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Claire likes yearbook. Likes that her need to make every page perfect has slowly pushed out the others until she’s the only one doing the final look-overs. She’s the one working for too long over the arrangement of the wrestler’s page, or the band page, or the dedication to Ms. Clinnock, who Claire admired for her hair and her heels and who died over winter break.
It’s nice. Working by herself, not having anyone breathing down her neck. Just Claire and her hands making things as they should be.
Then Jody comes in with a list of a dozen names - the admin office states that some students still haven’t had their photos taken. Over the course of two weeks, Claire, Jody, and Clancy manage to whittle it down to three. Claire rolls her eyes so hard when she sees the stubborn trio left over:
Andrew Clarke
Allison Reynolds
John Bender
Of course. She manages to coax Andy in pretty easily. He reminds her of her brother’s dog sometimes, in that she wants to ruffle his hair. Except if she did this in front of anyone, especially their friends, they’d go insane. Sheryl would believe it meant that Andy and Claire were going steady after all, even though since that Saturday Claire has only been able to see Andy as a friend.
“How come you didn’t have your photo taken with everyone else?” she asks when he comes in, tugging his shirt collar so it lays nice and then stepping back so Clancy from the AV club can take the photo. The school isn’t paying for the proper photographer for the stragglers.
“I dunno,” Andy says. Clancy sighs. Andy blinked right as the flash went off. “Knee injury, maybe?”
He gets a good photo after three tries. He looks smart. Handsome. He asks about the wrestling team’s page and she shows him.
“Looks real neat, Claire,” he says, nodding.
Allison is a little harder to track down. She locates her four days later in the girl’s bathroom, snapping her compact closed decisively as Allison washes her hands.
“You’re coming with me,” Claire says, tugging the baggy sleeve of her entirely shapeless cardigan. In fact it might have a shape, an entirely new shape yet to be discovered by mathematicians.
“Where are we going?” Allison asks.
“You need to get your photo for the yearbook.”
Allison rolls her eyes. But this is Claire’s move. “Come on,” she says, marching away. “It’ll take five seconds.”
In the ‘studio’ they’ve been using, with the stool and the ugly backdrop, Claire realises Clancy is nowhere to be found. She tells Allison not to move and stalks back out into the hallway. By some miracle she spots Brian. She shouts his name and he jumps.
“Claire?” he says. He sounds more confused than she’d like. Though she has ignored him since that day, has ignored all of them except Andy. Whatever.
“You know things about cameras, don’t you?”
“I mean, I guess? I don’t know that much, my dad has a --”
“I thought you were in the AV club.”
“No. Latin. Physics. Ma--”
“I can’t find Clancy. I can’t make the lens focus.”
Brian tightens his grip on his jacket. Steps back and forth briefly, looking down the hallway. “Okay,” he says. “I can try.”
Claire beams. Seizes his forearm to get him to hurry because he’s a dawdler. Ignores that he’s bright red when they arrive back at the studio.
Allison is still there by some miracle, staring somewhat corpse-like into the middle-distance, spinning on the stool.
“Hey Allison,” says Brian.
“Hey,” Allison replies, still staring at something neither of them can see.
Brian gets the camera to work. “You’re taking the photos?” he asks Claire, bending to peer at the contraption. He’s tall, Brian. Taller than you’d think. He smells like laundry soap.
“The last few,” Claire says, looking up at him. “Does it look okay? Clancy usually leaves it set up.”
“Looks fine,” says Brian.
Allison sits up a little on the stool. Her hair is in her face. That black shit is back around her eyes and thicker now. She looks like that Jett lady with the crazy eyes. Claire thinks this may be intentional even though she thinks that music is a lot different to the music Prince puts out, and Allison has that record sticking out of her bag right now.
“Look at the marker on the wall,” Claire says, pointing, and Allison does. “Smile.” Allison does not. She does this sour little expression, looking dismissively towards the camera. Claire thinks she can see a smirk hidden in there.
