From "Said the Gramophone" re: Photo Lie

I came into school one day tired and dragging my feet. Wet toast and water and tylenol and there I was. My bag was half-open and people buzzed around me, all more awake and enjoying the morning like they knew just how. I limped up to my locker, or what I thought was my locker, and started opening the lock. I didn't even realise; I was in the senior's hall, on the whole wrong side of the building. I had come in a different entrance 'cause I caught the city bus that morning and I was all turned around. Anyway, not only did I get the wrong locker, I got THE wrong locker, I got Jamus Gart's locker. The super-popular, had-sex-at-thirteen, senior that everyone loved and wanted to be. And even more amazing than that, in my tired stupor, I got my lock combination way wrong, and somehow guessed his correct combination. The locker clicked open and I was preparing myself for the smell of a flat apple and the look of a Batman Forever poster, my usual daily routine of disappointment. Instead I was greeted to a fine musk, a rich smell similar to animal fur or, like, a sweaty prince. The locker was tidy, books stacked on a middle shelf he had installed himself, a pair of sailing shoes sat neatly at the bottom, thin planks of cedar in the top compartment to neutralize possibly aromatic locker neighbours. Soft music seemed to play, like a thin veil of Curtis Mayfield and the Ave Maria, and a small mirror sat humbly and easy at eye level. A little photobooth photo stuck out from under the corner. A vision of beauty, a strong defiant bone-structure with a high collar; Jamus' college-aged girlfriend. I knew the whole time, at some level, I had made a mistake, but for a second I remember clearly thinking, "Woah, I really do have my shit together."