The "Blueberry Diner" was a relic of a different era, a place where the air felt heavy with the scent of maple syrup and the ghosts of a thousand Sunday mornings. It was the kind of establishment where the vinyl booths were cracked but clean, and the waitresses called everyone "honey" regardless of their age or social standing. For Clara, it was a chaotic nightmare of sticky surfaces and unquantifiable calories. For Kai, it was a sanctuary.
Clara sat across from him, her yellow raincoat draped over the back of the seat like a warning flag. She had her leather-bound planner open on the table, her pen poised like a weapon. She had already calculated that they were exactly twenty-four minutes ahead of her "Post-Pier Review" schedule, a fact that gave her a restless, jittery energy that not even the strongest black coffee could account for.
Kai, meanwhile, was halfway through a mountain of chocolate-chip pancakes. He looked entirely too satisfied for someone who had just spent three hours shivering in a freezing fog. He was leaning back, one arm draped over the back of the booth, watching the steam rise from his mug with a look of pure, unadulterated peace.
"You're staring," Kai said, not breaking his gaze from the window where the mist was finally beginning to burn off. "Is it the syrup on my chin, or are you trying to calculate the caloric density of my breakfast?"
Clara felt a flush creep up her neck, a heat that had nothing to do with the diner's radiator. "Neither. I'm just trying to understand how you can be so... okay with the unknown. Elias could have been a jerk. He could have told us to get lost, just like the others. We could have wasted the whole morning."
Kai finally looked at her. His eyes were a dark, observant brown, the kind of eyes that didn't just look at things but seemed to develop them like film. He set his fork down, his expression shifting from playful to something more grounded.
"The unknown isn't a waste, Clara. It's just potential. You treat every hour like a suitcase you have to pack perfectly, or the whole trip is ruined. I'm just carrying an empty bag and seeing what I find along the way." He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, invading the invisible boundary she usually kept between herself and the rest of the world. "Why are you so afraid of an empty suitcase?"
The question hit Clara harder than it should have. It felt invasive, a sharp needle poking at a balloon she had spent seventeen years inflating. She looked down at her notebook, at the meticulously drawn lines, the color-coded tabs, and the 'A+' she had written in the top right corner of the cover as a psychological anchor.
"Because if it's empty," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the clatter of silverware and the low hum of the jukebox, "then I haven't done enough. And if I haven't done enough, then I'm just... ordinary. And ordinary doesn't get you out of this town. Ordinary doesn't make the sacrifices my parents made worth it."
Kai didn't laugh. He didn't offer a platitude about how 'being yourself' was enough. He just watched her for a long beat, his thumb tracing the rim of his coffee mug.
"You think 'ordinary' is a dirty word," he said quietly. "But you're so busy building a pedestal for yourself that you're forgetting to stand on the ground. You're missing the texture of things, Clara."
He reached into his battered camera bag and pulled out a small, black-and-white polaroid. It was still slightly damp at the edges, the chemistry of the film still settling into its final form. He didn't hand it to her; he just slid it across the table until it rested on top of her planner, obscuring her Saturday afternoon schedule.
Clara looked down. It wasn't a photo of the fisherman. It wasn't a shot of the pier or the silver-scaled fish.
It was a shot of her.
He had caught her in a moment of pure, unshielded frustration. Her brow was furrowed, her lips slightly parted as she muttered to herself while checking her clipboard. Her yellow hood was pushed back, her hair a bit wild from the sea spray. But behind her, the sun had just barely begun to pierce through the gray mist, creating a halo of white light that made her look like something out of an old film—intense, focused, and vibrantly alive.
"You think you look like a mess there," Kai said, his voice a low vibration that seemed to bypass her ears and go straight to her chest. "But look at that photo. There's nothing ordinary about the way you fight for what you want. You just don't realize that you're allowed to want things that aren't on a list."
Clara picked up the photo. The plastic was cool against her fingertips. For a moment, the diner seemed to fade away—the smell of grease, the noise of the crowd, the weight of her father's expectations. She saw herself through Kai's lens, and for the first time in her life, she didn't see a grade or a rank. She saw a girl. Just a girl, standing on a pier, trying to make sense of the fog.
It was a 40% feeling. It was a feeling she couldn't categorize, couldn't schedule, and certainly couldn't put into a spreadsheet. It was terrifying.
"Twenty minutes are up," she said, her voice slightly shaky as she tucked the photo into the inner pocket of her raincoat, hidden away from the world. She stood up abruptly, the legs of her chair screeching against the tile floor. "We should go. I have a chemistry practice exam at two, and I still need to log the Elias contact info into the shared drive."
Kai smiled, a slow, lazy grin that told her he knew exactly what she was doing. He knew she was running back to the safety of her 60%. He stood up as well, sliding his camera bag over his shoulder.
"Right. Back to the 60%," he agreed, tossing a few bills onto the table to cover the check. "But hey, Clara? You kept the photo. That's a win for my column. We're making progress."
As they walked out of the Blueberry Diner and into the crisp, late-morning air, Clara felt the weight of the polaroid against her ribs. She told herself it was just a piece of plastic and ink. She told herself that Kai Jenkins was just a distraction from her ultimate goal.
But as she checked her watch to make sure they were on time for the walk back to the bus stop, she realized she hadn't checked the time once while they were sitting in that booth.
The "Human Perspective" project was supposed to be about documenting the city. But as Clara looked at Kai—who was currently distracted by the way the sunlight reflected off a puddle—she had the sinking, exhilarating feeling that the project was actually going to be about her.
And for the first time in her life, she wasn't sure if she was ready for the grade.