Part 7

        Mrs. Mayhew's voice echoed up the staircase. "Caaaa-leb! Your mother's on the phone!"
        "Awwww, again??" he groaned. "I just talked to her after school..." His footsteps on the stairs reverberated as loud as thunder through the old walls as he headed downstairs. (There was, of course, a phone in my room, but each of the rental rooms was on a different line from the main house, for privacy and to make sorting out the bills easier.)
        I finished flipping through the pictures on my camera, then crossed the room to set it on the dresser. I suddenly realized I felt lonely - I hadn't expected that to happen, I was usually pretty independent. But having always had my sister underfoot at home, and then a million other people always around in the dorms, I guess I wasn't used to having real privacy. I'd always thought I wanted it, but now I really wasn't sure what to do with myself.
        So I sat at the desk and flipped open my laptop, reaching around to hook up the phone line. I was going to have to deal with a dial-up connection, but at least it was some contact with the outside world...

        The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I went to work each day, where it was basically more of the same, though I slowly started joining in the conversations in the office. The mornings and evenings were my own, and I got to know the Mayhews' place better. I took plenty of pictures around the yard and gardens, but didn't venture too far into the woods - I was wary of getting lost, I didn't want to go in again without knowing where an actual trail was. Without really being conscious of the decision, I decided I'd wait until the weekend, when I could follow the boys out there - couldn't get lost if they were near. I remembered how well I knew the (admittedly much smaller) wooded area back home when I was a kid, and I was sure it was the same with Caleb and his buddies, as well as half of the other young members of the extended family.
        I fell into the habit of helping Mrs. Mayhew with the dinner dishes every night. I didn't mind, and I think we both enjoyed the company for a bit. She was, as I've said, full of a thousand stories, of family and the town and the house, but I soon learned that there was a lot of insight in her chatter. I made some mention of the fact that Caleb spent so much time here, and I thought it was really nice that he was able to be so close with his grandparents - mine always lived just far enough away that I saw them maybe once a month or so, spending a week with them in the summer here and there. She smiled at that, and said he definitely livened up the place when he was around, but something in her tone told me there was more to it, a bit of sadness maybe. I realized that, though Caleb was always here, I had yet to even catch a glimpse of his parents, and the Mayhews never mentioned them. I had a hunch there was some family resentment somewhere along the way, and given Caleb's constant visits, it seemed pretty likely that his parents' house wasn't the happiest place for him to be. I didn't want to pry, though, so I kept my questions to myself, knowing that more information would seep into conversation sooner or later.
        Friday evening, a big SUV crunched into the gravel driveway, and a small swarm of excited children whooshed out into the yard, immediately beginning to chase each other around and screech and laugh. Caleb, who had turned up earlier in the afternoon on his bike, tried to sneak off out of the house, but Mrs. Mayhew caught him in the act, and, very sweetly, and very authoratively, suggested he let Dillon tag along with him. Caleb grumbled a bit at that, but five minutes later I saw the two of them completely engrossed in some sort of (probably horrifying) experiment with some bugs they'd found, so it seemed he didn't mind his cousin as much as he'd let on. Boys.
        Being nearby, I was introduced all around - again, making me feel more like a family friend than a tenant, not that I minded. The two little girls were absolutely adorable, and they attached themselves to my legs at the earliest opportunity. I spent the better part of the evening being pulled around by the two of them. They showed me the room they always stayed in, I was introduced to a dozen or so dolls and stuffed animals, I had to of course give them a tour of my own room, and they would have taken me around the barn to introduce me to all of the animals (which they had named), but their parents canceled that plan for the moment, as it was getting dark and already well past the girls' bedtime. I had to promise I'd still be there in the morning, for them to finish the tour. I actually turned in early myself that night, still trying to readjust my internal clock after a semester of 3am bedtimes and 10am wake-ups.

        Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:30, and realized I wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep. I didn't really mind, the sun was up and it was that perfect time of morning. I hurriedly pulled on some clothes, and skipped the shower for the time being, just running a comb under the bathroom sink and yanking it through my bedhead hair...and then I gave up and just pulled my hair back into a cutely-sloppy ponytail. I snagged my cameras and a good couple of rolls of film, and moved as quietly out of the house as I could manage (though I still hadn't quite memorized all the creaky spots on the stairs, and a few let out loud groans on my way down).
        Once outside, I just stood there for a few minutes, taking slow, deep breaths and looking around, letting the gentle quiet of the morning seep into my veins. The air was a little chilly again, but it smelled so fresh and clean. The sky was the palest blue, almost white near the horizon, the sun almost invisible in the brightness it suffused into the atmosphere around it. I lifted up my digital camera and took a shot or two over the fields toward the sunrise...then thought better of it, and brought up my SLR, which was again loaded with black and white film. There wasn't much color to the scene to begin with, and something in the back of my mind told me to use the black and white film, I had this strange and unexpected...intuition, I suppose it was, some wordless feeling that the film would capture an atmosphere that would... I really didn't know at the time, I just knew it would be a good thing, some part of me knew that the film would capture the quiet serenity of the morning along with the freshness of the light I was used to my decisions being much more conscious than that, I was used to seeing something, thinking it looked pretty, maybe lining up a composition, and snapping a shot, and being done with it. But this...this was something different, maybe it was the atmosphere of the early hour, the intensity of the light in the small space of time before it was pushed aside by the harshness of human voices and manmade motion... I could feel an odd mood moving slowly through me, I felt... detached from my world, but more a part of something else... Not like I was "at one with nature" or any cheesy hippie shit like that, but... like I was brushing against the veil to a different layer of the air around me, like the difference between looking at something through a layer of plastic wrap and the clarity when the plastic's removed, or the moment when the vague chords of a song playing quietly in the distance suddenly resolve as you recognize the song.