“Fine,” she says once the flash fades. “Done.”
“Cool,” says Allison, standing. She picks up her bag and is gone. Claire shakes her head. Then she shows Brian his pictures in the yearbook. He’s in there four times. Club photos for Latin, Physics, and Maths, and again for a Mathletes championship. Five, technically, because you can see him in the background of one of the band photos. He has one eye open, the other half-closed.
“You did all this yourself?” asks Brian.
“Not all of it. Just the layouts.”
“So… all of it.”
Claire shrugs. Brian smells of laundry soap, but also faintly of weed. He gives her a thin-lipped, nervous sort of smile when she narrows her eyes at him like he thinks she’s going to snitch. Claire Standish might be a bitch, but she’s not a tattletale.
“Thanks Brian,” she says and he squawks, stumbling over a mumbled thank you I mean no problem.
Clancy appears fifteen minutes later. He goes ‘huh’ when he finds the camera hasn’t exploded. And says ‘really?’ when Claire says there’s only one photo left to take. She doesn’t like the way he says it. Like she’s incapable. Like he’s been any help, really. He squeezes past her desk a little too close and she scowls. Asshole.
John Bender is actively avoiding her. This becomes clear. He is the last photo. The last one. He must know this, somehow. Claire wonders if his whole ‘stick it to the man’ shtick is always this pedantic or if it’s only about things that affect her directly.
She finally tracks him down on the bleachers after practice. “John,” she says, her heeled boots clacking on the metal. He does not respond. She gets closer and toes him. “John. You’re the last photo left in the yearbook. Can you come to D3 sometime this week? I’m there fifth tomorrow. Sixth the rest of the week.”
He does not say anything. He’s wearing sunglasses, head resting on a bent arm. He’s pretending to be asleep.
“You’re such a dick,” Claire says, and leaves.
In the swelling tides of students escaping classrooms for the lunch hour on the following Tuesday, Claire overhears someone mentioning that John Bender is being reamed by Mr. Flintstock for fucking around with a saw in shop. So she goes down to the workshops, a place she has not visited for years now after making her required wooden box in freshman year, and sneezes at the smell of dust and grease and turpentine. She navigates the warren of rooms, passing tables and machines she cannot name. She hears Mr. Flintstock before she sees him.
“What in all that is holy compelled you to do that?” he’s bellowing.
“It was a joke, sir,” comes the reply, so insincere it’s bordering on stupid. “Brad’s gotta loosen up.”
“You could have cut Brad’s finger off!” Mr. Flintstock continues as Claire rounds the corner. “What then? What then, Bender?”
The teacher is waving his arms about. John is kicking his foot back and forth as he slouches on a stool, not looking particularly repentant but not looking at Mr. Flintstock either.
“You’re good at shop,” Mr. Flintstock continues, a little quieter. “You’ve got the mind for it, the ability. Why can’t you focus on that, instead of messing around, causing problems?”
“What can I say, sir,” John begins, finally looking up from the clamp he’s fiddling with. Whatever retort he had lined up dies when he sees Claire.
“Miss Standish,” says the teacher. “What are you going here?”
“I was looking for John,” Claire says. Both men seem astounded by this answer and the fact that she’s apparently popped out of thin air in the depths of the industrial arts complex of Shermer High. “He needs to get his photo for the yearbook,” she tacks on.
“I’m afraid that will have to wait,” says Mr. Flintock. “Mr. Bender decided that today was the day he’d attempt grievous bodily harm against another student with a saw.”
“Was it a handsaw?” Claire asks. She isn’t sure why. But John guffaws.
“No, it was a circle saw,” the teacher cuts in, also seeming confused as to why he’s answering her. He waves his hands between them. “Principle Brown will be here any minute. The photo will have to wait. Goodbye, Miss Standish.”
Claire looks at John. He’s grinning like a miscreant.
“See ya,” he says, and Mr. Flintock is back to shouting by the time Claire leaves the workshop.
