From Bad to Cursed

Then, without looking, she reached into the mess of earrings and pulled out the perfect match. She dropped it into my open palm and her deep brown eyes gleamed.

“Let go, Lex. All you have to do is let go.”

The mocktail reception was held in the main lobby of Farrin’s building. I walked in, with Mom at my heels, and stopped short.

Dominating the far wall was a giant print of my self-portrait-with-new-camera.

“Oh, Alexis!” Mom breathed. “Wow!”

I was slightly embarrassed but also pleased. Mom and Dad were always saying they liked my photos, but this was real—her gut reaction.

“Alexis!” I turned to see Farrin, in a drapey black dress. She leaned in and gave me an air-kiss on each cheek, like we were a couple of Europeans embracing at a fancy art gallery. “Let me look at you…how classic. Almost Grecian. I’m so glad you came.”

She shook hands with Mom.

“It’s down to five now,” Farrin said. “Would you like to meet your competition?”

Was “no” an acceptable answer? “I guess,” I said. “Mom, will you be all right…?”

“Of course,” Mom said. “I’ll go look around.”

In the middle of the room was a small clump of people. They opened up to make room for Farrin and me, and I recognized some of my competitors from interview day: the boy with the Mohawk; the boy who’d been wearing the purple suit; the ultra-preppy girl, in a blue-and-white sailor dress; and a girl with dark blue hair wearing a dress made out of a pair of overalls with a giant skirt made from the legs of other pants.

Clueless, I thought, and then I realized with a start that, but for Lydia and my sister, that could have been me.

“Everyone, this is Alexis Warren. Alexis, this is…”

She went through all the names: Jonah. Bailey. Breana. My eyes stopped on purple-suit boy: Jared. Tonight he wore green.

He caught me looking at his suit and frowned.

“I’m going to go say hello to your lovely parents. I recommend that you all try to mingle a bit. Don’t forget, this is a party.” Farrin glided away into the crowd.

The five of us just stood there. Mingling wasn’t high on my skill set, but I knew enough to know we weren’t doing it.

I heard my voice before I knew I was pla

“I’ll come with you,” Sailor Girl—Bailey—said, cutting through the center of the circle.

Mohawk Boy followed us, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jared and Blue-Hair Girl turn away from each other.

We started on the far left side of the lobby, looking at a blown-up photo of a rock formation.

I stood back and studied it, trying to quiet the endless whir of thoughts in my brain. That was the only way I could really appreciate photographs. To let go of everything else in the room and lose myself in the stillness of the moment.

Let go, Alexis.

As I let down my guard, I felt a jolt—almost like something inside me woke up. Something I hadn’t known was asleep.

I closed my eyes, and suddenly, when I opened them, it was like seeing the world in color after growing up in black and white. I looked around the room and thought, I can do this. I know how to do this.

Next to me, Sailor Girl turned her head to the side. “This is…nice.”

The rock formation in the photo was striking, but the picture itself was off-balance somehow—the proportions were wrong.

A suitable reply popped into my head. “The way the cool and warm tones contrast is unsettling.”

“Is it one of yours?” Mohawk Boy asked.

We shook our heads.

“In that case,” he said, “it’s boring.”

“Okay, I’m not the only one!” Bailey laughed, and I found myself joining in, even though on a typical day, I wouldn’t find anything fu

“Thanks,” I said. “I like yours too.”

“It’s vintage,” she said. “From San Francisco.”

“Fabulous buttons,” I said.

Fabulous buttons? Did those words really just leave my mouth?

Bailey gave me a friendly grin, which I returned. I could feel a co

It was so easy, I thought. I just had to take the way I looked at photographs and look at the rest of the world that way—climb into the passenger seat and let my instincts drive.

I turned to look for my mother. Instead of Mom, I saw Breana—Blue-Hair Girl—standing alone in the same spot where we’d left her. Her eyes jumped to the rock photo and then to the floor.

She couldn’t have heard us, I told myself. The lobby was like an echo chamber—it was hard enough to hear someone standing right next to you. But she’d been watching.

I felt a tiny tightening at the back of my throat, and I knew that if I stopped to think about it, I’d feel guilty.

So I didn’t stop to think. We moved on. Bailey stood up extra straight, and I knew the next one must be hers.

It was an extreme close-up of a brick.

I looked at it for ten solid seconds, trying to find something that made it more than just a picture of a brick.

Nope. Fortunately, my subconscious was prepared.

“It’s so static that it’s totally dynamic,” I lied.

“I know, right?” Bailey squealed. “It’s mine!”

Mohawk Boy kept walking.

The next photo was mine, the close-up of the grille of the car.

“Cool,” Mohawk Boy said, leaning in.

“I’m not into cars,” Bailey said, stifling a yawn. “I’m going to get some food.”

Mohawk Boy followed her away.

Happy to be left alone, I moved on to the fifth photo, which had to be Jared’s.

As soon as I raised my eyes to look at it, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach—hot and cold all at once, and slightly dizzy.

“That bad?” came a voice from behind me.

It was phenomenal. Better than phenomenal, actually. It was one of the most haunting photographs I’d ever seen.

It was a little girl in a hospital bed. She was hooked up to about fifteen monitors, with tubes and hoses and electrodes snaking off every visible part of her body. The background was flatly lit by fluorescents, green and dull. But the little girl was lit with a spotlight that made her look like she was onstage. And she wore a superhero cape and mask.

“Where is this?” I asked.

“I did some work with a children’s hospital,” he said. “A fund-raising thing. This is Raely

Even before he told me, I felt the entirety of the little girl’s struggle. You could see it in the shallow exhaustion of her eyes.

I was afraid that nothing I could say would convey how I felt. So I looked at Jared and nodded.

He looked at the floor, trying not to smile. “Thanks.”

We walked on, wordlessly examining the pictures. When we got to my self-portrait, he turned to me. “That’s you.”

“Yep.”

He stared up at it, and then at me.

Feeling self-conscious, I opted for some lame photography humor. “Take a picture,” I joked. “It’ll last longer.”

“No, I’m…comparing. You, and that person.”

“It’s not ‘that person,’” I said. “It’s me.”

“I know,” Jared said. “That’s what intrigues me.”

I guess that was better than being called a Barbie doll. “I know it’s really different, but—”

He squinted. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation. People change.”

I looked at his face, sharp angles and dark brown eyes behind a hipster pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

People change.

They do, don’t they?

Maybe I was allowed to change. And maybe it wasn’t the end of the world, even though Carter seemed to think it was.