Part 6

        After dinner that night, Caleb followed me up to my room, shooting rubberbands stealthily (so he apparently thought) at my back. Fortunately for him, I'd always been a terrible shot with rubberbands, so he was safe from retaliation in that form. I grabbed my digital camera from the dresser and plopped onto the bed, turning it on and flipping through the day's shots, culling out the obviously worthless. Caleb bounced up next to me, peering over my shoulder.
        "Didja find my fort yet?"
        I groaned and rolled my eyes, moving the camera closer to him. "Does it look like it?"
        "Were you really looking for it then?" he asked, both excited and a bit surprised.
        I shrugged. "Kind of. I didn't spend a lot of time out there, and it was my first time even going near the woods."
        He burst into exultant giggles. "You were nooooowhere near it! I knew you couldn't find it!"
        "Hey! I said I wasn't even really trying, I was just looking around a little."
        "Yeah right. You'll never find it."
        "Oh, we'll see... So what kind of fort is it, anyway? A tree fort, or one you built, or in an old shed or something..?"
        "Yeah right, I'm not telling you! It's a secret."
        "Yeah, yeah... Mine were always up in trees, some guys I knew built their own, but the one kid's dad worked at a lumberyard, so he could get all kinds of free wood to use. I had to be a little more creative."
        He scoffed, but I could tell he was intrigued. "Girls suck at building forts. They're always like dollhouses and crap."
        "Not always. My sister's was," I admitted with a giggle. "But she was always way more girly than me. Mine was...well I guess its defenses weren't all that great, it was more of a hide-out than a fort. But the camouflaging was pretty awesome."
        "Why, what'd you use?"
        "Well, I had a couple of different forts, but the main one, the best one, was in this sumac tree at the edge of my backyard, where the yard met the edge of these little woods that ran behind all the houses on the street. A lot of the branches hung really low, it had been partly uprooted I think at one point, and one of the bigger branches bent near the ground. So I stretched smaller branches across from the branch to the ground, and then covered them in field grass I ripped up, so it was like a straw wall almost, but inside the fort there was a little cubby under the branches and grass, that I could store stuff in. I stretched some rope between some of the branches and hung grass over it, to make grass walls, like on a tropical island. Anyway once the grass dried out, it just looked like more dead brush, so it blended in perfectly with everything around it."
        "Cool..." he murmured appreciatively, nodding. "That's a really cool idea."
        "It was, it looked really great... Problem was, whenever it got really windy, all of my walls would completely blow away. I had to make new ones like every week."
        He burst out laughing at that, and I had to laugh too, remembering what ridiculous lengths I went to, trying to keep those walls maintained. Suzy had always been really jealous of my fort though, which had made it all worthwhile at the time.
        "Mine's way better than that though," Caleb affirmed, as he rolled off the bed and started looking at all the photography acutraments on the dresser. "Me an' Dave made the best one ever. We're still working on it, we just got some tar paper to put over the part of the roof we patched so it's more waterproof."
        I nodded, biting back my grin. I wasn't going to give any hint that I knew he was saying more than he'd meant to say about what the thing looked like.
        "I guess we'll put that up this weekend maybe, but my cousins are gonna be staying here then too, so we'll have to sneak out and make sure Dillon and the girls don't try and follow us."
        "That's right, I forgot they were coming... how old are they?"
        "The girls are just babies, I think Sarah's two and Jessica is four or something. Dillon's seven but he's soooo annoying. All he does is ask questions all the time, and he doesn't know how to do anything, he wanted to help us one day but he didn't even know how to hammer a nail in right."
        I nodded sagely, sympathetic. "Are they just staying for the weekend?"
        "Yeah, but I probably won't be here much next week, Mom wants me to go clothes shopping and stuff." He started playing with an empty film canister, trying to get the lid to pop off by squeezing the bottom part. "You take a lot of pictures."
        "Well, that's what I'm going to school for, so I kind of have to, but I like doing it anyway."
        He glanced around the room at the pictures on the walls. "Did you take all those?"
        "Uh-huh. Developed them too, actually, which is the hardest part I think, I'm still not really good at it."
        "How do you do that? Don't you just take them to the store?"
        I laughed half-heartedly. "I wish. But I have to do it myself, for class, since they're teaching us how to do it. It's better anyway though, you have more control over the results, and can get whatever size and type of print you want."
        "So how does it work?"
        "Well..." I thought for a moment, trying to think of how to condense the process in such a way that a kid could get it. "Basically, the pictures go on the film - the film picks up light, so it records what things were light and what were dark. When you develop the film - that's really just dunking it into chemicals, it's a pain because you can't let one part of the film touch another part, or the chemicals don't go on it right. But the chemicals just make it so that the film won't pick up any more light, it just keeps whatever pictures you took on it. Then you put the film into a projector - like the ones you use at school, where it takes what the teacher's writing and blows it up really big? Basically the same thing. You project the picture from the film down, and have to focus it and stuff, then put a piece of paper down under it. The paper works kind of like film does, it remembers where light hits it and where it doesn't. Then you have to dunk it in a couple different chemicals, one makes the places where light didn't hit it turn dark. That's the most fun part, the picture sloooowly appears on this blank sheet of paper, it's really cool to watch."
        "Can I come see sometime?"
        "As long as you promise not to mess with the chemicals, sure. They'll eat your skin if you touch them."
        His eyes went wide. "Coooool..."
        I giggled, shaking my head. "The other chemicals just make the dark areas stop getting darker, and then make it so the paper won't react to light any more, just like you do with the film. Once the paper dries out, your picture's all done."
        "That sounds really complicated."
        "Y'know, it really is, when I explain it all out. It seemed really confusing to me at first, but now I guess I've done it so many times that I don't really think about it. Anyway it's not like I do that for every picture I take, just the ones I think will turn out nice. You can make little test sheets by setting the film right on the paper, and it will make prints of the same size as the film, so you can see little versions of each one all at once."
        "Aren't the rooms all red? Why are they red?"
        "The lights are, yeah. Remember how the film and the paper react to light? That's why - if you did all this in a room with lots of light, it would mess everything up. The paper is made to not see red light though, so a little of it's okay. Actually when you develop film, you can't even have red lights on, it's too sensitive."
        "So you have to do it in a totally dark room? With no lights?"
        "Ye-ah. That's what makes it such a pain. Like you put the film into a canister - like that one over there, the one with the tiny hole in the lid? And dump the chemicals in there, so no light gets in there. But unrolling the film from the little container it comes in, and putting it on those metal reels over there, and putting the reels into the container, all of that you have to do in a room that's totally dark. You know how usually, like at night, your eyes adjust and start seeing a bit of light, and you can see a bit?"
        "Yeah..."
        "That doesn't happen - the room has no light at all. It doesn't make any difference if your eyes are open or closed, you can't see anything."
        "Whoa... that's really creepy. How do you know what you're doing then?"
        "You just kind of have to feel with your hands what you're doing... it's like being totally blind. It's actually kind of scary the first couple times... and I still mess up my film sometimes."
        "Wow..." He was quiet a minute, fiddling with the wire film reels, twisting them back and forth experimentally. "Do the chemicals really eat your skin? Really??"
        I laughed. "They would if you got a lot on you, yeah. Little splashes just burn like crazy, I've done that before.
        "That's so cool!"
        "...not exactly the word I'd use, but all right."

