If I Lose Her (10 page)

 “Yeah.
They’re all of Amy.”

 She took the
photo from me.

 The next one
was taken underwater of Amy in a cornflower-blue-silk dress lying in a kind of
weightless, suspended animation with her face just above the surface of the
water where you couldn’t see it. The waters surface created a mirror image of
her body, which was so pale I couldn’t help but feel sad for her.

 “Oh wow. How
did you do this?”

 “It took a
few weeks to get the hang of photographing in the pond. Do you remember how
every time we’d move those leaves and dirt would get kicked up and cloud the
water? I had to get into the water with her, and we held ourselves up by that
rope for probably an hour and a half until the silt settled down before she’d
float out a ways and I would let myself down. You should have seen me. I had a
wet suit on and a snorkel and my camera wrapped in my waterproof bag. You would
have been proud.”

 “Jo I AM
proud. These are amazing. I mean this is on a whole different level than the
stuff you were doing before I left, and don’t get me wrong, you were already
doing some amazing work. It’s just that… I mean… wow Jo. These are so good.”

 She leaned
her head on my arm.

 There were
five or six more prints like these, but there was one in particular that just
took my breath away.

 “Which one
is your favorite?” She asked me laying them out on her bed.

 “They are
all really beautiful, but I would have to say this one is my favorite,” I said
pointing to one of Amy, in a red dress, holding flowers, while doing a back
flip underwater, only it didn’t look like a back flip. It looked like she was
in a kind of circular, weightless dance with the dress engulfing her like a
ribbon of flame. The background was black, but you could see just enough of the
leaves of the edge of the pool to let you know that it was photographed here on
Earth, which made it feel that much more supernatural.

 “I titled it
Weightless, and I want you to have it.”

 I turned to
her.

 “Jo you must
have spent hours printing this. I can’t take it.”

 “Don’t worry
about it. I have the negatives. I really want you to have it.”

 “This is
beautiful, thank you,” I said then I kissed her.

 “We should
probably get going,” she told me.

 In the days
that followed I had the photo framed with the intention of hanging it in my
room, but when my mother saw it, she liked it so much that she had me hang it
in the entryway of the house, and there it hung until I left home.

 It was a hot
August afternoon, two days until the beginning of my senior year, and I was
waiting for my cousin to arrive from Texas. Just about everybody I knew had
heard about my accident and how I totaled my car, and I was given two or three
offers to buy vehicles from friends and family but nothing inspired me until my
cousin Mike called me one morning and said that he was on his way back to
Germany with the Army and wanted to know if I would give his 68’ Cougar a nice
home. He only wanted the $3,000 for it that he paid hoping to restore it, but
he had only gotten around to putting a new engine in it before he was called
back to duty. It took me about .25 seconds to say yes since the insurance on my
little rabbit gave me about $2,000, I had a little savings of my own and my
mother chipped in the rest.

 Mike called
on his way telling me that he had crossed the Colorado border and that he
should be to my house by 2. It was 3:30, and I was anxiously pacing back and
forth in the driveway when I saw his Dodge pickup truck turn the corner on my
street.

 He pulled
up, jumped out of the truck and we hugged each other. We didn’t see each other
nearly as much as we would have liked since he was Army reserve, but when we
did see each other we were like brothers.

 “Here it
is,” Mike said handing me the key attached to the key fab with a Cougar logo. Then
he walked back to the trailer the truck was pulling, grabbed the corner of a
canvas tarp and pulled the tarp back revealing the sleek white lines of this
beautiful muscle car. Then he walked to the back of the trailer and extended
the ramps while I climbed up the side of the flatbed and into the driver’s
seat.

 “Bring her
straight back and you’ll do just fine,” he hollered.

 I slid the
key into the ignition and turned the car on. The engine rumbled like the deep
guttural growl of the cat this machine was named after. I put it into reverse
and slowly backed her down the ramps onto the street. He folded the ramps back
onto the trailer and jumped into the passenger seat.

 He told me
about the engine and the five-speed transmission as I got on the 6
^th
Avenue highway and headed for the foothills.

