Thorny walks back to the car alone, and I follow him, tainting the interior of the convertible with sea salt and sand. I shamelessly wiggle my toes while cradling my sandals on my lap. Then I watch the tan grains scatter over the plastic mat beneath my feet.

When we return home, we say nothing, retreating to opposite ends of the house like warring armies in the midst of a truce. Dinner for me is a cheese sandwich I fish out of the fridge.

For Thorny, it’s a wine bottle with a side of two beers. He guzzles his meal ravenously, sulking at the ocean, his cell phone nearby. He’s waiting for a call, I suspect.

But, as the night wears on, the phone never rings.

A knock on my door jars me awake. Painfully early, it seems. The sun isn’t even shining.

“You have five minutes,” Thorny warns from the hall. “Or I’m leaving without you.”

Leaving? I lift my head, blinking back eye crust.

“Put on the uniform,” he adds before descending the stairs.

It’s a magic phrase that has me leaping from beneath the covers. I wash up and get dressed in record time, avoiding my reflection in the mirror. My bruises are purple, my cuts scabbed over and swollen. I look like a broken doll, crudely stitched back together.

Thorny is my puppetmaster, calmly pulling my strings from a distance as I dash down the steps. The moment I am in the car, he drives off. I watch him, squirming. He’s wearing his starched professor uniform, his hair slicked back neatly.

If I didn’t know him. If…

I’d marvel at how the sun plays with his features, enhancing them. His eyes glow a deep ocean blue like this. Especially when he’s thinking so hard. It’s sinful, that expression.

I try to be a good daughter and not ask questions.

Why?

Why?

WHY??

I play the maturity game instead and fidget with my skirt’s hem. That stupid red journal is on my lap and I stare down at it, surprised I even brought it with me. Maybe to taunt him? I may be a terrible ward, but I’m a damn good student.

I’ve diligently followed his advice. Even the dumb bits.

Such as, convey how you feel. As if to spite me, that’s the lesson he poses to the entire class when the last students trickle into his classroom.

“Writing isn’t about a series of abstract sentences,” he informs us untalented peons. I swear his gaze honed in on me with extra pizazz as he said that. Pay attention. “It is about conveying, in words, the very things you can’t express out loud. Those secrets you can’t confess. The stories you feel no one listens to when you try to tell them.”

He is looking at me, his gaze like a missile darting over the heads of his real students, who eagerly take notes on his every word.

“Writing is about making people listen to you without realizing it. Showing them what you need them to see. Sometimes, words aren’t enough. You need something to draw inspiration from.” He approaches his desk and fishes a leather-bound journal from a top drawer. “This is where I keep what inspires me,” he tells us, opening the journal to the first page and holding it up for all to see.

We oooh and aww, aptly impressed. He’s glued snapshots to the pages and written garbled notes in between. My fingers twitch against the desk. I’d give anything to have a better look. To peer over his notes and random thoughts with the same scrutiny he does mine.

I see a picture of a forest, Thorny. But, ah, I don’t feel it. Describe it better. Write it better. Just be better.

Let me crawl inside your head and see what you see.

“Images,” he tells us, “can tell a story at a glance that you could need a whole novel to describe. And while this isn’t photography class…”

He reaches behind his desk again and withdraws another surprise: a cardboard box. He lifts the lid, letting the students in the front row get a peek. They squeal.

“Cameras!”

We all get one. They’re shiny, plastic machines that dispense snapshots. Polaroids, Thorny calls them.

“I want you all to find your own inspiration,” Thorny declares. “Find the stories lurking in plain sight. Try to put the impossible into words. Find a way to tell your secrets through layers of prose.”

We’re all dismissed with our respective missions. The rest of his little flock gets to skip merrily off to their next class, while I’m driven home. Jane is waiting on the porch steps, her arms laden with enough materials to beat basic English comprehension skills into a rock.

She sequesters me in the study for the rest of the day, droning on about all the many things society deems it necessary for me to learn before earning a magic piece of paper.

Thorny comes home late, when I’ve already retreated into my bedroom. He’s on the balcony, I bet, drinking his dinner and waiting for Elaine to call.

She doesn’t. At least, the lack of shouting makes me suspect as much.

Before climbing into bed, I finish my homework. My Polaroid camera offers a wealth of new storytelling opportunities. After all, Thorny said it himself: a picture is worth a thousand words. My scribbled paragraphs might not be convincing enough, but eyes are gullible and easy to fool. You stage two people in the right way, ruffle their hair a bit, and remove a few items of clothing. Voila. A platonic encounter can have naughtier implications.

They had sex. They only have to claim as much.

The eyes are the window to the soul, but the soul is an unreliable interpreter. It can see things all wrong. Find meaning in mystery.

It can make a girl wander from her bed at night and creep into a bedroom she has no business being in. It’s empty though, like always. Its owner is too busy scowling at the moonlight.

He doesn’t notice when I flick through the few items Elaine left behind on their dresser. A pearl necklace. A vial of perfume. A tube of pink lipstick.

I swipe it over my mouth and heft the camera while forcing a pout. Say cheese.

My nightgown is too revealing. I tug on the strap and make it loose. Before taking the shot, I smear the lipstick on the tip of my finger.

Flash.

Down below, Thorny doesn’t budge. Not even when I sidle to the window and sneak a snapshot of him. I only captured part of his shoulders and his head because my hands shook so badly. Oops.

I start to tear it up. It’s useless. There are no secrets revealed in the picture’s depths. Just Thorny, always out of my reach, only capturable in bits and pieces. Somehow, I wind up carrying it, unmolested, back to my room instead.

The pictures of me, I tuck into my journal.

The one of Thorny…

It’s not important enough to hide. So I shove it beneath my pillow, an afterthought. Like lint and dust and those forgotten things gathered in the corners. You’ve always touched them without realizing it—that doesn’t mean they hold any sentimental value.

They’re just there. Always.

He’s here. Always. I grip his picture so hard that it curls into a half-moon shape. Not because it means anything.

I have nothing else to touch.