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“My soul?”
Norman stares incredulously at his roommate, thinking he might have been less surprised if Ray had suggested a lobotomy.
Ray shrugs, adjusting the focus of his camera with a one-handed deftness that Norman finds enviable.
“Sure,” the other man says, balancing the lens against his knee, “Your soul, mind, essence - look for whatever feels right.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Norman says blankly, lowering his own camera back onto his lap, “How is any of that going to - you’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
Ray raises his eyebrows at him, as if to suggest Norman was being stupid. Somehow, this irks him more than Lucas Alfond rejecting his portfolio without a second glance.
“But seriously,” Ray tells him now when Norman scowls. “Not all that stuff Luc said was pointless.”
Norman casts him a withering look. He couldn’t even accuse the other man of nepotism; Raymond Alfond may have been their boss’ nephew, but this doesn’t distract from the fact that he somehow captures the exact instant before a kingfisher lunges into water, or the precise moment a dragonfly latches onto a leaf with an ease that should be criminal.
“I can’t mess up this submission,” Norman says quietly instead. “I’m barely making enough as it is for the month.”
Ray scoffs, the way he always does when Norman voices the very real fear of bankruptcy. Real, that is, unless you were a member of the Alfond family.
“You’re only broke because you’re stubborn,” Ray informs him sternly. “If you’d just take —“
“I can’t keep taking money from you, Ray,” Norman cuts him off, frowning. “It’s bad enough you won’t take rent, I can’t just live off your charity.”
Perhaps it had something to do with being an orphan — or legally, a ward of the state for most of his life — but Norman had only ever known living off of someone else’s favors. His own brains had been good enough to get him a scholarship, and even that had just as soon been revoked in the last year before he could get his degree.
(Never mind that he had a perfect GPA in Electrical Engineering, that he worked no less than three part-time jobs at any given time. Some guy born with an estate to his name had decided that his family’s money wasn’t worth dolling out, and that had been the end of Norman’s brief, but highly-exceptional, foray into college.)
And coming from Ray — his best friend, who had dropped out of college with him the instant Norman’s degree had become unsustainable, who had gotten them both a job at his uncle’s studio when Norman insisted on covering his share of rent — well, Norman thinks he’s accepted enough favors. Too many, to the point where the line between roommate and benefactor blurred uncomfortably every day.
Perhaps Ray knows this too, because he just sighs as if to say you aren’t going to change.
“Forget it,” Ray says, sweeping a hand through his dark hair. “Look, my sisters’ train reaches in the next hour, we’d better get going.”
“Remind me again why I’m going with you?”
“Moving train,” Ray shrugs. “You might actually get a decent shot.”
Norman nods like that had made any sense at all. Photography, he decides, has no business being an art-form.
***
He tries three different shots of a train pulling into the station and each one comes out blurrier than the last.
At some point, Ray stops looking over Norman’s shoulder entirely, and the message is clear:
You’re a gone case.
“Don’t lean so much,” Ray tells him now, his eyes fixed on the board of incoming arrivals. “You’ll have a harder time keeping your hands steady at that angle.”
“Are your sisters here yet?” Norman says in response, rapidly pressing delete on his camera. The idea of him finding his soul in this station is laughable.
Ray shakes his head, watching the steady stream of passengers pooling from either side of the new train that pulls up. “Ah — wait, that’s Gilda calling now. Hey, no, I don’t see you.”
“How is that helpful?” Ray demands into his phone. “It’s fall. Do you know how many people at this station are wearing a jacket? No, don’t give the phone to her.” Scowling, Ray disappears into the thick of the crowd, and Norman hangs back, thinking he may as well get a shot of the sky or something.
He positions his camera higher, his gaze searching for a bird or a tree or anything remotely interesting when he sees —
Her.
A woman about his age, with the most startlingly-green set of eyes he’s ever seen in his life. She’s leaning out of the train door, and her hair - a strikingly-deep red - is brushing against the top of her collarbones. Her hand moves to tuck a single curl behind her ear, and her smile —
God, her smile.
Without thinking it, without planning it, his camera is lifted to his eyes, and in a single motion, he freezes her in time, in the instant before she disembarks the train.
“Over here!”
Ray suddenly shouts into the crowd, waving an arm. Norman hadn’t even heard him return behind him. Next to Ray is a teenage girl Norman has never seen before.
Her hair is dark as Ray’s, falling in a glossy curtain over her shoulders. One of Ray’s younger sisters, Norman guesses. She perches her glasses higher at the bridge of her nose, and frowns.
“Neither of you ever listen to me,” she says petulantly to Ray. “I told you where to find both of us. And now she’s probably off getting the conductor’s whole life story.”
She waves a hand at the sea of people, and Ray merely rolls his eyes.
“Tell her we’re by platform seven,” Ray informs her, adjusting a neon pink duffle-bag over his shoulder. “Oh yeah, Gilda, this is Norman — my roommate. Norman, this is Gilda.”
“Pleasure,” Gilda says distractedly, standing on her toes to peer into the crowd. Ray shoots Norman an exasperated glance.
“It’s her first time traveling without our mother,” Ray mutters under his breath to Norman. “She’ll lighten up once our sister gets here though.”
Norman nods vaguely, wondering if he might spot the mystery woman a second time within the crowd. He lifts his camera again, and Ray smirks at him.