Part 5

        I hadn't been up truly early in the morning in--- well, only a year, really, I'd had to get up at 5:30 through most of high school. (Two teenage girls and only one bathroom in the house is never a pleasant experience.) But even then, I hadn't really been able to enjoy an early morning, and I really wanted to get back into that habit for the summer. There's nothing more beautiful, and calming and peaceful, than a quiet summer morning, just after daybreak, with a hush as delicate as the dew laying over everything in sight.
        An 8:30am alarm wasn't quite what I was shooting for, but it was a start. I hadn't had to get up before 10 for the whole past semester, I was lucky and had managed to avoid any really early morning classes. Unfortunately, that kept me in class fairly late, sometimes too late for taking pictures, especially during the first few months of the year, but, being an art student (sort of), I hardly had any classes on Fridays at least. My independent study this summer wasn't going to start for a few weeks yet - I still had to somehow get a note to my professor, and see what time he wanted me to meet up with him. It was going to be a pretty open-ended thing, really I could come in and use the darkroom anytime I wanted, and once a week I'd meet with Steve and he'd look over the work I was doing, answer any questions, and give me feedback on it. I didn't have any set assignments, but he'd told me he'd like to see maybe three to five finished photos each week, and take a glance at my proof sheets. By the end of the class, I was supposed to have a series of some sort finished, but the images could be linked however I wanted them to be, through subject matter or style or some sort of story or whatever I wanted. I didn't have a plan yet, I figured I'd just start taking a lot of pictures of pretty much everything, and then see what looked good on the proof sheets, what might work well together. Steve had suggested that I use the more laid-back requirements to take more risks - apparently I don't do that enough. He suggested I try taking pictures without looking through the viewfinder, or move the camera around, or take pictures when the light didn't seem right, or take things from odd angles... We'll see. Maybe I'll do some of that with my digital camera, just to see how it goes, without having to waste film on it - I spend enough money on film as it is!
        That train of thought got me through my morning routines. I slung my SLR over my shoulder, stuck a few rolls of film in the pockets of my jeans (along with a granola bar for breakfast), and grabbed my digital camera for the hell of it. Down in the kitchen, I found Mrs. Mayhew finishing a load of dishes. "Well good morning!" she said brightly, setting down a plate as she turned to smile at me.
        "Good morning! Anything I can help you with?"
        "Oh, no, no, you go right on ahead - picture-taking, I suppose?"
        I grinned, raising my wrist with the digital camera dangling from it. "Yes ma'am. Gorgeous morning out there."
        "That it is! I'm going to spend some time in the gardens myself, before it has a chance to get too warm like it did yesterday afternoon. You enjoy yourself!"
        "Thanks!" I called as I headed toward the door.
        Stepping out the front door, I realized the morning breeze was a little too chilly for me to be completely comfortable in just my much-abused old Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt and equally abused jeans-of-a-thousand-holes. But I decided the slight chill would help wake me up, and anyway it would warm up soon enough. Taking a bite of the granola bar, I looked around and decided to explore the farther edges of the yard, and head toward the woods. No one else was in sight, though I could hear some noises from beyond the barn - it sounded like repair work on something big and metallic, a tractor or car or something maybe. I walked carefully through the vegetable garden, trying to keep my cameras dry as well as not disturb anything that shouldn't be disturbed. It was too early in the season for anything to have grown all that much, but dew droplets were scattered all over the small leaves, which made for a few nice shots. I knelt down in the dirt and tried to get as close to the ground as I could, trying to get a picture up through the leaves of a tomato plant, with sunbeams peeking between them, which took some pretty awkward maneuvering - I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure Caleb hadn't dodged school again and wasn't about to poke me and make me fall on my face in the damp soil.
        After that, I picked my way through a stretch of fieldgrass, looking in vain for a path. I was sure there had to be a path somewhere, if Caleb and other small children related to the Mayhews were here as much as it seemed they were... but maybe it was too early in the season, I suppose any paths made last summer would have been covered by this year's new growth. My jeans were soaked by the time I reached the woods, it had been a few years since I tramped through grass that tall in the early morning, I'd forgotten just how much dew that stuff can hold. I tried getting some close-ups of water droplets on the blades of grass...but I hadn't grabbed my giant zoom lens, and I couldn't get as close with either camera as I wanted. At the edge of the woods, I looked along the treeline, trying to see if there was an obvious path anywhere. I saw one spot, not far from where I was, where it looked like there was a clear way in at least, not barricaded off by dense underbrush, so I picked my way through the field a little ways to enter there. I discovered upon reaching it that it was a path...just not a very long one. Apparently it was a path made by Mr. Mayhew, since it led to a giant pile of oversized rocks he must have dragged out of his garden plots. Very exciting. But as I moved closer to the pile of rocks, I noticed what might have been a deer path - or a little boy path - heading deeper into the woods. I grinned and set off to follow it.
        Ten minutes later, I reached the conclusion that both deer and small boys are apparently shorter, or at least more coordinated, than me. My hair had been teased out all over the place by branches and brambles, my hands scratched up, and hadn't it been cold when I came outside? There really hadn't been much to take pictures of, you can only take so many shots through sunlit leaves overhead. I was starting to get sticky with sweat, and cranky from the constant battle with undergrowth. I looked at my watch, and realized I should really get back, I needed another shower before I went to work, I felt so gross. Frustrated, I turned around and started to tramp my way back...only to miss an unmarked turn somewhere, apparently, since fifteen minutes later the stupid rock pile was nowhere in sight.
        I knew I couldn't be all that lost, I hadn't walked for long and I knew if I headed in the right general direction for a few minutes, I'd see the trees thinning out ahead of me. Still, it did not improve my mood at all - as much from the actual annoyance of being lost as annoyance with myself for doing something so stupid. How pathetic was this, to get myself lost in the woods like ten minutes from the house? But I tried to keep my temper enough to not do anything dumb like start running - there were too many obstacles, I had to watch my footing so I didn't fall and bang up my cameras, but at the same time I had to keep looking up and around me, to see if I could spot anything familiar. Finally, I caught sight of a huge tree that had fallen over, half covered in moss, which I'd taken a few shots of on the way in. Couldn't be far, then... and I'd taken a picture of something just before that, it was... I couldn't remember, I turned my digital camera back on and quickly flipped back through the shots I'd taken. That was it! That huge clump of ferns... there it was! Grinning, I walked quickly and confidently toward it, and soon was back at the rock pile. I flopped down on an especially large, flat rock (how on earth had Mr. Mayhew moved this monster??), and let my head fall into my hands, as I laughed dryly at myself. What a pathetic adventure that was... maybe Caleb was right, if I couldn't find my way ten minutes into the woods, how the heck would I find his "secret" fort? After a few minutes, I sighed heavily and got to my feet, and headed back for the house and a nice cool shower.

