Photobombed



  Photobombed

  William Hrdina

  Copyright 2014 William Hrdina

  Drone Wars - Issue 1 - Secrets and L.I.E.S.

  Drone Wars - Issue 2 - Combat Fitness

  Drone Wars - Issue 3 - The Panopticon Net

  Kenny G Must Die!! A Satire about Music- and Zombies

  Everyone tells me what happened wasn’t my fault. When I’m being kind to myself, I agree, somewhat. The thing is - I have never told anyone the whole truth - I always leave something out.

  I might not admit it, but I know what happened. I know - and it’s killing me.

  I can say, with total honesty, Ray Brauer was the furthest thing from my mind when I showed up at Wendy Havermeyer’s party last Friday. I mean, I knew who Ray Brauer was, my high school only has two hundred kids, but I didn’t really know anything about him. He was kind of a nobody - you know the kind? He just came to school and went home. I don’t think we ever had a conversation even. He was just a face in the hall.

  The only thing I was thinking about was Perry Kinsmith and the note he’d passed to me in math class.

  It said, “Alaya, I hope you’re going to Wendy’s party tonight. I’m going to go and I was really hoping we could hang out there.”

  Since the first day of school after summer vacation, I’ve been getting up, taking a shower and putting on make-up for only one reason: to get Perry to ask me out.

  Every morning I had agonized over my clothes, trying to gauge from his reaction (or lack of reaction) what he thought looked good on me. I heard from one of his friends that Perry liked girls who were smart, so over this semester I’ve brought my grades up from C’s to low A’s. My parent’s think I’m learning to apply myself. Being parents, they also think they’re doing something to make my grades go up. I see no reason to burst their bubble, so I let them think whatever they want.

  I really have been applying myself, but it hasn’t been to schoolwork. I’m applying myself to getting Perry to like me. My friend Sarah thinks I’m crazy. She yells at me all the time. She says I shouldn’t be trying to be someone that I’m not just to get a boy to like me. Her parents are, like, hippies or something. She says I should just be myself. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Sarah, she’s really nice and fun to talk to, but boys don’t even look in her direction, so I think I can be forgiven for not paying any attention to what she says.

  Then, this past Monday, it finally worked. I was doing my super sexy walk to my desk when Perry looked up from his geometry book and smiled at me.

  “Hi Alaya,” he said. He was so cool.

  I returned his smile, but I didn’t say a word.

  He was cool. I was cooler. This was advice my mom had given me. She says girls should always make boys think they like you more than you like them.

  My mom totally knows how to get a man, she’s had four husbands already.

  Tuesday, Perry had repeated his greeting. Just like the first day, I nodded and kept walking. He had glanced back at me several times during class. He had never done that before, believe me, I would’ve noticed. Then, on Friday, he had said his usual ‘hello,’ except, this time, when he did it, he handed me the note.

  I had already been invited to Wendy’s party, but I hadn’t originally intended to go. I was going to the movies to see Drone Wars instead. Well, that plan was out the window. A mutant dinosaur with a machine gun couldn’t have kept me from Wendy’s party after I got Perry’s note.

  Picking my outfit for the party turned out to be far more difficult to accomplish than raising my grades. I spent at least two hours on my make-up, a half-hour alone dealing with a stupid zit that popped up in the crease of my nose. As I took care of it, I tried to solve the riddle of the outfit. The party was supposed to start at like eight, I was still standing in front of the mirror at 8:15. Finally, at 8:30, I started to freak out that Perry was going to think I wasn’t going to show up. He might even leave!

  Fear, as it turns out, is a great motivator. Two minutes later, I was out the door and on my way to the party.

  It was bigger than I expected. At least thirty kids milled around the backyard with the music blaring and Wendy turned it down to a reasonable level every two minutes, before someone turned it up again. The couple of times I saw her, I actually felt a little sorry for Wendy, she didn’t look like she was having much fun trying to prevent her friends from wrecking her parent’s house.

  The mistake she’d made was allowing the keg. I heard Dan Booker brought it. Whenever there’s beer, things tend to get rowdy. If I was Wendy, I would have a puke clean-up bucket ready, somebody always drank more than they could handle.

