Two Girls Take a Photograph in a Parking Lot

Once you put out your cigarette against your thigh when looking at me instead of your hand. Against the warm metal, the small white scar almost glows.

I lean my back against the windshield, and wonder when you’ll let me start my project. I need three photos, each taken at a different time of day, with a human subject. You volunteered for nighttime, saying that your newly dyed silver hair looks “stunning next to the moon.” Too bad the moon is behind us, above the empty bottles and wrappers I don’t want in the photo, but don’t care enough about to clean up.

You exhale, and I confusingly watch smoke leave your body, not remembering the tobacco between your fingers.

“Where did that come from?”

“What?”

“The cigarette. How long have you had it?”

“A few minutes. Why? Do you want one?”

I don’t smoke tobacco, and you know that so I don’t bother shaking my head. Instead, I bring my knees forward and sigh. A long one. The kind that is so played out that the listener knows it’s me trying to call them out on something, without verbally doing it. You glare.

You’re going to say something like Have a problem? or Is there something you want to say to me? Like you having to ask me is the greatest inconvenience you have ever experienced. I watch, and you keep glaring. Your eyes are green and I remember how when I came out to my father, and told him about us, he asked me to describe you and I focused on your eyes. I used words like emeralds, the ocean, springtime, and other words, trying to capture the varying shades of your iris. I try to describe them now in my head, and can only think of your brown lashes, almost as long on the lower lash line as on the top. They make you look younger than your body and the smoke surrounding you.

“Is something wrong?” you finally ask. You’re using the bored tone of voice that lets me know that whatever I’m thinking isn’t really relevant to you, and should be kept to myself.

“I’m just wondering when we’re planning on starting the project. We’ve been here for an hour,” I mumble.

“I’ve been ready,” you respond, and I wait for you to move off my car, and in front of the patch of trees we agreed to be the background of the photo. You take another drag, and on your exhale you pucker your lips, trying to make rings out of the smoke.

I tap your knee, just below your scar, and hesitantly you slide off the car and onto the cement.

“Do you want me to change? I brought that red slip dress.”

I shake my head, then regret shaking my head because the red dress fits the image I want: a classy, almost vintage, looking girl who finds herself here, in a parking lot and knows, she doesn’t belong. You belong here, with your messy hair and bare legs. I keep thinking how you look too much like yourself: wearing a see-through white tank top that shows your maraschino cherry red bra, grey drawstring shorts, a black scrunchie holding your hair in a braided bun-like shape, and yesterday’s makeup. I want to tell you that the mascara is only on the tips of your eyelashes and that only the wing of your liner remains, but decide against it.

When you position yourself in front of the woods, I realize how many photos I have of this. You wearing brightly colored undergarments in parking lots, not looking at the camera (sometimes not knowing the photo is being taken until after the flash goes off), and a joint or phone screen lighting up the picture.

“Actually, could you change into the dress? It would look better in the lighting?”

“I just asked if you wanted me to change, and you said no.”

“I know… sorry. Could you also put on this lipstick?” I pull a light shimmery pink tube out of my pocket, worried it will be warm and melty from the heat coming from my thigh. You groan.

“Fine.” The word was drawn out to feign annoyance, but you smile so I smile back.

“Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too.” You disappear into the Waffle House.

Nineteen minutes later, you emerge in the dark dress sporting fresh eyeliner and silver flip flops.

“Do you have any other shoes?” I ask.

“No. It’s either these or the boots I was wearing. Why does it matter? It’s not like my feet will be in the picture,” You told me, putting your bag into the car.

“It’s a full body shot. Your feet will be in it.”

You shrugged.

I sigh, again, and I imagine the noise leaving my leaving my body like fog and gathering by your purple painted toes. You go to the patch of trees, and stand awkwardly waiting for instructions.

“Look lost.”

Your eyes widen and you look over your shoulder comically. I want to say tone it down a bit, but I don’t. Instead, I take a picture and you change positions, the worried expression still locked on your face. We do this for a while, me taking pictures of this elegant, confused version of you.