“You’re eager,” Ray notes. “What — get a good shot of a cloud or something?”
By way of reply, Norman holds up the picture he had taken towards Ray’s eyes.
Ray stills at the image, and a surge of pride wells up in Norman’s chest.
“Huh,” Ray says simply, and from the cadence of the other man’s voice, Norman knows that if he hasn’t impressed Ray, he has, at the very least, surprised him. It was better than nothing.
His roommate gives him an appraising sort of look.
“Not bad,” he tells Norman. “Here, Gilda, come see.”
He waves his sister over, and she turns towards them, unimpressed. The family resemblance, Norman decides, is uncanny. Nevertheless, she stows her phone away into her jacket before leaning over his camera.
Her eyes widen, and Norman thinks he may have outdone himself. She opens her mouth to say something when a blur barrels into Ray.
“Hey, Em,” Ray says lightly, receiving the newcomer with such enthusiasm he lifts her off her feet.
He sets her back down, and Norman catches a glimpse of her face. He thinks the air has left his lungs.
It was the woman from the train.
“Took you long enough,” Gilda exclaims now, but then the woman pulls her into the embrace as well.
“Three months!” she declares, an arm flung around both their necks. “Three months since we’ve all been in the same city.”
“I’ll make it longer if you don’t let us go,” Ray informs her, and laughing, she releases them both. Spotting Norman now, she holds out a hand towards him.
“Oh! You must be Norman,” she says brightly. “I’m Emma.”
When the silence stretches long enough to be uncomfortable, Ray claps a hand on Norman’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind him,” Ray says. “They don’t do handshakes where he’s from.”
Norman gives a short, mechanical laugh.
“Where are you from?” Emma asks him, apparently unfazed, and Norman thinks the easy smile she sends his way might actually blind him.
“Philadelphia,” he hears himself say stupidly. He can feel Gilda’s stare burning into his back.
“Oh, I love the Eagles,” Emma says. “Have you ever been to a game?”
He hasn’t even seen a game on TV. He nods anyway.
“Emma,” Gilda starts now, her voice dangerously soft. “You should see the picture Norman took today.”
“Nah, you shouldn’t,” Ray supplies, and Norman adds this to the list of debts he owes Ray. “He’s an amateur, you should hear what Uncle Luc says about him.”
“Well, you haven’t changed,” Emma frowns reproachfully at her brother, before turning back to Norman.
“Ray had this weird obsession with taking pictures of our cutlery,” she says conspiratorially. “Our dad banned him from the kitchen until Ray started cooking.”
“It was a Jan Groover thing,” Ray mutters, having the decency to look embarrassed.
“No, it was a loser thing,” Gilda corrects him.
“Well, I’d like to see Norman’s picture,” Emma says, ignoring them both. “I’m sure it’s better than butter knives.”
Right then, it occurs to Norman he had the option of simply showing her a different picture, or better yet, of smashing his camera against the hard tiles of the station. But for reasons he can’t even explain to himself, he holds the offending object out to her, its screen displaying his most recent shot.
Emma’s lips drop into a soft oh. He braces himself for the rebuke, an apology already lined at the tip of his tongue. I had no idea, he prepares himself to say, I’ll never take a single photo again for the rest of my —
“Wow,” Emma says, hushed. “I look — well, I look —“
Beautiful, he thinks, watching her green eyes flicker with something like revelation.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her quietly, for a moment forgetting entirely that Ray and Gilda were on the platform with them. “I definitely should have asked first, it was just — instinct.”
“Instinct,” Emma repeats incredulously. “That’s what our uncle says too. You don’t have to apologize, Norman, this is incredible. You must have a real passion for this type of thing.”
He watches her hair flutter in the wind, and for the first time in his life, he thinks, yes, he just might.
“I can send it to you, if you’d like,” he offers. “I won’t use it for any portfolios, I swear.” And he finds he really does mean it. The best picture he’s ever taken and yet — it felt wrong, somehow.
“Oh no, you have to use it,” Emma insists. “If it helps you. I don’t mind, honest.”
“He’ll use it,” Ray assures her. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Gilda gapes at both of them, affronted. Apparently, neither of these had been the appropriate reaction.
“Emma,” she hisses at her sister. “You don’t even know him.”
“Be nice,” Emma reminds her, patting Gilda’s cheek with an indulgence that someone might have reserved for a toddler.
Gilda slaps away her hand, sighing. “Fine, whatever. Ray, what’s for dinner?”
“Foie Gras,” Ray says, striding away towards his car, and both sisters scowl.
“Dude,” Emma groans, matching his pace. “That better be a joke. I was only home for a week but Mom’s been extra intense with that stuff.”
“No wonder the old man’s moving out,” Ray scoffs, and Emma nudges him sharply. She casts a worried glance at Gilda, who, Norman notes, had gone ashen.
“Ray made salmon,” Norman says loudly, and all three Alfonds turn to him.
“Salmon sounds great,” Emma says, shooting him a grateful look. “Right, Gilda?”
“Better than Foie Gras,” Gilda agrees, relenting.
By the time they pile into the car, the sisters in the back, and Norman in the passenger’s seat, Ray whispers to Norman under the guise of adjusting his mirror:
“Want her number?”
Reflexively, Norman catches Emma’s eye in the reflection. This is the one debt he will never be able to repay, he realizes. He breathes back anyway:
“Yes, please.”