  After a little looking around, I found my friend Kat and together we went looking for Perry and his friends (Kat liked Perry’s friend Nathan).

  I found Perry down in the basement with his friends by the keg. In no time we were talking and dancing. Perry told me I was pretty and put his arm around my waist. He gave me a beer, but I didn’t really drink it. I’d been working toward that night for months, I hadn’t wanted to get drunk and screw everything up.

  Around 9:45, I held up my cell phone, put my arm around Perry and took a selfie of the two of us. It was dark in the basement, so I had to turn the phone around to the back so I could use the flash. Because I couldn’t really see what I was pointing the camera at, the frame captured two or three other people in the background.

  On the outer edge of the photo was Ray Brauer. In the photo, he had a beer in his hand.

  Right after I took the picture, I realized I had to pee. So, as discreetly as possible, I broke off and headed toward the bathroom. While I walked, I was fiddling with my phone, clicking on the photo I had just taken of me and Perry and getting ready to post it to my Instagram (my way of claiming Perry as my boyfriend).

  It’s at this point in my story that I usually lie. I say I walked to the bathroom, noticed the beer in Ray’s hand, cropped the photo and posted it. But that isn’t what happened. When I looked at the picture, I didn’t even see Ray. My eyes were plastered on Perry, who had his arm around ME.

  I would’ve just posted the picture, but on my way to the bathroom, Ray put his hand on my shoulder. I turned around, thinking it was Perry.

  “Oh uh, hey Ray, what’s up?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t going to say anything weird.

  “Am I in that photo you took?” he asked.

  I held it up and showed him my phone.

  “You aren’t going to post that anywhere are you?”

  “Yeah, Instagram. So what?”

  “So, please cut me out of the photo before you post it, my Dad, he’s really strict, he’d kill me.”

  “Yeah, sure whatever,” I replied, wanting Ray to go away. My focus was on peeing and getting back to Perry. Half the girls in my school want him, if I leave him alone too long, someone else will scoop him up.

  This is where I give myself some credit. As I walked, I took the time to crop my photo so that the beer in Ray’s hand disappeared. Because of the way I had composed the picture, deleting him entirely would’ve required me to cut off half of Perry’s head. I figured the beer was the important thing. I got rid of that bit and posted it to Instagram.

  I went back to Perry and by the end of the night we were totally making out. He asked me out to a movie on Sunday afternoon.

  As it turned out, we didn’t get to go. Instead, I had to go with my mother to buy a black dress for the funeral.

  When Ray told me to cut him from the photo, I thought he meant he would get in trouble for drinking beer. Since it didn’t effect Perry, I cropped the beer out. I didn’t know Ray meant he had to be removed from the picture entirely. I didn’t know he was being l
iteral when he said his dad would kill him. I didn’t know what he meant. How could I? How could I?

  From what he told the authorities, Mr. Brauer had been having a lot of trouble with Ray. He kept lying about where he was going. In order to give himself some evidence against his son, Mr. Brauer set up some sort of parental software on his computer that searched the social media sites and used some facial recognition thingee to find pictures of Ray when they popped up.

  When Ray showed up in the background of my picture, his father found out he’d lied about going to the movies. Mr. Brauer was at the door waiting for Ray when he walked in.

  To make matters worse, Ray was a little drunk when he got home. He got into a shouting match and Mr. Brauer shoved his son. Ray lost his balance, fell, and smashed his head on the corner of the kitchen counter.

  He died instantly, in less time than it would’ve taken me to blur out his face. Or maybe, I could’ve just kept the picture off of the internet entirely. It’s hard to remember the whole world can see what I post there and in the end, there was no real reason the entire planet earth would ever need access to a photo of me with my arm around a guy who ended up being a bit of an idiot (and a really sloppy kisser - gross).

  I meant no harm - and I really wish that made one bit of a difference.

  It didn’t and it doesn’t. Ray’s dead, Ray’s dad is going to jail and I’m not in any trouble at all. Still, I have to live with what I know, with what I did and didn’t do.

  As much as I wish I could, I can’t bring Ray back.

  Worst. Photobomb. Ever.