Part 4

        At five o'clock on the dot, the lights were turned off and my fellow officeworkers headed for the elevator en masse. Everyone else seemed to know each other - which I'd picked up on during the day, but most of the time I was on my own in the back room with the files, so it was only at this point that I heard all of the teasing and joking in full. Each person (myself included) seemed to have a fresh burst of energy, now that the workday was done. The swarm dispersed at the ground floor, with some heading for one parking lot and some another, and one walking over to Thompson Hall to pick up her little girl from the daycare there.
        I took a more direct route across the campus this time - which I should have done that morning, since it was shorter, but I'd followed the main walkways out of sheer habit. I made a note of the time again, just to see how many minutes I shaved off by going this way.
        It had gotten pretty warm over the afternoon, and it felt even warmer to me, after having been cooped up in air conditioning all day (and slightly too-chilly air conditioning at that). I took off my vest, then folded it and draped it over my small purse, between the straps I was carrying it by.
        I put my headphones back in, and let my gaze wander across the wide expanses of sky, where there were only a few thin clouds gathered at the fringes of the horizon. Such a gorgeous shade of blue... and it frustrated me, because I knew film would never quite capture that kind of luminosity. So I didn't even bother taking out my camera on the walk, just let my eyes drink in the color, letting it soak into my skin and my lungs and---
        I gasped and whirled around, only barely avoiding a collision with a blond terror on a much-abused bike, who flew past me almost before I could recognize him - but I knew that laugh already.
        "Caleb!" I screeched, my hand clutching my chest as I tried to catch my breath.
        He skidded dramatically in the gravel of the shoulder, turning himself a full 180 degrees, grinning like crazy. I laughed weakly, still calming my shakiness, but remembering pulling the same stunt on my parents a hundred times. This kid Brian, who lived a few houses down from me when we were little, taught me how to skid like that, he had a gravel driveway, I remember spending probably hours trying to outdo each other...
        "Where were you all day?" he asked, bending over to pick a chunk of gravel out from the treads of his front tire.
        "Working, actually, on campus." Suddenly I remembered his appearance in the house this morning. "Hey, where were you all day? I saw you this morning, why weren't you at school?"
        He grinned broadly. "Teacher's conference day."
        I couldn't help but grin back - for all his impishness, he was a pretty cute kid, very endearing. Like you knew he might very well leave a garter snake under your bedsheets, but he'd do it with such innocent delight that you couldn't stay mad, you'd think it was pretty funny too. "Lucky you. You going home tonight then, or staying around longer?"
        He shrugged. "Grandma lets me stay however long I want to, the bus picks me up whenever the driver sees me there, so it doesn't really matter. Mom and Dad both work late a lot, so I come here after school a lot of times anyway."
        I nodded, plucking a wild daisy from among the field grass next to the road, twirling it idly in my fingers as I continued walking. He pushed his bike along beside me, occasionally pushing the handlebars forward and upward to pop small wheelies. "Where were you riding to?"
        "Just around. Dave and I were gonna work on our fort today, but his mom made him go out shopping."
        I raised an eyebrow, my interest perking up. "You know, I'd been thinking that there must be all sorts of great places around the yard for a fort... where's yours?"
        He eyed me incredulously. "I can't tell you, you're a girl!"
        I rolled my eyes. "Oh please, my cooties wore off years ago."
        He groaned. "It's not cooties I'm worried about, I'm not a baby."
        "What, then?" I was biting back a grin, curious to see what arguments he would give. I may not have had a little brother, but there were plenty of boys in my neighborhood, and I was kind of enjoying the chance to turn the tables a bit.
        "We-e-e-l-l-l-l-l..." he stalled, scuffing up clouds of dust and gravel as he walked. "Well it's just a secret! It's not a secret fort if everyone knows where it is."
        "Yeah, but I'm not everyone. I'm just a single one."
        "Yeah well, the fort location is on a need to know basis only," he stated firmly, obviously proud of the phrase.
        "How good's your security, then?"
        "The best. No way could you get in."
        "You wanna bet?"
        "Yeah! I bet there's no way you can even find it."
        I grinned broadly. "You're on, kid. I'll track it down before the weekend, and leave you a nice little note on the front door. On the inside of the front door."
        "Yeah right."
        "Exactly, that's right."
        "Yeah, well... I'll beat you to the house!!!" he yelled, jumping onto his bike and taking off.
        "Hey!" I called after him, laughing. "That is so not fair!"
        "Your stupid fault for walking!"
