Endangered Read online

  SecretAdm1r3r: Those I don’t want to answer. Ask better ones.

  PandaD: Okay. Why aren’t you busting me?

  SecretAdm1r3r: I understand you. Better than all your little website followers, better than the people you’re avenging. Better than anyone.

  PandaD: How do you figure that?

  SecretAdm1r3r: I’ve got a camera, too.

  PandaD: Old people on dinner cruises have cameras. What gear were you using that night?

  SecretAdm1r3r: Canon 20D with a EF50mm lens. Gives me great shots in low light.

  PandaD: Interesting. I used something similar when I first started. That’s a good beginner’s rig.

  SecretAdm1r3r: It’s a lot less bulk than what you’re shooting. Was it a Nikon? Hard to tell because your massive lens distracts me so.

  PandaD: Oh, whatever! It takes a lot of skill to handle high-quality zoom lenses, thank you very much. One day, if you’re ever comfortable with pro gear, you might see.

  SecretAdm1r3r: Pick the right spots and you don’t need zoom. Case in point, me shooting you. But, you know, I’m not a pro or anything.

  PandaD: Okay, okay. Truce. Tell me about that room you shot. Dante.

  SecretAdm1r3r: Awesome, right?

  PandaD: How did you get that fire?

  SecretAdm1r3r: What?

  PandaD: Was it a set? Did you need a crew? What sort of prep did you do to stage it?

  SecretAdm1r3r: I lit a match.

  PandaD: Oh, come on!

  SecretAdm1r3r: I answered your question. Now, I have one for you. Why “Panda”?

  On this, I’m slow to respond. When the pause lingers, another message comes through.

  SecretAdm1r3r: I know why others began calling you that—I don’t believe a word of that nasty tale, by the way. I want to know why YOU keep the name . . . considering the connotations. Come on. Fair is fair.

  It’s still hard to type. The last time I told the story—the real story—I pretty much dropped a nuke on my life.

  SecretAdm1r3r: I know so many truths about you already. What’s one more thing?

  PandaD: Fine. It came from my mom. When I was a kid, mean girls teased me because I’m mixed race. They said I had weird skin, and hair, and eyes. I came home crying one day, and Mom sat me down with this book we got from the San Diego Zoo. She flipped to the pandas and told me, “They’re black and white, just like you. They’re beautiful, just like you.” It stuck, and it helped.

  SecretAdm1r3r: Until it didn’t.

  Until it didn’t.

  PandaD: What’s the deal with this photo challenge you dropped? If I don’t do it, you’re going to expose me? WTF, dude? If we’re in the same gang, why blackmail me?

  SecretAdm1r3r: I sense hostility. Calm down. I don’t like the B-word. What I’m proposing is a friendly competition. A way to sharpen our focus. Pun intended.

  PandaD: I don’t need my focus sharpened. I don’t even know what that means.

  SecretAdm1r3r: I’ll tell you sometime. But you’ll have to participate in my project if we’re going to get to know each other better.

  PandaD: I get you’re not going to tell me who you are. But, are you someone I helped? Did one of the people I exposed hurt you in some way?

  SecretAdm1r3r: You’ve helped me. And I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you see what it is you’re really doing. Clearer than your best lens.

  PandaD: I don’t need to SEE what I do. I KNOW what I do. I do good.

  SecretAdm1r3r: Yes, but there’s always room for improvement.

  I start to type something snarky, but epic. The ultimate comeback. Only, before I get a word down, my computer sounds an angry buzz.

  SecretAdm1r3r has left the chat.

  The hell?

  I wander downstairs, dazed. A million thoughts and questions remain in the aftermath of my abruptly ended chat with my Admirer.

  How is it possible for someone to seem so creepy and cool at the same time?

  Dad’s upright on the couch and Mom’s stretched sideways like a lazy cat, her feet on the cushions and her head wedged in the crook of his shoulder. On the TV, a grayish-green blob swirls in from the Atlantic Ocean over a zoomed-in map of Virginia and North Carolina. The weatherman points excitedly at the storm spiral.

