dance captain like Claire, and that was okay. So why did I feel the need to keep trying to compete at that level?

I didn’t, I decided. Who needed that superstar stuff? Not me. I could be happy in the background if I didn’t always see it as such a bad place to be. I set the brown cardboard box with my new camera on my bed and flipped through the instructions.

Mom and Dad wouldn’t be home for hours. After some water damage to our house three years ago, my parents had had to put the whole repair amount on their credit cards. Mom increased her hours to full-time at the nursing home and Dad started working overtime at least a couple of days per week to keep up with the bills. Even if it was my birthday, I knew it was just what they had to do.

But I did take offense that Claire had after-school plans that she thought were much more important than me. It had been only a couple of years ago when she’d rushed home to pin up balloons and hide my gifts.

But she was busy and popular now, and I knew I should be happy for her. I was happy for her. Except that sometimes I wasn’t.

I flipped ahead a few pages in the camera manual until I found the instructions for loading the film. They seemed easy enough to understand. Following step by step, I inserted a roll of film.

When I picked up the loaded camera, its weight made it feel important. As I ran my hand over the buttons at the top, my brain surged on how intricate and stimulating and inventive photography could be.

In the instructions I found a layout of how to adjust the amount of light that came through the lens, and thought back to a picture Mr. Dewdney had drawn in art class of a big house with an eerie shaded quality. At the time, I’d done my best to copy it, but my drawing had turned into a muted mess of colors. It was completely unrecognizable.

A photograph. Now that you could recognize without even trying.

Even though I heard Claire come in sometime after dinner, I was absorbed and didn’t bother opening my door. I fell asleep with the camera on my chest, the instructions spread across my bed like a treasure map. There was so much more to play around with than on Mom’s little digital point-and-shoot model.

The next morning my birthday disappointments had vanished and I woke up with a smile on my face, thinking:

I have a cool new camera.

The camera was a gift from my sister and Josh.

Josh sat with me, smiled at me, and winked at me during my birthday lunch.

Why did I always have to focus on the negative, on all the ways that my life wasn’t good enough?

* * *

Two jocks stood right inside the school’s front entrance when I walked in. They laughed and said something I couldn’t hear as I walked past. Normally I would have wanted to be swallowed up by my hoodie, but today their reaction made me pull my shoulders back and walk a little taller.

When Marcus arrived at his locker, he focused on his books, not even saying hello. I tried not to take it as a snub. It probably had nothing to do with me. Maybe he was just incredibly shy and I’d have to work a little harder at getting him to talk to me each day.

The idea made me smile. That could be kinda fun.

I turned, about to open my mouth, when he said, “Did your highlighter explode? ” He gestured to my shirt—a gray tee with a big orange blob that said SPLAT across it. “That happened to me once, only mine was green and went all over my hands. ”

He said it with such a straight face, it took me a second—and a twitch at the side of his mouth—to realize he was joking. He wasn’t that shy, it just took him a little while to start a conversation. We were similar that way—not quick-mouthed like Shayleen.

I nibbled the inside of my cheek, holding back a smile. “Or maybe you just told people it was your highlighter after a really big sneeze. ”

His stoicism was no match for my dry humor. He reached up like he was wiping his mouth, but I caught the edges of a smile there first. I liked how he didn’t hand his smiles over easily. How he was making me earn them.

“Later, ” I said, waving a hand over my head as I spun and headed off to class.

All through English I noticed weird looks shooting my way from people I had never spoken to before. Jocks. Cheerleaders.

A folded turquoise paper was making its way around the room and I wondered if that had something to do with it, since the note conveniently bypassed me.

Seriously, what were we, in sixth grade? I had more important things to think about than if people were sending around notes saying “Loann has a fat ass” or whatever. I still had to tweak the last paragraph of my essay before handing it in. Grow up, people.

Thankfully our teacher quickly took over, and I didn’t think about the strange looks again until drama.

A lot of students take Mr. Benson’s drama class because it’s nonthreatening. He rarely calls on students who want to fly under his radar, and likes to work with those who participate. The kids who love to get involved sit in the front, people like Shayleen, who’s about as shy as a tornado.

