CHAPTER THREE
Pictures in or from a moving RV are a real challenge, even if you’re trying to get a blurry motion shot. I want all kinds of pictures, blurry and otherwise, so for sure this is going to require some creativity and resourcefulness. I take a few test shots with my camera to make sure I know these settings like Ruth knows Billy Joel lyrics. I’m not going to get the most absolutely perfect shots, or even Instagram-worthy shots, if I can’t maneuver across settings backward and forward without thinking. I need to know how F-stops connect to apertures and how pictures come out if the F-stop’s set larger or smaller and what works best when it’s lighter or darker and all of those professional photography things. It’s got to be second nature.
“Why are you taking pictures of telephone poles?”
I turn around. Ruth has been watching me. I open my mouth to say something, but no words come. I shrug.
“You’re so weird,” she says, and puts her earbuds back in.
Ellie’s got her atlas open across her lap and I can tell she’s listening to us. She glances over her shoulder at Ruth. Then she looks up at me and catches me looking back.
“Hey,” she says. “Do you know the alphabet game?”
“The one where you see who can find the alphabet first on, like, license plates and billboards and stuff?” I say.
“Yep. Bet you can’t beat me.”
“Oh, you’re on,” I say. “Ruth, we’re gonna play the alphabet game.”
“No thanks,” Ruth says, flipping a page in her notebook.
I lean a little farther out from my loft. “You sure? It’s fun.”
She adjusts her earbuds. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“But—”
“That’s fine,” Ellie interjects. She looks up at me and winks. “If Ruth doesn’t want to play, that’s fine. It’ll just be us two, and I’m still totally going to beat you. Eddie, you’re our referee.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” he says.
Is it fine? Isn’t Ruth missing out? But Ellie turns in her seat, looking out the windshield, then her side window. “A … B!”
I grin. The game’s afoot! I hurry and flip myself over so I’m facing the front window, ready to scan for letters. Can’t let Ellie get too much of a head start.
For the next little while, Ellie and I call out letters. We both get stuck on V for a long time until we spot a sign for a veterinary clinic. After I win the game at the last second (hooray for pizza billboards), Eddie takes an exit off the freeway and pulls into a QT gas station (could have used that one a few letters ago). I tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear and climb down out of my loft. I think about bringing my camera, just in case, but lugging my camera into a gas station might make Ruth think I’m even weirder.
Instead I meander around the shelves. I halfway start looking for things I could take pictures of for New Treasure, but it’s not quite time yet. Close, though. We’re getting closer and closer to New Orleans. I look at a spinning display of key chains. My favorite one says, I’m not bossy, I’m just always right.
Whether or not it’s New Treasure time, my mind still settles back to photography. There’s a sunburned man in a Stetson by the beer and a couple of girls with big, curly hair looking through magazines, and sometime I want to try one of those Portraits of Strangers projects I’ve seen. Projects where photographers go around interviewing random strangers, taking incredibly open and precise photos of someone they’ve barely met.
Ruth isn’t really looking at the food, but wanders around looking at her phone. She stops and eye rolls at it.
“Friend drama?” I ask, risking the eye roll being redirected at me.
But Ruth holds up her phone. “Mom,” she says. “She’s already bugging me about making sure I take my meds and putting GIFs like that’s going to make it less annoying. Also she’s terrible at GIFs.”
Of course Mom’s worried. When Ruth started taking daily medication for her depression, my parents reacted kind of differently. My mom made a spreadsheet and set alarms on her phone and Ruth’s, plus reminders twice a day that said Time to hydrate! Dad made a box shaped like a skull, the top half hinging upward like a doorway to the brain, and a slot inside perfectly shaped for a pill bottle. Mom groaned when he brought it out, but Ruth thought it was hilarious.
I don’t tell Ruth I watched to make sure she took her pills that morning.
Not that she’s in the habit of skipping or forgetting, but with a brain or a sister (or a sister’s brain), you can’t be too cautious. Instead I casually show Ruth where the granola bars are. The ones with the cherry filling. She’s always liked cherry. Getting enough food is always a good thing, right? Not that food is something that automatically cures Ruth’s bad days or anything like that, but it helped when Ellie did it. Ruth picks up one of the granola bars and after we pay at the register, she drops it into her purse. I hope she doesn’t forget about it. Ruth losing her appetite is not a good sign.
That night we stop at a Waffle House for dinner. We’re all fans of breakfast dinners, even Ruth. After we eat, Eddie gives me a couple quarters for the machines in the front lobby that spit out stickers or plastic rings or washable tattoos in little plastic carriers. I go for sparkly tattoos, because I’m pretty sure that’s the one Ruth would go for.
My perfect Instagram shot hasn’t happened today yet either. I try a few shots in the Waffle House parking lot on our way out, but nothing quite works. I don’t get discouraged, though, because the sun is going down and even though night photography is super hard, it can be the coolest stuff when it works out well.
We park for the night, and I knew my hopes weren’t in vain because across the street is a streetlamp and a giant oak tree.
Perfect.
Being out there alone with my camera and the nighttime breeze is my happy place. Happy in the peaceful sense. Happy in the sense that my head can finally stop buzzing about like a hyped-up bee.
I close my eyes for a few moments before I start shooting photos. It smells like cut grass and tar out here by the road. Sometimes I feel like smells can be important for getting my mind in the right place for a good picture.
I get a very atmospheric light-through-the-branches-type shot that will work just fine for a travel photo. I tend to go for the closer-up macro shots rather than the sweeping landscapes. That’s becoming part of my signature style. The aesthetic I’m developing on this trip.
