Page 2

Seven Years Before

Flores hated his job. All his life, he had wanted to be an artist, using camera and film as his paint and canvas. He’d put himself through art school, and after graduation he got a job ostensibly as a photographer, but really he was more of a factory worker, no more an artist than the guy flipping burgers at Mickey D’s.

Maybe that would be better. More honest. At least then he wouldn’t be bullshitting anyone—unlike now, calling himself a photographer while shooting school pictures for the Ansel Fitch Photo Studio. What a joke. There was no Ansel Fitch. They made up the name to evoke a real photographer. It was a freaking sacrilege, if you asked . Which no one did.

Ansel Fitch Photo Studio wasn’t even a studio. It was an assembly-line corporation operating in twelve states that did life photos for every occasion, from preschool through graduation to wedding pictures to family portraits. From cradle to grave, the suits joked in private, but really, if they could find a way to take photos on people’s deathbeds, was sure they would.

Whenever tried to diverge from the Ansel Fitch template, he got in trouble. “Be creative on your own time,”

they told him.

As a kid, had always worn a camera around his neck so he’d be ready when a shot revealed itself.

He’d loved the mystery of film, never knowing what moment you would capture until you got into the darkroom.

But now everything was digital, immediate, with no room left for surprises.

His job was not to capture a moment but to color in an outline.

And he hated it.

He hated cajoling second graders to sit still.

He hated bridesmaids asking one another if they looked fat.

He hated graduation portraits most of all.

It wasn’t even the kids.

The seniors at least approached the whole thing with a sense of gravitas.

The same guys who made buffoons of themselves at the winter formals, cupping their balls and thrusting to prove what big men they were, stared straight into the camera when it was graduation portrait time.

It was like they were trying to see their futures.

And that was why he hated it. These kids were on the cusp of it all, while here he was, age thirty-three, but somehow already over the dip of the hill without ever hitting the summit. It depressed the hell out of him.

He looked at his clipboard to call the next kid on his graduation portrait list. “Amber Crane.”

“Right here,”

a girl answered. She was pretty in a generic sort of way, a white girl, with honey-colored hair, twisted into an elaborate updo, too much eyeshadow. She was one of a million. Was that why she seemed familiar? He’d shot this school’s homecoming and junior prom last year, so she’d probably gone to those. She looked like the kind of girl who went to school dances. He would probably shoot her at prom in a few weeks. Cradle to grave, like Ansel Fitch wanted.

She handed him her order form. She had chosen the sunset background. He gestured to the chair and she sat, smiling nervously. He started to take the photo but she held up her hands. “Hang on,”

she said. “It’s my last one, so I want it to be good.”

“Your last one?”

“My last school portrait,”

she said. “It is my graduation picture.”

And then she smiled, and something changed. If a second ago she looked generic, now she was specific, which made her beautiful. knew from experience that such moments were fleeting. He snapped the picture, hoping he’d captured it.