Full Frame
8
Homecoming
“THIS IS REALLY OKAY?” Chris asked. She’d suggested I shorten her name instead of always using Christine. I rather liked the full name. “We aren’t like breaking and entering, are we?”
“No,” I laughed. “This is an honest-to-goodness key given to me by Mr. Barkley. I have my entire darkroom set up in here.” I opened the door and turned on the lights as Chris followed me into the room.
“Wow! Look at all this stuff! He just gave it all to you?”
“No. It’s not mine. He just said I could use it for props in a photo. For example, I might want to take a picture of a cute girl in a classic pose, so I grab a Greek pillar display stand and… um… a mannequin with an arm raised like Apollo. Then I’d ask her to just hop up on the pedestal and we’d work on poses.” I waved at the impromptu set and she went over and sat on the pedestal.
It took a little manipulating of the lamps to get light that would illuminate her without having shadows that were too dark. I got her into a decent pose and took a picture. She turned and put an arm around the mannequin, then laughed and started rubbing his chest.
“Poor guy doesn’t have any equipment. Must have been after all the prudes went around breaking the penises off the statuary.”
“Yeah, well, the way you’re treating him, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have one. We’d get raided or something by the porn police.”
“I feel silly dressed in shorts and a T-shirt trying to act like a classic statue. Weren’t they all nude?” She pulled her T-shirt up above her navel and popped the button on her shorts.
“Uh… Chris… um… Don’t. Please.”
“I thought you’d be all over the idea of taking nude pictures. Don’t you want to see me naked?” she giggled.
“It’s not that. Believe me, I’d love to see you naked. But we can’t take nude shots right now. It just isn’t right.”
“Why? Not that I’m pressuring you, I was joking anyway. But what’s the problem?” she asked. I sat on the bench where Mom had lectured me a week ago.
“One thing I was warned about by Reverend Mother Superior is that when I bring a girl to the studio, things might not mean the same to both of us. We could have seriously different expectations or think it means different things. I don’t plan to do any photos like that until I know and am sure the girl knows what the expectations are,” I said.
“Like if I was modeling nude, you’d expect to have sex with me?”
“No. Not at all. That’s the thing, though. I don’t know if you’d expect it. And if we had the kind of relationship where sex was a possibility, I’d want it to be something we were both on the same page about.”
“Would you rape me?”
“Absolutely not! I haven’t had sex with anyone and I sure wouldn’t want my first time, or any other time, to be a rape. That’s disgusting. But would you think that if you got undressed and let me see you naked that it would mean we were boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Not hardly,” she laughed. “I kind of like you, but it isn’t in any serious way. Would you?”
“No. When I’m up here, it’s my creative work space. I don’t want to think of it as an extension of my bedroom. There isn’t even a bed,” I said, grinning.
“Well, it sounds like our expectations would be about the same. So maybe sometime, we can talk about doing that kind of thing, but right now, I was just making a joke about my costume not being appropriate for the setting.”
“Hmm. You know Greek women back in the classic ages wore a kind of dress that was just a big square of fabric, tied or pinned at the shoulder and belted. There might be some fabric in here.”
“That would be cool.” We started hunting through the store room.
“There’s something else, Chris; just so you know the expectations. There was an article in Popular Photography magazine last year about a guy who was a legitimate photographer and all, but had taken some nude pictures of a high school girl. He was convicted of statutory rape because she was under age. I don’t think I’ll be taking any nude pictures of anyone under eighteen.”
“Eighteen? Wow. I thought sixteen was the age of consent. I guess we’ll have to stay friends for a year in order to take any nudes. What about this?” she asked, holding up a package that was marked ‘Flat Sheet’.
“That would work. Here’s a curtain tie that we could use as a belt. I like the tassels on it.” We went back to the pillar and opened the sheet. I worked on arranging it on her and had to go find something to pin the shoulder with. When I turned back to her, she had her T-shirt off and was standing in her shorts and bra. She’d kicked her shoes off, too. “I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to look.”
