"Are you alright?" Jesse asked Ashley, Ashley's eyes profoundly lodged in her recently-developed pictures, her pudgy fingers scampering over them as if to feel the softness, feel the roughness of her creativity and craftmanship. Jesse and Matt hitched a ride with the girls to the State Theatre in Detroit, Mi, the dark clouds rolling into the blue sky like murky waves surfacing from an ocean's deep abyss of evil and vulnerability.

"Just fine," Ashley responded harmoniously, the well-captured photo of Greg's serenade to Taryn sitting on the top of the pile, very useful evidence for blackmail.

She was a clam, refusing to let that lustrious pearl hidden deep inside out in the open. "So you like..." Jesse began, his eyes looking at the photographs as if to read the right word.

"Photography?" Ashley finished, her eyes nestling into his. Jesse spread a pixie smile across his face as Ashley continued. "I guess...I don't see myself as a teenager. I don't see myself any different from when I was younger. The only way I know I have grown and changed is through photographs."

Jesse marveled at the photographs sprawled across the dark oak's table like a giant mosaic. "That's really deep," Jesse responded in awe, Ashley's life displayed before him in the vivid slides of black and white photos creating stories, movies.

"It's just me," Ashley shyly replied, shrugging in all-honesty, "Photographs are memories captured in time."

"You think you'll have a lot of memories captured in time from this trip?" Jesse questioned curiously, snatching some of the pictures to look at.

"A thousand and one memories," Ashley admitted, shuffling her pictures together like a deck of cards, her smile relaxing.

"What are you listening to?" Matt asked Taryn, the two new-found friends sitting on the teal and white stripped couch opposite from Ashley and Jesse.

"A canadian punk band called Serial Joe," Taryn told him emotionless, her eyes in a twinkle enduced by music's drug-like high, clawing her black headphones from her ears and handing them to Matt, Matt accepting them readily, always willing to experience the goods of rock music.

Taryn informed Matt the song was called "Go For a Ride." She raved that it had to be the theme song of their summer. Matt tapped his toes along with the guitar's beat as he closed his eyes to truly experience the music (Refer to GFAR Index for lyrics).

"Wow," Matt grinned when he was done, a slower ballot pushing away his interest, "That isn't Sublime, but it sure is something."

"Sublime's pop-like lyrics may be sugar-coated with good beats, but are harsh in language and message," Taryn said evenly, as if she was the Einstein of Rock.

"Sometimes you need that kind of music to escape," Matt told her earnestly, their brainwaves just a tad off because of the sharp tounge belonging to Taryn, the girl always transmutting between sweet puppy and wrathful shrew.

"Don't I know," Taryn agreed gruffly, clinging her arms around the bottom of her black boyfriend tank.

"But it isn't healthy," Matt continued, his fingers touching the window as sparatic fat rain drops splattered on the window like paint on a canvas.

"What is healthy anymore," Taryn spatted back, not to irritate Matt but irritate the world, her spiteful eyes scortching into the darkened afternoon, leaving a hole in comformity. "Everything you do, everything you believe in can kill you. Nothing is safe, no one is safe."

Matt gaped at her in shock, like Taryn punched her hand through his forehead and to his brain. "You can't honestly believe that."

"The only things I have, the only things that set me apart, really set me apart from the rest of them, are my beliefs," Taryn retored, her hand sifting blindly on the floor for her black journal streaked with red, green and blue stripes, her face scrunching into a wrinkled cloth as her search ran farther across the floor.

"That's for sure," Matt responded with a roll of his eye.

Like the sharp eye of an eagle, Taryn caught his gesture from the floor and the corners of her mouth turned downward. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Matt swallowed the lump festering like rotted meat in his throat, knowing it would sit there until his voice was consumed if he didn't say what was laying in his mind and continued, "Your beliefs make you seem...bitter." Taryn was prepaired to whip his face with her cutting words, but Matt pressed on. "But I've seen a snipette of the real you, the you you hide from the world behind your red hair and permanent frown."

"How can you say that you've seen the real me?" Taryn asked hushly, her eyes churning with black coal and fiery rocks, "I've been friends with these girls for years and they haven't seen the real me. No one has."

"You won't let them," Matt informed her, his brow furrowing in the passion and disguist.

"And you think I've let you?" Taryn laughed, "Some kid from a boyband? See the pain and anguist I inadvertantly lay on myself in the respect that I don't want to be perfect, don't want to be normal?" Taryn's face sunk at that admittance, her passion transgressing past her shield of bizarre self-confidence and sheer hatred toward anything msinstream.

"You're going to make a good lawyer some day," Matt cooed, patting Taryn on the knee. Taryn pushed his hand away angrily, shooting up from her seat and retrenching to her bed in the back, crushed that Matt had gotten under her skin, even more crushed this day would stand out forever in their minds; the day she confidentially admitted she was wrong.

