“So, what are you up to?”
“Just occupying my time.” She dug into her bag and pulled out the camera. “Trying to see the city from a different perspective.”
“Cool. Can I come with?”
She looked down at his valet outfit—white button-up, black vest, slacks, and dress shoes. “No offense, but you’ll kind of stand out where I’m going.”
“Well, now I’m definitely intrigued. I have a change of clothes in my car around back.”
Reyna considered it for a second. Beckham didn’t want anyone to know that her pictures were connected to her, but she didn’t think it hurt anything to take Everett along. Who was he going to tell? He was a valet for her apartment building.
“Sure. Why not?”
Reyna tapped on the glass of the front passenger window. It rolled down slowly. “Yes?”
“I’m going to go around the back with my friend. Will you meet me there in a couple of minutes to pick us up?”
“You aren’t going to leave without us, are you?”
Reyna rolled her eyes. “I agreed not to. We’ll be in the completely lit back parking lot.”
“Five minutes,” he said and then rolled the window back up.
“Charming,” she muttered, following Everett around to the back.
“So, what got you interested in photography?” Everett asked.
“The attack, actually,” she said softly. She stared hard at the ground. “I already had a bad image of the streets, but that magnified it. Beckham gave me the camera as a hobby, I think to keep me from getting bored, and I decided that I wanted to see the streets through the eyes of the suffering. People like me.”
“People like you were…”
“Just because I live up there right now doesn’t mean I’m any less like you or your friends or anyone else. I don’tbelongthere, and I want my pictures to show that. Show what no one at Visage or in politics or in the upper class reallyseewith their eyes.”
“That’s really great,” he admitted.
They reached Everett’s Mustang, and he found his spare clothes. She watched as he took off his vest and button-up, revealing a rather nice bare chest. Her cheeks heated, and she quickly turned around.
“Oh, sorry.”
Everett laughed. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I want to hear more about this photography. You know, it reminds me a bit of this blog everyone has been talking about lately.”
“What blog?” She turned back around to face him. He had on a plain gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans perfect for what they were doing.
“I’ll have to find it on my phone.”
Beckham’s car drove toward them as Everett fiddled with his phone, looking for the blog. They hopped into the back seat, and Reyna told the driver where to go. She had been taking pictures at a homeless shelter a lot lately. The pictures made her eyes blur with tears when she looked through them, and that was how she knew they held truth.
“Aha. Here,” Everett said. He passed the phone to her. “Perspective.”
Reyna nearly dropped the phone. There were her beautiful pictures. Beckham had named the websitePerspective. She hadn’t even realized that other people could see them. She had been uploading and organizing her images for herself.
“You said people are looking at these?”
“Yeah,” he said, eyeing her questioningly. “They’re anonymous, though. Everyone has been trying to figure out who the photographer is. They think the person must be an Elle sympathizer.”
“A what?” she asked. People were associating her pictures with a person she had never even heard of?
“You really know nothing about politics, do you?”