disappears behind the clouds. I would see it perfectly even if I wasn’t the subject, even if I hadn’t lived it.
Seeing myself on his screen like this, in this context, a shot taken without my knowledge, without even knowing I was being watched—it makes me feel all sorts of twisted, like I’m tangled up in barbed wire. He had no right to take this without my permission. He has no right to see me this clearly. He has no right to make me feel this exposed.
He had no right to take the first image of that other me. She should have been mine.
The emotions would be best stored and sorted through later, but my words seem to always come out untethered around Hendrix. “How dare you?” I ask, not careful about my volume. “You were watching me when I arrived? How dare you?”
He gapes, shocked by my outburst.
He’s not the only one watching. I feel the eyes of all my students on me like needles, and I still can’t pin my mouth shut. “You can’t just take pictures of people without their consent. It’s unethical. It’s wrong. It’s not fucking nice.”
I’m shaking with anger and something else. Something I’m so unused to I have trouble naming it. Vulnerability? It makes me feel stripped down and smothered all at once, and I know. I know the feeling only partly stems from the stolen photograph, that I’m being ridiculous, and that the bulk of my ire is rooted in this cyclone of a situation that I’m in with Hendrix. It’s defense against the possibility that this happiness is false. I’ve moved from the calm of the eye into the overwhelming winds of the storm, but that knowledge does nothing to leash my temper.
“Camilla,” Hendrix says, naturally taken aback. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
Tears sting at my eyes, and I can’t look at him. Turning away means facing everyone else—twelve faces wearing identical shocked expressions.
“That goes for all of you. No photos without consent. Ever. Not in my classroom. I won’t accept it.” It’s not a believable cover. It’s not enforceable. It’s not even practical.
I can’t deal with those details at the moment. I’m dizzy and unsettled and embarrassed and there’s no way I can stay here like this, bare and on display.
“Take this.” Without looking at him, I hand Hendrix his camera. “Continue on, please,” I say to everyone else.
Then, heading to the door with even steps, I run.
Chapter Nine
Expression: The means by which an artist communicates ideas and emotions. - MoMA Glossary of Art Terms
I was sixteen the first time I picked up a camera. One of those early therapists Edward hired had suggested it. It wasn’t the first activity I’d been prescribed. The Four Ps, that doctor had called his recommendations—painting, piano, poetry, and photography. Four Ps for therapy. I’d been an utter failure with the first three, so I was less than thrilled when he’d informed my brother it was time to try the last.
“Less than thrilled” is a kind way of describing how I’d felt, actually. I broke the first camera I’d been given—a Kodak DCS that had cost over ten thousand. Digital was still new and this one was cutting edge, which was why Edward had selected it. Inaccurate as the feeling may have been, I had a sense that the gift had been an attempt to buy my forgiveness for the time after foster care that I’d been enrolled in private school. It was no secret that I harbored resentment. I made it known whenever possible, including when I’d opened that box, seen the expensive contraption, and proceeded to throw it across the room.
I have a different view of that time now that I’m an adult. It was hard enough to become a parent in my thirties. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have to parent a sister at the age of eighteen, especially a sister with as much baggage as I’d had. Have. Some of that baggage I share with Edward. Our well-to-do household fell apart when our mother died. My father, distraught by her loss, chose her over us and ended his life to be with her in the grave. Thanks to a swindling relative, the fortune he’d left us was soon gone, and both Edward and I ended up being separated in the foster care system until he was old enough to assume guardianship over me. Luckily, he’d inherited our father’s ambition and quickly built his own wealth, which