        I didn't actually try to keep up with the kid, I took my time walking back - it would have been hopeless, and anyway running was pretty out of the question in these boots. When I did make it back, I saw the bike lying on its side, abandoned in the yard near the porch, but Caleb was nowhere in sight. I'd find him soon enough - a whole fort is pretty difficult to completely conceal.

        Dinner was again delicious, despite Caleb shooting me looks all through the meal that were half threatening and half wary. I finally crossed my eyes at him, which made him loose his composure and giggle. He tried to return the cross-eyed stare, but failed utterly, which brought me up a few points in his book.
        While doing some more work on my room, I thought the evening over for awhile. Strange as I knew it was, it was actually really nice to hang out with a kid for awhile. Things are so much more honest and open with kids than they are when people get older. College especially, things in the dorm would just get ridiculous sometimes, the amount of drama was insane. What with boyfriends and cheating on tests and people hogging the shower and music up too loud and people visiting at all hours of the night and people coming in at three in the morning to puke on the hall floor... and then of course people getting confrontational about it all, being defensive and refusing to take responsibility for whatever they'd done, accusing everyone around them, ugh it could get to be such a mess! Even the people who were all about being honest and opinionated and never holding back on what they thought caused problems, there's a difference between honesty and domineering, which some people just don't seem to get.
        I'd spent a lot of my first semester basically hiding in a corner and keeping my mouth shut.
        Later on, of course, I'd found my niche, I'd starting talking to people in my classes, and discovered some girls in my dorm who I got along with really well. Even some of the people I lived with, that I wouldn't really call friends, I had a lot of really great talks with. That was one of the things I liked best about college, just the insane mash-up of totally different people, all thrown into the same building to live together.
        Dorm lighting, however, is awful for taking pictures in. It's basically impossible to take good pictures inside any building on campus, everything's so dark and thick-walled and fluorescent-lit. I feel so much lighter already, just being in this house. It's much older than the campus buildings (the ones I was always in, anyway, though I think a couple of the buildings are like a hundred years old), but, it was made to be beautiful instead of just practical. That and it wasn't built in the '60s or '70s, which is when a lot of the campus went up - the sleek concrete lines of the architecture do make for great photos, but it's pretty depressing to be around all the time. What's a smooth gray curve against the sky to a camera, is a pitted and pocked discolored grungy slab of cement up close.
        I picked up my camera and looked around the room through the viewfinder, checking out the lighting levels in here. The sun was setting, but since my room was on the western side, a good bit of warm orange light still spilled in through the gauzy lace curtains. The lace caught my interest, I wondered if I could capture the way the light spilled in through the myriad gaps between the white threads... I knelt in front of the window, seeing how close I could get my camera to the lace and still stay in focus... I took one shot, then another, and as my thumb moved to rewind the film, I felt the lever resist the motion. Out of film. I hauled myself up and went over to the desk, flipping up the release lever and winding up the film as I walked. I could still remember when all the hundred tiny procedures of an SLR felt overwhelming, but after just a year and half with this camera, most of the motions were second-nature to me already. I turned my back to the window, keeping the camera in shadow just in case, and opened the back of the camera. I pulled out the spent roll, and slid it into an empty film canister laying on the desk. I dug around in a drawer for a minute until I found a black Sharpie, which I used to make a big X on the lid of the canister - I hate thinking I've grabbed a fresh roll of film, only to open the canister when I'm out somewhere and find that it's already been used. I paused for a minute, considering the two stockpiles of film in the desk drawer - then sighed, and opened up a package of black and white film. I'd be a good little photography student, and work on my weak spots. I popped the film in, started the roll onto the winder, closed it all up and shot a few blank frames.
        I looked back over to the window, and was glad to see that the sun hadn't dropped much lower, I could still take a shot or two through the curtains. As I moved closer to it, I ended up coming at it from more of an angle - and realized the light was catching in some dust motes in the air, falling in visible rays into the room. I grinned broadly and dropped to my knees, praying the camera would pick it up, taking several shots with different settings, hoping to get it. I took a few more through the lace curtains, then sighed contentedly and set the camera aside.
        I set my alarm for the next morning - I wanted to be up early enough to have time to go on a walk with my camera before work. And maybe do a little nosing around for Caleb's fort while I was at it.

