Chapter Two

Photography class had at least eight empty seats. For a class with a surprisingly large budget, it was never one that had gained much popularity at Westwood. But Eva needed another credit and having submitted her preferred grade eleven schedule late, all the good electives were taken and she was left with trying to figure out how to work a camera every second period.

Eva never really had much talent when it came to being artistic. So trying to capture the perfect moment with a camera she could barely use was starting to make the easiest course in school one of the hardest.

When Eva walked into the classroom, she was five minutes late and all the lights were off, the only visual guide being the painfully bright projector that the teacher was nearly blocking with her body. Mrs. Campbell didn't even glance over at Eva when she walked in and merely continued to talk about the image her shadow was covering.

Eva settled into her seat in the middle of the class, off to the far left. The desk next to her was empty so she gently placed her binder and books down and lifted her feet onto the vacant blue seat beside her.

"Today you will be doing an activity that will take up maybe half the period but we'll see how it goes," Mrs. Campbell said. "The yearbook class needs some of the cameras so we're low on stock today. You'll be in pairs with one camera between you, going around the school and trying to get the best image you can, with the focal point being the colour yellow."

All of a sudden half the heads in the room had turned and were scouting out their friends where they caught each other's eye and made a silent nod of affirmation. Eva didn't have that friend waiting for her to make a weird signal to from across the room. It was the one class where no one she knew was in it, or at least no one she was well acquainted with enough to ask them to work together. Natasha, Taryn and Carmen were the ones that easily made friends and knew someone in every class, no matter what it was. Eva was the slightly more awkward tagalong that really needed to get her social skills refined.

Eva frowned at the task in front of her and the teacher came around with an assignment sheet that Eva confusedly read over. Of all the colours, Eva thought, why would she pick something as uncommon as yellow?

"I don't mind who you are partnered with, just as long as you have one. If you don't, come see me and I'll sort something out," Mrs. Campbell said and immediately chairs were being scraped along the floor as people paired off and signed a camera out before rushing out the door. "Be back at quarter past eleven!"

Eva stood up and looked around the room. A few people had dawdled back but before Eva could scoop in and ask them to work with her, they had also paired off and left the room. She realized she was going to be the only single-person team in the class and slowly walked to the front of the room where the teacher was stood with one leftover camera on the table in front of her.

"I don't have a partner," Eva said and Mrs. Campbell looked up from her papers with a tight and short lived smile.

"That's okay, neither does Cathy."

Cathy?

Eva turned around to see Cathy trudge over from the back of the classroom in the corner seat. She had a messenger bag slung over her shoulder that hit her knee with each step she took. They glanced at each other before Eva quickly looked away and signed out the last camera. She didn't wait for Cathy as she walked out of the classroom and strolled down the hallway.

They walked for a while and Cathy always stayed one step behind, letting Eva lead. She tried to slow down and get Cathy to walk next to her but they never ended up at the same pace. Eva walked down the hallway where the science and math classrooms were and stopped outside a door that had a yellow poster taped messily to it. The corner was hanging off and there was probably nothing artistic or visually appealing about it but Eva turned on the camera and after hitting the zoom button twice, she finally managed to get a picture of it.

"This is stupid," she mumbled to herself and turned around to see Cathy looking down the hallway, not focused on anything. Eva sighed. "Do you have any ideas?"

Cathy glanced over at Eva and shrugged. "Um, the lighting is usually better outside."

Eva knew it was cold outside and the chance of rain was way too high to be doing anything outside without a coat but Mrs. Campbell had already lumped her into the pile of people who probably won't pass the class so if she wanted to actually get a credit, getting good pictures was the only way.

"Okay, outside it is," Eva said. "You lead."

Eva stretched her arm out and held the camera towards Cathy. The latter looked surprised for a moment before gently taking the camera and turning to head to the stairs.

As they walked down the back stairwell that led outdoors, Eva thought about mentioning the website. But what could she say? There was no way to go around it without things getting weird or going south. Eva felt like asking how she was doing was just going to rub salt into the wound. How are you doing after finding out someone has dedicated a website to making fun of you, oh, and sorry for laughing about it. Eva slumped her shoulders. There was no winning. It was better to just stay quiet.

Outside there was a chill in the air but the sky was clear so luckily rain seemed unlikely. When they made it to the football field and the bleachers, Eva expected a gym class to be out doing laps but instead it was quiet and still. The bleachers were a multi-coloured mess. They ranged from green to red to yellow and were nearly falling apart. The paint had chipped in many parts and revealed the dark material underneath. The grass the bleachers sat upon was dry, brown and dead. The whole image just looked sad.

"So what are we taking a picture of?" Eva asked.

Cathy looked around for a moment before seemingly setting her eyes upon the ugly bleachers.

"This could work...the yellow one, I mean," Cathy said unsure and Eva shrugged.

"Go for it," she said. "Anything's better than what I took."