“Um… I think you’ll have to in order to pin this on correctly. It’s really big. And the T-shirt looked stupid under it. Is this the way you’re thinking?” I disciplined myself to think about the sheet and making it look Greek instead of the simple white bra she was sporting. It… she really looked nice. I had to experiment a little with how high to pin it so it didn’t fall under her breast. I finally got a safety pin in it and wrapped the cord around her waist with a simple knot. Then I worked on blousing it out over the cord and making it look kind of dress like.
“Wow! The ancient Greeks must not have cared much about showing a little side boob,” she said. “How about another pin here so it doesn’t gap open?” I grabbed another of the safety pins I’d found and worked on pinning the fabric together so it didn’t gap and the pin didn’t show. I had my hand right up against her side and the skin under her arm. I concentrated on the pin.
“There, that should do it,” I said. “Want to try sitting on the pedestal again?”
“Sure. Oh crap! You can still see my bra.” She deftly pulled her left arm out of the strap and tucked the strap down in the inside. This was all a lot more work getting set up than I’d ever imagined. She moved up on the pedestal again and tried to find a good position. Her right leg stuck out through the slit. Nice!
“Can you kind of tuck your left leg up under you and let your right leg dangle out? That’s really cool and sexy.”
In order to be balanced and sexy, she leaned over supporting herself on her left hand with the right crossed over in front of her. I fussed a little with her dress to cover her shorts and then took a light meter reading to get my lens settings. Working with the rather diffuse lighting of the lamps, I set the f/stop higher and slowed down the shutter speed to get maximum depth of field. I took half a dozen shots and then used a strobe light bounced off the ceiling to add more brightness.
We’d been working more than an hour when she jumped off the table.
“I have to get going! My folks think I was just going to go out and look at the grave. It’s almost dinner time. Help me get out of this.”
I fumbled around a bit trying to get the knot untied and then trying to remove the safety pin without sticking her. When the sheet was off, she stuck her arm back through her bra strap and grabbed her T-shirt.
“Thank you for coming up and letting me take some photos, Chris,” I said as she headed for the door.
“It was really a lot harder than I thought it would be, but it was fun. I can’t wait to see the pictures.”
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” I said as she headed down the stairs.
I processed the film and printed a contact sheet before I went home.
School was all about homecoming week. I’d printed the photo of the line getting ready to charge and by the time I got to Hennessey’s class, it was already on his blackboard. When he gave it back to me, I took it to Miss Sullivan and she installed it on our new bulletin board outside the office.
The bulletin board wasn’t just for my photos. It had official notices, like the school lunch menu for the week, the schedule for the football games, and a copy of the newsletter. There was a list of rules about behavior at the Homecoming Dance and what would and would not be allowed. The gym had been refinished to get ready for basketball season and hard shoes weren’t allowed on it. So, the rule was that if you were on the part of the floor that was covered with canvas so tables could be set, you could wear shoes, but if you wanted to dance on the gym floor, you had to take them off. Of course, gym shoes were not allowed.
First, we had to get through Friday’s Homecoming Game against Webster’s B-Team. The game, on our rough field, was Friday afternoon while it was still light enough to play. The dance would be Saturday night because no one wanted to try to get dressed up between the game and the dance. But the homecoming court had to be introduced at half time and paraded before the parents who had come out for the game. It wasn’t a big deal because there were only about a hundred people camped out on the ground to watch the game, but I got some good pictures as the girls tried to walk on the soft ground in their high heels. It had rained during the week and while the ground wasn’t muddy and wet, it had definitely softened. I got a nice photo of a couple of the girls that wasn’t just embarrassing, and I finally got a photo of our quarterback as he ran for our team’s first touchdown of the season.
Anna and I went out for a sundae after the game again. We held hands all through it. When I got her home, I had to go over the plans for what time to pick her up on Saturday and tell her parents that my parents were driving and we’d definitely be straight home after the dance ended at eleven. I kept sniffing my hand as I walked home to see if I could smell a trace of Anna’s perfume from holding her hand.
I hadn’t had a lot of time in my darkroom during the week and hadn’t even printed any of the pictures of Christine. I processed the game film and printed proof sheets, then looked at the proofs of last Sunday’s outing. I was disappointed. The sheet we’d used had fold marks all across it. You could see the outline of her bra under it, and she just looked kind of precarious in her pose. On the other hand, one of the photos I took of her at the gravesite was really great. It had just the right feeling and I did a test strip to figure out the best settings for an enlargement. I was getting better at figuring out the best timing and used a number four filter on my second print. It really popped. It was like the whole world faded away and it was just Christine and her uncle Julius.