  “—we can expect upward of three inches of rain with wind gusts as high as fifty miles per hour tomorrow afternoon—”

  Drifting into the kitchen for a snack, my confusion persists.

  Who IS this guy? How do I show him I’m the superior shooter?

  My phone buzzes again. Ocie’s doubling down on the apologies, insisting I respond. In the same moment, the weatherman’s voice turns all doom and gloom (“—expect dangerous lightning strikes near the coast—”), and I’m thinking about beating my admirer’s Dante. Talk about the perfect storm.

  Pun intended.

  I nearly drop the milk when the idea hits.

  It’s so exciting—so awesome—that I’m trembling when I text Ocie back.

  Me: R U really sorry?

  Ocie: Totes

  Me: Wanna make it up 2 me?

  Ocie: Ok?

  Me: Free up ur evening tomorrow. I’m going to need ur help.

  I think on it a moment, then send a follow-up text.

  Me: U might want 2 bring an umbrella.

  CHAPTER 10

  WE’RE ON THE HIGHWAY, CREEPING THROUGH rush-hour traffic.

  Ocie’s tapping on her thigh in a rhythm I still hear in my head even though I’ve cranked the radio to drown it. Tap-tap-tap, stop, Tap-tap-tap, stop, Tap-tap . . .

  I lower the music and say, “If you’re nervous, we could talk about it.”

  Her tapping increases. “You should concentrate on the road.”

  By “road” she means the thirty feet of visible asphalt fading into a torrential downpour that’s so bad some drivers angle their cars toward the shoulder, deciding to wait instead of persevere. Looking through my windshield is like looking into a pool, and my wipers fight the water like bad swimmers, breaking the surface long enough to gasp before going under again. One of those fifty-miles-per-hour wind gusts the weatherman warned about swats my car, and I grip the steering wheel with both hands so I don’t swerve.

  Lightning flashes. The bolt is a crooked electric finger pointing toward the worst of the storm. I don’t need the directions, though. Already going that way.

  “When you said you needed my help,” Ocie says, “I didn’t think you meant with committing suicide.”

  “We aren’t going to die.” I hope.

  Another gust bounces us in the lane.

  “I’m glad you’re so confident. What are we doing here?”

  “Remember that contest I told you about? The one I need a killer photo for?”

  I glance over for a reaction. Ocie’s jaw is slack. She stares at the roof of my car; I know this look. Really, she’s looking to God for a more satisfactory explanation.

  “You’re effing crazy, Panda. Driving in this? For a photo? Of what?”

  I hesitate. She’s not going to take this well. “I’m—I’m not sure yet.”

  “Jesus take the wheel. Like, seriously.”

  It’s true. I have some ideas—what I’d like to see when I’m looking through my viewfinder. You never know for sure, not until you’re in the moment.

  Rain patter and the thunk-squee, thunk-squee of my wipers are the only sounds. I need to say something, something that will sell Ocie on today’s mission. Something affirming.

  “I overreacted about you tutoring Taylor. I’m sorry.”

  “You might want to apologize to him, since you made me cancel his session to go storm chasing.”

  That will never happen. “This is about us. I shouldn’t have been all bitchy about it.”

  “Really?”

  Maybe. A little. I shrug. “So, you and him are, like, real friends?”

  “Not like we are.”

  Thunk-squee, thunk-squee

  Ocie says, “There’s no
thing going on between us or anything. If that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “It never even crossed my mind.”

  She flinches.

  “I just mean you’d have to be pretty stupid to go there with him, O. You know what he’s like.”

  “Are you sure you do?”

  Gripping the wheel tight enough to make my hands ache, I say, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means—” But Ocie’s phone spasms in her lap, emitting a long, aggravated groan that startles us both. She reads the screen. “Emergency alert! You know this mess is a Hurricane Watch now? Are you listening? Don’t you have anything to say?”

  I gasp, and catch the word rocketing up my throat before it passes my lips.

  I almost say, “Perfect.”

  If photographers were soldiers, storm photographers would be our Navy SEALs. The elite shooters who do the things most can’t, things most of us shouldn’t even try. Storm photography is dangerous for all sorts of reasons. Lightning strikes, flying debris, flash flooding. That stuff kills people who are trying to get away from storms; imagine the mortality rate for those going into them. Like we’re doing now.

