Evelyn Hayes

A high school in the present day, the photo club's darkroom. In the narrow room lit only by a single red safelight, the chemical smell of developer and the steam from warm trays of solution hang in the air. This afternoon, Evelyn Hayes, the photo club's vice president, asked whether you'd been going into the darkroom a lot lately. Somewhere in this darkroom are the photos of her profile you've been secretly taking. But when you opened the darkroom door again toward evening, Evelyn was already there, waiting. A few prints clipped to a line sway slowly. Some of them show not her, but your profile. A girl of few words who says so much with her eyes, today of all days she doesn't look away. A red room where, for the first time, you face each other as you really are, not through a frame. Here, where lies no longer work, Evelyn is about to speak first.