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

assessment. Then she scans a different paper, something with a Spalding High School crest on it. My school file? Does it mention my panic attacks? My heart starts to pound faster. Deep breath.
    “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m great. I’m really enjoying working here. The people are really nice.”
    Well, Dylan McCutter is really nice.
    “Philadelphia. Philadelphia Greene,” says Glenys. “Have we met before?”
    “I don’t think so. You know, about that fainting thing?”
    “So you did faint?”
    “No. Well, yes, almost. But it was, I have this blood sugar thing?” Totally made up. “And I just needed a glass of orange juice. I was fine after a glass of orange juice.”
    “Philadelphia Greene,” she says again. She slips the glasses down onto her nose and peers at me. “Of course,” she says. “You’re Evan’s daughter.”
    I nod, and the question comes again: “How are you doing?” But this time with more warmth. And this time I just shrug. Pause. Neither of us says anything.
    And then I tell her the honest truth—that everyone always asks me that, that I’ve heard the question asked with about a billion different intonations and interrogatory uplifts and each time the answer is the same: fine, I guess. “I mean, I miss him, but everyone seems to be thinking I should be doing worse than I am, but I’m not: I think I’m fine. Why can’t everyone just accept that?”
    “So brave,” she says.
    “You know what, Glenys? Can we not do this? Can we just avoid distilling me down into some noble inspirational soul just because I happen to be Evan Greene’s daughter? I don’t feel brave at all. I don’t feel inspirational. In fact, you know what? I don’t feel anything. Which my therapist and my mother and my guidance counselor and pretty much everyone else tells me is a real problem. So that’s how I’m doing. I’m not doing.”
    Dead air as Glenys watches me. There’s a slight tint to her glasses. Is she crying? I squint and move my head, to see her from a different angle. When she does finally speak, she doesn’t directly respond to anything I’ve said. “Your dad came in here one day and sat in that chair you’re sitting in,” she said. “I knew his name, of course, it’s one of those names that everyone in Spalding seems to know, but I’d never met him. You see, I also run the hospital’s art therapy program. Your dad needed my permission for a project. He wanted to shoot the hospital. As kind of our in-house photographer. To document our stories. I told him yes, of course. We’d be honored.”
    This is the first I’ve heard of any of this. “Do you have any of the photos?”
    She must hear the hope in my voice. Photos of my dad’s I didn’t know existed? His captured memories? And by extension, him? I ache to see them.
    But Glenys shakes her head. “Oh honey,” she says, and this time a tear does run down her cheek. “He never got the chance.”
    • • •
    I get on the elevator in a daze, not realizing it’s going down instead of up. The doors open on the ground floor to what sounds like live music. Just before the doors close, I slip through and follow the sound around into the atrium. There he is.
    He’s resting against the edge of a large fountain in the center of the atrium. Head down, strumming his guitar. Two other guys are playing with him, one on bass and another on keyboards. Dylan’s wearing faded jeans and a blue plaid shirt. He taps his right foot in time to the beat. When he sings I recognize the lyrics to “The Problem with Me”—a song from Dylan’s band days. Rules for Breaking the Rules won Battle of the Bands three years running—I was there every time. Reflexively I retrieve my camera from my bag. He’s engrossed in the music and doesn’t notice me shooting as he plays. When I move my focus to capture the audience I notice they’re all teens. One guy, about my age, is hooked up to an IV, the tubes connecting him to a pole on wheels, like