OneIyanu
There are just these little things that a camera lens can reveal about a person. Things that they don’t want anyone else to see. And when you’re the one with the camera, you tend to fade into the background. You get to be part of the world without having to be a part of the world.
Exactly how I like it.
I’ve always preferred working with film; something about the way it captures light feels so alive. The first time I ever printed photos, I was ten. Now, seven years later, the carefully controlled process is practically embedded into each line on my palms, and I go through the motions with ease. It’s just as practiced as taking the photos themselves, the comforting familiarity of creating something new. Revealing hidden truths in a way that only the process of exposure can achieve.
But unlike ten-year-old Iyanu in the makeshift darkroom that Mum, Dad, and I put together in our tiny downstairs bathroom, I’m now in the Wodebury Hall photography lab, surrounded by stainless steel surfaces laden with expensive tools and devices.
Adjusting my glasses, I peg a photo up onto the drying line behind me and consider the perspective in the red glow of the gently buzzing safety light. It’s a picture I’d taken yesterday of the matchmaking event we’d held in the fields behind Wodebury House, the main school building.
Despite being a frigid Friday evening in late January, we’d had a great turnout. In the photo, a good chunk of the Year Twelve boarders and some of my fellow day students stand bundled up among the trees in stylish knit jumpers and tweed coats, like outfits straight out of a designer winter collection.
And most of them probably are.
Each round of the matchmaking event had one contestant and twelve potential matches. The event’s host asked both groups specifically themed questions on everything from favorite color to relationship dealbreakers. After each question, the contestant eliminated potential matches based on the compatibility of their answers until there was only one person left.
I glance over the photo again, scanning the faces of every person on the stage. The lens reveals their stories, the slight nervousness concealed behind the participants’ beaming expressions, the anticipation glimmering in the eyes of the students who came to watch.
A committee of Year Twelve students always puts together the Valentine’s Day Ball for Sixth Formers—the Year Twelves and Year Thirteens—that will be happening in two weeks, and I’d been unexpectedly nominated to the group by our head of year to oversee all photography matters. And when this matchmaking event had been proposed as a fun way for us Year Twelve students to find dates for said ball, I’d been the only person on the committee who didn’t see the point of it.
However, as each couple was matched throughout the evening, the point quickly became clear: conflict and drama. Which can be entertaining—everyone loves a good soapy spectacle—but it’s exactly the kind of situation I’d normally avoid for the sake of my own mental health.
Once I set the final matchmaking print to rinse for a few minutes, I’m eager to pour over the images I’d rather be working on instead. So I hurry over to the cubby shelf where I’d kept my things.
I grab my film negative binder and a magnifying glass, then quickly flip to the pages where I’d stored my negatives from the Black Girls Winter Fair.
Warmth fills my chest.
The fair had taken place in London last weekend, and I’d been staring at the negatives every chance I could this entire week, anticipating the moment when I could finally print my favorites. Unfortunately, the matchmaking photos needed to take priority.
The photo rinse timer starts beeping when I get to the final one, the image distorted by the glaze of unshed tears around my eyes. I ignore the sound, staring at the image for a little longer with an achingly wide smile.
It was the best moment of the entire weekend. I was heading out of the fair when I’d spotted my favorite writer, Kia Rose, an amazing photojournalist and professor of Black women’s history.
After building up the courage to speak to her, she’d let me take a photo of her standing in front of the Wall of Messages; the place where my own tear-stained note was pinned up alongside those of the other fair attendees with messages of love about their time spent that weekend.
I’d already planned to use these photos for my WeCreate article—the final stage in the application process for the online magazine’s photojournalist position. But seeing Kia Rose that day felt like fate.
I’d discovered the magazine in Year Seven, marveling at the space created by queer women of color writing about their passions and experiences. The first issue I’d ever read was guest edited by Kia Rose, and I can never forget that feeling of being so completely seen, even though my eleven-year-old self hadn’t fully processed the importance of having a safe haven away from Wodebury’s halls. Now that I do, I just need to write about it, that same feeling captured here in every image I’d taken at the fair: Black women celebrating in community.
Nervous anticipation rushes down my spine, followed by a twinge of desperation.