Part 3

My hair has always had a wave to it, but cutting it short last summer made it more noticeable. A few months ago I decided to be creative, and cut it at on angle, leaving it longer by my face and shorter at the back of my neck - which I really liked, not only because it was something different, but also because it was very practical. I've always hated having my hair getting in my way, and it drove me nuts when it clung to my neck in the summer. Barrettes looked really cute in it at this length, which had led to me going on a barrette binge last semester, I'd found a few websites with tons of adorable clips and things, and I ended up with enough to justify dedicating an entire old jewelry box to hair accessories. I was a little embarrassed by it, it felt so girly, but my wardrobe was all about pulling together the most random elements and making something sharp-looking out of unexpected things.
        I bleached the streak into my normally dark brown hair just a few weeks ago - it caught my parents a bit off-guard, but only because it was unexpected, even they had liked it. I'd spread out the highlight a bit, instead of just thin straight lines like most people do - there was a little portion on the right that was lighter than the rest of my hair, and it spread out into a chunk about an inch wide on the left side of my face, with little bits to either side that spread into the rest of my hair. Instead of leaving it that dull bleached-blond color, I'd dyed all of my hair a rich light red, which gave the darker areas a nice warm highlight, and made the streak kind of a strawberry blond. Of course, now I had to adjust the color palette of what I wore just a little, and took things a little more punk where I used to take them a little more '40s, but it made for a nice change of pace. I'd always been a little more grungy in my summer clothes anyway - as a kid I was always running around outside, and that hadn't really changed, I just added a camera into the mix.
        The kitchen was empty, so I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the kitchen table, facing the large curtained window. The weather was perfect, it looked a little windy but I was getting used to that, so near to Lake Erie. I was really going to have to get down by the lakefront this summer, I'd never actually been down there. There was a state park somewhere along the waterfront I knew, but I had barely explored in that direction from the campus at all. ...I got the feeling that the townies looked down on the college kids a bit, it's so easy to mentally shut yourself into a campus, it's such a self-sustaining kind of place that most of the students rarely leave it to get to know the town they're in, apart from the bars of course. And tanning and nail places maybe, and the omnipresent WalMart. I was as guilty as anyone, I knew, but I was determined to make up for it that summer, I had a hunch I'd really like the town if I spent some time in it. People were much more friendly here than back home in the suburbs...not that people were unfriendly there, but this was the sort of small town where anyone you make eye contact with on the street will say hi and smile at you. I really liked that, I'd actually found myself making conversation with the guy at the post office about the boxes (covered in bright silly stickers) I was sending out to my friends one time.
        When I finished eating, I washed out my bowl and set it in the drying rack alongside everyone else's breakfast dishes. I was just turning to head back upstairs and grab a few things to take with me to work, when I heard the rapid pounding of feet on the porch outside, and the whine-SLAM! of the screen door. The pounding continued, and a blond blur zoomed into the kitchen, flung open the fridge, grabbed a can of pop, and was back out of the kitchen and out the door before I had a chance to say a word. Did I really have that much energy as a kid? I wanted some of it back. I was half tempted to follow him outside, to see what was so important that his snack-break needed to last no more than ten seconds - and wait, shouldn't he have been at school?? - but I wanted to get an early start toward campus, so I wouldn't have to worry about hurrying at any point. I hadn't actually walked the distance yet, so I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take me to get there.

