The Photographer by Barbara Steiner

**This blog contains adult language.**

Warning: Contains Spoilers!!!  This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself.  Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/....fuck it - it's Derrick.  There's never any mystery about that.

Tag Line: They were all pretty as a picture...and all marked for death.

From the Back of the Book: All the girls smiled for the camera... Megan had arranged for a group photo of the homecoming court...something to remember them by.  NOW THE GIRLS ARE GETTING SICK...ONE BY ONE.  Something is draining the life out of them.  Something the doctors can't identify... AND THE PHOTOS HAVE TAKEN ON AN EERIE GLOW...A grim portrait of once dazzling beauty...now faded to a ghostly image of death.

Okay, I'm not mad at the book blurb.  It's actually pretty good for a change and, if I had seen this book back in 1989 when it was published, I probably would have wanted to read it from that description.

We begin with our protagonist Megan chasing her best friend Cynthia down the hall of the school. Cynthia is trying to avoid Derrick because he gives her the creeps. Megan shows what a spectacular friend she is by laughing at Cynthia and telling her that she's being ridiculous. Derrick is new to town and kind of nerdy but harmless. Cynthia says he's been staring at her ever since he arrived at the school and now he's gone and done something awful. He's asked her to Homecoming!!!!!!!

The horror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Megan can't believe a nerd would ever ask a girl out and I'm starting to hate her a little. Cynthia says she didn't answer but he seemed to take her silence as acceptance. Megan laughs at the idea of the short, homely nerd dancing with the tall, blonde beauty. She's a peach.

Steiner makes a huge point of Megan's lunch being robust including a piece of German chocolate cake wrapped in foil. Has Steiner ever SEEN German chocolate cake? It's not the kind of thing you wrap in foil and throw in a lunch box. All the gooey topping would stick to the foil and it would be a huge mess.  I don't know what the point of this lunch description page was other than to introduce us to the fact that our heroine is "plump".  I guess Steiner's proud of having a plump heroine.  We don't get many of those.

Megan continues to be a dick about Cynthia's feelings and Cynthia, in turn, manages to get a dig in about Megan not having a social life to worry about. Ordinarily I'd say “ouch” but I think Megan pretty much deserved it, so high five to Cyn.

While they're eating, Megan suddenly drifts off into a memory of a dream she had the night before and she grips Cynthia's arm super hard as the memory overwhelms her completely.

Oh for fuck's sake. Really, Steiner? We're getting this stupid this early in the book. Yipee.

Cynthia bitches about Megan mangling her arm and Megan tells her about the dream. Cynthia was lying in a hospital bed pale and frightened. This does not really seem overwhelming enough for Megan to have such a fugue episode. Whatever. Cynthia brushes her off. She's stressed about school and mad at her on-and-off-boyfriend Gus and scared of Derrick but she's not sick. She hasn't been sick in a year at least. Besides, she's too busy to be sick. She has to finish sewing her homecoming dress.

Steiner tells us that Megan nibbles at her food. Mice nibble. Bunnies nibble. Girls eat. It's okay for girls to eat. It's allowed. The image of someone nibbling is just too idiotic for me to take seriously.

Megan notices Derrick staring at her across the room and secretly thinks that Derrick scares her too. She'd never tell Cynthia that though. She wouldn't want Cynthia to mistake her for a supportive friend. That would be the worst. She tells us that David has an unusual energy about him. It attracts her at times and repels her at times. Today she's just scared and she wonders if she's picking up Cynthia's fear. She sometimes absorbs the feelings of the people around her and....I feel sorry for her because I do that too and it sucks a lot of the time. I still hate her though.

After school Megan has photography club. Derrick is a member and he seems unnaturally subdued today. A fellow club member named Robert helps Megan set up her slideshow. Every week a member of the club presents some photographs for critique and today is Megan's turn. She's showing photos from her family's trip to India. The group discusses the superstitions that some cultures have regarding photography. The sponsor Mrs Kloverstrom mentions almost having her camera confiscated in Mexico because the person she photographed thought the image produced would steal his soul. A girl named Bunny makes a joke and Robert heckles her a bit. Megan thinks in her head how absolutely dumb Bunny is because Megan is a bitch.

She flips to a new picture and she is again overcome with the memory of one of the gypsy* women giving her a look of fear and it's just dumb so I don't care. Megan gets overwhelmed with memories a lot. I would be sympathetic of this but the memories she's being overwhelmed by aren't overwhelming at all. Drama llama, y'all.

