Overexposed by Adrianne James Young Adult May 24th 2013 by Star Bound Books In the tiny town of Willowspring, just about nothing ever happens except for ...
Overexposed by Adrianne James Young Adult May 24th 2013 by Star Bound Books In the tiny town of Willowspring, just about nothing ever happens except for layoffs, hockey games, and your average melodramatic teenage angst. But that was before. Vi, Ashley, and Macy are just trying to make it through the school year without one more humiliation when they team up for a simple photography assignment: create a story through a series of photographs. Can’t be too much trouble, right? Wrong. The shutterbugs happen upon Willowspring High School’s darkest secret. When everything around them starts to crumble after trying to do the right thing, their only hope is to stick together. When the door opened to the alley behind the rink, I realized two things. One, it was freaking colder outside than it was in the bleachers by the ice, and two, Brianna Jones (A.K.A Bra stuffer) was already out there. The three of us walked out as if it was perfectly normal to be there but Brianna didn’t even notice us. We walked to the opposite side of the alley and huddled together. We hoped it would look like we were keeping warm, but we were trying to hide both the cameras. Watching Brianna was rather dull. She was just standing there, talking on her cell phone and it wasn’t even anything remotely interesting. We took pictures anyway, because like Mr. Bennett said, you need the before, during, and after to tell a story with photographs. “Look! She is checking that car’s doors! That isn’t her car, is it?” The quiet clicking of the shutters on our cameras was almost deafening to me. I swore each click was louder and louder as we watched Brianna try to break into a car. Finally, the last door she tried, the back passenger side, was open. She slipped in and a second later, the dark car had a red glow inside. She climbed back out, shut the door, and walked over to the wall, smoking a stolen cigarette. “She just broke into someone’s car for a cigarette? Seriously?” Ashley was just as flabbergasted as the rest of us. Why would anyone risk committing a crime for a smoke? “Oh! She is moving again!” Click, click, click. I took more and more pictures. I hated that they were all from the same angle, but spys have to do what they have to do to keep from being caught, all the while still getting the images. Brianna walked back to the car and put the cigarette out on the hood. Lucky for whoever owned it there was a layer of snow to put it out before it could burn the paint. Then she leaned over and used the mirror. She pursed her lips, showed her teeth to check those, then she lifted her head slightly. “What is she doing?” I whispered. “I’m not sure.” Macy said breaking away from the group. “I am going over there, different angle.” Before I could stop her, she had gone back across the alley to the other side. She was braver than I was. Ashley watched her closely before turning back to me. “Let me take some. I promise I won’t hurt Jilly.” I knew I had to hand it over. I promised her she could use it. Even knowing that, it didn’t make it any easier. “Okay. Here.” I took the strap from around my neck and quickly placed it around hers. The minute the fabric was firmly against her skin, she took off, too. “Ash, what are you doing?” I whisper yelled to her. She just put a finger over her mouth to shush me and she got even closer to the car than Macy had. I figured that made me look out so I opened my