I wasn’t sure what to do with the photo. This was not a ‘school’ photo. I needed to get a model release from Christine. I’d give her a full set of pocket prints and see what she said.
I had to get the laundry and ironing done before I could consider getting ready for the dance. For that matter, I needed dinner with the family. There would be finger food at the dance, but not a meal. And it didn’t begin until eight o’clock. By seven-thirty, I was dressed and ready to go. Perhaps my suit wasn’t the most fashionable, but it looked decent and I had a crisp white shirt and one of Dad’s best ties on. At a quarter till eight, we pulled up to Anna’s house and I grabbed my flower and ran to the door. Of course, Mom, Dad, and Kat got out of the car and came up to the steps as well. Dad had grabbed my camera.
“Wow! You look beautiful!” I said when Anna came to the door. Her parents and little brother came out onto the porch, too. Everyone wanted to take a picture of us before we left. She wore a long blue satin skirt with a pale blue top and a bow at her throat. I had to go through the process of pinning her flower on without sticking her. It was the first time I’d ever given a corsage to a girl. I thought the pink looked a little brown at the edges.
By the time we’d satisfied the parents with photos it was already eight o’clock, so we piled into the car to get to the school. We didn’t say anything on the way there because Kat was talking a mile a minute about Anna’s dress and what she wanted for a dress when she went to a dance. She’d need to wait five or six years for that day to come.
I was thankful Dad had only taken half a dozen photos since this was a school roll of film. I had a second canister in my pocket in case I needed more than the remaining eighteen on the roll. I probably would.
“Um… I want to just sit and hold your hand,” I said. “But you know I have to get a few photos for the yearbook.”
“Can I just walk beside you while you take pictures?” she asked.
“That would be great. Kind of like we do at the games,” I said. We began to circulate around and I got a few of the people to pose, but then I put the lens cap on and suggested we go out to dance. We found the table where Andy and Karen were and kicked off our shoes. I slung the camera around under my arm. It was a bit of a nuisance to have to carry it while dancing, but I wasn’t going to leave it on the table.
I hadn’t seen Judy and Janice much since school started. I mention that because they made an entrance about nine o’clock. Those girls know how to stop a show. They were both dressed in black gowns. Judy’s had a couple of layers of frill on it and was fitted tight to her chest but full from her waist down. Janice’s dress clung to her body all the way past her hips and was narrow even from there to the floor. It had a seriously plunging neckline, but she wore a black camisole under it so her cleavage wasn’t actually showing. They both wore black hats with veils.
“Wow! I need to get some pictures,” I said. I might have been a little abrupt in leaving Anna and rushing to Judy and Janice. She sat at the table with Andy and Karen.
“Hello, Nate,” Judy said. “Miss us?”
“No kidding. These are great outfits. Like The Addams Family. Let me get a couple of shots.”
“Not The Addams Family,” Janice corrected me. “Dark Shadows. It’s so spooky. Look. I even have a pair of fangs. Let me bite your neck.”
“Boy, it’s crappy light here. We should do some studio shots of this,” I suggested.
“You mean like we did at the train station? That would be cool.”
“Yeah, except inside where I can control the light a little better. I’ve got a place above Center Marketplace.”
“Cool. We could do much better poses in private. I could get rid of this thing. Mrs. Hardesty in Home Ec said I had to wear something under the dress or the school wouldn’t let us into the dance.”
“Oh, um… sure.” I looked at the plunging neckline of the dress and was sure it went all the way to her navel. Without the undergarment… Wow!
Just then it was time for me to hurry over and take pictures of the crowning of the Homecoming Queen. Hillary Bascom was crowned the queen and Principal Reichman placed the crown on her head. I got a pretty good photo since they did the ceremony on the stage and had lights turned on there. I had to speed up my shutter speed because I’d been using 400 ASA film for the low light conditions.
When I finally made it back to my table, Karen was there, but Andy and Anna were missing.
