I leaned forward to check out her discovery. In the picture, the boys’ mother was a plump woman who desperately needed to dye her hair. Their father had a mustache, probably thinking the extra facial hair hid the fact that he had no head hair. The taller one eyed the camera like he was hitting on the girl taking the photo. The short one grinned, standing off to the side of the rest of them. His spiked bangs fell into his eyes, casting half his face in shadow. He stood straight, upright, obviously trying to make himself as tall as possible.

Dad yanked the picture off the wall. “Nice work, girls. These boys are cute.”

Lara’s eyes widened. “Dad! Put that down before someone sees you."

"Before someone sees this?" He waved the photo in the air.

I wanted to hide behind the picture wall.

“They’ll blow it up poster size if you want to hang it above your bed,” said a raspy male voice that was definitely not Dad’s. “I mean, it’s not as sexy as the photos in all those teen mags, but I think we hold our own.”

I spun around to see the taller of the two boys smirking as if the picture had come alive. The shorter/cuter one slouched behind him. They wore khakis and polo shirts. The taller boy’s hair was scruffy, messy, almost as if he specifically styled it to resemble bed-head.

“I don’t know him,” Lara said, her voice all flirty and high-pitched. She giggled as she pointed to Dad. “I swear, he’s just this random guy that’s been following us around.”

I wasn’t sure if I admired her ability to transcend embarrassment or was jealous of her composure while my hands shook like I’d just come out of a really cold pool.

Dad stepped forward and put his arm around the boys, their photograph still dangling from his fingertips. “You know…"
Dad’s leg jerked forward, and I could tell by Lara’s stoic expression that she had just kicked him in the shin. “What! There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The girls thought you were cute."

My mouth flopped open and the shorter boy smiled at me. Not at Lara. I wondered if he needed his eyes checked.
I wanted to jump off the ship. I grabbed Lara’s arm and pulled her down the hall. After a couple feet, she twisted around to wave at the boys, but they were already gone. “Didn’t you think they were cute?” she asked.

“Yeah. They were. But Dad…”

He followed behind, pleading with us to wait up, probably so he could engage in his favorite pastime: embarrassing his daughters at every opportunity.

“I know. We’ll just have to ditch him.” She smiled as we entered the dining hall.

All through dinner, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way that boy had smiled at me. Normally, no one ever noticed me. At Lara’s monthly dance productions, she performed the memorized steps she herself had choreographed, all eyes on her. She held the spotlight, and I just sat with my parents, surrounded by all my sister’s peers from her performing arts high school. No one cared about Lara’s little sister, the one without the dance talent, the one who sat in her room and studied for her smart-kid prep school and did boring things like ace tests and sit on the bench at swim meets instead of go on auditions. I was invisible in the crowd.

But here, someone noticed me. Smiled at me. Not at Lara. And I turned away. It was as if he had spoken a foreign language, and I couldn’t understand his dialect. I was a tourist in another country, refusing to learn the simple phrases I needed to get by. Because I was shy. Because I was scared. Because I’d never traveled before, not even outside of myself.