Flash Burnout Read online

  it means using both elements in one composition. I plan to experiment

  with darkened rooms and directed angles of light to achieve chiaroscuro.

  I would also like to try shooting a photo of the full white moon through

  black tree branches on a clear night, if I can figure out the shutter speed.

  —Blake Hewson, homework, Photo II

  "I saw your brother with a girl yesterday," says Riley, skidding to a stop in front of me. He grabs his skateboard and stuffs it in his pack before a teacher can show up to accuse him of skating on school grounds.

  I'm standing with Shannon and her friends before the first bell. "Yeah?" I say. "Has she been blind since birth or did she lose her eyesight when she looked at him?"

  "Oh, stop!" says Shannon. "You know your brother's got that scholar-jock thing going on. Brains and brawn."

  I give her a betrayed look while Jasmine and Kaylee giggle, and Shannon adds, "But he's not funny like you are!"

  "He is totally cute, though," chimes in Jasmine, giggling some more.

  "I don't think he's that cute," says Kaylee.

  "So who was she?" I ask Riley. "This scholar-jock-loving girl."

  It's that new girl. The one who moved here from Oklahoma."

  I must look clueless, because he continues, "On the radio? Calls herself Bitch Trickster or something?"

  "What does she look like?" I'm remembering Garrett's detailed description: not a dog.

  "She's okay. Streaky hair, not too tall, not too short. Kind of skinny."

  "Huh." That's new for Garrett. He's a curves guy. "Give me something to grab on to," I've heard him leer.

  "Where did you see them?" asks Kaylee.

  "It was late yesterday," says Riley. "Garrett was coming out of auto shop, and Cappie—that's her real name—was coming out of the radio station. I was waiting for Carter."

  "Who's Carter?" asks Kaylee. Why is she so red all of a sudden?

  "My brother. He's in Radio Club, too."

  Is he the one with the funny T-shirts?"

  Riley nods. "Yep." He hardly looks at Kaylee; he's busy telling his story. "So this Cappie chick says something to Garrett and he walks over to her, and they start yakking like they're old pals."

  Cappie?" I say. "That's her name?"

  I guess."

  Is she a captain?"

  Everyone laughs. Points!

  "So they were talking," I say. "So what?" Verbal intercourse. Where's the intrigue?

  "Then she kissed him," says Riley.

  ***

  As soon as we drive into KWST range the next morning, I turn to Garrett. "So."

  He keeps driving.

  Let's see. How shall I go about messing with my brother today? "I like the stuff they've been doing at KWST."

  Nothing.

  "That new girl really adds something."

  Not even a grunt.

  Wait. Is that a millimeter of a smile? One thing I can say about Garrett is that he doesn't kiss and tell.

  "Why are you getting all up in my business?" Garrett asks, then adds, "Studly. That reminds me. I've been meaning to tell you."

  "What."

  "I've been hearing how you're all over your girlfriend like a desperate housewife."

  "What?!"

  "Yeah, man. In between classes, during lunch, after school at Ottomans ... you're constantly pressing the flesh."

  Is it wrong that this makes me feel the tiniest bit proud? My moves have been getting some play. "Whatever," I say. "Like it's anyone's business."

  "It's my business if I have to be shamed by your pathetic puppy dog thing."

  Okay, now I'm mad. Who does he think he is to judge my style? I'm getting a reputation as a hotblooded stallion while he's Scholar Jock Man. "Jealous much?" I ask.

  "Jealous?" He starts laughing. "Listen, Ass-wipe, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Girls don't like it when you're too much into them."

  This is so untrue it almost hurts me to correct him. "Garrett," I say kindly. "Yes. They do. Girls do like you to be way into them. Trust me. The more into them you are, the happier they are. There's no such thing as too much into them."

  "Yeah. You're an expert now. One chick takes pity on you, and all of a sudden you're giving me advice about women!" Garrett shakes his head. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'too much in the sun'?"

  "Wha—?"

  "It's from Hamlet."

  And it means?"

  "Figure it out, man." Garrett turns up the radio.