“Anna wanted to dance, so I let Andy take a turn with her. Come on, we’ll dance over to find them and switch,” Karen said. The music was slowing down a bit after the crowning and when we made it to where Anna and Andy were dancing, they were just shuffling around.
“May we cut in?” I asked. Andy looked relieved and quickly pulled Karen into a hug. Anna was a little peeved that I’d abandoned her. “I’m sorry I had to do all that work. Maybe we could go out sometime that isn’t a school event.”
“Really? Would you leave your camera at home?”
“Promise.”
She melted into my arms and I swept her around the dance floor. I wasn’t a grab and grope dancer. I watched all the dances on American Bandstand and even watched and practiced dances I saw on Lawrence Welk when my parents had it on. I moved Anna around the dance floor a bit more than most of the other couples were moving. Eventually, though, we ended up like the others and just held each other in a hug while we moved enough to say we were dancing.
That’s when the lights came up, of course, and the dance was over. We collected our things and headed for the door where my dad was waiting in the Falcon. Kat had gone to bed and Mom stayed home so she’d be rested before church in the morning.
We sat next to each other in the back seat, holding hands. I was trying to figure out how to go about kissing her goodnight, but I wasn’t going to do it in the car with Dad right there in the front seat. I walked her to her door but it seemed like her dad had put a 500-watt bulb in the porch light. We had to squint to even see each other.
“I had a really good time,” I said. “I’m glad you were my date. I’d… um…”
“Yeah. Me too,” she said. “I’ll see you in school Monday.” Before I could do anything else, she’d opened the door and stepped inside. I waved and headed back to the car.
Trying to date in a small town when you depend on your parents for transportation sucks. It was a cinch that I’d never get Anna alone until I could drive.
Tuesday afternoon when school let out, Dad picked me up and drove into Huntertown to the license branch. The driving test wasn’t much because Dad had taken me out several times to learn how to handle the Falcon and I could even shift gears pretty smoothly. The examiner said I passed and took me into the office and started filling out the paperwork. It was a piece of heavy paper he put into the typewriter and started typing.
“Height?” he asked.
“Five-eleven-and-a-half,” I said, a little disgruntled that I hadn’t actually achieved six feet yet.
“Oh… Uh… That’s about five-twelve.”
I laughed but kept answering the questions. Weight: 175. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Birthdate: 9/27/49. He looked up a number in a book and typed in my new license number. He typed in my address, the date, and the expiration date. He turned it to me to sign and asked Dad if he verified that this information was correct. Dad did and signed the form for parent or guardian. The examiner had a photocopier and made a copy of the whole thing, then used a paper cutter to align it and cut the license out of the middle on the dotted lines.
“Congratulations,” he said, handing me the card. “Drive carefully.”
I thanked him and Dad and I left. Dad tossed me the keys and held out his hand to look at my driver’s license as I started the car and pulled away from the license branch. I almost drove off the road when Dad started laughing.
“What?” I asked.
“You’ll see when we get home.”
I drove us back to Tenbrook and parked in the driveway. Dad handed me my license.
“Just take a look and tell me what you see.”
“Sex, M. Height, 5¦12. Weight… Wait a minute! He actually put my height down as five-twelve? I thought he was joking!”
“Well, technically it’s correct, so I guess you’re legal.” We laughed and went into the house. I was a licensed driver in the State of Illinois.
“Hey,” I said when I sat down next to Anna Wednesday. “How about a date Saturday night? Maybe a movie in Huntertown?” I asked.
“Really? Your parents will take us all the way there?”
I showed her my license and she grinned.
“I’m a legal almost adult,” I said. “Date Saturday night with just the two of us and no camera,” I promised.
“Yes! I’ll get permission from my parents. They might not want me dating someone who is so much older. I don’t turn seventeen until December,” she laughed.
We decided on a burger and a movie. I’d saved up a fair amount of my allowance, but decided to get a little money out of my photography fund to supplement the cost of the movie and a burger. Doctor Zhivago was still playing and I figured three hours of holding Anna’s hand or maybe having my arm around her in the dark would be just great. We’d get a burger and a malt at Gertie’s and then I’d still have enough left out of my ten dollars to get the movie and a bag of popcorn. I decided I’d better get another five dollars just for emergencies.
