Prologue.

---from the novel After the Departures

by Chad Michael Lange

He is almost at the front of the line.  Most of his classmates look forward to this day, Picture Day, the first Thursday every September, because they miss classes all morning.  He doesn’t. Each year he stands in this line, stares at his feet (he purposefully unties his shoelaces so he won’t have to look at other students), and dreads the moment he sits in the stiff, backless, red plastic chair. It’s always the same photographer, a slovenly man, untamed beard, so bushy and thick that wild animals, zebras or gazelles, might jump from its hairy depths. When the photographer asks his name, the boy answers patiently, politely, every year, even though the photographer invariably shakes his head, puzzled, and wants him to repeat his name at least two or three more times. When he’s satisfied, the photographer addresses him as “Brad,” which, the boy is grateful, isn’t his name.

            He doesn’t like the idea of light, a permanent irradiance, imprinting his image. Flashes that hold not him, but a useless representation, one that preserves forever, a fetus inside a formaldehyde jar, chained to one specific moment. He is many different people from one minute to the next; entire personalities appear, develop, and disappear within hours. His ability to re-create is astounding. How, then, can a provincial photographer, a man who never, in ten years, has properly pronounced his name, hope to personify him---his shifting moods, his loves and hates (mostly hates), his feelings that he might suddenly, without warning, sink into a depression so black and deep he might never re-emerge---with one glimmer of light? How can you capture all of that?

            The line inches forward, slow and steady like a caterpillar. He steps into the dimly lit music room, where each September the photographer establishes his annual base, a den of mediocrity, making eye contact only with his unknotted shoelaces.

            His backpack is slung across his shoulders, and he caresses its coarse black straps. The backpack’s contents, the boy thinks, represent his personality much more than the insipid picture he is about to have taken. Inside, notebooks. There are five, created over a period of nine years, from the time the boy was in second grade. Several notebooks, the oldest ones, contain only illustrations.

            In the earliest pages he drew himself, a tall stick figure, and in the middle of the linear body he outlined a blue heart.

            The heart isn’t filled in, and the boy realizes others might see the image as a hollow yearning, vacant and lonely, a cheap roadside motel shining lurid lights, desperately trying to attract visitors. But when the boy examines the drawing (which he does every three days exactly), he doesn’t see the need to completely color the heart. To him, the heart pulsates with life, and it emanates a love so powerful that tears fill the boy’s eyes.

            As he grew, words replaced the drawings. He expresses himself better this way (He is, after all, a poet.), although his English teachers, who assign multiple-choice tests to analyze Poe, disagree. He has never revealed his talents to anyone. No one knows he’s an artist.

            All the notebooks and poems are addressed to one person, and one day soon, he hopes, he will show her his creations.

            Besides the notebooks, the backpack also houses a small, hand-held gun. He carries the gun to school, along with his secret offerings, the outlined blue hearts, the reams of love letters and poems, every day. He’s done this for more than two years now, ever since he started high school. He feels protected with the gun so close, nestled in the front pocket, the zipper’s handle long ago broken so that now, to the boy’s annoyance, he has to pinch a half-formed metal nubbin and pull the zipper carefully so that the backpack’s contents won’t spill all over the polished wooden hallway floors. Although the boy doesn’t like to look at the gun, its presence is a comfort. He can skirt the perimeters of the school’s hallways with something resembling confidence.

            Now there is only one student in front of him, a guy he’s gone to school with since fourth grade. Standing this close to the slobbish photographer, the boy forgets this other student’s name, even though he knows it, as clearly as he knows that the photo backdrop, a blurry view of the upper atmosphere, cerulean sky, fluffy, marshmallow clouds, is one in front of which he doesn’t want to sit. What is the classmate’s name? Michael? No, something more ethnic. Omar, maybe. Or Juan.

            A brief, concentrated luminescence flashes through the room. It’s his turn. He contemplates the red chair, the old familiar, and recognizes a dried yellow stain (mustard?) from last year. He remembers the stain but not his classmate’s name. The boy sighs with disappointment, and sits. He was hoping, ridiculously, he believes now, for a new experience. Something different. Because if things were different, that would mean people change, and this promise alone might give him confidence, filling his blue, outlined heart with hope. Then he can show her the letters and poems. But the photographer wears the same charcoal-colored smock from last year. Cracker crumbs cling to his unkempt beard. Worse, there’s a stain on the red plastic chair, the same stain on the same chair where the boy has been photographed throughout elementary, middle, and high schools. It is stupid, then, to think that things change, and to hope so, the boy now understands, is certain cause for heartbreak.

            The photographer asks the boy his name. He answers patiently, politely, even though inside he stings with disappointment and something larger, a threatening, blooming energy. The photographer says, “OK, Brad, could you please remove your backpack?”

            “I prefer not to.”

            A short, thick tongue (the boy always thinks it’s a pink slug) lolls from the photographer’s puffy mouth. He places his sausage hands on his hips and says, “Now, Brad, be reasonable. What will your mother think if you’re wearing a backpack in your school picture? It looks like a growth. Like you’ve got a hump or cancer growing from your spine. Is that what you want your mother to see? Cancer?”

            “I prefer not to.”

            “Come on, Brad. You can place it next to your feet. I only shoot from the shoulders up. As soon as I’m done…well, you can put it back on.”

            Clutching the backpack tighter, his fingers wandering toward the front pocket, the boy remains silent.

            “OK? I’m not asking, Brad. Take off the backpack.”

            Reluctantly, the boy obeys, slides the straps off his shoulders, and cradles the backpack in his lap like a baby. His fingers feel hot, as if dipped in lava, when they rest on the front pocket and broken zipper. How easy, he thinks, how fast.

            He’s naked now, possessed with a violent vulnerability, suddenly conscious of his appearance. Hung over, the boy rolled out of bed too late to shower this morning. His hair stands in disheveled clumps, skin oily, pimples spreading like crabgrass around his mouth. Embarrassed, feeling as slobbish as the photographer, he can’t look directly at the camera. He focuses instead on a black tattoo, an anchor with two letters, B.B., his own initials, carved into the anchor’s shank. The tattoo decorates the photographer’s forearm, and for some reason, the boy can’t decide why, this makes him sympathize with the photographer. He removes his burning fingers from inside the backpack’s front pocket.

            The photographer no longer veils his impatience. “Look into the lens, Brad. Pretend it’s the eyes of a pretty girl.”

            He said the same thing last year, but this time, the boy agrees. Yes, this is a good idea. He lifts his chin, and when he stares into the lens, it’s her eyes, which are a lighter color, more turquoise, than the second-rate backdrop. If it turns out good, he thinks, maybe I’ll give her a copy. She might want that. She just might.

            The flash doesn’t last long, less than a second, but the play of light, its brilliant illumination, owns the boy. It reaches out and surrounds him, a personal welcome, simultaneously rough and glamorous, and when he’s in the middle of the effulgence, the boy’s angles and views alter. The light engulfs him so that, momentarily, he forgets everything: the talentless photographer, his backpack, its histories and promises, his predecessor in line (Enrique, the boy remembers. His name is definitely Enrique). For 1/1000 of a second the boy is centered, at last, within the light, and he believes yes, changes are certainly options. There will be changes this year. He will make them happen.