        Half an hour later, I was on my way, a small bag with a notepad, pen, phone, and my digital camera slung over my shoulder. I checked my watch and made note of the time, so I could time out the walk. I had my iPod in my pocket, and let it play through a Rock Kills Kid album - good music to move to, enough energy to push me on and expansive enough to fill the fields around and wide skies overhead. I turned it up probably louder than I should have, but I was walking in the graveled shoulder of the road, I wasn't really worried about traffic out here.
        I let my gaze wander, unable to keep a smile off my face at the warm sunlight. Summer has always made my heart warm and content, somehow it's always been hard to cling to worries and concerns when there's such a welcoming gold in the air. There wasn't really much to take pictures of along the way, one shot of a grape field with some woods beyond it and the sky above was as good as any other shot. I found myself looking at the power lines a lot, but I couldn't really work out a way to get a nice composition out of them, and I really didn't want to spend too much time side-tracked today.
        About half an hour later, I crossed the road and was able to walk on an actual sidewalk, which bordered the campus. I crouched down and brushed some of the dust off my shoes, then looked out over the campus and smiled. After only a year, it really did feel like home. It was an odd feeling, really, especially when I went back home-home to visit, like as soon as we hit the Thruway exit to my hometown, I felt all warm and safe, but then when my parents brought me back down here, as soon as we reached the Thruway exit, I felt that way too. Kind of unsettling, it was one of those things I just kind of accepted without thinking about much, it was hard to sort out.
        I stopped off at the library to use the bathroom, just to check my hair and rest for a minute, catching my breath and getting into the mindset to work. Not that it was going to be difficult, all I was doing was officework over in Admissions, but it was still something new, and I needed to reel my thoughts back in from the summer sky, and bring them down inside the concrete buildings.
        I could have taken the odd little tunnel that ran from the library over to the office building, but it really was too nice out, so I took the outside route. (Anyway I felt more professional walking in the front door than I did sneaking in through a random side entrance.) I thought about stopping by the front desk on the ground floor, just to double-check that I should go right upstairs, but then I remembered from my visits during the year that it seemed pretty compartmentalized in this building, I had a hunch the class-scheduling people didn't know much about the admissions-people and whatever. So instead, I walked around and found the stairs (elevators always made me so self-conscious, like I've always worried that I might be impeding someone who's in a hurry, by making it come to get me), and made my way up to the third floor, where the financial offices were.

        Twenty minutes later, I'd been introduced to the four other people in the department, been shown where the bathroom was, and had my first stack of papers in front of me, all nice and jumbled and un-alphabetical and in need of filing. Such a thrilling summer ahead of me! But I didn't really mind, it was mindless work, so my thoughts could be my own - there was a radio on, playing innocuous pop music, and it seemed pretty quiet and laid-back around here. I'd take boring over stressful any day. It actually wasn't much of a job, pretty much just working afternoons for most of the week (they didn't even open the offices on Fridays in the summer), but at the moment there was a pretty huge back-log of paperwork from the previous semester that needed dealt with, as well as things for the incoming freshmen. I was basically going to be the gopher-kid who did all the menial little tasks no-one else really wanted or had the time to do, but that was all right with me - having a summer of officework on my resume would look just fine, showing I was responsible and could be trusted and whatever. Plus it would be nice to actually know how to work a copy machine - somehow or another, that was one of those generic life skills I'd never managed to pick up, and I felt kind of silly about it.

note

Cameo mention of my photo prof/video prof/advisor, wooooo. This chick is so definitely in Fredonia. ...well, so far, anyway, we'll see what happens when I settle on the surroundings of the abandoned house.

I am - for the moment - slightly ahead of where my wordcount should be. (God I'm so scared to say that, I'm terrified I'll jinx something!) There *is* a graph that's supposed to be over in the sidebar there, but NaNo's website is always beaten ten feet into the ground the first few days of November. The picture should actually load in a few days, once half the participants have decided to be wimps and drop out.

And yes, I know I broke off in the middle of a thought with today's chunk. I haven't completely decided what her hair looks like yet, so I'm taking the rest of tonight to sort it out, and I will pick up there tomorrow. ^^;

Part 2

        Dinner smelled amazing - and tasted just as wonderful. I was still a little in shock at how immediately and how warmly the Mayhews adopted me, I honestly hardly felt I was renting an apartment, it was much more like I was distant family visiting for the summer. Heck, maybe I was and no-one had ever told me, I would spend my summer unveiling small clues as to a family history that had been long forgotten--- I laughed silently at the thought. Really, Mr. Mayhew had been friends with my grandpa back when they were kids, though the connection hadn't been made until after my parents paid for the apartment. They hadn't kept in touch or anything over the years, and hadn't been close friends or anything, just gone to the same small-town school not far from here. Nothing really dramatic or anything, but just enough to make them bring me in a little more warmly maybe...or maybe not, I really couldn't imagine Mrs. Mayhew treating anyone as anything but a grandkid she hadn't seen in years, she's such a sweet doting little old lady. From what I gathered, it seemed that the two of them really did have a pretty steady stream of people staying with them, mostly relatives but also some friends of the family, and friends-of-friends, and really just anyone who wanted to visit awhile.
        "This is such a big house, and it felt so empty when all the kids moved out on their own," Mrs. Mayhew chatted away as we ate. "My mother used to rent out the rooms in the west wing of the house when I was growing up, traveling businesspeople or visiting clergy, a few students from the college sometimes - as long as they were of a good reputation," she added with a wink at me. I grinned. "So when she taught me how to cook, it was always for a large group of people - and I never did learn how to scale it all down!" Which was pretty clear from the table, there were six of us there (her and Mr. Mayhew, me, Caleb, one of Mr. Mayhew's friends, and the neighbor's teenage son, who'd been over helping in the barn all afternoon while Mr. Mayhew fixed the fence) and there was still way too much food, just these vast plates of vegetables and salad and fresh fruit and a giant casserole. I felt bad leaving so much on the table, but I ate until I was stuffed, it was so good...and somehow I didn't feel as guilty about over-eating here than I would on campus, this was real food! The campus stuff is so awful for you, the Freshman Fifteen totally nailed me my first semester, though I'd tried to battle it back a little last semester. But it was so hard to pass up the late-night chicken finger subs...
        Caleb gave me an impish look. "She's reputable?"
        I flushed a bit, and Mr. Mayhew chuckled. "More reputable than you - I should tell the Missus what you nearly did, kicking that damn ball around today."
        "Now, watch your language around the boy, please!" Mrs. Mayhew scolded.
        "Oh, don't you fret, Claire, if he tries repeating any of it, I still have a few bars of that lye soap you made last winter."
        Caleb looked properly horrified, and everyone else laughed at the fear in his blue eyes. "That fear gained by experience, then?" Mr. Mayhew's friend asked, and Mr. Mayhew said it was indeed. Caleb looked sullen, and stabbed viciously at the string beans on his plate, muttering to himself. I had to smile, he reminded me just then of Suzy when she was younger, poor kid.