And I’d always sat with her. But today she leaned in, murmuring with Deirdre and two other guys. Maybe my insecurity had risen because of the weird looks in English class, but I immediately wondered if it was about me. Shayleen had had temper tantrums, yes, but I’d always let her cool off. She was obviously no longer the object of anyone’s scorn after yesterday’s lunch episode, judging by all of the people huddled around her. So the whispering probably had nothing to do with me, I reasoned silently. I was overreacting.

I sucked in a breath and marched for my usual seat beside Shayleen. She didn’t look my way, but with the giggling going on between her and her crew, I didn’t really know if she’d noticed me.

Turning to the back of the room, I found Marcus and gave him a little wave. He returned it, along with a few scrunches of his nose—like he was going to let go of a really big sneeze—and then checked out his shirt and his hands to see if anything had exploded on them. I laughed quietly.

I’d never considered myself one of the nonparticipators like him—I’d always sat in the front—but now that I thought about it, when was the last time I’d volunteered for one of the drama games? The most I ever did was call out prompt suggestions when Mr. Benson asked for them.

Maybe I was more like Marcus than I realized.

The group around Shayleen dispersed to their seats when Mr. Benson started class with a long spiel about this year’s play. Shayleen watched our teacher intently, nodding her head at regular intervals. She looked consumed with thoughts of getting a good part in the play, and I was glad that she’d forgotten yesterday’s outburst.

Except she leaned in her seat to angle toward Deirdre and away from me. I heard whispering from behind me, from the guys she’d been talking to. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.

By the time the bell rang at the end of class, Shayleen had not looked in my direction once. I tried to keep talking myself down about it, but when she stood and turned for the door, I decided I needed to know if she was still mad.

“Hey, Shay. . . ” I said.

She stood with her back to me for several seconds so I couldn’t read her.

“I’m, um, sorry about yesterday, ” I said. Because I was. Even though there was nothing I could have done about it, I did feel bad that Claire and Jasmine had embarrassed her in front of everyone. “My sister and her friends. . . they can be like that, ” I added.

Shayleen turned around slowly, her eyes narrowing. “So now everything’s your sister’s fault? ”

“That’s not what I meant. I—”

She cut me off, slapping a turquoise paper down on the desk in front of me. Then, with a smirk, she spun toward the door and marched away.

I flipped over the paper and my eyes widened at the lines of text. This was the sixth grade! Literally.

Shayleen had printed off a quiz—a private quiz—I’d done at least five years ago when we emailed each other almost every day. She’d obviously copied it on bright paper so it wouldn’t be missed. I gripped the edge of my desk and stared down at the list.

Most of them were lame questions about favorite movies and books, and there was nothing too embarrassing. Except for the last three:

Have you kissed a boy? NO! But WANT to!

Have you ever had a boyfriend? Sadly, no.

If you could kiss a boy, who would it be?

***JOSH GARRISON***

The asterisks were mine, along with a Google Image of a pair of pursed lips I’d included at the bottom. If the header of my email address wasn’t enough to identify me, Shayleen had scribbled the words YOUR SISTER’S BOYFRIEND, LOANN? right underneath. Of course it didn’t mention that Claire didn’t even know Josh when I’d answered this.

My face burned. How many people had seen the paper this morning?

For the rest of the day, my main agenda was this: Avoid Shayleen, avoid Claire, and hopefully—please, God—avoid Josh. It will blow over in a few days, I told myself again and again and again under my breath. I avoided people’s eyes in the hallways and ignored their whispers in my classes.

The only person I came face-to-face with was Marcus.

He gave me a playful nudge with his elbow at our lockers. Because I was off in another world, I lost my balance.

“Ha, ha, ” I said, righting myself, but truthfully, after holding in my frustration and embarrassment all day, it almost brought tears to my eyes. “Don’t tell me you don’t know your own strength, ” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster to cover up my fragile emotional state. As soon as it left my mouth, though, I wondered if it might have sounded pretty mean. The guy wasn’t exactly oozing muscle.

But he came back quickly with, “Is that an invitation for an arm-wrestle? ” He lifted his eyebrows a couple of times in quick succession.

I licked my finger and striped it in the air, giving him one point, mostly for distracting me and bringing a smile back to my face. He closed his locker with a bump of his hip. “Later, ” he said on his way to his next class.

At least he hadn’t said anything about the turquoise paper. But the more I thought about it, he’d have to know someone who was passing around a copy to actually see it.

