Free Picture This by Norah McClintock Page B

“With your interest in nature and your sharp eyes, you could grow up to be a biologist. Or a botanist. Or a zoologist.” She explained what each of those things was and why they were all important. Tricia kept her eyes on her plate, but Mrs. Ashdale didn’t let that bother her.
    â€œWhat about you, Ethan?” Mrs. Ashdale said to me. “How’s the project going?”
    I was too old for baby camps, so my youth worker suggested that I take part in a special program for kids like me, which is to say, at-risk kids. Kids who have been in trouble. Kids who need to turn their lives around before it’s too late. The program was called Picture This. It taught kids the basics of photography and gave them special projects to work on, which we were supposed to talk about regularly in a group. The idea was to really look at the world around us and to try to capture it with our cameras.
    We spent the first couple of weeks learning how cameras work and experimenting with composition, framing and photo editing on the computer. Now we were working on our own projects.
    â€œSo far, so good, I guess,” I said. “But I’m probably going to have to go back for more pictures. I want to see if I can get closer this time.”
    We were supposed to pick a theme and illustrate it with photographs. I picked freedom. I wanted to show that it isn’t possible for a person to be completely free, because there is always something—usually more than one thing—that puts serious limits on freedom. To do that, I was documenting a couple of hawks I’d discovered in the woods north of the city one time when Mr. Ashdale took me hiking. Hawks look like they’re totally free, especially when they’re soaring high against a clear blue sky. They’re birds of prey, powerful birds that take whatever they want from nature. They’re like a lot of guys I used to know. They look and act like kings. But they aren’t completely free. Not only was the hawks’ habitat endangered, but so was the habitat of their prey, thanks to people. It was getting harder and harder for those kings of the sky to get what they wanted. And it was going to get even worse, just like things almost always turned bad for the guys I used to know, guys in gangs who thought they could do whatever they wanted, but who ended up either dead or in prison.
    My project was going really well. I was proud of what I’d done so far. All my pictures were in the digital camera that the Ashdales had bought me for my birthday back in April. That’s why I didn’t want to hand it over to the guy in the alley. I didn’t tell Mrs. Ashdale about what had happened. I didn’t want her to worry.
    â€œI’ll probably head up there again tomorrow, if that’s okay with you,” I said. “I have a note from DeVon.” DeVon Loomis was in charge of the Picture This program. I’d asked him to write the note so that Mrs. Ashdale wouldn’t think I was trying to duck the program for a day. I dug it out of my pocket and handed it to her. She didn’t read it. She just smiled and set it next to her plate.
    â€œI’d love to see what you’ve done so far,” she said. “Maybe you could show me after we clean up the kitchen.”
    â€œSure,” I said. If I had to name only one thing that I liked about the Ashdales, it was that they were really interested in what I was doing. It wasn’t a put-on. They actually listened when I told them how my day had been or what assignments I was working on for school. So I was more than happy to get out my camera later that evening and show Mrs. Ashdale my pictures. She exclaimed over the ones that I thought were the best and asked a lot of questions.
    â€œWho’s that?” she said, pointing to the camera display screen. I squinted at it.
    â€œJust some guy,” I said. He was a middle-aged man, and he was leaning on a shovel. He was in