Cathy didn't answer that and instead lifted the camera in her hand and walked towards the closest set of bleachers. She crouched down a little and angled up to be directly in front of the yellow bleacher. Eva wasn't expecting to see her hand completely steady and her fingers knowing exactly where to go. In a flash, Cathy had taken multiple pictures of the bleacher from all different angles and Eva frowned at how calm and less skittish she suddenly seemed.

Cathy stood back up and checked through the pictures before handing the camera to Eva. She took it and went through the new pictures that were added to her unfocused poster. Eva blinked in surprise. The yellow bleacher was perfectly focused on but the rest of the colours blurred into the background gently and the dampness of the seats could even be seen through the camera.

Eva looked over at Cathy. "They're really good...um, how did you do that?"

Cathy didn't react to the compliment but she instead looked out for something else that was yellow to photograph. She finally settled on a yellow milkshake cup that had been thrown onto the ground, the straw lying loosely on top of the dirt. Cathy walked over to it and held the camera out so that Eva could see it.

"It's really not that hard," she said. "Once you know where all the fingers go and you get used to focusing the camera then it gets easier each time."

Eva watched where Cathy put her fingers and how she got the camera to focus on the cup. She then passed the camera to Eva and she bit her lip in worry as she tried to get her fingers all in the right places and her angle perfect. She spent a good few minutes focusing and re-focusing until she eventually took a big group of photos in one go.

She eagerly went back to look at them and beamed up at Cathy, much to her shock.

"They're actually good!" Eva breathed out. "Thank you so much."

Cathy stood uncomfortably for a moment before tentatively giving a small smile.

"No problem."

***

When third period came around, Eva stopped at her locker to grab her wallet. She sent a quick text to Natasha and closed her locker back up. Natasha appeared a few moments later with Taryn and Carmen in tow.

"Ready to go?" Eva asked and the three nodded.

They walked out of the school and down the road towards the hotspot for lunch. The sidewalk was littered with people and Eva sadly knew she was going to be waiting in line for food for a while.

Taryn was talking about something but Eva wasn't paying too much attention to it. It was once again names that she didn't know and parties she never went to. Whenever she was invited into the conversation she had to pretend she knew exactly who they were talking about and that in itself was stressful.

"Oh!" Carmen suddenly piped up when the conversation had died down. "Did you see the new posts?"

"Posts?" Taryn asked.

"On the website, about Cathy," Carmen hushed her voice.

"There's more?" Natasha added in.

Carmen nodded eagerly and slid her phone from her pocket as they reached the eating place and stood in the line that was just at the door. She linked her phone to the internet and loaded up the website page.

"Here, two more posts," she said and Taryn and Natasha leaned over to read them.

"Oh my..." Taryn put her hand over her mouth to stop a laugh coming out.

Natasha's mouth stretched into an amused smile. "Is that actually true?"

"Have you seen Cathy?" Carmen snorted and looked at Eva. "Wanna see?"

Eva really didn't want to see.

She also didn't want to admit that she'd already seen the posts the night before. That she hadn't laughed like they all were because all she could think about was Cathy crying over it.

But that wasn't how it worked. Saying no wasn't really an option.

"Sure," Eva said.

She looked at the posts and forced a laugh. But there was no amusement to it anymore. How could she laugh at the expense of a girl that she saw crying? A girl who she had been friendly with less than an hour ago? A girl who had the whole school already making fun of her?

But she had laughed, just the day before with her friends.

And now that laugh felt bitter on her tongue.

***

Eva usually listened in English class. Normally she was always engaged and writing notes. The teacher was one of her favourites so the class wasn't a chore to her.

Except for today.

Eva couldn't concentrate. Her page was blank, the faded lines staring at her tauntingly and her mind had run off and was going through a million different scenarios, all with a bad outcome. She stared at her page through a lecture, an explanation of an assignment and independent work time in class.

Mr. Colt walked over and stopped in front of Eva's desk. He crouched down and lightly touched her empty page.

"Do you understand the assignment?" he asked.

Eva blinked and lightly shrugged. "Uh, yeah. Yeah I get it."

Mr. Colt gave her a look and sighed. "Are you okay? You've been faded out all class. Is there something on your mind, something you need to get off your chest?"

Eva gulped. "No."

"Sure?"

"I'm sure," Eva said quietly.

Mr. Colt nodded. "Okay. But just know that if there is a time you need to talk or work something out, you can always come find me in the English office or in this room."

"Thanks," Eva said. "But I'm fine, really."

Mr. Colt seemed somewhat satisfied so he stood up from his crouch and gave Eva a smile before moving around the classroom. Eva closed her binder and rolled her tight shoulders back. She could feel the tension so painfully and her entire body just fell into worry. Worry over what she was going to do, how she could face Cathy, how she needed to act around her friends. And how she was going to deal with the sudden feeling of guilt she was having – the guilt of her not doing anything to fix it.

Eva chewed on her lip.

It would have been easier if she had never seen that website.