The job is perfect anyway, but I also just need it. Wodebury giving me a bursary to cover the fees to study here is one thing, but the upkeep of being here is another—I wouldn’t even be able to afford the ticket
to the Valentine’s Day Ball if I didn’t have a discount as a committee member. I need as much extra income as I can get.
My thoughts are interrupted by several successive dings of text notifications.
I quickly return the negative strip to the binder and head back to the processing station, grateful for my phone’s darkroom filter as I open up the messages.
Saturday 8:07 P.M.
Nav
no, i won’t stop pouting! you’d feel the exact same way if you had a dream match and that happened to you
i just wish Jordan didn’t leave . . . Mr. Leighton said everyone on the committee had to take part yesterday, i needed the plausible deniability
Navin had only joined the committee to keep me from being alone with the “popular crew,” but he’d spent most of his time subtly eyeing Jordan.
Another message comes in, and I laugh at the selfie of Navin’s pouting face. The soft pink gloss on his lips shines perfectly against his light bronze skin, and from the background, it seems like he’s returned to his dorm room in Roweton House.
Navin—and access to this darkroom—are my saving graces here at Wodebury Hall. He’d spent most of his early life shuttling between England, Bangladesh, and another boarding school in Spain before arriving at Wodebury Hall in Year Nine. His mum, the owner of a multimillion-dollar international architecture firm that builds large-scale city projects, was born and raised in Bangladesh, while his dad is Bengali and white British aristocracy. So Navin and his father stand to inherit an estate from Navin’s grandfather, who he often describes as “an old white man who means well but is still an old white man.”
sorry babe
but you know what? here’s a wild idea, what if you just *ask* Jordan to the ball?
Navin’s response comes in immediately, and I chuckle.
i hate you
i just want to tell him how pretty he is . . .
but like, i also never want to tell him how pretty he is
The words hit a little too close to home, and I hurriedly ignore the face they conjure up, the memories threatening at the edge of my mind.
you love me, i’m your favorite person
unfortunately . . .
I laugh gleefully at the voice note that follows of a deep resigned sigh.
i love you
i love you too
Smirking, I put the phone down, only to have the mirth disappear at the sight of the completed image staring back at me in the wash tank.
I’d purposefully left this photo for last because I hadn’t wanted to take it in the first place.
There are only three subjects. My cousin Kitan Ladipo and her two best friends, Sarah Pelham and Heather Seymour-Cavendish. The trio stand in their default pose with Heather in the center, her green eyes glinting in the reflection of the large bonfire lit for the matchmaking event.
I can still hear Heather’s annoyingly saccharine tone asking me to take the photo of them. She’d walked up to me, dripping with the type of confidence that can only come from believing that no one would ever deny you anything.
And as an earl’s daughter, most people never dare.
For example, on the committee, she’d been the one to come up with the matchmaking event idea. And even though everyone else had readily agreed, she’d posed it as a statement, not a question.
My sigh comes out like a growl. Looking at this photo, I can clearly see that no one has ever told her that blackfishing is wrong either.
Heather came back at the start of this school year from a summer away on safari in Kenya, apparently having decided that blackfishing was where it was at. She’d permed her dark brown hair into tightly spiraled curls to “go with” her fresh tan, employing the makeup skills that had earned her over two hundred thousand followers and subscribers across her social media platforms to make her skin look even browner. Her tan has definitely long since faded, but with the help of a foundation shade that would be more at home on my dressing table, she always ensures that her white skin is just bronzed enough for her to appear “exotic Black.”
Her racist words, not mine.
That first day, I’d preemptively decided I was too exhausted to deal with all that mess. Heather has hated me since the day we met, and it’d be a waste of my precious time and labor trying to educate her.
But as I examine the image now, noting the shade of her heavily bronzed skin next to Sarah’s pale white—Heather’s real skin color—it’s become evident that Heather is getting way too close to the line of blatant blackface.
Now I definitely have to do something, or at least say something to Kitan.
I should have sensed all this coming after Year Eleven when Heather had gotten her results from a DNA test. Because even though it showed that she was completely Western European with a “trace amount of undetermined ancestry,” like most white people on Earth, she’d gone on and on about how she had no idea she was “mixed.”
Rolling my eyes, I hang up the photo to dry and my gaze lingers on Kitan.
