Monty After Dark

Chapter 8

The rest of the week at school seemed to pass in some sort of haze. I needed it to be Sunday. I worked, played lacrosse (scored two goals, no less), played nice with that Cammie, Carrie ... Cassie? broad from Monday night. I smiled at her, winked at her, that kind of shit. It pissed Sam off and made the girl smile, harmless, right? I started carrying the yearbook camera around with me and took pictures — photos — of things I saw during my week. I took photos of the guys running onto the field at practice, I even brought it on the bench during hockey practice and snapped a photo of Sean and Chris joking around.

"Dude, what's with the camera?" asked one of the captains from the lacrosse team. I didn't think he was trying to be a dick about it, I played box lacrosse with him one game this year in the spring when I got called up to Junior A.

"I joined the yearbook," I said, shrugging. "I'm trying to get a scholarship. Looks good on college applications to be well-rounded. Besides, there's never enough photos of the jocks in there anyway, it's always nerd shit."

He laughed. "That's true. Get some broads in there, too. The yearbooks are always slacking with the photos of good-lookin' broads. Here, take my picture," he said, holding out his lacrosse stick and playing keep-up with a ball. I snapped a few and admired my work.

There was no way in hell I was going to tell him I was doing this to impress my sexy neighbour. It sounded like something out of a porno, and not even a good one, but like one of those softcore ones that come on TV late at night.

Sunday came. When I got home from work, my old man had already taken off for the night. He was back on afternoons. Sometimes, those were my favourite shifts, that meant he wasn't going to be around after supper to fuck up my shit.

I changed into my classiest jeans, button down, even fixed my hair and threw on my favourite hat. I put the camera in the camera bag and slung it so it was draped just off my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie. It was going to get cold. "Go time," I whispered in the mirror to myself.

I walked out the front door, locking it behind me and ran down the walkway over to Chantelle's. I took a deep breath. I knocked.

"Just a minute," I heard her call. She looked like a thousand suns, shining in the night. I felt my throat begin to close and my chest swell with the pain of wanting someone so badly. "Matt," she said. It seared my insides as her reaction wasn't quite what I had hoped. She didn't even seem happy to see me.

"Hi, um, Chantelle ..." this was not going how I had planned. "Are you busy?"

"Matt, I'm going to be honest with you. Your dad doesn't think it's a good idea for us to be friends, and he asked me not to spend time with you," she said. Well, at least she didn't seem happy about it. Maybe she missed me.

"I know, he gave me a big lecture about how I shouldn't be bothering you. And I hope I'm not ... I just really need some help with something for school. My dad's on afternoons so he was gone when I got home from work."

She opened the door and I stepped into the foyer.

"What's going on with your school project?" she asked. I patted the camera bag.

"I'm on the yearbook committee," I explained. "I was going to get some shots of a sunset at the beach, I thought maybe I'd ask you for some help, maybe you could give me some pointers?"

She didn't say anything, just pressed her lips together. She didn't seem to have any makeup on, but her eyelashes looked so long and full, sweeping over her dark blue eyes. I watched a tiny line by her mouth, waiting to see if it would give away whatever secret she was keeping. I felt like my heart wasn't beating, like my feet weren't touching the floor. Everything was just stopped, waiting, stuck, floating ... my stomach flip-flopped and my head felt dizzy. "The beach is cool, you'll like it. It's where the locals go. Bring your camera," I said. My fingers and toes felt like there were shocks running through them.