*Side note. I learned recently that some people consider the word “gypsy” to be a hate term similar to the N word. I never knew that before but now that I do, I feel uncomfortable using the term. From here on, if the book mentions this woman again, I'm just going to refer to her as the woman from India. I don't always understand the pain and offense taken to certain words, but I am respectful of it and don't wish to cause further pain and offense.

Derrick doesn't comment on any of Megan's pictures. He's an extraordinary photographer and Megan is really hoping to learn some things from him in the club. After the meeting, Derrick offers Megan a ride home and she accepts.  I guess she forgot that he's creepy and she's scared of him??  Robert walks them out and invites them to drive into Denver with him some Saturday to take some pictures for a competition.

On the ride home, Megan talks about her pictures. She says she wants to have the one of her family crossing a river on elephants enlarged. So.....she couldn't have taken that one, right? They were crossing a river so it's not like she set her camera on timer and then ran to get in the picture. There were no selfie sticks back then. So someone else likely took it. Then why is it in her slideshow of pictures SHE took? Sounds like someone's a cheating cheater who cheats to me.

As soon as Megan walks in her door, she is overcome with fatigue and she goes straight to bed. She dreams of fire and planes crashing.

Apparently she and her parents were in a small plane returning from an excursion in India when it crashed. Her mom had a broken arm but Megan and her dad only had bruises. There was no actual fire. Megan mentions the crash to her parents that evening and it's almost as if they've both forgotten about it. Megan's mom says it's because it was such a non-event which seems really fucking weird to me. A plane I'm in falling from the air and crashing into the hard ground way below would be an event for me and one I'd not easily forget.

The next day at the newspaper meeting, the staff decides to do a special issue on superstitions and Halloween. Robert assigns Megan to go to the local psychic and have her fortune told. Megan is petrified of this idea. She refuses to go and then we get a few paragraphs about how Megan thinks she might be psychic but she's too scared to find out.

Wednesday night, Derrick shoots the Homecoming candidate pictures for the paper. Cynthia was one of them. She later says Derrick didn't seem upset when she told him she was going to the dance with Gus, but he smiled creepily at her the entire time he was taking the pictures.

Can you believe we are five chapters in and absolutely nothing has happened??? (Note from future me: I only took SEVEN pages of notes for this book.  It's usually double that.)

Derrick doesn't show up at school the next day and Robert needs the pictures for the paper so he and Megan leave campus during lunch and head to Derrick's house. Derrick's mom answers the door and says that Derrick has a cold. Robert asks to talk to Derrick so they can get the pictures and his mom says she'll go up and get him. Megan notes that Derrick's mom seems afraid of him. Then her wrists start itching for no reason. Steiner seems to be going full paranormal on us for this one. Weird.

Derrick's mom comes back down with the pictures. Robert and Megan look through them. All the girls are there: Cynthia, Bunny, Roxie, Marva, Candy and Lora. Megan thinks they're all cardboard with not much going for them except for Cynthia, of course. Megan's a super, huge, mega-bitch.

Robert asks Megan to the dance. They'll both be there to photograph it anyway but he figures they can sneak a dance or two in.  She happily accepts.

The night of the dance, Megan dresses in a dusty pink dress and feels exceptionally pretty. Robert seems appropriately gobsmacked when he sees her. They get to the dance and Derrick is already there snapping away. Cynthia complains that he's in her face constantly and it's creeping her out. Megan tells her that she should consider Derrick's stalker behavior a compliment. But then Derrick snaps a picture of Cynthia and Megan talking and the flash irritates Megan and all of a sudden it's a big deal. She didn't give a fuck when it was Cynthia being followed around and over-snapped but when it's her, she wants Robert to speak to Derrick immediately.

Megan notices that Cynthia isn't dancing much and she seems exhausted. She thinks Cynthia must have been up late finishing the gorgeous dress she's wearing. Robert and Megan go to dance and by the time the next song starts, Cynthia has lost consciousness and fallen to the floor. Megan is terrified when she sees Derrick watching with a smile on his face.

Gus, Robert and Megan go to the hospital with Cynthia. They run tests but find nothing amiss so everyone assumes it was stress and exhaustion. After Robert takes her home, Megan confesses that she thinks Cynthia might have an eating disorder. The words aren't used but Megan says Cynthia doesn't eat right in order to keep her figure. Same same. Robert decides this is the perfect time to confess his love for Megan and they kiss until she forgets Cynthia entirely.  Because that's the type of friend Megan is.

Cynthia is released from the hospital on Sunday but she doesn't come to school on Monday. Bunny talks to Megan after school and mentions how tired she is. She's physically tired and mentally tired and just over everything. She doesn't want to do her article for the paper or her homework or anything really.

