Shooting Stars Read Free Page A

inside will be grainier and darker but worth a hundred times as much as theirs, and I’m eager to get home now to see how much I’ll be able to add to my online piggy bank to night.
    When my night’s produced just the usual unexciting, general shots that I’ve taken while out and about, like of celebrities picking up their dry cleaning, I usually upload them straight onto this website called papshotsrus .com, where they sell to the highest bidder for a small cut. It’s easy, quick, and low contact, which is good, because sometimes contact means people freaking out about my size and age.
    But to night I won’t be selling through a website, and no one will be freaking out about my size or age, either. To night, I know the person who passed on the tip— Melissa, a newspaper editor I work with now and again— will want these shots exclusively. It’ll be an easy sale, and I won’t have to share a portion of my earnings.
    When the path clears, I slip outside, avoiding the other paps, and make my way around the side of the venue, where it’s quiet. I stow all my gear away, unlock my bike, and am on my way home in minutes. I take a familiar route through 13
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    as many back streets as I can, since it’s now almost midnight. My dad might not be here this week to enforce a curfew (not that he would anyway), but the LAPD can if they feel like it. There have been a few times over the past year and a half that they’ve used the minors’ 10:00 p.m. curfew to hustle me off when I’m being particularly annoying to one whiny star or another.
    Luckily, I avoid any run- ins with the law, and within the next ten minutes I am back home at the two- bedroom apartment I share with my dad. I lock up my bike as fast as I can, fi sh out my fauxPod, and take the stairs two at a time. I still have my backpack on and am downloading my shots onto my laptop when I get the editor, Melissa, on her cell.
    “Jo?” she says groggily, obviously already in bed. “I take it the tip paid off?”
    “And then some. Ned Hartnett arrived and then fainted.
    Twice.”
    I hear her sit up in bed. “You got it?”
    I check out the shots that are fl ipping up, one by one, onto my computer screen. “Yep. And they look goooood.”
    “Send them through. I’m going into the offi ce now and we’re getting this out tomorrow, even if it kills me.” I laugh. “I’m sure it won’t.” I know this editor well, and she is one tough nut. I’d bet several of my internal organs that these shots will be on the front page of her paper tomorrow.
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    “I hope so. Now, let’s talk money,” she says as I hear her pulling on clothes and a belt buckle being done up.
    ★ ★ ★
    The money we decide on (after a little negotiation) is more than satisfactory, and when I’m off the phone and have sent the shots directly to Melissa, I bring up my savings spreadsheet. This is my piggy bank. And the money I’ll add from to night, plus the money that my dad will add (he matches me dollar for dollar), means I am much closer to my goal than I was this morning. In fact, I am now more than three- quarters of the way there.
    My goal? It’s simple, really. Photography classes that will take me across three continents in three years and hone my skills in what I really want to become— a portrait photographer. And when I say “portrait photographer,” please . . . I’m talking Annie Leibovitz, portrait photographer to the famous and infamous, and not Kiddifoto, making babies sit in pump-kins and look oh so cute at the mall.
    Don’t get me wrong, being Zo Jo is great and everything. On nights like to night, it’s exciting and innovative and the chase can be a lot of fun. Plus, it’s in my blood: my dad is a paparazzo from way back. Where this industry is concerned, he’s royalty. He’s not on the