“These are exactly the same.”
I could see why she might think that.
“No. They’re completely different.”
“I hate to disagree, but they are the exact same picture.”
“Look closer,” I urged. “They were taken five seconds apart. Focus on a small section of the picture and compare it to the other one.”
She leaned closer and inspected both pictures, then looked up suddenly and smiled.
“The leaves moved. They are different.”
I just grinned at her and could see the understanding come into her eyes.
“I get it. A moment in time is frozen in the picture. I bet you could take hundreds, if not thousands, and never get the same exact one.”
“Exactly,” I said, smiling that my girlfriend recognized what I’d done.
Next was a series of pictures of the farmhouse and barn that showed the moon above it. I’d taken a photo every fifteen minutes throughout the night. Well, I hadn’t, really; I’d set up a tripod and programmed the camera to take the pictures. I valued my sleep too much to sit up all night. It had taken almost a week to find a night when the clouds cooperated and stayed away so they didn’t ruin the shot.
The last picture was the net result of what I wanted to accomplish. Brook looked up when she flipped to that page and smiled.
“I want a copy of this one. It’s so clever,” she said to approve.
I’d stitched six of the pictures together to make it appear like there were six moons equally spaced over the house. It was a fun way to show what you could accomplish with time-lapse and the software we’d been given. I hoped it showed that I understood what I’d been taught so I could get an ‘A’ for my project.
◊◊◊
At lunch, all seemed right with the world.
“Where are we going tonight?” Jill, my brother’s girlfriend, asked.
I looked at Cassidy and Don because they normally double-dated with Jill and Phil. Brook stuck her elbow into my ribs, and I showed my irritation.
“You promised to take them to dinner,” she reminded me.
“Oh, I thought we were staying in and working on that video project I’ve wanted to complete.”
I’d teased Brook that if Fritz and his crew had a video of us having naked fun, we should make our own. That conversation had gotten me nowhere … so far.
“Where are we going to dinner?” Brook asked to get me to focus.
“What’s going on? I thought we had plans for tonight,” Cassidy complained.
“David said he would take Phil and me out tonight,” Jill said.
“That means we can’t go out,” Cassidy pouted.
I glanced over at Brook, who was mysteriously quiet. This felt like a setup. I looked down at the table, and Tracy and Pam were giggling. I tried anyway.
“Wolf, could you and Sarah take Don and Cassidy with you guys tonight?”
“I’d love to, but we already have plans.”
“And those plans are?” I asked.
“Going to the T-Bird with everyone,” he explained to let me off the hook.
The Thunderbird was a campus restaurant-bar that let you stay to enjoy the band free of charge if you had dinner there early. There might even be dancing if I played my cards right.
◊◊◊
It had been a busy week with the game on Wednesday and then the excitement of the airplane having mechanical difficulties. It wasn’t too much of a surprise when before football practice, I found Roy, looking nervous, waiting for me outside the training room.
“I thought I had to come to you for flight lessons,” I said as we shook hands.
“They asked me to come here for the press conference.”
I pulled my phone out and found that somehow the ringer had been turned off. There were six messages from Frank and Caryn, followed by several text messages.
“Hang on, I need to call a couple of people before we meet the press,” I told Roy and then called Caryn. “What’s up?”
“Finally!” she huffed. “Frank needs you to call him as soon as possible. He set up a press conference so you wouldn’t be hounded about the plane going down.”
“Message received,” I said and received an inappropriate comment in return.
“One more call,” I promised Roy.
“I have some talking points for you,” Frank said without preamble.
He proceeded to give me an outline of what I should say.
“Mr. Tyro is here with me. Do you want to talk to him too?” I asked.
Frank thought it might be a good idea to have us on the same page, so I handed the phone to Roy.
◊◊◊
They’d set up the press in the place where we usually held after-game press conferences. It looked to be the usual suspects, with Jeff as their ringleader. He, of course, ambushed me as soon as I walked into the room. Roy was still talking to Frank, while I’d gone to Coach Hope’s office to grab our talking points that Frank had emailed me. I’d used Coach’s printer.
“Those your talking points?” Jeff asked.
I’d made a copy for him, following the practice we’d developed during the steroid scandal in my sophomore year. He would use the notes later to write his article. He skimmed through them.
“I would skip this one,” he said, pointing to the page.
