Selfie

originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (February 2016)

The Spring Fling just isn’t any fun without Savannah. That plain Jane Jane Blaine asks me to slow dance, like she could hold a candle to my beautiful girlfriend. Not! So I slip out of the gym and back to the dark loading dock behind the high school to sneak a smoke and take the selfie Savannah asked me to text her.

It’s not Savannah’s fault she came down with the stupid flu and had to stay home. Like it says on the bumper stickers, stuff happens, right?

So here I am out back of the school, a Camel dangling from my lower lip and dribbling smoke, angling my stupid iPhone 4 so I can take the shot with available light instead of washing everything out and blinding myself with the stupid flash. It would be so much easier with the 6, I could line the shot up perfectly with the front camera, but my stupid parents never even upgraded me when the 5’s came out, forget the 6’s!

Savannah’s never seen me in a suit, so that’s why she wants the selfie.

Me, I never used to smoke, you know, except this one time junior year I was hurrying across the football field, running late for practice, when I saw Savannah standing on the loading dock with a couple of her girlfriends, cheerleaders, all of them, smoking. So after practice I stopped at the 7-Eleven and bought a pack of Camels and started carrying them around in my pocket with a book of matches, just in case.

And, sure enough, a week or so later I saw her out here again, by herself this time, rummaging through her book bag, all distracted, so I saunter up to her and say, “You want a smoke, there?” and she says, “Yes, please, I thought I had some,” and I whip out my pack, which is now only half full because I been practicing, and I shake out two cigs and stick them between my lips and light them both, real cool, like I seen in this movie my old lady was watching on TCM, and I give her one and she takes a long drag and sighs out smoke and says, “Thanks, I needed that.” So we get to talking, right, and I ask her does she want to go out some time, and she says, yeah, why not, let’s go to a show.

Turns out “a show” is what Savannah calls a movie, so Saturday night I pick her up in my Mitsubishi Eclipse, which I bought used but in practically cherry condition with money I been saving up like forever, and we go downtown. I let her pick the movie and she picks a scary one, so by the time the psycho killer is sneaking up on his fourth victim she’s got her arm snaked through mine and she’s pressed up against me, holding my hand so tight it would’ve hurt if I wasn’t pretty buff from working out and stuff, and by the time the movie ends we’re all boyfriend and girlfriend, you know, and now it’s senior year and we’re still together, making plans to go to the same college after graduation.

So I’m out on the loading dock with a cigarette and my stupid phone, so I can take a selfie and text it to her, you know. Off in the distance, I can hear the band in the gym. Actually, it’s not really a band, it’s just a DJ with records, our school’s too small and cheap for a band, but, still, it’s music, you know, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, and that’s all that really matters except not to me, not tonight, because Savannah’s home sick and what am I supposed to do, go dance with Plain Jane Blaine and get everybody gossiping? No, thanks.

I’m standing on the loading dock, and it reminds me of that other time, a week after I saw Savannah out here smoking with her girlfriends, beginning of senior year. She was alone, that time, and I was scurrying across the football field, hoping nobody on the team would see me, because it’s an unwritten law at our school you don’t go on the field unless you’re actually on the team. I was late for practice, though, and I’m the captain of the stupid chess club, so it’s no good if I’m late, so I cut across the field and I see Savannah out here by herself, pawing through her book bag, so I figured the hell with chess club and I come up to her and say, “Um, excuse me, you looking for a cigarette?” She looks me up and down and drawls, “Yeah, you got one?” And I take one out and hand it to her — I tried to learn how to smoke them myself, but they make me cough — and she says, “Match me, Sidney,” which I later Googled, because my name is Steve, not Sidney, and found out it was a line from a movie, an old one, black and white.

So I try to make conversation with her, right, except she says she’s late for something and poof, she’s gone. If she hadn’t of been late, we would have got to talking, I bet, and I would’ve asked her out, maybe Mom would have let me borrow her car, and by now Savannah would be my girlfriend, I’m pretty sure.

But I figure it’s not too late. So tonight I get all dressed up and come to the dance, looking for her, except I can’t find her, and Jane Blaine tells me she didn’t even come to school today because she’s sick, some kind of bug or something, so I thought, hey, I know what I’ll do, I’ll come out here on the dock where I first talked with her and take a selfie and send it to her, that’ll be cool, she’ll see I’m an okay guy and text me back, and maybe we’ll catch a movie, after all, and wind up together, like they do in the movies, in what I decided Savannah probably calls “the show.”

The lighting’s pretty crummy on the loading dock, and I’m moving my stupid phone around, this way and that, trying to find an angle that looks cool but hides the tip of the cigarette, so Savannah won’t see I haven’t lit it, they make me cough, but she doesn’t know that and I would look like a jerk if she did so I want to make sure she doesn’t.

I twist around, angling my phone, and there are my feet, in exactly the same place they were that day I was late for Chess Club, thinking maybe if I showed up at the meeting they might let me join, and Savannah was standing right in front of the door, blocking it. I was late, and I tried to say “Excuse me” but my voice came out all strangled and stuttery, and she looked at me funny and said, “Hey, you, Poindexter,” which is not my name, my name is Stephen, “you got a smoke?” Which of course I don’t, because of my condition, so I said “N-n-no” and she made a sort of tchk noise with her pink tongue and said “Get lost, then” but she was still in my way, so I had to go all the way around the school to the main entrance and by the time I got to Chess Club the door was locked and they wouldn’t open up when I knocked.

So I been practicing being cool in the mirror at home, and tonight I put on my cleanest pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt without any funny sayings on it and ride my bike to the dance. Savannah is in a corner with the rest of the cheerleaders, and they’re chattering away and laughing and stuff, and it takes me 20 minutes to get up the nerve while the DJ spins record after record, but I do, I go right up to them and, hardly stuttering at all, I say, “Can I talk to you?” and the other girls laugh like I told a funny joke but Savannah kind of narrows her eyes and says “Why not?” and comes outside to the loading dock with me.

“What do you want?” she says, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse and sticking one between her beautiful red lips and offering me the pack. “I have asthma,” I say, not stuttering, and she shrugs and puts the pack back in her purse and stands there, hands on her hips, waiting for me to light her cigarette for her, and I reach for my book of matches and remember they’re in my regular school jeans at home. She’s waiting for me to light her cigarette and I say, “S-s-s-sorry,” stuttering, and she looks annoyed and says “Jerk” and starts back inside.

So I reach out and grab her elbow and turn her around to face me, and I say “We’re not done here” without a trace of stutter and tell her some pretty cool things about myself which I guess impress her, because before you know it she’s looking up at me with respect in her eyes and I know she’s going to be my girlfriend, after all.

“Take a selfie,” she says, “of you and me, and text it to me so I can always have it on my phone and look at it under my desk in class and think about the next time we’ll be together.”

So I take my iPhone 4 from my pocket, which is better than the stupid 5 and 6, anyway, they ruined it when they did those upgrades, and I hold it up and angle it just right. I have to fiddle around to get Savannah in there, too, but I finally find the right angle, the perfect angle, me smiling, her pink tongue sticking out between her beautiful red lips as she lays there on the concrete, not moving so I can get the perfect shot, in sharp focus, the perfect selfie of me and my girlfriend Savannah, who I will love forever even though she smokes, and I smile and say “Cheese!” without a hint of a stutter and press the button to take the picture.