  We make it to Atlantic Avenue in one piece, a tenuous state. Rain pelts us with greater frequency, peppering so hard I expect a thousand raindrop dents in my ride when this thing is over. I pull into the empty lot of the Oceanview Inn, a dwarf building wedged between two newer, taller luxury hotels.

  Ocie hasn’t said much since announcing the Hurricane Watch, but her thigh-tapping has morphed into hand-wringing that makes the skin on her palms and knuckles bright red. I catch the flash of nearby lightning from the corner of my eye, and thunder grumbles overhead, a sound like a dozen boulders rolling in to crush us.

  I say, “I don’t think we’ll need to be here for long.”

  “We shouldn’t be here at all,” Ocie says, but quietly, like she is talking to herself.

  I undo my seat belt, twist into the space between us, and slither into the backseat. My camera bag is there. There’s other equipment in the trunk, but I’m losing my nerve the more the crosswinds swipe at my car like a giant cat pawing a ball of yarn.

  “Ocie, I need you to drive us onto the boardwalk, just like we do at Christmas, when they have all those lights on the beach.”

  She twists in her seat. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal any time other than Christmas.”

  “It’ll be fine. There aren’t any cops out here.”

  Two lightning bolts crackle in quick succession.

  “I wonder why.” She’s already climbing behind the wheel and adjusting the seat to accommodate her short legs. “I should drive us home.”

  I crank up the syrup in my sweet voice. “You won’t, though, because you’re my bestie. I really think the photos I’m going for will win me this contest. I think they’re the only way I’ll win this contest.”

  “I don’t understand why this contest is such a big deal. Is it for scholarship money or something?”

  Ocie does these formulas in her head where she calculates the value of difficult tasks relative to the speed and distance they can propel her beyond the Portside city limits after graduation. Scholarship money means bigger, better schools. Possibly out-of-state schools. If that justifies risking life and limb for her, well: “Yes, there’s a couple of thousand dollars of scholarship money in the prize pool.”

  She sighs, still looks skeptical. I sweeten the pot. “Do this, and lattes are on me all weekend.”

  “Two weeks’ worth of lattes, and I’m talking venti. None of that tall crap. If you don’t get your picture in fifteen minutes, it wasn’t meant to be and we’re going home. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Ocie gets us moving, maneuvering toward a gap next to the Oceanview Inn meant for maintenance vehicles. When she turns on the brick-and-concrete boardwalk, I’m transfixed by the view beyond the steel guardrails and the shore, which is half its normal sandy width thanks to the storm stretching high tide into higher tide.

  It’s almost sunset. What my tribe calls the Golden Hour—the hour after sunrise and before sunset. There’s no studio or digital substitute for the beautiful lighting you get during those very narrow windows at dawn and dusk, a time when the best outdoor photos in the world are shot.

  What’s happening around us isn’t that. Not exactly.

  There is a gilded spear piercing the angry cloud cover twenty miles offshore. A solitary tower of sunlight, flanked by arcing lightning, is the only evidence there is still a star to warm us. Everything else is forced night, and the contrast where the two meet is astonishing.

  This is the shot. “Ocie, stop driving.”

  The car halts. I stretch myself across the seat until my back presses against the door farthest from the ocean. I zoom, trying to crop out visible car parts in-camera, but I’m still getting automotive evidence in my viewfinder. I shoot fast, at least sixty shots. And I know—KNOW—none of them is right.

  Even with the zoom, it all feels closed in. The pictures aren’t in the storm. If I were shooting fire, I wouldn’t be able to feel the heat.

  “Can we go now?” Ocie half yells to be heard over the banshee wind.

  No. We can’t.

  I pull the knob-lever thingy that lowers half of my backseat so I can access more gear in the trunk.

  “Panda?”

  I grab a tripod and a rain hood for the camera. Then I rip the plastic seal on a disposable poncho and slip it over my head.

  “No. No way,” Ocie says. Pleads.