  ***

  Marissa smiles when I walk into English. I nod. It's a relief to see her back at school. Now I can stop worrying about her and get on with my life.

  I sneak glances at Marissa a couple of times during class. Looking at her, you would never guess that her mom is a meth head. Marissa is cute and clean and gets good grades. Normal. I guess that's due to her grandma. Props to Grandma Mary!

  Shannon has some club meeting at lunch today ... Music Club, maybe?...so Riley and George and I get up a game of cards. I like having a GF, but I like having things the way they used to be, too. Spending some quality time with my boys. Seems like I'm supposed to spend all of my breaks and lunch with Shannon now.

  Mr. Malloy writes a date on the board at the beginning of photo class: March 12. "Third Thursday Gallery is sponsoring this year's photo contest," he says. "It's not until March, so you've got plenty of time to compile your best work."

  Then—I am so not kidding—he looks right at me and says, "Plenty of time to improve and polish your work."

  Burn!

  No one else seems to notice, though, so I just stare down at my desk while blood gushes into my head and heats up my face. I glance at Marissa. She does a little sympathetic thing with her lips. She noticed.

  "Every student who enters the contest will have an opportunity to show their work at the gallery for one night," Mr. Malloy goes on. "The winner will have a month-long showing at Third Thursday. If the winner chooses to offer his or her photos for sale, the gallery will suggest a price range."

  Marissa and I look at each other.

  "Are you going to enter this year?" she asks.

  "Why? Apparently I suck too much."

  "Come on. He didn't mean anything."

  "He said, 'Improve and polish, or DIE, Blake.'"

  She laughs.

  "He said, 'People will turn away in revulsion and vomit into their shoes, Blake.'"

  "Shush. Let's enter," says Marissa. "I will if you will."

  Fine," I say. "I'll show Beret Boy 'improve and polish.'"

  ***

  Garrett's car is in the driveway when I get home, but he's nowhere to be seen. His bedroom door is closed and music pulses behind it. Wait. Is that a voice? Is he talking to himself in there?

  I'm sprawled on the couch, channel-surfing and scarfing down my special blend of cheese-and-caramel popcorn when I feel the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

  There's a girl standing in the doorway.

  "Whoa!" I yell, and the popcorn goes flying. I sit up. "What the fuck?"

  "Hi, Blake."

  I can't speak, because I'm in the middle of a heart attack. Finally I manage to answer. "Who are you?"

  "Cappie." She's barefoot, with long, tan legs and short black hair with blond streaks in it. "Can I have some?" She moves closer and points to the half-spilled bowl of popcorn.

  "Sure."

  She grabs a handful and munches it, then plops down next to me on the couch.

  "Um, yeah. Won't you sit down?" I ask. She's way too close for someone I just met and almost shit myself in front of.

  "What's on?" She grabs the remote and starts flipping channels. Bold. That's a dangerous move ... taking a dude's remote.

  "Where's Garrett?" I ask.

  She doesn't answer for a moment, and I stare at her. She's got some killer green eyes. "Who?" she says.

  Blink. Blink. "My brother. The guy who lives here."

  She munches more popcorn. "Oh, tha
t's right. Garrett. I call him Caveman."

  "Caveman?"

  "Mm-hm. He's so big and strong, he could drag me away by my hair."

  Riiiight. We sit there in silence for a minute, because really, what kind of thing is that to say? There's no answer to it. Finally I say, "And where is, uh, Caveman?"

  "Asleep."

  "Asleep." What did you do to him, I think, that he's passed out in the middle of the day? And can you teach Shannon how to do it? "Well, just FYI," I say, "his name is Garrett. Garrett Hewson."

  "Hewson? As in Paul Hewson?"

  "Uh...?"

  "That's Bono's real name. Don't tell me no one's ever told you that before!"

  "Oh, right," I say. "Uncle Paul. We like to keep that quiet."

  She smirks at me and grabs some more popcorn.

  After a couple minutes of watching TV in silence, I ask, "So are you that new DJ?"

  "Chick Trickster. Yes."

  "Cool. So how did you meet Garrett?"

