Rule of Thirds, The by Chantel Guertin Read Free Book Online Page A

challenges him. I’m about to say that Ben doesn’t have to go if he’s not prepared, but he stands up and plugs his iPad into the computer.
    “Let’s see . . .” He opens a folder labeled Gray , then starts his slideshow of more than a dozen photos.
    The first is a guy sitting on a bench outside a rundown old gas station. Then a single white orchid blossom against a gray sky. A gray shower curtain in a white shower. Gray boots at a front door. A street scene with one light burnt out amid a row of glowing lampposts.
    They’re good. He totally has an eye for both angles and details. This is just what I need—he’ll push me to be better. Except, the last thing I need right now is more competition for Vantage Point. Only the top two spots in each region go to Tisch Camp.
    “Where’d you take the pic of the old guy?” Jeffrey asks Ben.
    Ben shrugs. “My dad and I took a road trip last summer. Somewhere on Route 66 . Don’t remember which crappy little town. They all blended together after a while.”
    “And the lamppost? That looks familiar.”
    “A burnt-out lamppost looks familiar?” Ben laughs. “Dude, relax.”
    I ask if anyone has a suggestion for next week’s theme, Ben’s pictures still flittering through my internal viewfinder.
    “What about groups of three?” Ben pipes up.
    “When you say three, do you mean three, or do you mean 17 or 12 or 82 ?” Jeffrey grumbles.
    The rest of us agree to the theme being Threes and as the meeting breaks up, Ben approaches with a sly smile. “Want to shoot together till the bell rings?” My stomach flips—does that qualify as being asked out?
    • • •
    “Glenys wants to see you,” Hannah says as soon as she sees me. She’s behind the nurses’ station, stacking supply boxes onto a dolly.
    “What? Why?”
    “Her office is on the third floor,” Hannah says.
    “But do you know why?”
    “Pippa, her office is on the third floor.”
    Code Greene! Busted? But for what? I haven’t done anything wrong! I’ve only been here for one shift so far!
    Right. There is no way I’m going to Glenys Grange’s office. I’ll just leave. I’ll quit before I can be fired. I’ll sneak out. I’ll . . .
    “Hey, hold up,” Hannah says. “I need to take these boxes to the third floor and they won’t all fit on the dolly. Carry these two?” She nods at the boxes remaining on the floor. I follow Hannah to the elevator.
    “Put those on the counter,” Hannah says when we’ve reached the third floor nurses’ station. “And Glenys’s office is that way.” The nameplate on the door says Glenys Grange, Volunteer Coordinator .
    I cross my fingers then knock on the door. It swings open.
    Glenys Grange looks me up and down. She has poufy gray hair, brown bushy eyebrows. Clear plastic glasses sit on top of her head like a headband. She’s wearing a bright pink T-shirt that says I’m So Hip I Needed a Replacement. Maybe she has a sense of humor? Laugh lines furrow the skin around her eyes, but she’s not smiling now. “You must be Philadelphia. It’s so nice to meet you in person.”
    We do the usual adult-teenager meeting mumbo-jumbo. Shaking hands and all that. She gets a few points after I call her Ms. Grange and she tells me I can call her “Glenys.”
    “Want to grab a seat?” Glenys points to a chair beside her desk. “I just wanted to check in and see how things are going?” she says in her high-pitched voice.
    “Really?” I say.
    “Yes. Hannah said she saw you yesterday, sitting in the hallway with your head between your knees.”
    “Ah.”
    Busted.
    Glenys’s eyes are wide. “She was worried about you. Some people just can’t handle hospitals, Philadelphia. So how are you doing?”
    You know what? If another person asks me how I’m doing I’m going to—well, I don’t know. Something. Something crazy.
    A rustle of paper. Glenys is going over a file folder on her desk. My handwriting’s on it—the form I had to fill out after my volunteer