Page 24 of Odin
“I decided during the night that it’s probably the best course of action, at least for right now. I want to try to get back into school, and if I can’t do that, then I’ll apply for next year. There are some things I have to work out. I need time to do that. I don’t want to be one of those people who is always running from the hard things in life.”
Odin studies his camera after removing the lens cap. I watch him for a minute, so intent on his artistry. He’s not hiding behind that camera. He’s trying to give me a moment of privacy so that I don’t have to control my own expressions.
“I don’t want to bring any negativity into this amazing spot.” I want the calm and quiet joy that suffuses this place like the sunbeams slanting down through the branches. I don’t want to bring the future into the present and taint this moment.
“I’d like you to tell me.” Odin looks up slowly. He points the camera at me, but I can tell he’s not setting up for a shot. “Talking about what you’re feeling isn’t negativity. It’s honesty. If we can’t come out here to think and reflect, then what can we do?”
My throat is suddenly thick and hot. I’ve never met someone who could read my thoughts so easily. Most people will tell you that they want you to be honest, but in reality, they want the convenience of saying it to sound like a good person with deep waters, when really, they only run surface deep. They don’t actually want to hear what you have to say, and they’re banking on the fact that most people won’t express their innermost thoughts.
“When I met Preston in college again… I… I don’t want this to come out wrong.” I’m terrible for playing with my hair when I’m nervous, and that’s exactly where my hands shoot, straight to a strand of blonde. I smooth my fingers down and up, then down again. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I wasn’t in it to use anyone.”
“I would never think that about you.”
“I had that scholarship,” I state uselessly. “I was working too. I wasn’t searching for some rich guy to take care of me. When we met again and started talking, it just felt so nice to have a friend. Someone who knew me before. I was so busy working and going to school, that I really didn’t have time to make new friends after we moved. It felt right to have someone in my corner for once and I think that I mistook that for a lot of other things. Maybe we both did. You can care about someone and still be completely wrong for them.”
Odin absorbs that. He lifts the camera, but doesn’t give any instructions.
I take a few steps over to the stream. I walk slowly, making sure I check the ground for each step because I’m in bare feet. The moss is soft and squishy. It feels as cool and alive as that flowing water probably will.
“I wish that we had just stayed friends,” I say without turning around. “I don’t know that it would have been possible for him, but it would have been for me. I’ve been thinking so much about it, and I can see that I left him alone in the relationship in some aspects. I think maybe we both knew it wasn’t right, but we were too afraid to talk about it. If we had, I would have called it off, and I’m not sure he would have been all that heartbroken. He would have been okay, at any rate. I’m not sure that he was even into my mom, or if he just did what he did because he was trapped and didn’t know what else to do. Or if he thinks romantically about her. I don’t know. I think I need to go back to LA and talk to them to understand. We all need to move on. I want to forgive them both, even if they don’t ask for it, because that’s what I need to get past this.”
The weight of all of that settles on the clearing like a black cloud overhead. Not a raincloud promising cold, cleansing renewal, but a depressing grouping that blocks out the sun. The weight of it all settles back down on me. I had forgotten it since this morning. I did exactly what I didn’t want to do and bring all the trouble and fatigue of the past and future straight to this moment. I pressed on my own bruise.
I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to ruin this day…
I want to breathe, I want to laugh, I want to dance. I spread my arms overhead, dispelling my sadness like droplets of water flung into the air. I whip around, spinning in place and then dancing closer to the stream. I yell and cry out, and I laugh at the air rushing past my face, at the forest floor underfoot, and then at the splashes of water as I charge into the stream and soak half my dress because it’s deeper than it looks and I go straight in past my knees. I squeal as mud squelches between my toes. The bottom isn’t solid like I thought it would be. Of course it’s not rocky. Every step I take stirs up muck and dead leaves. It’s not gross. It’sawesome.
I wheel around after a few moments of tearing my feet out of the silt just to hear and feel the strange suction, remembering with a jolt that I was supposed to be posing for photos. I asked and then I just unloaded a bunch of trauma on Odin, then dashed off like a crazy person. He probably thinks I’m totally unhinged.
I turn, shy and worried, mortified at my own ridiculous behavior, only to find Odin standing stock still, the camera pointed right at me.
I suck in a breath and try to make a joke of it to steady myself. “Ouch. Good thing I had already planned on laughing at myself.” I strike a pose, jutting out a hip and setting my hand on it, giving my best pout. “Isn’t this how all the models do it?”
He lowers the camera slowly, an expression on his face so deep and true that I have no way to describe it. I only know that no one has ever looked at me that way before. Like… like I’m the only thing that matters in this moment. Like time and space and fucking gravity don’t even exist. Like it’s just the two of us out here. I mean, it is, but like we’re the only people in the world, butthis isn’t one of those twisted games of survival and there are no zombies or anything coming at us.
Just this moment.
So damn real. So charged.
He quickly turns and walks back to the blanket. He silently pats the spot beside him. It’s a call that I can’t ignore. A summons that spikes through my bloodstream as adrenaline but also wraps around me like a tight embrace.
I lift one foot from the muck, then the other. It’s not hard to climb out of the stream because it’s so narrow, but if it was any wider, I might have had some trouble. I stand back on the moss and rinse my feet off in the flowing water, then creep soundlessly back to the blanket.
Odin already has the screen set to the first photo, when I lifted my hands and charged towards the water.
It’s just my back, but the photo is still so powerful, framing me surrounded by the woods, dashing like my life depended on it for the sheer joy of that simplicity and peace beyond. It’s what my life was missing in LA. I was rarely able to take a few minutes andstop. Stop working. Stop studying. Stop worrying.
I flip through photo after photo, enraptured at the way that Odin captured me. There are almost no shots where I’m facing the camera, but my body is one joyous length. When I have my hands thrown up in the air, it’s like I’m reaching for the sky, trying to cup the sun and gather up the moon and the stars even though they’re hidden.
Each photo is better and better.
Photos of my hair covering my entire face in a wild mass. Water droplets splashed through the air when I lifted my foot. One with mud stuck between my toes at the very same instant a leaf blew down from one of the trees around us and hovers in the background. One photo is dappled with sunspots, another captures the water glinting at either side of me. The last burst are all of my face as I turn around, bewildered for a second, until I remembered the camera.
His photos aren’t just a lovely form of artistry.
They make me feelseen. He brought me to life. My soul. My body. My spirit and personality. He saw all the bits of me that I didn’t even know existed.
He photographed me like he’s known me for a lifetime and cherished me for a good portion of those years. Even if he doesn’t know that about himself, heisthe kind of man who could fullyknowanother person.