Your hair is down, curly from the braid you had it in earlier, and I realize I’ve never seen you like this. The dress is your sister’s (too “flapper” for you). You normally wear skater dresses that flare at the bottom and have daring cutouts. You hair is always partially up; held together by a selection of scrunchies and pins. I remember when I got high in your apartment, and you let me tattoo a heart on your left shoulder, next to the “L” your little sister got to do and above the constellation your best friend put on your upper back.

“Even if we break up, and it’s sad and ugly, I still want this tattoo. I’m happy and want to remember being happy, even if I don't want to remember you.”

You tattooed three circles on the inside of my left index finger (saying three's a lucky number or something) and I remember not remembering which hand a wedding ring goes on.

I look at you, not looking at the camera.

Right now, you look like the girls I crushed on in Catholic School, the kind of person that girls like me couldn’t have, so I got a girl like you.

I remember four weeks ago when I was supposed to be taking pictures of landscapes but ending up capturing you pulling your hair (deep “mermaid” blue at the time) into a bun. We planned on going to a club later that night, so you were wearing dramatic false lashes and plum lipstick that you claimed embodied the nature of autumn. It was summer, but I found the comment charming.

I remember how you wore that lipstick to your mother’s birthday party, and she laughed when a purple stain was left on your glass, and how she winked when you introduced me. You wore that lipstick when you got in a fight with an Uber driver about pocket sizes in relation to the patriarchy, and stopped wearing it three months ago, when it melted in my car. You decided not to buy a new one, and I never mentioned it.

You smile at me, then the camera. I try to smile with only my eyes, but don't and just take pictures. You laugh.

When you laugh it comes out in bursts of air, like hiccups. I first noticed when I poked you in the ribs on the way to Psychology, thinking you were one of my friends. After your fit of giggles and gasping ended, you introduced yourself, making the last syllable of your name longer than needed. I found it charming.

I think we’re happy.

When my father asked me to describe you I said that you were technicolored. I told him how you weren’t like mom, or my sister, or like anyone from home and I wanted to tell you how sometimes I wished you were ordinary, but I didn’t. Girls from home don’t roll their eyes or fill their lungs with smoke. They walk in groups and whisper about the boys in the neighborhood that call them prudes but marry them anyway.

Once when we drove to my parents house the week after exams ended. You told me how the houses down each identical street looked like those fancy cupcakes the windows of bakeries.

“You don’t eat them, because they’ve been sitting there for God knows how long, plus they’re probably filled with plastic and dye to make them like that. They’re still pretty but they taste like shit, you know? Is that rude to say? Your neighborhood is lovely and all…”

You didn’t say that to my parents (whose house was painted the same eggshell white as everyone else on the block) instead, you smiled with your teeth and laughed at my prom photo: me with waist long hair in a long sleeved navy blue dress. If you looked closely you could see that my date (a quiet boy from my history class who now works with my father) isn’t actually wrapping his arms around my waist. They were floating an inch above my skin.

You walk towards me and ask something like can I see? and I show you. It’s one of the first pictures I took. You are looking up with wide eyes and half of a smile. The photo was taken far enough away that I can’t see the clump in your mascara or the pores on your nose. From here, you look like an oil painting: beautiful and easily destroyed. You bite your lip as you hold the camera closer to your face than you need to. I know what will happen. You will say that you liked that one picture I took of you at that bonfire (you laughing at a forgotten joke with a beer in your hand. The fire behind you looks like the flames are coming from your back) more than this one, and I’ll nod but still turn this one in. Maybe I’ll print it and have it hung on my wall or the fridge, and you’ll come over to my dorm and laugh but be uncomfortable that this is the picture of you that I chose, that this is what I choose to remember you by if you’re not here with me. You let out a low whistle, and laugh.

“I’m not sure if I like these. They look cool and everything, but they don’t look like me.”