Mr. Ocasik looked up as the door to his office opened and reflexively smiled. “Come in Justin, come in.”
Justin Timberlake didn’t smile, but his eyes greeted Mr. Ocasik like a warm, comforting pat on the back. “Hey Mr. O. The office is looking less cluttered than usual.”
He laughed, although the thought flickered in his mind that maybe Justin wasn’t joking. He dismissed it. Of course Justin was joking, he was always joking. “Take a seat.” When the boy was seated, he said, “How are classes?”
“Completing the usual busy work that teachers begin to assign once they figure none of it really matters anyway since they won’t have to look at any of us ever again.”
Mr. Ocasik wondered if he really liked Justin. He laughed. “Teacher’s are allowed to get lazy just like students. I mean, after all, they’re just human.”
“Yea.”
“So, have you made your decision yet? That is, are you going to accept the scholarship to UCLA, that everyone on the student board is so proud of and the rest of the faculty pushed for you to get, or are you going to follow that,” he chuckled at the ridiculousness of the thought, “that insane idea of moving to New York?”
Justin began to chuckle with him, although there was no humor in the sound. “Yes, actually, I have. Due to recent events, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m moving to New York.”
Mr. Ocasik stopped laughing. “What?”
“I’m going to New York City, the Big Apple.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Can’t I? Ok, well then how about I say I’m going to accept that scholarship then. That’s not serious.”
“Justin, this is not a joking matter.”
“No, I suppose not,” he replied.
“You must think of your future. There’s no future for you in New York, no future for anyone who doesn’t have a college degree. At least tell me that you’ll be going to NYC if you move.”
“I will not.”
“Then what will you do?”
Justin grinned. “Become a world famous singer.”
“What!”
“Mr. O, you seem to be losing your hearing today.”
“Since when did you want to be a singer? You’ve never showed interest in the school choir.”
“That’s really more Faye’s thing.”
“I didn’t know you were interested in singing,” he said, astonished.
“Not many people do know…about any of my interests.”
“You can’t give up a full scholarship Justin. UCLA is one of the nation’s most prestigious school’s, it’s hard enough to get accepted, but accepted with a full scholarship nonetheless! That’s an unheard of gift they’re extending to you.”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“But, you just can’t!” He sat back, because he could see it in Justin’s eyes, that discussing it was useless. He couldn’t understand the boy’s motives, how Justin could be so sure of himself, and then Mr. Ocasik remembered where he had seen that same look of confident determination. “Justin, do you know Keller Parks?”
For the first time ever, he saw Justin’s face show actual reaction to something.
Justin’s head shot up, his eyes squinting curiously, as if Mr. Ocasik had intruded on private property. “Barely. Why?”
“You remind me of her.”
“I’m not sure if I should be insulted by that comment.”
“I would never insult you, my boy. Keller’s a lovely girl, you kids out to give her more of a chance. Especially you Justin. You two would have a lot in common. She’s planning on going to New York as well.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You do?”
Justin shot him a look. “People talk Mr. O. May I leave now?”
“Well, all right, if you must. Are you sure you won’t change your mind about college?”
“I’m sure. See ya Mr. O.”
When Justin had gone, Mr. Ocasik sat back and breathed a heavy sigh. Justin was a curious individual. He was a favorite amongst the staff, but whenever he came up in morning meetings, nobody could find much to say about him, except that he was very punctual about turning in his homework and that he was very polite. Yes, Mr. Ocasik thought, he’s very polite, and then he sat up again and returned to his desk work.
~~
“I can’t believe you’re moving to Chicago.”
Keller, while placing her books in her locker, shot Naomi a tired look. “I told you, I’m not sure if I am going to Chicago.”
“So you’re not going to accept the prize?” the other girl asked.
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet! Where’s Benny and Mouse?”
“Who cares! Keller, you can’t move to Chicago! I’d never see you.”
She smiled tenderly. “Well see each other all the time, and I’ll call you constantly.”
“So, you are going to Chicago?”
“Naomi!”
“Ok, ok, sorry.” They started walking down the hallway, passing curious stares that neither of them noticed. “What about New York?”
Keller looked down. “Yea, I’ve thought about that. But Benny was right, I don’t have the money to move out all the way over there on my own yet. I don’t even have enough for the airfare. With Chicago, I mean, they’re providing transportation there, a place to stay, and a job. It’s perfect.”
“When do you have to leave?”
She paused, then said, “Friday.”
Naomi froze, dead in her tracks. “Keller, that’s in three days.”
“I know.”
“Are you even going to graduate?”
“I have all of my credits done, I can finish up all of the my tests. The next two weeks are all busy work and preparation for graduation. I’ve talked to most of my teachers, and they all said go for it, that they would take care of everything.” She sighed. “It’s just…Chicago…”
“Isn’t New York?”