Wouldn’t you know, it was raining Saturday. I was a little worried about driving in it, but it let up when I went to pick up Anna, so it didn’t seem like it would be too bad. Her dad looked like he was just getting ready to leave for somewhere, too, and he admonished me to drive carefully. Anna got in and stayed over by the door when I was hoping she’d slide to the middle, but I really needed to focus on driving, so it was a pretty quiet ride into town.
Being out with no adults or other teens hanging around was a new experience for both of us. I think we were kind of looking around to see who might have seen or heard us every time we said anything. She thought it was funny that I ordered coleslaw with my burger instead of fries. She had a sweater on because the evenings were beginning to get a little chilly and she thought the theater might be air conditioned.
Her skirt was a little shorter than what school regulations allowed. It was about four inches above her knees when she sat down and I really liked what I saw. Who knew knees could be so cute? I mean we saw them in shorts all summer long, but now in a skirt, they were a million times more tantalizing. I wished I had my camera, just so I could take a picture of her knees.
We could walk from Gertie’s to the movie theater and I shelled out my dollar each for our tickets, then got two bags of popcorn for a quarter each. That about did it for my ten-dollar budget and I was glad I’d gotten an extra five dollars out of the bank just in case.
We sat about half way back in the theater, but there weren’t all that many people there. I had a feeling this movie would close and another would take its place soon. I was sure everybody who wanted to had seen Doctor Zhivago by now.
It was a good movie. About the time I’d finished my popcorn, I felt Anna’s hand on the armrest between us. I crumpled up the bag and put my hand on hers. We held hands through the whole rest of the movie.
We left the theater and I tried to surreptitiously wipe the tear from my eye. I noticed Anna do the same thing. It’s really a sad story. As we were walking out, I saw flashing lights just up at the corner. We ran that direction and saw a pickup truck had slid on the wet pavement and plowed into a traffic light pole. The light was out and a policeman was directing traffic. A tow truck was backing up to the mess. Apparently, the ambulance had already left.
I automatically reached for my camera and realized it wasn’t there.
“Oops!” I said. “No camera. Guess that’s one I don’t need to take.” We went on to the car and I opened the door for her. When I got to my side of the car, she’d slid over to the middle of the seat. I thought maybe her skirt had bunched up a little bit when she slid over because it was definitely a little higher on her leg than it had been. I was really going to need to focus on driving and not on her legs. She didn’t make it any easier when I got on the road and she put her hand on my leg. I really couldn’t take a hand off the steering wheel after seeing that accident, no matter how much I wanted to take her hand again.
“I’m sorry, Nate,” she whispered as we drove along.
“For what? This has been a perfect evening,” I said.
“Yes, it has. But I made you come without a camera. You should have taken some kind of award-winning photo of that accident. I guess as a photojournalist, you’ll need to have a camera with you all the time, won’t you?” she asked.
“I’m a long way from being that kind of photojournalist,” I said. “I’d have taken a picture, but I don’t know what I’d have done with it. It doesn’t seem right to win an award off someone’s misfortune. We don’t even know if the driver was okay. Or if there was a passenger. I should be more concerned about that than about getting a good picture.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said squeezing my thigh. “But still, I won’t mind if you have a camera in the car when we go out from now on. As long as you aren’t always hunting for a photo opportunity instead of paying attention to me. That was really nice. I felt like you gave me all your attention and I really liked that.”
“I liked it, too,” I said. “I really like you, Anna.”
“I really like you, too,” she giggled.
I walked her to her door and figured that porch light or not, I’d kiss her. I leaned toward her and she turned her head so I kissed her cheek. She darted back and kissed mine.
“Not yet. Um… When I turn seventeen. Then we can maybe have a little kiss. Not now. Thank you for a really nice date.” She opened the door.
“When do you turn seventeen?” I asked.
“December 15,” she answered just before the door closed.
Almost three months! Dang!
Sunday afternoon, I went over to my darkroom and started working on photos from this week at school. I was developing a roll or two a week and was getting some pretty good photos. Each week, I chose one to enlarge to 8x10 and Miss Sullivan put it on the bulletin board with the announcements. I’d sold three prints for five dollars each. I kept in mind that once I set a price, I had to give the same price to everyone. It was hard to convince Hillary that I couldn’t just give her the print of her being crowned homecoming queen.