The screen door of the RV claps shut from behind me.
“There you are,” Eddie says. “Everything okay?”
“Oh yeah, just getting a picture of the tree.”
“Ooh,” he says, grinning. “Can I see?”
I flip on the display screen and angle it toward him. He leans in, squinting.
“Wow, wow, wow.” He puts his hands on his waist. “You have some serious talent. This is what you post on your Instagram?”
I nod.
“Wow,” he says again. “This may be the thing that finally convinces me to sign up for social media. You’ve gotta show Ellie.”
We climb up into the RV. Ellie and Ruth are both in PJs, flossing and brushing their teeth at the sink.
“Hey, El, look at the picture Olivia took.”
My face is in danger of heating to a blush, and though I’m not really sure how to handle the attention, my skin buzzes with shy satisfaction as I turn my little camera screen toward Ellie. She stops flossing and leans in.
“Whoa,” she says. “I love the angle here—that’s so cool! And the contrast … you’re really good at this, Olivia. You should show us all the best pictures as we go … ooh, maybe at the end you could do some kind of, like, road-trip-recap slideshow too!”
“Definitely,” Eddie says.
My laugh is awkward, but real. “Sure,” I say.
Ruth’s still brushing her teeth at the sink, looking in the mirror. Ellie heads to the back room, and Eddie steps up to the front of the RV to get his phone.
I pull the tattoo out of my pocket. It’s a glittery silver-and-blue manta ray. I hold it out to Ruth, who spits toothpaste into the sink and looks over at me.
“I thought this was cool. I mean, I thought it was sort of you.”
She tilts her head to look at it. “Cool. Thanks,” she says, then scoops a drink of water in her hands. After she’s rinsed and dried, she takes the tattoo square and sets it on her shelf.
I use the tiny bathroom to change into pajamas. Before I climb up into my loft, Eddie walks by and nudges me with his elbow.
“I think I’ve figured out what your superpower is,” he says.
“My superpower?”
“Yeah, everyone has one. Yours is finding pretty things to show other people. To try to make them happy.”
Red lights of an ambulance rush by. “Ha, that’s not a superpower,” I say. “I wish it was.”
“Believe me, it is,” Eddie says. “Not everybody thinks that way, and you’re really good at it.”
If I was really good at making people happy, I think, then the people around me wouldn’t be sad. But I tell Eddie thanks.
In my loft I upload the day’s pictures onto my laptop. I sit cross-legged and spend a long time scrolling through the small moments of the day. Blurry trees, an aerial shot of Ruth with her earbuds in and eyes shut. (Not a New Treasure shot, but still a pretty good one.) That’s what pictures are. Like a diary times three thousand.
The RV is dark except for the light from my computer. One of Ruth’s legs is dangling off the side of her bed and her black-and-blue hair is mussed in every direction. A snore gets caught in her throat and she moans and rolls over. She looks so peaceful when she’s asleep.
I get pretty in-the-zone when I’m going through pictures, especially now that I’m picking the very best ones to post. So it startles me a little when my phone buzzes.
Ruth: You okay?
I look down to her alcove and in the blue glow of her phone screen, I can see her looking at me. I must have woken her up. She looks back at her phone.
Me: Yeah, just looking at pics.
Ruth: Weirdo.
Then she sends a blurry, low-light photo of herself. The camera is just under her face and she’s pressed her neck backward so it looks like she’s got five chins. Her nostrils are flared and her teeth are settled on her upper lip in a ridiculous overbite.
I have to slap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing and waking everyone else up. I don’t care if Ruth gets mad at me tomorrow. That blurry picture will be a happy thought for a long time. It’s the healthy, vivacious, laughing, pirate-ship, Treasure-Hunt-creating version of Ruth.
Me: Your new profile pic.
Ruth: Get some sleep, you dork.
Me:
Before I shut down my laptop, I e-mail Ruth’s selfie to myself. I download it and save it on my desktop in a new folder I name “Sisters.” It’s not a picture for my secret Treasure Hunt, but it’s still a good one. Definitely a good one.
Then I close my laptop and put it in my bag. I find Murphy and lie down, pressing my forehead against the window. I scroll through the photos I’ve just uploaded to the cloud and find my favorite of the tree-streetlight shots.
One of the most boring parts about travel accounts, I’ve realized, is the captions. They’re all so Here we are at this gorgeous place blah blah blah. I want to do something unique with my captions, give my photographs epic titles. I just haven’t found the right idea. I look back down at Ruth and then it hits me. I know exactly what my caption strategy is going to be.
It won’t even be hard. I already know all of Ruth’s favorite songs.
And I remember a lot from our playlists.
In the caption space, I write: “Moonage Daydream,” David Bowie, 1972.
Shared.
I don’t even know if Ruth will see it. Maybe she’ll think it’s dumb. But I can’t think of any other way to tell her what I want to say, to express it accurately. To tell her what I see. I don’t know how to tell her that when I look back, I measure my life in Treasure Hunts.
So I’ll do what I can to show her. Show her in pictures.
As I finally start drifting off, I imagine being the youngest photographer National Geographic has ever hired. I imagine professional travel photographers liking my work. I imagine them sending me a DM saying something like, Hey, your work is great! or Hey, you’ve got a good eye! or Hey, you want to come photograph penguins in Antarctica with me? And then being shocked when they realize I’m only thirteen.
I think about the Something New photo from last time, the one where Ruth’s jumping high in the air under the sign, and I imagine how easy it’s going to be to find something similar in New Or- leans.
I imagine taking a picture that makes Ruth smile.