Much like every day since Heather came to Wodebury in Year Nine, and especially
since I joined the ball committee, I just can’t help but wish that Kitan didn’t hang out with them—Heather, Sarah, and the rest of “the popular kids.” But I suppose with Kitan, old habits always die hard. And there’s no way she’d hang out with me either way.
Not anymore.
I glance at the photo hanging next to the trio, the one I’d captured of Kitan at the exact moment she was matched with Oliver Wei last night. The firelight dances in her eyes, orange hues bouncing off her skin like sparkles of gold.
It was a happy surprise when they were paired. During our first few years at Wodebury, when Kitan and I were still close, I noticed that everyone started dating each other while the two of us remained perpetually single. As the only two highly melanated Black girls in our year at a primarily white boarding school in the countryside of southeast England, it seemed that no one was going to be looking our way.
Kitan had to have noticed too, but we’ve never talked about it.
There’s a lot of stuff we don’t talk about.
But unlike me, who’d resigned myself to being solitary in all aspects of my life, Kitan wasn’t one to give up on love.
So she’d spent the whole evening with a smile, making sure the long dark brown waves of her wig and the loose curls of the parted curtain fringe were sitting just so.
I’m happy that it ultimately worked out for her, even with the sadness that still lingers after everything that’s happened between us—just as happy as she’d looked walking off the stage with Oliver.
I guess my old habits die hard too.
And not just with Kitan.
My traitorous eyes scan the drying line, searching for the face I’ve been trying to ignore since I’d developed the photo.
Quincy.
The tiny ache that blooms in my chest feels a little too much like mourning, but my thoughts are mercifully interrupted again by the sharp dinging of texts, this time from Mum asking when I’m coming home.
After shooting back a reply, I quickly clear up the chemicals and wash my hands. I take one last look at the pages of the Black Girls Winter Fair negatives then place the binder underneath my camera bag in the cubby shelf, ready to go first thing on Monday morning since the darkroom is closed tomorrow.
As I head toward the exit, I glance around the red-lit room at the photos hanging from the line, then grab my satchel and shut off the safe light.
The smell of chemicals is strong in the air as I inhale a deep breath, steeling myself to leave this peaceful space, before heading out the revolving doors.
The photography lab is located in the art department in Wodebury House, the massive four-wing neoclassical building that houses most of
the school’s main classrooms. As I hurry through the long-shadowed hallways, the giant windows offer glimpses of the two nearest dorm buildings: Lady Chalford House and Brookfield House. The former a late-Victorian redbrick mansion with carved white stone facings, and the latter a large stone building with a classic symmetrical Regency facade.
And that’s what gives Wodebury its charm—an eclectic collection of buildings from all the different eras the school has seen in its three hundred years, chronicling the spread and growth of the ancient institution.
So maybe charm isn’t the right word.
My footsteps echo on the marble floors before disappearing into the night air that bites coolly at the skin of my cheeks as I exit the building. Hugging my oversized coat tighter around myself, I head down the large front steps and into the courtyard. Wodebury House, with its Corinthian columns of cream stone and ornate sculpted wreaths, seems to glow in the moonlit sky.
The stars always look beautiful from here, and I trace their familiar patterns as I cross over the cobblestoned ground toward the parking lot. Pulling my scarf over my chilled nose, the barrier sends my panting breaths upward, fogging over my glasses as I start to turn the corner.
“Oof!”
Before I can fall backward, whoever I’d slammed into grabs my shoulders to steady me.
“Sorry!”
The familiar voice sends a shiver scattering down my arms, and I pull off my fogged-over glasses before looking up at Quincy’s slightly blurry form.
His surprised expression melts into a tiny smile. “Iyanu. You okay?”
Willing my heart to slow down, I rub my arm where we made impact.
“Y-Yeah, that was partly my fault,” I stumble out, gesturing upward. “Got a little distracted.”
Quincy glances up at the sky with a chuckle. Putting on a deeper voice, he declares, “‘Ill met by moonlight.’”
It takes only a second for me to place the Shakespeare quote, another to realize the “ill met” he’s talking about is our collision, and one more to remember that we’d rewatched A Midsummer Night’s Dream at our final movie marathon. And then the ache flares again.