I spent the lunch hour alone on the grass outside the back of the school, and after last class I left the building before the bell finished ringing, my book bag already packed for home.

I sulked quietly in my room for about an hour before a faint tap sounded from the bathroom that joined my room on one side and Claire’s on the other.

I swallowed. I hadn’t heard Claire downstairs and I’d assumed—hoped—she had after-school plans.

“Come in, ” I murmured.

Claire pushed through the door with a mug in her hand. Her head tilted to the side in concern, and in a second I knew she’d seen the turquoise paper. And worse, she wasn’t mad. Not at all. She pitied me.

I chafed a finger back and forth over the edge of my thumbnail. I didn’t want Claire and her perfect world anywhere near me right now.

“I heard about what happened, ” she said, in this caring voice that reminded me of when we were younger. It was nothing like her strong and confident school voice, the voice she’d used at the lunch table yesterday. I don’t know how she pulled off a dual personality like that.

She held the mug out toward me and I noticed a few magazines in her other hand. “That Shayleen really doesn’t know when to stop. ”

After a long second, I took the mug from her, smelling the sweet chocolate steam, and placed it on my nightstand without taking a sip. “Thanks, ” I said.

She sat beside me on my bed. Years ago, Claire laid on my bed daily, flipping through fashion magazines, going through quizzes, or asking my opinion on things, even though it was obvious way back then that she had better taste.

Silence fell between us. I think we both knew we wouldn’t be able to bond over stupid magazines anymore. But sitting with her did make me feel a little bit better.

Claire put her hand on my knee. “It’ll be okay, Loey. It will. ”

The moment was sweet, like we’d gone back in time together. She wasn’t this popular, perfect person. She was just my sister. My sister who would make things better with Shayleen if I asked her to. Heck, she’d probably even break up with Josh if that’s what would make me happy.

There’s something peaceful about knowing that someone cares more about you than anything else in the world.

Even if it is only for a moment.

CHAPTER FOUR

I had never been so glad for a weekend.

I didn’t have to put up with stares—or glares, in Shayleen’s case—from anyone at school. With all my homework done early on Saturday, I stared at the camera sitting on my desk. Every time I came back to it, it seemed intimidating all over again.

I skimmed through the instructions to where I’d left off. There was a lot to learn—about aperture, shutter speed and lens care, how to adjust the focus on different distances, ideas for placing my subjects—and this was just the basics!

I tried a few test shots around the house. Claire held a hand out like a stop sign whenever I came near her, but Mom was happy to be my first real subject.

My mother stood halfway between Claire and me in all respects: five-three, with hips like mine, yet lean like Claire. She had dull coffee-colored hair with more wave than Claire’s silk tresses and still miles from my frizzy coils. She had the ability to say all the right things, but could cackle in the middle of a library.

Mom waltzed through the house, saying, “Here, Loann, get a shot of me by the banister. ” She moved with a flourish, like she was sure she’d missed her calling as a supermodel. Too bad her oversized Saturday work shirt and mussed-up hair didn’t complete the image. By the glint in her eye, though, I think she knew we were both out of our element and just having fun. “See, this is the kind of natural, spur-of-the-moment thing that makes a great photo, Loann, ” she said, opening the oven door. We both burst out in laughter.

When Mom got bored with parading around and showcasing the household appliances, I focused my energy on nature. I photographed the oak tree in our backyard: tall, covered in new leaves, looming over our house like a bushy guardian. It was the perfect perch for sparrows, blue jays, and other small birds, but unfortunately there were none around today for me to capture on film. Focusing on the tree at different angles became my second choice.

The more photos I took, the more I wanted to search out and capture something deeper—better—from the world around me. I explored for hours in our backyard. When I found something—a blade of grass from inches away, or a spider building its web—my heart sped up and I fumbled my fingers over the intricate adjustments of my new camera to frame it.

Click.

I headed into the house for a drink and found Claire stretched out on the living room floor, flipping through a beauty magazine. I’m sure she went through about a hundred of them a day, with grad coming up. She was constantly trying to figure out the perfect hair or makeup or shoes, and with her intense focus she must not have heard me. Before she could say no, I pulled the camera to my eye to adjust the zoom.

Claire must have felt me there. She stared up at my camera, then gave me the strangest look. Her eyes pulled together and her jaw tensed. I tried to read her face, but her hair fell in front of it as she looked back at her magazine.