John does not appear for the rest of the week. Claire asks at the front desk if he’s been suspended or perhaps even expelled, but apparently Principle Brown wants him out of her hair more than she wants Brad’s parents to make a complaint so he’s still hanging around somewhere.
Claire finds him third period on Friday. He’s fucking around with some of his burner friends in the hallway.
“Excuse us, princess,” he crows, lifting his arms and stepping back to make way.
“Are you going to come for your photo?” she asks over their laughter, fixing him with a look. He’s grinning. Such a showman. She hates him. She hates that her stomach swirls with butterflies. Mostly she wants to slap him across the face and ask him if he’ll ever stop being cruel and an idiot. If he’s ever going to apologise and mean it. Not that she cares.
“You want a photo of me?” he asks. His friends jeer. Claire feels her neck getting all hot. He’s waiting, goading her on with his eyes. She refuses to bite.
“Last chance. I’m in D3 until four-thirty.” Then she leaves him to his friends.
At four-fifteen, Claire is packing up her things. The yearbook is essentially complete. A few checks next week and then it’ll be sent off for printing. She’s going to write ‘asshole’ in the space where John’s photo is supposed to go and call it a day. So what? Her photo is great. Her hair is perfect. She practised her smile. Got her good side. Who cares about some burner who probably won’t even escape Shermer’s gravitational field?
She’s about to clasp her purse shut when the door to D3 swings open, crashing into the wall. Claire spins around. John stands there, the denim jacket tied around his waist swinging.
“Hey,” he says.
“I’m packed up,” Claire tells him, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re too late.”
“I distinctly remember you saying you were here ‘til four-thirty, red. Didn’t take you for a liar.” He gives her one of those infuriating smirks. “Come on, I prettied myself up just for you.”
Claire narrows her eyes. Taking this for acquiescence, he swaggers in and slouches onto the stool, legs spread, rolling his neck and shaking out his shoulders.
“How’s this?” he asks. Then he gives her what her mother calls a mega-watt smile. It looks scary on him. Unnatural.
“You look crazy,” she deadpans, leaving her bag on the table and approaching the camera. Brian told her how exactly to work the thing. She even poked around in the AV club’s dungeon and found a tech magazine. It was boring and ugly to look at but she figured out what she needs to know.
She sets the camera up, adjusting it. Brian might be taller than John, but only by an inch or so, and the last person to have a photo was Allison, who was slouching.
“How’d you want me?” John asks. He’s been watching her without saying anything which must require Herculean effort. She wasn't aware he had the restraint.
“There’s a mirror over there,” she replies, glancing at him once and then back at the fiddly camera. She’s just flipping back and forth between two buttons but he doesn’t need to know that. The room feels muffled suddenly. “…if you want to check your hair or something.”
“I trust you,” John says. Claire jerks upright. John is staring at her again the way he does -- looking into her, past the veneer, to the half-formed, scared girl hiding behind the popularity. “Level with me. Do I look good?”
Claire draws in a breath. Two can play at this game.
“Good for a stoner? I guess. I wouldn’t know.”
He huffs a laugh. “You know, I begged out of after-school detention with Mr. Tierney to do this. I was gonna get here earlier.”
“More detention? Aren’t you sick of it by now?”
“You think I actually show up on Saturdays? Vernon can suck my--”
“You turned up in March.”
“Yeah. So did you, sweets.”
Claire shrugs. Until that point she’d never had an infraction like that. A few late essays, sure, but nothing that warranted real trouble. Besides, she only got caught because someone’s older sister who works at the mall ratted her out.
John continues, “How come you got detention in the first place? You never said.”
“I skipped school to go shopping.”
John’s mouth quivers. Claire stops pretending to adjust the camera and waits for him to say something scathing about rich bitches, and she knows he’s dying to, but he just grins out of the corner of his mouth like he’s… proud?
“What?” Claire says defensively.
“Nothing. I’m just impressed.”
Claire immediately deflates. She checks her wristwatch. Four thirty-two. “I have places to be, John, if you’re going to make fun of me.”
