Part 20 (1/2)

He pulls out slowly, responsibly, drives down the block, turns the corner, and parks.

I unbuckle and climb into his lap, he puts his hand on my face, we kiss hard like in movie scenes that usually make me uncomfortable and squirmy. I open my eyes and see the reflection of his taillights in a house's window.

”Turn off your lights,” I tell him.

He turns off the lights.

His hand moves, softly, up my s.h.i.+rt, across my back. I kiss his neck and taste salt, kiss harder. I squeeze my legs around him.

”We should get to the store,” he murmurs, then touches my hair.

The steering wheel digs into my back but I hardly feel it, and he runs his hand down my thigh, traces the groove of my knee.

”Yeah, we should,” I say.

We kiss until my mouth feels swollen.

When I pivot off his lap and back into my seat, exhausted, happy, the clock says 9:55.

”What time did we leave?”

”I don't know,” I say. ”We should hurry.”

”7-Eleven's closer.”

”Yeah, let's go there.”

He turns his lights back on and starts the car. I watch him as he drives. I touch a small curl above his ear, the place where his neck fades into shoulder, down to his arm that rests on my lap.

His beautiful, freckled, perfect arm.

”Taylor,” I say. And I've said his name a million times, but this time it sounds different, like I'm the first person to ever say it, like he's the only person in the world with that name.

”Yeah?”

I lace my fingers through his. He parks the car. I don't answer. All I wanted to say was his name.

”What flavor?” he asks.

”Anything with caramel.”

He squeezes my hand and lets go. Opens and shuts his door. Walks into the fluorescent glow of the 7-Eleven.

10.

”I think it best that you focus on moving forward,” Ms. Delani tells me, consulting her grade book.

It's after school and we're in her back office. Books sit neatly on shelves, tins of tea rest on a table in the corner, her motel images line the walls.

”I love these,” I tell her.

She follows my gaze to her photographs. ”Thank you,” she says. ”They aren't anything yet. Well, yes they are. They are the beginnings beginnings of something.” of something.”

”What do you mean by the beginning?” I've never thought of a photograph as something leading to another. I want her to explain.

”All of my work is intimately connected to the process of coming to understand myself. My last series, the one you came to see at the gallery, dealt with fragmentation and unification.”

She pulls a drawer out from a tall, wide cabinet and spreads a few photographs in front of me. ”These were the beginnings of that series.”

Each photograph is of a different woman in a different room. I recognize Ms. Delani in our cla.s.sroom, leaning against the whiteboard, which is covered in photography vocabulary and diagrams. The next photograph was taken in a small, cluttered kitchen. A girl sits at a round table next to a stack of newspapers. She looks familiar, but I can't place her.

”That's my dad's kitchen,” she says.

I look closer at the girl. She's wearing a roomy university sweat-s.h.i.+rt and her hair is in a high ponytail. She's sprawled across the table, leaning on an elbow.

”It's you, you,” I say.

”Yes.”

”When you were in college?”

”No. Two years ago. You already knew me then.”

”Are you serious?”

I can't hide my amazement and she laughs. I've never heard her laugh like this. She sounds younger, like someone who might be seated at the table next to me at a restaurant, or in the row behind me at the movies. Like someone Davey and Amanda would be friends with. I move on to the next photograph. Again, I hardly recognize her. Her hair is down, lying perfectly straight, skimming the tops of her shoulders. She is sitting on her knees on a bed staring straight at the camera. On either side, candles burn on bedside tables. She's wearing a tiny satin camisole. My first instinct is to be embarra.s.sed that I'm looking at my photo teacher barely dressed, but then I remember the countless images of nudes I've seen over the last three years of her cla.s.s and it seems less strange.

”I was inspired by Cindy Sherman,” Ms. Delani says. ”You remember learning about her work, don't you?”

I nod. ”She photographs herself as different characters.”

”Right, only I wasn't trying to become someone other than myself, I was working to reconcile the different parts of me: the teacher, the artist, the lover, the daughter, the friend. And so on.”

”These are amazing,” I say.

”They were a starting point. Much like these motel shots. The self-portraits were too literal. I moved on to household objects, but they were too static. I ended up with dolls. Still objects, but inherently representational of the female figure. By taking them apart, examining pieces separate from the rest, putting them back together, I was able to really wrestle with the issues I was working through.”

”What issues are you working through now?”

She gathers her photographs and puts them back into the file drawer. I worry that what I asked was too personal.