Wednesday is boring. I have no interesting goings-on in any of my classes and rehearsal is music. I don't really have any songs with Dutchy so I don't even get to see him after warm-ups. Rehearsal drags by with nothing to entertain me (except for Jack's occasional monkey shines) and nothing pretty (a.k.a. Dutchy) to look at, so I just stare off into space and pretend to be devoted to listening to people sing about goin' steady, steady for good.

Finally, it ends, and Dutchy walks in. He grins at me and sticks his songbook into his backpack as he walks over to me. "Hey," he says, that easy smile glinting in his perfect blue eyes. Good Lord, I could stare at... "I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come over tonight." He totally interrupted my train of thought, but I guess that's okay.

"Well, sure, but what's in it for me?" I grin back at him.

"Oh, I've got an exciting night planned, jam-packed with homework and poking fun at Blink and Mush and you helping me pick out my entries for the photo competition." He pushes his hair out of his eyes, smirking. "And perhaps, should the mood strike us, a rousing game of Go Fish."

Laughing, I nod. "I'm in. But I'll have you know, I'm a hell of a hand at Go Fish."

His chuckle is abruptly stopped by a cold glare. Those pretty blue eyes are fixed on a girl crossing the room, headed for where we're standing. Her name is Becky, and she plays Kim.

"What's wrong, Dutch?"

Dutchy rolls his eyes. "Becky Mason is headed over here."

"Yeah, so?" I fail to see why this is such a buzzkill.

"She's Sarah's best friend."

I nod and cock and eyebrow, and Becky approaches me, smiling coyly. "Hi, Daniel," she coos.

"His name's Specs," Dutchy interjects, setting his jaw.

Becky slides irritated eyes toward Dutchy. "Thank you, Johannes." Then she looks back at me, that weird, girlie smile on her face again. "So, Daniel – do you mind if I call you Daniel? Nicknames are so immature. Anyway, as I was saying..." She hasn't even said anything yet. What the hell? "I couldn't help but notice you were looking at me during rehearsal."

I scratch my head. "Um, well, see, Becky, I wasn't--"

She laughs. "It's okay, Daniel. Anyway, I hope you don't think me forward or anything because I don't usually do this – I mean, I usually let the guy make the first move but you're still fairly new here and don't seem to know a whole lot of people yet, you don't know how things work around here..." God, this girl rambles a lot. "Well, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to, um... maybe run lines with me sometime?"

My jaw drops. "Run lines with you?" What?

"You know, rehearse our scenes, help each other memorize our lines?" She's blushing a little bit.

"Well, Becky, we don't really interact all that much in the play... Wouldn't you be better off running lines with Jack or something?"

"But you're my boyfriend."

I blink. "Um, in the play..."

She giggles. "Well, yeah, that's what I meant. In the play. Anyway, what do you say? How's, say, Friday night for you?"

"Becky, I..."

"Friday night it is, then. Um, we can meet in my room, I guess, seeing as my roommates are going out, and nobody will bother us. Eight o'clock?"

I can't even speak. I figure I'm either dead or having a really bizarre nightmare.

"Great." She leans in and kisses my cheek, blushing. "See you Friday... Daniel." And she runs back to her girlfriends, giggling.

I stand there, my mouth hanging open, completely dumbfounded. Dutchy, being the sweetheart that he is, doubles over laughing. When I'm able to speak again, I turn to him. "Shut up, Johannes."

He makes an attempt to look angry and straightens himself. Ruffling my hair, he suppresses another chuckle. "Come on, Casanova, let's get outta here."

I punch him lightly in the arm and head out.

Up in his room, I'm looking through his photo prints and they really are amazing. Dutchy is an incredible photographer. Not a single photo is out of focus, never dust on the lens, never a single flaw. I don't know how he manages this kind of perfection. None of the photographs looks staged or fake, everything looks so happenstance and natural. I guess there really is an art to photography; it's not just point-and-shoot.

"How do you do this?" I hold up a particularly impressive picture of Crutchy, obviously taken unwittingly, with his eyes squinted at the monitor of his computer and his tongue pressed between his lips in determination.

"Do what?" Dutchy looks up, examines the picture, smiles.

"Make it look so easy." I turn the photo back to myself, study it again, set it down.

He shrugs. "I guess it is easy. I just keep an eye out all the time. I see something I like, I take a picture of it."

"But it never looks set up, it never looks like any old photograph."

"That's because it never is."

At this point I hit him with a pillow. "That's the cheesiest thing I've ever heard."

"You're just jealous," he says, laughing as he dodges another whack with the pillow. After a couple minutes of laughing, he sighs. "But seriously, what should I submit?"

I shrug. "They're all really good, Dutch." I look over the other pictures spread out on his bed. "Are you looking to do a theme?"

"Well, we're supposed to submit a bunch of related photos, and everybody always does a friends theme." He leans back against the wall and shrugs. "I mean, I kinda want to do something like that but I don't want just a bunch of candid shots of my friends. That's boring. They aren't connected."

"What about, like, relationships?"

He looks at me, eyebrows together in thought. "What do you mean?"

"Um... you could photograph people in relationships. I mean, like, romance. You could take pictures of couples, like boys and girls talking, and even like Jack and David and Mush and Blink and stuff. Make a statement."

He nods. "That's actually a really good idea." Smiling, he grabs his camera. "Hey, come here." I scoot over to him and he puts his arm around me.

"What?" I ask, looking up at him.

"Smile," he says, and clicks the shutter.