  "I like to think of it as fate." She stands up, and I realize I don't want her to go. She's weirdly fascinating. "Wait. Where are you going?"

  "Do you have anything to drink around here?" She heads for the kitchen like she's lived here all her life. I hear the refrigerator door open. "Oh, good. Beer."

  I leap off the couch. If my parents come home and find some strange girl chugging brews in their house, we will all suffer the punishment of a thousand lectures. I stumble into the kitchen, where I find Cappie pouring herself a glass of milk. She grins, raises the glass in my direction, and drinks. I grin back and pretend to clutch my heart.

  "Listen, Blake," says Cappie.

  "Yes?"

  "Consider your lips sealed."

  "Huh?"

  "This was just a play date. A free hookup." She drinks the rest of her milk, then says, "I don't date jocks. So your brother and I are not going to be the new cute couple on campus. I don't want you telling people I was here."

  I stare at her. She doesn't blink, and finally I say, "Fine. Like anyone cares."

  "Great!" She swoops past me, brushing my arm lightly.

  "Hey, where is everyone?" I hear Garrett calling.

  I hear nails clicking on the floor, and The Dog Formerly Known as Prince appears in the kitchen. He must have been in the room with Garrett and Cappie. He looks surprised.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I really believe there are things nobody would see

  if I didn't photograph them.

  —Diane Arbus, American photographer (1923–1971)

  I saw my first dead body when I was nine.

  Not the whole body. Just the elbow. I'm not even sure if it was a man or a woman, because it was covered up, chilling in the cold room. One of the arms was sticking out a little, so the body must still have been stiff. (They stop being stiff after a while.)

  Dad has always been so, you know, blunt about corpses that I wasn't even freaked out. It's like growing up with a doctor—they'll talk about things at the dinner table that would make most people run out of the room with their hands over their ears. My dad is a doctor, too, of course. But his patients are, um, metabolically challenged.

  I remember the day when I saw The Elbow. My dad needed to stop by his office, and Garrett and I were with him. He told us we could wait in the car, but we wanted to go with him. He led us through the big tiled "cutting" room, which was empty, and past the sliding glass door of the "cold" room, which was not.

  We got really quiet after that.

  Dad grabbed what he needed from his office and introduced us to some coworkers, and we were out of there in less than five minutes.

  "You guys okay?" he asked once we were in the car.

  "Yeah," said Garrett.

  "Blake?"

  "Yeah," I said unconvincingly. Maybe I was a little freaked out.

  "Did it seem weird, going through the back way?" he asked.

  "Yeah," we both mumbled.

  "You know what my job is, right?"

  This is kind of embarrassing. I remember I started crying.

  I remember wishing my dad had a normal job.

  My dad opened his car door and came around to the back seat. He opened the door and got into the back seat with me.

  Garrett was trying to look like a tough guy, like "Jeez, that Blake, what a baby." But I remember that he looked a little squicked-out, too. My dad put his arm around my shoulders and said, "You know what, guys?"

  "What," I snorfled.

  "I think it will help if you guys think of me as the last doctor these people go to. It's my job to find answers for them, even if they're not around to know about it. If someone did something to hurt them, even kill them, it's my job to find the evidence so the police can catch that person. Or if someone died mysteriously, it's my job to find out how. Once I know the answer, the dead person's loved ones can have peace of mind."

  Right then I stopped wishing my dad had a normal job and decided he had the coolest job ever.

  Not that I want to be a medical examiner. But I'm glad he does, because he's wicked smart.

  So today is Sunday. Mom has informed me that I can accompany her to work and study in her office while she gives a sermon in the hospital chapel, or I can go with Dad.

  "Mom! What am I, five years old?"

  I can almost see her putting on her Homework Police hat. "If you'd done your homework yesterday, my friend, we wouldn't be having this conversation." She raises her eyebrows at me. "You'll get more studying done away from the TV and the Mind-bender."

  Gee, thanks. Trust me much?

  To review: my choices are dying people and their sad relatives ... or dead people down the hall.

  It's not even close ... the dead people rock.

  "How come Garrett gets to stay home?" I ask.