She snaps a photo but he stands in the middle of it so all she gets is a blur of his shirt. “I’m not laughing at you, cherry. I thought you’d, I don’t know, made another girl cry, maybe. Swirlied her for stealing your lipstick or pulling your hair.”
“Swirlies are disgusting.”
“I figured it was something lame.”
“Shopping on a Wednesday is lame.”
“Hey, I don’t know. Might be great for bargains.”
This gets to Claire. For some reason. She actually laughs, forgetting that John is standing on the other side of the camera with the same open, fragile look he had, genuine for a split second, when he talked about Wild Kingdom. He looks like a different person. It makes Claire’s stomach drop like she’s on a rollercoaster.
“I did get this half-off,” she says, gesturing to her skirt. John looks her up and down.
“Looks good on you.”
“Let’s just take the photo, John.”
His eyes travel all over her face. There’s yellow bruising over his cheekbone. Hopefully it won’t be visible on camera.
Finally he nods and turns back to the stool. He unties his denim jacket from around his hips and pulls it on, popping the collar.
“No,” Claire says immediately. “Collar down.”
He does as she asks. He shakes his head and then whips it back to pull his hair from his face instead of just using his hands like a normal person. Then he looks at the camera.
“I’m ready,” he says. Claire rolls her eyes for the hundredth time this week. She checks the camera one last time and then counts down and snaps the photo. For a brief minute she stares at it, the flash dying, and sees eighteen-year-old John Bender, lowlife asshole who offered to be her parents’ worst nightmare, preserved forever in a single frame, with the grey streak in his hair and the cut of his jaw and his jacket sloping over his shoulders and her -- her earring. Her diamond earring. Still in his earlobe.
“You’re at a loss for words,” John says. Back to that smarmy grin. “Glad to have been of service.”
Claire looks away from the photo. “This could have been over and done with two weeks ago, John.”
“Sure it could have, but then you wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing me so often.”
Claire doesn’t dignify this with a response. She begins shutting things up. When she reaches for the big umbrella light and switches it off the room is plunged into total darkness. Claire gasps. Stumbles over a wire.
John says woah there and suddenly he’s got her, one hand on her elbow, the other ghosting over her hip for a split second, stopping her from falling. He smells like smoke and aftershave and he says “You good, red?”. His voice floats out of a darkness Claire’s eyes are still adjusting to. It sounds soft. Maybe it’s not even his. Maybe Claire has dropped into a parallel universe where John Bender wasn’t ever a prick and didn’t spill paint in the garage and Claire’s parents are happily married and Claire joined French club like she wanted instead of being bullied out of it by Sheryl and Stubby.
“Yeah,” Claire says. “I’m fine.”
A beat. Claire has no idea how close he is exactly. When he shifts she hears the chain at his hip clinking. He’s still touching her elbow, ever so lightly.
“Claire,” he says.
There’s something wrong with her, for wanting to lean into him after what he did under that desk. She wonders if he’d let her pinch him until his flesh bruised. She almost says you didn’t even say sorry but then the lights are on and Clancy is there saying ‘what’s going on?’.
Claire blinks at the harsh bar lighting illuminating the room. John has already put a meter or so between them. Maybe Claire imagined the whole thing.
“Photos are done,” she says. “No thanks to you.”
“You remembered to take the lens cap off?”
Claire grabs her bag. “Don’t be a dick, Clancy,” she snaps, brushing past him.
Her father picks her up in his BMW. At a stop light, Claire sees John Bender on the sidewalk, lighting a cigarette. Usually she wouldn’t notice him. Usually she would look the other way. But she watches now. What was he going to say, before Clancy came in?
John looks up and notices her after a moment. He puffs out a billow of smoke and nods at her. Claire waves back.
“Who are you waving at, sweetheart?” her father asks. Surely not the defective smoking outside a mom-and-pop.
“No one,” Claire says. “Just some guy from school.”