From Bad to Cursed

Oh, Mom. You give her an inch, she’ll take a road trip. She’d been so astonished by my friendship with Megan and my coupleship with Carter that she expected me to vault to the top of the social standings any day.

“Yeah,” I said. “Megan’s having one Friday.”

Then Mom drew up all of her Mom energy and achieved a perfect Awkward Mom Moment. “And Kasey’s invited?”

Dead silence spread over the table.

Kasey kept a very close eye on her food.

“I’m sure she…must be,” I said.

“Thanks, but I have plans,” Kasey said, her nostrils flaring. “With Adrie

“That’s wonderful,” Mom said, beaming. Dad nodded along. It was a little pitiful, to be honest. “Is it a sleepover or a regular party?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Kasey said. “I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to eat. Can you pretend I’m not here?”

Mom’s chest pulled back into her body, as if she’d been punched.

“No problem,” I said. “We survived without you for ten months. I’m sure we can make it through di

When second period arrived Tuesday, I reported to the library, where I found I was the only student enrolled in second-period study hall—and that “study hall” was a euphemism for “help the new librarian organize the whole entire library.”

Arranging thousands of books in numerical and alphabetical order might not seem like a good time, but compared to wandering around campus with Daffodil/ Delilah, it sounded like heaven.

And Miss Nagesh, the new librarian, was practically drooling about having someone to help her. Though, from the way she kept talking about how desperately she’d begged for help, and how great and generous it was of Mrs. Ames to send me, I started to get the feeling I’d been played. Still, I was too relieved to care.

I promised I’d start organizing the next day if she’d let me work on my Young Visionaries contest application that day. Miss Nagesh was all for it.

And as soon as Mom got home from work, I borrowed her car and hit the road.

It was 5:17. The deadline for entries was 6 p.m., and the address was about twenty miles away. Even if I ignored Mom’s “the speed limit is the limit, not the starting point” rule, I would be cutting it a little close.

A surge of adrenaline and apprehension buzzed through my body as I glanced at the bag containing my application and portfolio. I wasn’t even sure if you were allowed to drop your stuff off in person. The application said, “SEND MATERIALS TO…”

The freeway was busy with commuters—impatient, cranky drivers headed for home. When I noticed that it was 5:47 and the exit was still two miles off, I started to worry. I didn’t think I’d win; photography-wise I might hold my own, but get me in an interview and I was sure to destroy my own chances—but I was doing something real with my pictures, for the first time ever. I really wanted to enter, and not just for the money.

I pulled into the parking lot of a sleek glass and steel building at 5:54. I grabbed my bag and headed for the giant metal entry door. Inside, the lobby was cavernous and dimly lit. I approached the receptionist at her huge semicircular desk in the center of the room.

“Hi, I’m dropping off my application for the Young Visionaries contest?”

She spared me less than half a glance. “You were supposed to mail it.”

My breath stuck in my throat.

She pointed toward the endless white hallway to my left. “Down the hall. Suite six.”

I was glad I’d worn a black sundress and blue cardigan instead of just jeans and a T-shirt. Even my shoes were decent—a pair of Megan’s grandmother’s hand-me-down gray suede ankle boots.

The door to suite six was closed, and there was no doorbell or sign, apart from the metal number six. I knocked a few times, but nobody answered.

Finally, I pushed the door open a couple of inches, revealing a miniature version of the main lobby with a partition dividing it from the rest of the office.

“Hello?” I called. No answer.

Off to the side was a table covered in stacks and stacks of envelopes, even a few small boxes. I wandered closer, checking the to on one of the address labels: “Young Visionaries Contest.” I did a quick sweep and guessed there were seventy, maybe eighty entries. Way more than I’d imagined.

I almost turned around and walked out, taking my portfolio with me, but I stopped before reaching the door. I’d already gone to the trouble of filling out the application. Even if they hated my work, even if I was ranked seventy-nine out of eighty, it wasn’t like they’d be rejecting me in person.

I could handle long-distance rejection. I grabbed the padded envelope from my bag and looked at it.

Unopened, it was a pretty good-looking entry, top ten at least. Mom works for an office supply company, so she gets all the freebies she can handle. I’d printed up a nice quarter-page address label with the to address on it and stuck it on a pale blue mailing envelope. And mine hadn’t been knocked around by the postal service.

So I had that much of an edge.

Before I lost my nerve, I dumped my envelope on top of the stack and hurried out to the hall. In the ladies’ room I used a handful of toilet paper to dab the beads of sweat from my forehead and tried to imagine what the judges would think when they looked at my pictures.

I’d lost almost everything in the fire the previous October—not only my camera, but years of negatives and prints. Portfolio-wise, I’d started in November with a blank slate. And now I began to worry that none of it was particularly interesting. It was just stuff I’d found around town, some pictures of my family, and—

That “and” threw my world off balance. The floor seemed to slide out from underneath me.

I shut the water off and raced out of the bathroom, back to suite six.

The door was locked. I pounded on it. “Hello?” I called. “Hello?”

Mid-knock, a woman pulled the door open. She was in her fifties, about my height, and beautiful, with thick, wavy black hair that rested on her shoulders. “Can I help you?”

I glanced past her toward the table where I’d left my envelope.

“I dropped off my stuff a few minutes ago,” I said, “but it was a mistake. I need it back.”

She didn’t move. “Are you Alexis Warren?”

I nodded and stood there panting until she took a step back.

“Come in,” she said, with a sweep of her arm.

I went straight for the table, but the blue envelope was gone.

“It’s over here,” she said, walking to a worktable with a daylight lamp shining down on my portfolio. “It’s the first one I opened.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

The woman gave me a pointed look. “Generally, if you want your work lost in the crowd, you don’t submit it in an eye-catching envelope.”

The book was open to the very last picture, a close-up of the grille of a rusted old car. I’d cleaned the hood ornament and grille until they were as brilliant as the day the car was made, but left the rest of the rust, grime, and cobwebs.

“That’s nice,” she mused. Never before had the word “nice” stung so sharply. What she meant was: Nice—but forgettable.

But that was the least of my worries. If she’d seen that photo, that meant she’d seen the others. The ones I’d never meant to show anyone—much less a judging panel full of strangers.

I grabbed the book and pushed it back in my tote bag. “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s been a mistake. I withdraw.”

The woman gazed down at the table where my pictures had been, almost like she was still looking at them. “What a shame,” she said. “All right, then. Good night.”

If she’d pressed for details, I wouldn’t have given them to her. But her easy dismissal bugged me. “It’s just that there are pictures in here I didn’t mean to include.”

She glanced at me sideways. “Which ones?”

“Some that are…personal.”