Fish Eyes

14

I tried my hardest not to think about how Dalia's date was going.

Feeling things for someone who doesn't feel things for you creates one of the worst stomach aches. It makes your gut unsettled and your brain foggy. I was over it, but I felt a mess.

I felt much more of a mess than I looked as I tried to focus on my motor function and put my strobes together without dropping and breaking them. I definitely couldn't afford to.

Our project was going absolutely nowhere and I hadn't the energy to drag Dalia along as if it was something I forced her to do. She was the one who begged coerced and threatened to use me. If she wanted to desert the project, we could do that.

I did need to get on my shit though. I was hanging around a bunch of high schoolers religiously when my future was about to be my present. I couldn't stand to let myself waste away.

My conversation with Queenie rang through my head as I struggled to place what I was doing. I'd always felt so blessed to be at Joy and Glee in the first place; I hadn't even thought about the possibility of anything else until very recently.

I was eighteen going on nineteen, but I'd be turning thirty eventually, too. How much changes in ten years, and how much stays the same? Is that something I have to decide?

One thing I knew was that I'd been talking about shooting a series of my own photography concepts for a minute and had failed to do so. Dalia pissing me off was the perfect opportunity to get it done.

Emily sat on a stool in front of the lights, waiting to be directed.

"Thanks for helping me with this," I spoke to her.

She flashed her pretty, braced teeth at me and responded, "You know you're my dawg."

She swung her feet, bored, for a few seconds before finally asking me what she'd be even doing for me by helping.

I just wanted her to help me with figuring out framing for the most part. I'd been wanting to do some monochromatic stuff and experiment with editorial shooting more than anything. I trusted that Emily could help me work out the kinks before I started calling people and trying to make this into a production.

"I'm going to take the pictures how I see them in my head and edit on top of you to see how I want the final products to look," I said as I turned the strobe light on and faced it away from Emily so I wouldn't blind her.

I got the last of the lights set up, but my mind was still elsewhere. Instead of not thinking about Dalia's date, I kept thinking about how I wasn't thinking about Dalia's date. It was aggravating to no end.

Bowling? Who took a girl like Dalia bowling? I was pretty sure her nails were done, too, which was just a recipe for disaster.

I wondered what made her think to go on a date with dude and not me. We met pretty recently. She calls me handsome. But she's never even alluded to the possibility of going on a date with me. 

She sat in the wrong section once and got a new man.

I blew out a frustrated breath.

"What's your problem?"

"Nothing, man. I need to get my mind on this. My future's blurry as fuck right now."

"Yeah, same," Emily agreed. 

"I never asked you what you were doing since graduation," I realized as we spoke. Emily was still living in the neighborhood, like me, but I had no idea if she was in school, working, or what.

"This," she smiled. "I didn't do enough in school to get into college. Don't really want to work. I think I'm going to have to, though. Bills aren't getting paid otherwise," she bit her nails and looked off into space.

Emily was such a pretty and charismatic girl that I was sure she could do anything she wanted. Especially modeling. She had a naturally lean figure that towered just below mine. She was always known as our neighborhood's sweetheart. It was sad to hear she wasn't doing anything.

Then I realized that I wasn't, either. I had a job, sure. But all in all, I was a graduate who was still staying at home and not progressing. When I could be. Like Emily could be. That was all I needed to get my mind together and pull the camera out.