  Before my mom can answer, Garrett pipes up, "Studly, I'm coming with you."

  You heard me: Garrett doesn't have to come. He likes it there. He is just that twisted. I have never watched an autopsy. Hi, can you say morbid? Not only has Garrett watched a bunch—he wants to learn how to be a diener. That's what they call the morgue attendants—it's pronounced dee-ner. I love that word because it means "servant" in German. Those wacky medical examiners!

  When we get to Dad's office, Garrett grabs the bottle of Dead Guy Ale from Dad's shelf and pretends to chug it, like he always does. I snag some candy from a skull candy container. My dad collects these Mexican folk art things that are used to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. You know, Day of the Dead? Doesn't everyone's dad collect that kind of thing?

  I crash on Dad's beat-up old office sofa with my copy of Dracula while my dad goes to change clothes.

  "Dad, can I watch today?" asks Garrett.

  "Let me see what I've got," says my dad.

  Garrett sits down at the desk and logs on to the Internet. A couple of minutes later my dad reappears. "Not right now, Garrett. It's an infant."

  My dad has some limits.

  "There's a boating accident after that. You up for that one, bud?"

  "Sure."

  Trying to blank out the images that go along with "boating accident," I open Dracula and start reading.

  "Just two cases today, guys. We should be out of here in a couple of hours," says my dad. He clomps away in his clogs. Some people wear clogs when they garden. My dad wears them when he goes cadaver diving.

  About forty-five minutes later I wake up when Dad clomps back into the room.

  "Ready, Garrett?" he says.

  "Yeah!" Garrett logs off the Internet and jumps up.

  "Dad," I say.

  "Yeah, bud."

  What happened?"

  He knows what I'm asking. He doesn't sugarcoat things. "Shaken baby syndrome," he answers, and walks away.

  ***

  Mondays used to be a slow boat ride through the bowels of hell, until I hooked up with Shannon. But now I actually look forward to Mondays, especially if I haven't seen her over the weekend. I know, right? Looking forward to school. But I c
an't wait to get there and feel her up, I mean ask about her weekend.

  We kiss and cuddle on the quad for a few minutes before the first bell, then head off to our separate classes.

  I'm even looking forward to English today, and not just because Shannon's in my class. This book, Dracula, is pretty good. Sure, it's got all this veddy British writing in it, but come on. It was written forever ago, and it still has a great creep factor. Things keep getting worse and worse for the people trying to hunt down the vampire.

  When I walk into English with Shannon, I'm busy getting my stuff out and answering Riley, who just asked about my weekend, when I notice Marissa.

  She has a black eye.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When you really need to fill up your frame,

  there's no better lens than the fisheye.

  —Spike McLernon's Laws of Photography

  I stop in the middle of my sentence, staring. Riley turns to look where I'm looking.

  " Damn, man, what happened to her?" he says.

  I can feel my heart thumping in my chest. What did happen to Marissa? Wasn't her mom supposed to go to rehab this weekend? Did they have, like, a brawl?

  Marissa glances over at me. And grins.

  I look away really fast, embarrassed to be caught staring.

  "Oh my God, what happened to Marissa?" asks Shannon. She turns to me for an answer.

  I shrug.

  "Aren't you going to go talk to her?"

  I shrug again, staring hard at my desktop. Somehow I can't get out of my chair.

  Shannon gets up and goes over to Marissa.

  "Okay, everyone," says Mr. Hamilton, clapping his hands in his oh-good-it's-a-new-day way. "Settle in. We've got vampires to dissect. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Jasmine, good morning. Shannon, take your seat, please."

  Shannon comes back to her desk and sits down. I look questioningly at her.

  "Hurtle," she says.

  "Hurl?"

  No. Hurtle."

  "Hurdle? She was at a track meet?"

  "No! Hurtle, with a t." Then she shakes her head at me to indicate I should shut up. Mr. H. is looking right at me. I shut up.

  WTF? Hurtle?

  I spend half the class wondering what "hurtle" stands for. I doodle on my paper:

  Hork Until Real Tears Leak out of your