Free Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

later on, when I was a little deeper into my learning curve, she’d help me develop a roll. Show me some of the tricks you can do when you develop your own.
    When I got the pictures back, I found out I’d made a lot of mistakes. A lot of them. Photo after photo, they were half dancing out of the shot. My focus was bad a lot of the time. But I took almost fifty photos. So maybe by the law of averages, about five of them were really good.
    I laid them out on my kitchen table.
    Frank and Molly looked like they’d danced right off the screen of an old movie. I was so proud. I thought, I did that. Not just pointed the camera. I saw something I knew would make good photos, and I staged a photo shoot, and I got what I wanted. I saw now, on my kitchen table, what I’d seen in my head when I asked permission to shoot them.
    In the best one, Molly’s skirt was just a little bit blurred by the way it was spinning. Just enough that you could really feel thefrozen action of the shot. And the looks on their faces were caught just right. You could see them loving dancing and loving each other. The expressions just said it all.
    It was so nice to look at. I was even able to stand outside the fact that it was Molly and Frank and enjoy the look of love on their faces. Love always looks nice. I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t enjoy it when they see it. Anyone who doesn’t, I don’t really want to know them.
    It was only five photos, and they were good almost by accident. But next time it wouldn’t be an accident. Next time I would know a lot more.
    I heard a knock at my door. I thought it was either Frank or Molly. I ran to the door because I was so happy to show them my pictures.
    I threw the door open wide.
    It was my mother. I think she could tell I was disappointed.
    “What are you doing here?”
    She looked hurt. “I came to visit you.”
    “I thought you were going to call first.”
    “I knocked. I thought you just wanted me to knock.”
    “Next time call first. Please?”
    She sighed and swept dramatically over to my table and started looking at the photos. I really hadn’t invited her to look at them. They felt a little private, in a weird way. Not that there was anything wrong with them. But there were lots of parts of my life that I wasn’t anxious to share with my mother. Plus, I was really itching to go over and show them to Molly and Frank. So the whole thing was making me feel a little grumpy.
    “What are these?”
    “What do they look like?”
    “Well, they’re photos, of course, but who took them?”
    “I took them.”
    “Using what for a camera?”
    “Using my camera for a camera.”
    She leveled me with a disapproving look. “If you’re receiving expensive gifts from someone, I should know.”
    “ You bought me the camera.”
    “When did I do that?”
    “For my birthday.”
    She just stood quietly a minute, and I felt like I could see wheels turning in her brain. “Oh,” she said, as if someone had just defaced a Michelangelo, “all those beautiful clothes.” Long, semitragic pause. “I didn’t even know you were interested in photography.”
    “Probably because you don’t know me anymore at all. Which is probably because we don’t live together.”
    “You’re being unnecessarily cruel today, Ellen. Who are these people?” She pointed to the photos.
    “My next-door neighbors.”
    “Ah, yes. That nice little man. So you’re getting friendly with them?”
    “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
    “Nothing. I suppose. I just thought you’d make friends your own age.”
    “I have friends my own age.”
    I purposely neglected to mention that I was barely speaking to any of them.
    I felt another one of those moments coming on. Where I knew exactly what I wanted and needed. But it was hard to say.
    But I was about to say it anyway. Against all odds.
    “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I sort of have something planned. I’ve been learning about photography from Molly next door. And the