My mind is busy collecting my pens and notebook and checking to make sure I have my cell phone and I wait too long to answer, so I blurt out the first thing that lands on my tongue.

“Photography,” I say.

Lies, lies, lies.

“Oh!” She leans forward and grabs my arm excitedly. “Make sure you check out the Missoula Art Museum. You’ll just die.”

I spend the rest of the day telling myself to be normal, as punishment for my slip. I tell myself it won’t happen again.

When the press release announcing the extension of N. E. Endsley’s Orman Chronicles breaks the internet, I find out along with everyone else that there will now be five books instead of three. N. E. Endsley does not call me to tell me the third novel will come out next June, and I do not call him.

I eat dinner at the Williamses’ twice a week. We sign the paperwork for my scholarship, discuss my first semester, and I don’t go to Jenna’s bedroom to say good-bye at the end of each visit, because what’s left to talk about?

Everything is back to normal.

Except for photography.

A few days after the seminar, I squash my brain’s plea of normalcy long enough to walk to Downtown Books and inform them I am going to be their event photographer for what’s left of summer. It has nothing to do with the clever wind—I left that in Lochbrook—but I need a guilty pleasure to get me through the rest of my time here. And maybe it will help release some of this absurd photography energy so I can get on with my life.

It’s only a month.

“We can’t pay you,” Becky’s boss—decidedly un-Valerie-like in his sweatpants and book shirt—tells me. “We don’t have the budget.”

“I’m just in it for the experience,” I say.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

It has meant taking more than one picture at a time—another new normal meant to absolve part of my guilt—and with at least two author events a week, the photo library I post to the Downtown Books blog is almost doubling each week.

“You’re good,” an author I recognize from CCBF says, as she looks over my shoulder after her event. I’ve captured her midlaugh, signing a book for an eager fan. “You should go professional.”

I tell her thank you and try to ignore the compliment as it plinks down the empty well inside me.

My walk home tonight feels particularly grueling. I’m exhausted. There were two back-to-back events at the store, my feet are sore, and all day I’ve been stewing over the roommate survey the college sent me.