“Exactly. But Chicago is a lot closer to New York than Wyoming. I could work my way East.”
“So then you are moving to Chicago?”
She glanced at her friend, silent for a couple of minutes, and then nodded. “Yea, I guess I am.”
~~
When Keller opened the front door to her house, the phone started to ring. She couldn’t believe who it was.
“How did you get this number?” she asked, finding it strange that the hand gripping the phone to her ear was sweating.
“I need you to come over,” Justin said on the other line. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Then he hung up.
She couldn’t believe what a jerk he was. She also couldn’t believe that she was now walking through the rusted gate, going to his window. So that’s what it felt like to be there without her camera, to be there on an actual social visit. Maybe she was looking to into it. He probably just wanted to discuss a picture he needed of himself, the arrogant bastard. It was nothing.
Why did she keep wiping her palms on her jeans?
She knocked on the window. The blinds lifted and he appeared, sliding the glass over. He moved so she could pull herself in, and then they both stood facing each other.
“So?” she asked, trying to make the silence stop screaming in her ears. “What is it you needed?” The way he was looking at her made her feel exposed, like he was seeing more than he should have.
“There’s something I have to say, that I’ve needed to say to you for a long time now. About yesterday, about New York-“
“Yea, well I’m not going to New York.”
His reaction was nothing she could have ever predicted. Shock dominated his features, such an intense shock that it seemed like he had just received news he was going to die tomorrow, like what she had said had been earth shattering information. “You’re what!?”
She shrugged casually, trying to ignore his stunned expression. “I’ve won this magazine contest and I’m moving to Chicago now.”
“Contest? What contest?”
“If you must know, I submitted a picture of mine in to this magazine. Contrary to what you think of my work, they liked it, I won, and now they have a position waiting for me in Chicago to start as an assistant photographer on the magazine.”
“You don’t want to work in Chicago though. You want to go to New York.”
“I know,” she said, wondering why he was telling her what she wanted, like she didn’t know already. “But I don’t have the money to go to New York just yet. In due time, I guess. What is your problem? Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Because! You can’t go to Chicago.”
“Why the hell not? Why do you care?”
“Because…because I…”
The bedroom door opened, and a pale boy with black hair entered. Andrew Evans. He looked at Keller, then turned questioning eyes towards Justin, and then back to Keller. “What is she doing here?”
Justin’s face had calmed, in a sense darkened although the sunlight coming in the window seemed to be captured on his face, and he answered Andrew’s question while keeping his eyes on Keller. “Leaving.”
She didn’t wait to let the sharp pain in her chest sink in, and turned around, leaving the room the way she had come in.
~~
There were many hallways just like that one. Chester Ray wasn’t the only school with social clashes and gossip sessions. So many went through school days as if that place was the world, that this was the golden year of their lives, and they were at the peak of it all. Others were lucky to make it out alive; each day a horror, a day to survive, a day to live through, another day over just so the next day could arrive and they would have to survive through it all over again.
Keller was in neither category.
These weren’t the golden years of her life, simply because she lived her entire life as golden, not just selected years. Some said “But I spent four years of my life here”. The past four years hadn’t been spent in school, they had been spent taking pictures, being with friends, being herself, learning about herself, not pouring her time into a building. She could leave it with ease because the building hadn’t been the four years, she had, and she wasn’t leaving herself behind, she was taking more of herself with her.
And as for survival. Well, there was always something in life she had to survive. The point was that she would survive, she would make it, and she would do it on her own terms.
“Keller, are you coming, or what?”
Snapped back into reality, she realized then that she had been lost in thought and saw Benny and Naomi watching her carefully. “What?”
“Do you plan on going to class or did you just want to keep staring at those tiles there?” Benny asked.
“I’m coming,” she said, closing her locker and following her friends to her first class of the day.
In English, Andrew Evans was absent, which was no surprise, except that accompanying his empty desk was the desks of Justin Timberlake and Faye Masters. Everyone knew this wasn’t a coincidence and the gossip in the room was already bubbling over. The only people who didn’t seem to care where the famous three were, were Keller, Benny, and Naomi.
Every class had started the seasonal routine of showing movies, constantly. Keller took out the black, leather folder that was everything in her life she treasured, that was officially an extended limb of her. Her portfolio was thick, full, separated into two categories, colored or black and white. It didn’t have all of her pictures, just her best ones, and there were many to chose from. Her favorites were the black and white photos, but there was one colored picture that stood out from the rest.
