Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

angles.
    Days stretched into weeks, and I rarely ate or slept. I left my phone in my apartment, but I rarely stopped by there for anything more than a shower, a catnap, and a change of clothes. I was well aware that I would miss moments the longer I stayed off the streets, and my camera would go hungry—meaning I would lose focus on my photography and start to think about other things, like whether Patrick was missing me, or how Shawn was doing, or if Patrick was out of the hospital already, or what treatment plan Shawn had settled on, or if he’d settled at all. I couldn’t fathom calling either of them for the details I craved, so I kept myself occupied and distracted.
    School never entered my train of thought. It simply wasn’t my focus right now. I kept away from campus, knowing there wasn’t anything for me there. Mercedes would be breathing down my neck about the senior project, but I didn’t have anything to show her. Part of me wished that my camera would point me in the right direction to complete my project so I could graduate, but the majority of me just didn’t care. School had lost all of its appeal, all of its context. It simply wasn’t important anymore.
    Ever so often, when I checked back into my apartment to try to eat a withered apple or a handful of peanuts, I realized that my phone had pinged with a message from my adviser. I never looked at them. I didn’t need the distraction.
    Without any distractions—except for photography—my art boiled down to a science. I left my apartment as early as possible and stayed out as late as possible. I had to be there to get the shots. That was the most basic thing.
    And I was getting the shots. I had never shot like this before—compulsively, like I had to in order to continue breathing. It became a strange manifestation of myself that I wasn’t altogether comfortable with. But Mercedes had told the studio class once that we were never supposed to be comfortable—it was the discomfort that would push us to the next level.
    Well, I was breaking through to the next level, all right. That, or I was breaking—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I didn’t feel like myself; I didn’t want to feel like myself. I sought out alleyways and dumpsters and wild patches of asphalt no one took pictures of, and I featured them all in the best lighting of the day, saying something about the forgotten parts of this fair city. I took photos of people dressed up for galas, entering restaurants I would probably never be able to afford, and I took pictures of the people who rooted through the trash behind the very same restaurants, hungry, looking for any sort of scraps to sustain them through the next day. I traversed homeless encampments, talking with their residents, gaining their trust, and photographing them. I listened to them tell their stories, took notes, and got the camera to tell the rest of it.
    “How long are you going to keep coming back here?” a grizzled old woman asked me after I distributed some sandwiches I made in the cafeteria at school, figuring no one would miss them if I carried out several shopping bags full of them.
    “I guess until it makes sense,” I said, shrugging.
    She patted my shoulder comfortingly. “Welcome, then. It doesn’t ever make sense.”
    And it didn’t. She was right. We lived in such a beautiful place—one of the most expensive in the nation—and there was a significant population who didn’t enjoy a single luxury or perk here. I shot whole memory cards full of photos in these encampments, always friendly, always ready to listen or help in some way, always bearing sandwiches or whatever food I could cart out of the cafeteria. So much of it went to waste anyway.
    It was through this incessant roaming through the back lots and side streets of San Francisco that I found the gallery.
    The gallery was an unassuming exhibit space tucked into a row of retail spots and eateries. It wasn’t in the more booming blocks of the