I’m bombarded by a series of memories I always try to keep buried: The chubby-cheeked seven-year-old who’d smiled happily at me on the playground our mums had brought us to. A smile that led to four years of inseparable friendship before we all came to Wodebury and everything changed. The shy little kid I’d spent every weekend with for seven years—even as we found ourselves interacting less and less at school during the last three—baking cookies and having movie marathons in the makeshift blanket fort on his bedroom floor; the film projected on the blank
wall above his desk.
And then the newest memory haunting me: Quincy being paired with Heather at the matchmaking event after all the other people had been eliminated from his round. I’d managed to capture the image as it happened.
He’d tried to keep a straight face, but I’d like to believe my lens was right when it revealed the resignation in his eyes. The reluctant acceptance. Typical Quincy, who would never want to make a scene.
My musings plunge us into an awkward silence, and I fiddle with the arms of my glasses to distract myself from the acute pang of these reminders.
Quincy and I are voracious readers, and back in the old days, whenever Quincy would randomly come out with literary quotes, I’d respond with where it was from. But we don’t do this anymore. Since we both joined the committee, Quincy and I have shared a few words here and there—and one lingering glance when he suggested Old Hollywood for the ball’s theme—but before that . . . not since Year Nine.
Quincy clears his throat, gesturing his chin over my shoulder. “Did you get through the matchmaking photos?”
I nod shakily. “You coming from Brookfield? Still about an hour or two left till weekend curfew, right?”
“Yeah, I was just heading to the library. Jordan wanted some chocolate, and you know how he only ever eats Kit Kats, but the Brookfield common room has run out.”
In December, right at the end of Michaelmas term, Jordan fractured his ankle in a rugby match and has to stay in a cast for another week. So Quincy’s going all the way to the library vending machines to get one of his brothers a Kit Kat.
My heart, which had finally started settling down, kicks up a notch again.
“Is everything okay with Jordan? I know he left the matchmaking event early.”
I was once nearly as close to Quincy’s younger twin brothers, Jordan and Marcus, as I was to him. So the concern is genuine, even if a tiny part of me is still scoping out the situation for Nav.
“Yeah, Jordie’s all right.”
Nodding, I wipe down my glasses and put them back on.
Quincy’s face comes into crystal focus. His large dark brown eyes framed with thick brows and even darker long lashes, intense against the warm brown of his skin. The line of his button nose leading down to big pouty lips with a tiny fading scar in the corner. The sharp, lightly bearded jawline.
It’s all just too Quincy, and I have to drop my gaze to my penny loafers. But that doesn’t stop me from also noticing how unfairly good he looks in the navy suit and red-striped rugby tie he’s wearing.
Focus.
“. . . but I dunno,” he continues, oblivious to my distracted musings. “I’m just a little worried about the twins.”
My laughter comes without my permission, and I lift my eyes once again.
Quincy is always worried about Jordan and Marcus. The Villar twins have always had a way of getting into trouble.
I say as much, and Quincy lets out a breathy chuckle. “Yeah, I guess.”
Another silence, this time a little suffocating.
“Okay, I’m just gonna . . .” I trail off, pointing ahead.
“Yeah! Yeah, okay, see you on Monday.”
Then we do this weird dance thing where we both try to go around the other in the same direction. After two false starts, I grab his shoulders gently—trying not to focus on the heat radiating through his soft wool coat—and maneuver us around.
Quincy chuckles again, running a hand over his dark curls, which are loose and free. “See you later.”
I wait for a few moments until he disappears into the building before heading on my way.
TwoKitan
Saturday 8:19 P.M.
Oliver
should i come pick you up from Brookfield? or do you want to meet at the practice rooms?
Even in text, I can hear the cadence of Oliver’s voice. The deep tenor that always sends warmth rushing through me.
It’s so easy to grin wide and a little goofy when it comes to Oliver. To just let my guard down. But before the corners of my mouth can even begin to inch upward, I remember where I am, surrounded by way too many people to do that kind of thing.
In my absentmindedness as we’d been texting back and forth, the careful positioning of my face is all wrong now, my hair is probably a mess, my blouse—
Taking a breath, I school my face back to my usual neutral expression, automatically filing my feelings away.
Not here. Never here.