It was a sunny day and she had gone to the city hall, a simple building most onlookers would say, but a thing of achievement according to Keller. It wasn’t as amazing as the warehouse, but it was a close second and she had used many rolls on it. She was walking past the back when she had seen the single, small window high above her, near the roof of the building. It was an almost vertical shot. She had walked close enough to it that her head was tilted up towards the sky, her camera blocking the sun from her eyes, and she could still capture the window. She snapped the picture.
She had expected it to be a good photo. It had turned out amazing. The majority was of the wall and the window, but a tiny corner on the left hand side was owned by the sky, a powerful, light blue that was sprinkled with a thin, misty cloud. The window reflected that sky and had captured a ray of sunlight in its glass, frozen still in the photo, stuck in time forever. That was the picture she had submitted to the magazine; that was the one that had won her the contest.
“Who would like to take the attendance sheet up to the office?” the teacher asked up front. She looked over the class of anxious hands and saw one head that wasn’t even looking up. “Keller Parks.”
She slammed the portfolio shut. “Yes?”
“Take this to attendance.”
Her footsteps echoed down the empty hallway. The silence made it seem bigger, more personal, like the walls around her were breathing, the lockers watching her as she passed by. The entrance to the school glowed a distance away. She was turning down a smaller corridor when she heard the distinctive sound of voices floating down the halls. It was coming from the open entrance.
Quietly, she walked towards the open double-doors, stopping the minute she caught a glimpse of the dark hared girl wearing patent leather pants and a red, revealing shirt. She had purple and gold pom pom’s sticking out of her bag.
“Nothing has to change,” Faye was saying. “I don’t understand what difference it makes where she goes.”
“It doesn’t have to change for you.” That voice was Justin’s. “Stick with your own agenda, I’ll revise mine. We shouldn’t even have to have this discussion.”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” and that was Andrew, “Of what the hell Keller was doing in your room yesterday.”
She didn’t like the sound of her name in his mouth. Never before had she ever even considered Andrew Evans, but in that instant, she knew she disliked him.
“You can’t go there Justin,” Faye said. “We have a plan, you can’t just chuck it like that. What you do affects all three of us, whether you want to deal with that or not.”
There was a lapse of silence and Keller leaned in closer, seeing Justin and Faye exchanging looks and Andrew lighting a cigarette. Then she heard Faye speak words that made her skin crawl, that shut off any kind of reasoning she had in her mind.
“She won’t be anything we’ll have to worry about. She’s got some pathetic obsession with a camera, so what? It doesn’t mean she’ll be anything, it doesn’t mean she’s any threat to us. Keller won’t make it, she won’t.”
Keller never knew she had an angry side. “Excuse me?”
The other three jerked their heads in her direction, Faye turning a couple of shades paler, Andrew choking on his cigarette smoke, and Justin just watching her with a small grin forming on the corner of his mouth. She paid no attention to him and went directly to Faye.
“I honestly don’t think that the prestigious honor of being captain of the single most embarrassing, mentally challenged group of girls to ever walk the planet would give you any right to take the role of art critic as well.”
“Keller-"
“Shut up,” she snapped at Justin and then returned back to Faye. “I won’t be anything you have to worry about? I’d strongly reconsider that statement if I were you because Faye, I’m going to become a successful photographer and I can almost guarantee that, without ever having to think of you ever again, I’ll be something you worry about for the rest of your goddamn life.”
Without giving Faye a chance to respond, Keller shot Andrew a hard stare and then turned her back on all of them, casually walking into the school again to start heading towards the attendance office.
“Keller!”
This time, the sound of her name and the voice who carried it made her ears tingle. Against her better judgement, she stopped and faced him, seeing only Justin running into the hall after her. The others were no were in sight.
“When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Why do you care?”
“Just answer the question.”
“No.” She turned her back on him and started forward again, but he ran in front of her. “What?”
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Not here.”
She looked around. “The hallway is empty.”
“It won’t be for long.”
“And, since you don’t want to be seen with me, you’d rather just make sure not even the slightest chance of anyone leaving a classroom and seeing us occurs?” Pushing past him, she said over her shoulder, “I’ll save you the trouble.”
He grabbed her arm to pull her back. “It’s not like that.”
“What could we possibly have to say to each other?”
“More than you know.” What made her still was the way his eyes looked. There was no trace of his normal, contemptuous smile. There was no humor in his face whatsoever, just the serious, intense blue eyes that not only made her feet still, but the rest of her as well. “When are you leaving?”
“Friday night,” she heard herself whisper.
“Will you make sure to be home then?”
“Why?”
“Keller, please. Just be at home, ok?”
Slowly, she nodded. “All right.”
He let go of her arm and started walking in the other direction.
“Wait,” she said, and he stopped to look back at her. “How do you know where I live?”
He smiled then, and there was nothing cold or cruel about it. Without answering, he turned forward once more and walked away.