The Wrong Way to Rock Bottom | UPDATES Fri/Mon

37

We trail from room to room, wherever Priya's artist's eye takes her, and I tell her my family's story: my grandmother's whirlwind romance with an American, the two sisters who traveled to a country where they didn't speak the language and had no family, and my mother's upbringing. I explain that my grandparents never talked much about Bahrain, or taught my mother Arabic, because they wanted her to fit in and be accepted. But Aunt Meryem was always fiercely proud of where she came from, and tried to teach my mom and us about our culture whenever possible.

Priya eats the whole thing up. I have to admit, she has a talent for this. Each room that she photographs, she has me share a memory, or talk about what the room meant to Aunt Meryem, until I'm just as swept up into the story.

Unfortunately, she also insists on having me in almost all of the photos. It's humiliating to be an instrument in my own downfall, and Jamie's chortling and unhelpful feedback just rubs salt in my gaping wounds.

"Lissa..." Priya looks at the picture she's just taken and her expression does not say 'America's Next Top Model.'

"You can tell me, it's terrible." I'm all but scowling at this point. Maybe if I keep ruining all her photos, she'll scratch the project entirely. Or she'll just re-cast me.

"You're so pretty," she says, "but you kind of look angry in all these photos."

"That's Lissa," Jamie agrees. "Pretty and angry."

My glower intensifies. If Priya picks up on the tension, she's too much of a professional to bring it up. All she says is, "Why don't you sit on the spiral stairs?"

I do as she asks, but I can't help protesting. "Priya, I know you're the expert, but I don't see why I have anything to do with this article."

"We want to make this house feel alive. That's the entire point of doing these pieces; to show people that history isn't just in the past, it's connected to us, present day." Priya gestures to me. "You're the connection, Lissa. Your great-aunt and everything this house meant to her is kept alive through your memories. Without that, it's just another old house."

Her words land harder than I'm sure she intended. I'm hit with a wave of conflicting, but equally strong emotions. Guilt over what I'm doing to Aunt Meryem's home, and a renewed desire to not let it go to someone who would erase every piece of her that's left here. She'd be furious with me for the damage I've already done—and still I can't bear to give up. I picture her bright colors being changed to neutrals, her poetry painted over, her garden torn out and replaced. The thought hurts almost as much as losing her did.

The camera snaps, and Priya says, quietly, "Perfect."

I blink, surprised to find that my eyes are wet. "I'm sorry, I wasn't posing."

"You didn't have to. Here, look." She turns the camera to show me, and even on the little screen, I see what she means. Sitting on the bottom steps, with my aunt's handwriting on the wall above the stairwell door, Priya has managed to capture every bittersweet emotion in my expression.

Looking at that photo, I feel a returning surge of anger at Jamie. How can he be such a willing party in all of this? And how dare he capitalize on my great-aunt's beautiful, messy life like it can be boiled down to a catchy headline for free advertising?

So of course, when it comes time to take a photo of the kitchen, Priya decides he needs to be in it as well.

"I love that quote. 'You are my tribe'? Just one person can't capture that idea. It would be too lonely," she explains as she positions him next to me.

"How do you want me?" Jamie asks Priya, cheerfully ignoring the burning hatred coming off me in waves.

"I'm not sure yet. Play around with it, do what feels natural."

Right now, what feels natural would be me standing alone while Jamie lies on the floor and tries to recover from a knee to the groin.

Jamie stands next to me as casually graceful as he is in every situation, not even posing. I'm sure he looks great on the camera. Meanwhile I'm stiff as a wooden puppet and my eyes are probably giving "Jack Nicholson in The Shining".

"Lissa, could you try relaxing a bit?" Priya suggests. "You look tense."

That's more diplomatic than saying I look like an axe murderer.

I force my hands to unclench and curl my lips into what could legally be called a smile. Jamie's body shakes with silent laughter.

"You're despicable for this," I say without moving my lips from their creepy clown grin.

"Sticks and stones, Alessandra."

"Don't tempt me."

"All right, this is not working." Priya blows out a sigh and examines us with the intensity of a scientist trying to crack quantum physics. "Maybe if you... kind of... or I could just pose you?"

"What about this?"

I feel Jamie's hand come around my waist, and before I can tell him to keep his paws to himself, the world goes upside down. I grab onto him as a reflex, trying to get my balance back, and the next thing I know he's kissing me. I go limp with pure shock.

James Keller just dipped me, in front of Priya and God and everything, and he is kissing me. If he let go of me even a little bit I'd be on the floor because I've lost all ability to stand, but he doesn't. He holds me securely, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other cradling the back of my head. His thumb brushes against my jaw. All at once I'm nineteen again, and for a fraction of a moment he isn't the obnoxious ex I can't stand. He's Jamie, the boy I was in love with for half my life. The boy who broke my heart.

Then he sets me back on my feet and lets me go, and the look on his face is so triumphant, it reminds me who I'm dealing with. He looks exactly like how I imagine those dudes from the Roman times who would drop people in boiling oil, or throw them into the river in a sack full of angry weevils and then laugh over their weevil-ravaged corpses. He's pure evil.

"Okay, that was phenomenal." Priya flips her camera around. "You have to see how this came out!"

Jamie goes over to see, but I don't.

He wants to play dirty? Fine. I can play dirty too.

Author's Note:

I've done some revising on this story, mostly pacing because we have a lot of plot that has to fit into 90k words and I've tried to squeeze too many things in. Sadly Lissa and Jamie will not be bonding over a scraggly feral kitten because there's just no time. In my edited version I did cut the chapters about the fair and the dunk tank (because to be honest I 90% wrote that for the for long name and that just wasn't reason enough to keep it in. RIP Jamison), but I'll leave it on Wattpad due to the fact that I was gone for a million years and it seems cruel to come back just to delete chapters. However I will be adding slight edits to the Point Bridge chapters and to Chapter 34.

Also these new chapters were motivated by all the fabulous comments y'all left so thanks a million, you're the best <3