 We stopped
by Smash Burger in Apple Wood for a burger and shakes while Mike told me about
his latest girlfriend and how things were going for him in the reserves. It all
sounded so exotic and exciting for me since he was nearly seven years older
than me, living on his own and traveling the world.

 “Are you
scared going back in?”

 “Nah, it’s
no big deal. We don’t really fight wars any more. I’ll probably be running
security for some two stars or something, drink a lot of beers and be back home
before I know it. How ‘bout you? What are you doing when school’s over?”

 “I don’t
know. I really like the photography, and I think I might want to work for a
newspaper or something. The girl I’ve been dating for a while now is applying
for scholarships to some universities and she keeps talking to me about college
this and college that. She thinks I might even be able to get a grant or
something to help pay for it.”

 “College is
bullshit man. I mean, if you want to work in an office for the rest of your
life maybe, but there are guys I know making six figures working as security
contractors, and they haven’t been to college a day in their life. Besides, the
army needs photographers too. If ya like, you can give my recruitment officer a
call just to ask him some questions,” he said reaching into his wallet, pulling
out a business card with the Army Reserve logo on the back and handing it to
me. There are all sorts a crazy perks to bein’ in the army,” he said. “Whenever
you go to bars you never buy your own beers, hell, I got pulled over on the way
here and all I had to do was accidentally on purpose show the sheriff my
military id and he just shook my hand and let me go. Just think about it,” he
said slapping me on the shoulder. “We should get goin’. I need to be back by
tomorrow afternoon.”

 “You’re not
staying the night at least? We’ve got plenty of room.”

 “Nah cuz,
you know I’d love to, but I gotta report for duty first thing Monday mornin.”

 We drove
back home, and I watched him leave. Then I went inside and called Jo to tell
her how amazing the car was and how great of a time I had had with Michael. I
wasn’t going to see her any more that weekend because she was busy running
around with her parents getting what she needed for school. That was fine. I
would pick her up Monday morning and she could see the car then. I hung up the
phone and looked at the card Michael had given me.
Army Reserve.

 The first
day back at school felt different this time than it had all the years before,
because now Jo and I were seniors. This meant that I had a lighter class load
though Jo was going to do some AP courses, and we were now some of the oldest
kids on campus.

 I couldn’t
have cared less whether I had this math class or that science lab, all I wanted
to do was get to the yearbook room.

 I stopped by
the office and showed the assistant principle my schedule and how I was one of
the seniors on the yearbook committee this year.

 “There’s
been some changes.”

 “What kind
of changes?”

 “Well, the
yearbook staff won’t have access to the darkroom anymore. It’s only for art
students now.”

 “What? How
are we going to process anything?”

 She didn’t
reply. She just smiled and told me to go have a look at the yearbook office and
come back to her with any questions I might have.

 “Okay,” I
said taking the keys.

 I walked
down to the yearbook room and came to the door. The single lock on the door
handle had been replaced with a new higher quality doorknob and a dead bolt.
Okay?

 I unlocked
the locks and switched on the light. The room was freshly painted and smelled
like a new car. Two rows of iMacs sat along either wall draped in plastic. The
old steel cupboard where we used to keep the camera equipment was replaced with
fresh wooden shelves, and on them sat about a dozen unopened boxes of various
sizes. They all read: “Canon”.

 I walked
over to an iMac and lifted the plastic. The machine was clearly brand new and
the spotless monitor, about the size of my bedroom television, reflected my
astonished look back at me. I covered the monitor again and walked over to the
shelves of boxes.

 
This is
all new gear!
I thought to myself reading the various labels. Four new
camera bodies, lenses, bags, the works. I was glad Jo wasn’t around because I’m
pretty sure she would have seen me drooling.

 I took one
of the boxes labeled D30 and opened it. It looked like the camera I had bought
just before the beginning of the summer only there was one significant
difference. This was digital.

 
I don’t
know anything about digital.

 
I
peeled the plastic away from the battery and put it in the camera, opened one
of the brand new lenses, attached it then turned the camera on. No CF card
present, the monitor on the back read.

 
CF card,
cf card, what’s a cf card?