        I offered to help with the dishes after dinner, and Mrs. Mayhew nearly didn't let me, but I insisted, and finally she gave in. I was really feeling pretty spoiled, and I was so used to doing dishes and cleaning at home that I felt bad just sitting back and letting her take care of everything. Anyway, it's not like I had anything else to do that night... I'd really have to start finding something productive to do with my time, I was going to get bored out of my skull pretty quick around here, even with the job. Developing film would eat up a lot of time of course, but, even though photography's what I wanted to do, I really didn't think I could spend every waking minute on it.
        We talked a bit while we worked - well, mostly, she chatted, and occasionally asked me questions, but she's full of stories of the hundreds of people who've been in and out of this house. Which was cool, of course, but it was a little creepy thinking about just how many people had slept in the room that was mine for the summer. It almost made me feel a little more distant from the place, thinking about how slight my time in it really was, compared to everything else. Just one more name and a few sparse facts, just one person out of hundreds staying on for a few weeks... Oh just what my self-esteem needs! I tried to focus back on the story Mrs. Mayhew was telling, something about some distant relative and her kids, thinking one got lost when he'd really been sitting up in a tree giggling like crazy for a few hours.
        I tried to be polite and pay attention and laugh in all the right places, but my mind had gotten really distracted by the thought of those vast faceless numbers of people, and how small I was in comparison to that huge pile of stories... and really, what sort of story would I leave? Nothing, really, just a mention maybe of a girl with a quirky sense of fashion who took a lot of pictures. As soon as the dishes were done, I faked being tired and yawned, saying I wanted to unpack a few more things and then call it a night. Mrs. Mayhew told me to sleep well - everyone else had scattered around the house, I could hear Mr. Mayhew and his friend trading jokes in amiable voices out on the porch, and Caleb had bolted as soon as he'd finished eating, going who knew where. Spazz of a kid. As I reached my room and started emptying a box of CDs, I wondered vaguely how he kept himself amused here, with no-one else his age around. But then I remembered all the totally random things that had occupied my own summers as a kid. Spending hours following animal tracks around the yard, catching bugs to keep in jars for a day or two (until they died, which they always did, no matter how many different kinds of leaves you stuck in there for them to eat), building forts in the most obscure places... I realized this place would be great for making forts, whether in unused rooms or out in the woods or in the barn, I wondered if Caleb had any? I'd have to poke around, and see if he'd let me help or something, that could be pretty fun.
        CDs arranged neatly on their little wooden rack, I looked around the room. Really there weren't many boxes, most of the stuff in my dorm we'd just picked up and thrown into the car and brought over here. Mom had somewhat organized it all while she was making sure I had everything I needed, so there really wasn't much to do besides add all the little touches, putting knick-knacks and things around where I wanted them. I had a small stack of prints I'd made last semester sitting on the dresser, mounted on mat board, to put up on the wall. I dug around in the box sitting on the desk, and found the giant ball of postertack I'd made when taking down everything off the dorm walls. I spent a few minutes looking around the room, spreading out the pictures on the dresser, deciding where to put each one. Most of them were black and white, I'd only taken one class so far where we used color film. I still don't really feel like I've gotten the hang of black and white, it's so hard to imagine how it's going to look before you see the actual print... but that's another thing I'm supposed to work on this summer, looking at light and shadow and texture, and learn to do black and white better.
        I stuck a big print of a gorgeous sunset over the dresser, where I'd see it every morning, and grinned smugly. Whatever it was Mr. Professor Steve Komp had against sunset pictures, this one was absolutely gorgeous, so there.

        I rolled out of bed around nine the next morning, and showered in the bathroom that was essentially just mine, since I was the only one in any of the rentable rooms this summer. I pawed through my clothes, eventually settling on a simple but nice turquoise short-sleeved shirt with little ruffles at the collar and sleeves, and a cute black tuxedo vest buttoned up over it. I went back and forth on the black and white houndstooth print dress pants, and decided to go for it, they worked really well with the outfit, and I really wanted to wear my new suede ankle-high boots. Which meant I was going to walk, rather than ride my bike today, which was fine. It looked like it was going to be a gorgeous day out, and I didn't need to show up until after lunch. Now that I'd slept in the room, it was starting to feel a little more like my own...though the thoughts that had plagued me after dinner, about how tiny my lack of a story was in that house, had made me leave the radio on low to drown out my thoughts until I could fall asleep the night before. I checked my outfit in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of the bedroom door, and grinned. Very cute. I grabbed a few barrettes off my dresser and pulled back a chunk of hair from my face, pinning it off to one side. I was really happy with the changes I'd made to my hair over the past year, being on campus had really made me a lot braver in terms of my appearance.