I was in the darkroom getting ready to move a print from rinse to fixative when I heard the door open.
“Hello? Are you here, Nate?”
“I’m in the darkroom. Please don’t turn on the lights.” I’d sealed the darkroom up pretty tightly, but I noticed the overhead lights leaked in a little around the top edge of the curtain.
“It’s Chris. Can I just wait out here?”
“Sure. I’ll be about five minutes,” I called.
I tried not to rush the fixative and then ran to the bathroom to rinse the print under running water and hang it up. I wiped my hands and went out to see Chris. I turned on one of the lamps and she looked up at me. She’d curled up on the bench seat and looked like she’d almost gone to sleep.
“Um… Could you hold right there until I get a picture? That’s a sweet pose.”
“Is there enough light?”
“It will be kind of a long exposure, but the way the shadows catch… you is really nice.” I almost said the way the shadows caught her boobs. They really were thrown into sharp relief. And wow! What was with girls wearing short skirts on the weekend? Nice legs. Which I already knew anyway, but it was nice to see them.
She lay there and I approached her to move a lock of hair just over her left eye. Wicked! I took half a dozen pictures at different settings to maximize the effect of the light. I hoped I’d been steady enough not to blur the images. I set the camera down and went to a little table I was using for a desk to get the stack of pictures I’d made for her.
“I’m afraid these aren’t that great,” I said. “Conceptually, they have something going for them, but you can see the fold marks in the sheet and… Well, the outline of your shorts and bra. And the shoulder really needs a nice pin instead of a safety pin. You know, like, what do they call them? A brooch.”
“Yeah. I see what you mean. And makeup. My eyes kind of disappear. That’s why I wore makeup today.”
“It really sets off your eyes,” I said. “Very pretty. Maybe we should take some more pictures. But first, I want you to see this one I enlarged. Please don’t think it was insensitive of me. I just think it’s a really beautiful photo.” I gave her the 8x10 with her uncle’s gravestone. She looked at it a long time.
“Nate? Could I buy a copy of this to give to my father? I think he’d really love it.”
“Oh! You don’t have to buy it.”
“I heard you even made Hillary buy the picture of her being crowned as homecoming queen.”
“That’s different. It’s an agreement I made with Miss Sullivan. The school pays for the film and will get all the negatives back, too. I had to set a price and promise I wouldn’t vary it for anyone. But these photos aren’t school photos. What I need is for you to sign a model release.” I grabbed one from my table and handed it to her. She read.
“So, you could, like use any of the photos. For what?”
“Well, it’s like my fair entries. I had to turn in a model release with them. If I was doing some exhibition, it would cover that. If I had a photo that a magazine was interested in, I’d need the release for that. In return, you can have prints of any of the photos I shoot, and can give them to a friend or relative, or use them in a portfolio, or use in your autobiography when you’re fifty and famous.”
She laughed. “As if I’ll ever be famous. But I guess it’s okay. Got a pen?”
She signed and dated the release and I did the same, giving her a copy and putting a copy in my folder.
“Do you have a lot of them?” she asked.
“Not really. Just four. I took some pictures of Patricia Berg this summer. And of Judy and Janice in a couple of their costumes. In fact, I plan to take some more pictures of them later this week. Did you see how they were dressed at homecoming?”
“Oh, yeah. Those two are nuts. Is that why you’ve got new lights?”
“Yeah. The lighting when I took your pictures was part of the problem. This rack of mini theater lights was used to illuminate some jewelry display years ago. I’ve been experimenting with different filters on them because I don’t have a dimmer.”
“Well, maybe you should test them with some new pictures of me now that we have an agreement.”
I was more than willing to do that and had her stand up in front of the drapes. I suggested a couple of poses and experimented with turning the lights in different directions.
“You know, there is something I liked about the classic poses we did,” she said. “Can you do a shot of me with a bare shoulder? That was cool and I felt really sexy.”
“Oh! Sure. Let’s have you sit on the pedestal again and lean forward a bit. I won’t take as wide angle a shot, though. It will be more of a closeup.”