It takes a second longer than usual, but I successfully compartmentalize my thoughts, smooth down my hair, and adjust my blouse before responding to Oliver’s message with an affirmative.
The common room at Brookfield House is a grand space, with intricately carved rosettes in the high light wood ceiling, an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and heavy jacquard curtains. It sports a blend of the old and new: leather chesterfield sofas, a wood-carved pool table, and a grand piano in one corner, alongside a flat-screen television with game consoles, vending machines, and foosball tables. Naturally, this always draws a Saturday evening horde, which, combined with the blazing fireplace, means the room is a bit too warm, and I discreetly wipe at my brow.
Even with the crowd, Sarah, Heather, and I have easily managed to snag the long sofa near the pool table to ourselves.
Everyone knows that’s where we sit.
I try to file away the twinge of guilt I feel at what it took to get here, because the alternative feels much worse. Being relegated to the fringes of Wodebury’s social life. Laughed at. Before Year Nine, people would have looked at me sideways the moment I walked into this room. With Sarah and Heather, none of that happens.
Yes. This is leagues better.
“Who’re you texting?”
Heather’s voice comes from my right. Her tone is almost purposefully laced with slight boredom. Like she doesn’t want to seem too interested.
I hope that the way my shoulders tense as I tilt the phone away doesn’t make it too obvious that I’m trying to keep her from seeing the screen.
“Just Oliver,” I respond softly.
Oliver could never be just anything, but it’s the only thing I can think of to say.
The teasing smile of Heather’s newly plumped lips, unnatural against the equally unnatural bronze of her skin, doesn’t fully reach her eyes. “Oh, so now that you both have dates to the ball, you no longer have time for me?”
From Heather’s other side, Sarah looks up from her phone with an amused eye roll. I hold in my giggle as we exchange a quick look.
The matchmaking event had been Heather’s idea. As committee president, it didn’t take much for her to convince our head of year, Mr. Leighton, to let it go ahead. But he’d stipulated that all committee members had to take part, “in the interest of community spirit and engagement.” Iyanu was exempt though, so she could take the photos. A part of me had wished I could be too. Instead, I spent the night terrified and bracing for the usual rejection, only this time on a much more public stage. But after almost an entire evening of the expected
disappointment . . . Oliver.
“You say that like you’re not going with Quincy,” Sarah responds, tucking a strand of brunette hair behind her ear. But as she turns to face Heather, leaning back against the sofa arm, her bob shakes and the strand falls free again, brushing her pale white freckled cheek. “I was just double-checking my game plan for Wednesday.”
It’s a Saturday evening, and Sarah is working on her color coded down-to-the-minute calendar that she created for this term. I smile at the endearing familiarity. It’s all an effort to optimize her chances at getting nominated to run for head girl next year. This most recent hurdle is the head girl workshop on Career Day. All prospective applicants will be attending to impress Mr. Leighton, who, as our head of year, has the biggest sway in the teachers’ nomination process.
“Yeah,” Heather starts, inspecting her nails. “I was thinking of going to the workshop on Wednesday too.”
There’s a moment of silence as Sarah blinks confusedly. “Why?”
My shoulders tense a little more.
Heather, seemingly oblivious to Sarah’s silent freak-out, continues picking at her nail polish. “For all the head girl stuff, right? I told you I was gonna try for it last week, didn’t I?”
She did. But neither Sarah nor I thought she was actually being serious.
Ever since Year Seven, Sarah has always had top marks in every one of her classes, all while creating the perfect résumé with a host of extracurriculars and the titles prefect, subject leader, and student council member under her belt. All this would make her an excellent choice to be nominated by the teachers and, if everything goes according to plan with her campaign next year, to win.
I’d briefly considered running for head girl a few years ago. But when I realized how important it was to Sarah, I decided against it. She has Wodebrians all the way up her family tree from both her parents, and all the women on her mother’s side have always made head girl. Ever since her parents split when she was ten and she started living with her dad and stepmother, she’s been fiercely determined to make sure the tradition remained unbroken.
Besides, even if I was nominated by the teachers, no one would vote for me. Not with the types of numbers Sarah could get. And definitely nowhere near the type of landslide Heather Seymour-Cavendish could achieve.
“Right,” Sarah says, staring at her phone like she’s trying to convince herself that this new reality doesn’t exist. ...
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