 
I
decided to utilize one of our new computers, so I set the camera down, pulled
of the plastic and …
power button, where’s the power button?
I had never
used a Mac before. I was use to just clicking the power button on the front of the
tower underneath the desk. The only problem was that there was no tower, there
was nothing underneath the desk except my legs. All I had was a keyboard, a
mouse and a monitor. I ran my fingers along the edge of the monitor and turned
the monitor around. The power button was on the back. I pushed it, watched the
screen light up and found my way onto the internet.

 A web site
explained that a cf card was a memory card that slid into the side of the
camera and showed me what it looked like.

 I rummaged
around the new boxes and found a stack of memory cards still sealed in their
packages. I tore one open, slid it into the camera and saw the camera come to
life.  I lifted the camera to my eye, focused on a computer across the
room and clicked the shutter. Then the camera started to glow. I looked down
and saw the photo I had just taken being displayed on a small screen on the
back of the camera.
HO-LY CRAP!
I thought as it sunk in how this single
function was going to change everything I knew about photography. I clicked off
a few more images and watched them one by one display on the small screen.

 To explain
what this meant is difficult.

 I could go
to a baseball game, do everything in my power to make sure that the exposure
was correct and all it would take was the clouds to shift or the sun to come
out without me noticing and my entire roll could get messed up. Now, all I
needed to do was check the image on the back of the camera, once in a while,
and I would be golden. This doesn’t even mention the hundreds of hours each
semester I wouldn’t be spending developing film anymore or the hundreds of
dollars it would cost every few months to develop my personal work.

 It was 2:30.
4 o’clock was our first scheduled yearbook meeting.

 On a
clipboard hanging from the new wooden shelves was a list of the names of
everyone on staff this year as well as a checkout system for the camera gear. I
recognized a few of the names, but most of them were new. This wasn’t
surprising since most of the staff last year were seniors, and they had all
graduated. I wasn’t sure ANY of us would know anything about working with the
new digital gear since these cameras had to have cost thousands, so I sat down
with the camera manual and the Internet and tried to give myself something of a
crash course in digital photography.

 By the time
people started showing up I had a thimble full of an idea of what jpegs and
mega pixels were. Of course most everyone was early since they were chomping at
the bit as much as I had been to be back in the staff room, so when everyone
was present we made our introductions and opened all the shiny boxes.

 Not everyone
on the yearbook staff is there for photography, but everything had gone digital
so everyone was nervous and excited to work with the new and untested
equipment.

 “I’m sure
there will be a learning curve,” I told them. “But, I’ve been playing with
stuff and it doesn’t look that terribly difficult.”

 Then I
showed them what little I had learned about turning the computers on and
powering up the gear. A couple of them had Macs at home so that wasn’t a big
deal. At the end of the meeting we still had one last bit of business to attend
to.

 “We still
need to elect an editor,” Susan said, who was one of the new seniors who had
worked with me on the staff last year. “And I’d like to nominate Alex.”

 I tried to
explain that I didn’t know much about the gear and downplay my interest, but I
will admit that I was excited at the opportunity.

 It was
unanimous. I was the new yearbook editor.

 Everyone shook
my hand. We scheduled weekly meetings, turned out the lights and locked the
door. I went down to the vice principal to tell her who the new editor was.
        She congratulated me and handed me a
packet of papers outlining how this was going to be less fun that I had
originally thought.

 When I saw
Jo after class, I told her about me becoming the new yearbook editor and how we
had gone fully digital.

 “I’ve been
reading some articles about digital photography online, but I’m still not
convinced,” she told me as we drove to Smash Burger. She had never been there
before and wanted to try it. “It doesn’t sound like the quality is as good as
film, and what about the darkroom. I love developing in the darkroom.”

 “I know, and
I’m not ready to give up film yet either, but I can store two-hundred photos on
one memory card and carry it in my pocket. I mean that’s crazy. And for stuff
like yearbook photos, I think this will make things a lot faster. I bet half my
time last year was spent in that darkroom developing photos.”

 “Yeah,
that’s true. But I’m going to stick to film for now.”

 “You do
that,” I said leaning over and kissing her cheek.

 Then we got
out, went in and enjoyed our burgers.