She sat on the little pillar and experimented with the pose a little. I moved lights and sighted through the lens and took a light meter reading. This would be one of the first real portrait closeups I’d ever taken.
“Wait!” she said when I snapped the first picture. “My shoulder isn’t bare.” She unbuttoned her blouse a few buttons and I could see her bra peeking out. Then she pulled it down off her shoulder and pulled the strap down. I looked through the lens and then went to her to adjust the collar on the opposite side and push it a little farther down from her bare shoulder. Then I lined up and bracketed the exposure I thought I needed with a stop on either side. I looked up at her and she was finishing unbuttoning her blouse. She didn’t say anything, but I thought she was blushing a bit. She took it off and pushed the other bra strap down her arm.
“That’s… um… really pretty,” I mumbled.
“Can you get a picture all the way down without actually showing the top of my bra?” she asked, fidgeting with the material to fold the strap down inside. “I mean, so it looks like I might not be wearing anything?”
“Are you sure you want to suggest that, Chris? I mean, showing me your bra… that’s pretty daring.” I was happy to see it. The bra wasn’t padded enough to hide the bumps of her nipples pressing at it and I loved seeing her tummy beneath the bra. It was almost like the bikini pictures I’d done.
“Nate, I’m feeling really daring. But more than that, I see something in your photos that I want. I think that before we graduate from high school, you’re going to see a whole lot more of me than you do now. So, let’s see how these turn out. Okay?”
I took a couple of photos, framing the picture just above her bra. Then I had her shift positions and look off over my left shoulder as she sat up straight. I shifted that one lock of hair so it was just touching the corner of her eye and lifted her chin slightly. I wasn’t quite so careful about framing the picture as tightly. I could always crop it when I printed it and I really liked seeing her with her shirt off and her bra pulled down almost to her nipples. I clicked the last frame on the roll and started to rewind.
“I guess that’s it for this roll,” I said. Chris quickly pulled her bra straps up over her shoulder and grabbed her blouse.
“Thanks, Nate. That was… kind of exciting. Could you not show those to anyone until I’ve seen them? Please?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
She had her blouse on but still open. I looked at her and she pulled it aside.
“I guess I couldn’t complain if you think about seeing me like this the next time you beat off,” she whispered. Then she quickly buttoned up and tucked the blouse in. “I shouldn’t come here to pose every week, but maybe in two or three weeks, okay? Can I take that sheet with me? I’ll make sure it’s ironed and I’ll find a brooch to pin the shoulder with.”
“Sure.” She reached the door. “Hey, Chris.” She paused and looked at me. “Thanks. That was really a great session and I think we’ll begin to learn more of what each other wants in the photos if we can work together once a month or so. Just… Thank you. I’m already looking forward to the next time.”
She grinned at me and waved as she went out the door. I checked my watch. It was only four o’clock and I had time to process the film and print proofs before I went home for Sunday night TV and ice cream.
When I pulled up beside Tony’s motorcycle he was dismounted and heading for the school, leaving Patricia still standing there. She turned and looked at me with a wan smile, and shook her head.
“You guys okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s not mad at me. He’s just really upset and doesn’t want to be around anyone. Wish he’d lean on me a little in times like this. He’s talking about just moving away.”
“What’s up?”
“Oh, the guys went out for a ride yesterday and went clear out to Fulton. It was such a nice day and who knows how many more are left this fall. So, they wheeled into town to get gas and the constable pulled out right behind them. I mean, right on their tails. He followed them like that all the way through town. They pulled into the gas station and he pulled in behind them and yelled at Brick, the guy who was on duty, to make sure they had money to pay for the gas before he pumped it. They all had to get a dollar out of their pockets to show they had enough money to pay for two gallons of gas in their motorcycles.”
“Why does he have such a hard-on for Tony and the guys?” I asked as we walked toward the school together.
“Why do you think? Tony’s darker than the rest of us.”
“I guess I didn’t think about that,” I said.
“You wouldn’t,” she laughed. “You see all people the same way. Except you have a preference for people with boobs.”
“I guess you caught me there,” I said. We headed on in to our English class and I got a nice welcome from Christine, too.
A definite preference, I admitted.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
