4"We should get some shots in the bookstore," Billie says as we approach Bluebell bookstore where we met a day ago. She's holding her camera to her left eye, right eye squeezed tight, tight in pretense, snap snapping wildly.
I don't know what the film is going to be about yet and I would like to hold her camera, too. Take my own shot. Teamwork. But, she's the captain here. A captain with sparkling nail art and dyed hair. Smelling a little like wonder. Like teenage dreams and yellowed paper.
I hold the door open for her, chimes giggling and giggling like children. "Okay," I say, but I don't mean it.
I don't get to look through the new books about marine life. We loiter by the classics, pretending I'm reading stuff like that because Billie thinks it's aesthetic. Then, I think it's aesthetic, too.
Her camera's glowing white light onto the words so I can't even read them and it's all botched, but I'm happy when we review the footage and I look a little like I'm a part of all of that glow, white against the blue-black bookstore.
She slumps against the wall, looking and looking for a better camera angle, jotting notes in the margin of her forearm with a pen she produced out of nowhere. Comfortable and just right. Never out of place. Every safety pin where it belonged. Every bracelet is effortlessly styled. Shinning gold like plastic confetti.
Her fingers are featherlight on my chin when she tilts it up up up and heavenward and on my knees to part a bit here and on my arms to lean as casually as I can muster over there. But, she doesn't ask. She tells us gently but with determination to follow her lead and I do.