The moment was gone. I’d missed it. I lowered my camera in disappointment. It would have been a great shot. Skipping my drink, I pushed my way back out the front door and snapped pictures until I’d used all of my film.

I didn’t have to ask Mom to develop my first rolls, probably because she knew she was on them. She took them off my dresser when she picked up my laundry, and returned the photos later that day.

I sighed as I started to skim through them. The lack of vibrancy and spontaneity showed just an album’s worth of ordinary. My heart sank. I thought some of them might actually be good.

Then I came to a photo of the oak tree. I’d taken this one looking up the trunk. The sunlight shone between the leaves in trickles, and the shadows gave the tree an almost unearthly largeness. This was exactly what Mr. Dewdney had meant about getting the shadows right.

There was another photo with a luminous glow surrounding the tree. I’d probably missed it with the aperture, but it looked kind of cool, like a glimpse of heaven. I leaned the photos against the mirror of my dresser and flipped through the rest, thinking: Not bad for my first time.

CHAPTER FIVE

I had completely forgotten about Shayleen and Deirdre until they walked down the school hall toward me on Monday morning.

Before they saw me, I ducked my head and rounded the corner away from them. I didn’t start to relax until I saw Marcus with his back to me at his locker.

I quickened my pace, but stopped when two guys decked out in their sports jerseys passed behind him. One of them gave Marcus a shove practically right into his locker.

“Fag, ” the bigger one said, and then laughed to his friend. Next to lanky Marcus, the guys looked to be at least three times his breadth.

Marcus kept his hands braced on either side of his locker so he wouldn’t end up inside. The moment the jocks released him, he straightened up but kept his head down and away from them. The two jocks chortled all the way down the hall. I looked both ways and it didn’t seem like anyone had noticed. No one except me.

“Hey, ” I said tentatively, keeping my eyes on my lock as I dialed my combination.

“Hey, Curly. ” His humor-infused tone surprised me, like the bullying hadn’t affected him at all. He grabbed a binder and flipped it open to check its contents. “Guess I’ll see you in the green room, ” he said, reaching over and tugging lightly on a tendril of my hair before he shut his locker and walked away.

* * *

In drama, Shayleen and Deirdre sat in their usual seats, chattering like parakeets with the rest of the overanxious front-row students. They ignored me. I stood near the door and scanned the classroom, but I already knew where I planned to sit. Sure enough, there was an open spot beside Marcus at the back.

“Curly, ” he said, when I sat down in the empty chair.

“Hi, Chris. ”

“That’s Mr. Columbus to you. ”

I laughed, probably too loudly, and Shayleen turned to glare at me. I focused on Marcus. “Truce. Marcus, all right? I’ll call you Marcus. ”

“Okay, Curly. ” He smirked and then even laughed a little. “Okay, Loann. ”

Marcus was nice, and funny. I couldn’t figure out why he was such a loner.

“You want to get a coffee after school, Lo-Ann? ” He pronounced my name like it was two very long and separate names.

“Coffee? ” was all I could get out, and seemed to be my entire vocabulary at the moment. I said it again. “Coffee? ”

“Yes, coffee. Ever heard of it? ”

Was this a date? No, he didn’t say “movies” or “dinner” or any normal date stuff. He just meant coffee.

“Um. . . okay. ”

Just then, Mr. Benson interrupted our conversation. “As you know, I was planning to do Hometown Heroes for our year-end production. ” Shayleen and Deirdre immediately started whispering. Deirdre had obviously picked her side against me. I tried not to be offended. I wouldn’t want to go up against loud and domineering Shayleen either, if it were me. But still, it made me sad.

“The play has a large cast, ” Mr. Benson went on, “and so I’m asking all of my junior and senior drama students to audition. ” He scanned the room slowly, as if to reiterate that he meant every single one of us. I sighed inwardly. It would have been one thing to audition with Shayleen and Deirdre. In years past, we’d spent afternoons running lines with one another, anxiously awaiting our turn on the stage. I’d gotten a bit part one year, but usually I just helped backstage. As I glanced toward Shayleen, she turned to me with an obvious sneer. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough interest for a stagecraft class this year, ” Mr. Benson rambled on, “and without much money in the budget. . . ”