Jessa sharply stopped in front of a large iron gate, a gate as big as the one suspended in the clouds, but as dark and cold as the one below the ground, shaking Celeste from sleep in the overhang queen bed. "Looks like we're normal fans today, kids," Jessa announced to the back as Chris scuttled through the hiccup-like rain to the RV, safely under his improvised leather umbrella, commonly used as a jacket, looking like a father late picking up his kids from school. Chris rapped on the locked door frantically, Ashley jumping from her seat on the white plush dinner chair and letting Chris in, the door squeaking sharply against its worn hinges.

"C'Mon, boys," Chris announced, motioning toward the door, his face spakled with angel's tears, "We've got a thousand fans waiting for us!"

As Jesse and Matt rose from their seats, Chris gazed up at Celeste, Celeste moaning from her deprivation of sleep, her loose curls hiding her sedated eyes. Celeste scanned the perimeter, her eyes attempting to wipe away the sand of slumber, then stopped dead on Chris, Chris's smile augmenting as he approached her.

"Stay away," Celeste warned, using her purple pillow as a shield and index finger as a sword.

"What is your problem?" Chris asked her aggitated, his hands clasping to his hips, not comprehending why she was acting this way.

"Maybe other girls like being groped by your hands and raped by your eyes," Celeste began, cautiously lowering from her perch, her eyes set with chained fury on Chris like a policeman's on a heinous criminal, "But I don't."

Chris was utterly confused; never before had he been turned down by a girl so harshly. He watched her finish her descend from the bed, Taryn's blue flannel boxer shorts rumpled from the tossing and turning associated with restless sleep and white tank top clinging to her like it was glued on. Jessa, Ashley, Jesse and Matt watched engrossed, as if a soap opera was being performed live, addictive eye-candy. "You don't like guys then, odviously."

"Don't you dare insunuate things without pretense!" Celeste cautioned, almost nose to nose with him, the heat and prickles rising from the back of her neck. "Assumptions can be deadly."

"You're telling me you don't like attention?" Chris asked in defense, her hands clenched to her sides, ready to sling at him.

"What you do is not attention," Celeste responded, pointing her finger into his shoulder and pushing him away slightly, not a lot, just enough to push his buttons, "It's exploitation of me and yourself."

"That's not true!" Chris shouted, not willing to admit he's at fault for their rocky start, staring her down and grimacing like an angry dog foaming at the mouth.

"Oh please," Celeste begged with hands clasped together, turning her back on him and taking a few steps toward the stove, the anger boiling over her body ready fire for the stove for at least 2 weeks. She let her hands slide to normal position, knowing exactly what to say. "You think you're hot shit, that girls would give anything to have you touch them. I've seen your kind..." Her eyes averted to Jessa, Jessa rotated in the driver's seat, Jessa's face drooping down toward her jean capris because of her degrading past. Swiftly and gently, Celeste turned back to him, her delayed and dramatic actions drilling the spectators deeper into suspense. "But I am not one of them. I won't throw myself at you because you give me 'attention.' If you haven't noticed, I have better morals than that."

"How can you say those things when you've never had a decent conversation with me?!" Chris demanded furiously, not willing to take her snide and narrow-minded remarks, his eyebrows penciled together and hands in tight coils.

"I think actions speak louder than words, especially in your case," Celeste laughed, sitting down in Ashley's vacant seat nonchalantly, tossing her hair behind her shoulders, feeling as if she was winning this battle 1 to 0. Chris's veins started to portrude from his neck, color rising into his flesh like summer's steam floating into air. Celeste looked satisfied that she made her point; she walked chillingly past Chris and toward the bathroom, her saunter displaying newly gained confidence.

"Well, I think you're a bitch," Chris responded bluntly, all veins inside his body exploding like water overflows meek costal rivers during hurricanes, that verbal smack spinning Celeste foward, her voice temporarily mute from saying a syllable. Her mouth moved up and down as if it was working efficiently as Chris snatched a pile of bras fresh and clean from a green laundry hamper lounging behind the passanger's seat, ready to challenge the girls at their own trivial game, then pumbled out the door into the sudden downpour, a timid Matt and shocked Jesse following at his heels.

Everyone gazed at Celeste, Celeste feeling as if she was fettered to the floor, unable to move, unable to speak. Her eyes became tight slits as she bulldozed for her Adidas Response Running sneakers laying lifelessly by the passanger seat. Emotionless, she thrusted the shoes on her feet, her decrepit self-will barely crawling past the stinging tears verging to completeness in her eyes only on a promise.

"Are you OK, Cel?" Ashley asked quietly, as if not wanting God to overhere unnecessary discussion about that electric quarrel.

"Celeste?" Jessa asked soothingly, her touch trying to heal Celeste's broken heart. Celeste shrugged Jessa away like Jessa's mother did, lost and befuddled in her drunken state of contentness, an action that definately spoke louder to Jessa than words. "Celeste!" Celeste grabbed a grey Old Navy Pull-over and dashed into the darkness overtaking their RV and their perfect summer in its planned evil and despiration to reveal the truths gnawing at the girls to everyone.

"Now where is she off to?" Taryn pondered aloud, her guard dismembered to actually and openly caring for a friend, poking her head to the side of the bed, her journal tumbling to the floor as pages spilling out. The three friends watched Celeste do what they were all doing in way or another, running.