  She’s not going anywhere without me, though. I’m her anchor.

  When I pop the latch and push my door against air that’s pushing back, I think maybe she’s not the one who needs an anchor. Once I’m on the boardwalk, the door closes on its own, like my car’s telling me never come back. I walk in a hunch, shielding my eyes from the moist sand blasting me. More thunder. More lightning. Sounds and signs like final warnings, which I ignore.

  The light piercing the cloud diminishes as the storm shifts and the sun continues its westward trajectory. There’s no time to set up the tripod, so I shoot without it and pray I get something decent despite the forceful wind. I zoom in, out, forgetting the elemental chaos around me. God, the colors alone. Streaking reds, purples, blues, and golds.

  Behind me, chairs held down by rope and bungee ties rattle against the short fence that boxes in a hotel restaurant’s outdoor area. On warm and pretty days, the patio is filled with hungry tourists enjoying their view of the Atlantic. Now it’s a storage area for poorly secured storm projectiles. A plastic chair somehow slips its rope, jumps the fence, and skips past me until it collides with the steel rail standing between the boardwalk and the sand. It hits so hard, the chair cracks.

  The splintering plastic shakes me. I look to my car and see a scared Ocie twisted in the driver’s seat, looking like she’s watching my impending doom.

  Fine, fine. I check my camera display, I’ve taken nearly a hundred shots. They’ll have to do.

  I run to the passenger side of my vehicle and climb in. Ocie’s driving before I get my door closed. She takes us a quarter mile up the boardwalk, then swings a left at the giant King Neptune statue to put us back on Atlantic Avenue. The ocean god, flanked by his army of sea turtles and crabs, stares after us. More lightning illuminates the furious gaze some sculptor etched onto the deity’s green stone face.

  “You ever wonder why he’s so mad?” I ask.

  Ocie says, “What?”

  “Neptune. They made him angry. But why? Is it because the people who come to him always leave, or because he can’t?”

  “Panda,” Ocie says. “Shut. Up.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE STORM PASSES AND WE DRIVE home on a deserted highway. When we get to the surface streets, my tires bump over broken tree limbs and loose shingles left behind by the wind. We make one stop at Starbucks, where we switch seats and I make the first payment on my latte debt. At Ocie’s house, I say, “What do you want
to do this weekend?”

  Usually this question results in a number of options—mall/movies/whatever—but all she says is “Don’t know. I’ll text you.”

  Meaning she won’t. At least not for a day or so while she gets into a space where she can accept any apology I’m willing to give. “Ocie.”

  “Yes?”

  “You kicked ass tonight.”

  She sighs, shakes her head. “White chocolate mocha, nonfat, no whip, delivered to my cranky, un-caffeinated hand on Monday morning.”

  I smile. “Done. We cool?”

  “You’re being kind of other right now, but we will be.” She leaves the car, taking her coffee with her. “I hope you win your contest, since we almost died for it and all.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “You’re crazy,” she counters. “But what else is new?”

  With that she’s gone, and her annoyance with me is a secondary concern. I’m racing home to show my Admirer what a real photographer can do.

  Examining the shots on my MacBook’s Retina display, my stomach sinks. I’m halfway through the batch and most of it’s blurry, poorly composed garbage. There are a few decent shots, but decent isn’t good enough.

  Worse, these are the pictures taken from the backseat. I knew they wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted, but if the pictures I took from a relatively stable position look this bad, what are the ones I took while fighting the storm going to be like?

  I speed up my review, moving to the batch taken outdoors. Right away I see they’re terrible. Not even good enough to get a decent grade in Digital Photography class. I’m not used to shooting in weather, and in a couple of shots I managed to capture the edges of the camera’s rain hood in frame, obscuring what might have been an okay photo otherwise. I could crop . . . but . . . damn it! I’m better than this!

  The number of remaining shots is dwindling, and I’m ready to scream from frustration.

  Until . . .

  My third-to-last shot catches two bolts of forked lightning flanking the sun column, center frame. High waves crash in the foreground, while the water smooths to black glass at the horizon. It’s. Freaking. Gorgeous.