Ann Martin - Claudia And the Clue in the Photograph

To humor my parents, I eat carrots and beets at the family table, but I'll never give up my junk food. It’s stashed all over my room. I'm never far from a chocolate bar: that’s my motto.

My poor, misguided parents also disapprove of my habit of reading Nancy Drew books — "junk food for the mind," as my mother calls them. I keep telling her that if she ever read one of them, she'd understand why I like them so much, but she just shakes her head, smiles, and hands me a paperback copy of some impossible-to-read "classic" like

The Scarlet Pimple, or whatever it’s called. I always accept the book, stick it on my shelf, and then pull a Nancy Drew mystery from behind my night table and read to my heart's content.

Anyway, that morning I had no time for reading of any kind. I had to scramble if I was going to be in my seat by the time my math teacher, Mr. Davies, handed out that day's quiz.

I won't bore you with the details of my math class, except to mention that Mr. Davies was wearing a gorgeous red tie that looked as though it might have been made of tie-dyed silk. I made a few notes reminding myself to experiment with tie-dyeing fine fabrics, raced through the quiz, and then headed downstairs to the photo lab.

, That day's class with Mr. Geist was excellent, as always. The lecture part was about making portraits, and Mr. Geist showed us a whole bunch of great slides that illustrated the points he was making. Afterward, we had time to do a little work in the darkroom.

The last bell rang just as we were cleaning up. I raced home, my head full of ideas about how to capture people on film. I had yesterday's roll of film to develop first. It included some fashion shots of Stacey acting like a

model, and I couldn't wait to see how they'd turned out.

I walked into the kitchen, thinking hard about my portrait assignment, and nearly bumped into Janine. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Professor Woodley doesn't need me until two today," she said, "so I came home to have a quick lunch and pick up my notebook."

I made us a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, and we ate together without talking much. I was still thinking about my new ideas, and Janine was poring over columns of figures in her notebook. She barely lifted her head when I cleared my plate and told her I would be in the darkroom for awhile.

I went up to our bathroom and began to assemble all the things I would need for developing my roll of film. First, I set up my dock radio, dialing in my favorite station and making sure the dock was turned so I could see it while the film developed. Keeping track of time is an essential part of working in a darkroom. Then I got out all my chemicals and measuring cups and set them up, along with my thermometer (the temperature of the chemicals is important, too), my developing tank, my bottle opener (to pry the top off the film canister), and my scissors (to cut off the end of the film).

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I know it sounds like a complicated process, but really, developing film is incredibly easy. The most important thing is to have total — and I mean total —r darkness while you're loading the film into a developing tank. You can load film in a lighted room, by using a changing bag, which is a rubberized sack with places to put your hands in. But it’s not easy to rumble around in there with the reels and the bottle opener and all that. I'd rather load film in a lightproof room, and my dad and I had made sure that the bathroom, which doesn't have any windows, was as lightproof as possible. All I had to do to make it totally dark was shove a towel into the crack at the bottom of the door and turn off the lights.

Which is what I did. Then, in the pitch-dark, I sat on my stool next to the counter, and felt around for the film and all my equipment. Since I had set things up so carefully, it only took me a few minutes to get the film out of the can and loaded onto the reel. I had just dropped the reel into the developing tank, knowing that as soon as I put on the lid, the tank would be lightproof and I could turn on the lights, when I heard a tapping at the door.

"Claud?" asked Janine. I heard the doorknob turning.

"No!" I yelled. "Don't come in or — "

Janine pulled the door open and poked her

head inside. Light from the hallway flooded into the darkroom. "What did you say?"

" — or you'll ruin my film," I finished, slapping the lid onto the tank as quickly as I could.

Janine put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, no!" she said. "I'm so sorry, Claud! I didn't realize — "

"It's okay," I said, even though I was pretty upset. It was easy to see that Janine felt terrible. "I might be able to salvage the negatives."

Janine apologized about three hundred times more and then, .finally, she left. I shut the door behind her, promising myself to make a Darkroom in Use sign for it, and looked at the tank. If I was lucky, there might be a few frames on the roll that hadn't been destroyed. Stacey would be coming over that afternoon for our BSC meeting, and if I hurried, I might be able to show her some negatives from our "fashion shoot." I turned up the radio and settled down to work.

Chapter 2.

By five-twenty that afternoon, I had not only finished developing the film, but I had also done my math homework. (Yea, Claud!) The negatives were pretty much ruined. There was a gray fog covering almost every shot. With careful work, I might be able to print parts of each picture, but the fact was, it would be easier just to shoot the whole roll over again. I knew Stacey wouldn't mind posing for me one more time. She had loved playing model.

I was sitting at my desk, looking over the negatives with a loupe (that’s a special kind of magnifying glass) when I glanced at my dock and realized my friends would start arriving any minute for our BSC meeting. I put the negatives away and picked up my camera. While I was working in the darkroom, I'd been thinking over what Mr. Geist had said about creating portraits, and I'd come up with

a great idea. See, Mr. Geist had talked about "capturing the essence" of a person on film. A good picture of somebody shouldn't just show what they look like, he said, it should show what they are like. So my idea was to take a picture of each of my friends as they entered my room, as an exercise in making portraits.

I would use black-and-white film, so I could develop it myself. Black-and-white is best for portraits, anyway. All the best photographers use it. I couldn't wait to see whether my quick shots would capture my friends' personalities.

Just as I was taking the lens cap off my camera, I heard the front door slam. Then I heard footsteps thumping up the stairs, and I knew by their sound that Kristy Thomas was about to arrive. Quickly, I aimed the camera at the door to my room, focused, and set the correct exposure for the amount of light. As I peered through the viewfinder, Kristy appeared, framed by the doorway. "Say cheese!" I called out quickly.

Kristy stopped in her tracks, gave me a huge grin, and shot me the peace sign with both hands. Snap!

Perfect. The picture would show what Kristy looks like: short, with dark hair and eyes — they're brown, really — dressed in running shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt (Kristy's uniform!).

But it also definitely captured Kristy's essence. Confident, outgoing, and full of energy; that’s Kristy. She's president of the BSC, and with good reason. For one thing, she came up with the idea for the dub. And for another, she keeps adding plenty of other great ideas to make the BSC even better. The BSC started taking shape one day when mom was trying to find a sitter for younger brother, David Michael. (Kristy also has two older brothers, Charlie and Sam.) At the time, Mrs. Thomas was going it alone as a single mom, since Kristy's dad had walked out on the family years earlier. Anyway, Kristy watched her mom make call after call without success, and that’s when she came up with the idea for the BSC. She figured parents would love it if they could make one phone call and be guaranteed a responsible sitter. And she was right. Boy, was she right. Our dub now meets three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from five-thirty until six. During those times, parents can call to set up sitting jobs. Using our dub record book, we can figure out who's free and schedule the jobs. It’s as simple as that. The club's been a success right from the start, but Kristy couldn't leave well enough alone. She had to add more ideas, like the dub notebook, in which we each write up every job we