Cynthia doesn't come to school all week. Megan stops by to see her on Friday and she looks awful. In fact, she looks like the dream Megan had weeks ago. Cynthia says the doctor suspects Mono and she'll probably be in bed for awhile. I can relate. I missed almost two months of school in junior high because of Mono. It was hard to bounce back from.

The newspaper staff is trying to get the next issue together when Robert realizes they don't have enough pictures. On cue, Roxie produces a massive dress box and pulls out two elaborate fairy costumes. She says one is for her and one is for Bunny and they can go to the mall that evening and let Derrick take pictures of them for the paper. Bunny is unenthusiastic but agrees. Robert makes some gay/fairy joke which makes me want to slap him and Roxie insists that they aren't “that close” which makes me want to slap Steiner.

Cynthia continues to get worse and at the end of the next week, she tearfully tells Megan that they're going to admit her again and test for cancer. Megan is alarmed and she begs Cynthia to get better as if poor Cynthia has any control over it.

After Cynthia's admission, they all dress up and take Halloween decorations to her room to cheer her up. Derrick comes along with his cameras. They decorate the room and then all pose with her for a picture. Megan takes note of how tired Bunny looks.

After they leave the hospital, Robert, Megan, Bunny, Roxie and Derrick head to the big Halloween party at the mall. They make plans to meet back at Robert's car at midnight and separate. Megan and Robert are enjoying some time together when Megan suddenly gets a feeling that something has happened to Bunny. Sure enough, they get word that Bunny collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Robert and Megan go straight to the hospital but there's nothing they can do, so they end up going back to Megan's to make out. Teen tragedy is nothing compared to teen hormones.

The next day, Megan goes to the hospital to visit Bunny and Cynthia. Bunny is pale and weak and says that she talked to Roxie on the phone and now Roxie is feeling sick too. Cynthia is asleep but her parents tell Megan that she's worse. All the tests are negative and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. Megan feels like Derrick is somehow responsible but she can't pinpoint why or how.

By Monday, all the female Homecoming candidates are sick and out of school. The principal calls Megan into her office to talk about the pictures in the paper and being submitted for yearbook. She points out to Megan that all the pictures are of the school “beauties”. There are no pictures of the clubs or the athletes or the student council. Megan is embarrassed that she hasn't noticed. The principal wants things balanced out immediately and Megan promises to talk to the staff at the meeting the next morning.

Megan takes the pictures into the newspaper office and starts looking through them. Most of them are of the Homecoming girls. Cynthia and Bunny lead the tally count with the most pictures. All of them were taken by Derrick. Megan can't help but feel that the illnesses are related to the pictures. She tells Robert and he laughs at her. He says he'll only listen to her when she has solid proof.  Nice guy, Robert.

Megan decides the logical thing to do is to get Derrick out of the way and then search his house. She asks for Robert's help and he says he'll assign Derrick to cover the city council meeting the next night because the student council president will be speaking at it. Megan sneaks over to Derrick's house when she knows he'll be at the meeting. She isn't sure how she's going to get in, but an opportunity presents itself miraculously when Derrick's mom comes home drunk and leaves the keys in the front door. Deus ex margarita.

Megan makes it up to Derrick's room and searches for the key to his dark room. Miraculously she finds that too. When she looks in the dark room, she finds pictures tacked up of all the Homecoming girls. Each one is surrounded by an otherwordly glow.

So....I think I would try tearing up the pictures and hoping that would free the girls' souls. My luck, it would just kill them, but that would be my first instinct. To rip up the photos, not to kill them. Jeez people.

Megan also finds glowing pics of Derrick's mom. She gathers up all the glowing photos and makes a break for the front door. Naturally she stumbles and drops all the photos down the stairs because Steiner is a rather formulaic horror writer and the survivor girl always does this. She always drops the evidence and leaves one piece of it behind so the bad guy can figure out that someone's been there. Although, in this case, the missing photos would have tipped him off anway. But whatever. She makes it out just as Derrick comes home natch. We would expect nothing less from our lucky, plucky, PH protagonists.

Megan takes the photos home and burns them one by one. Then she falls asleep and dreams of fire again.

The next day, Cynthia is feeling a lot better. She's alert for the first time in a week and she and Megan talk before Megan has to go to school. For some reason, she doesn't bother to check and see if Bunny and Roxie are feeling better as well. That would be the first thing I'd do. But she goes to school and decides to check up on absences for the term. She mostly finds that the Homecoming candidates have the most absences but she notes that Derrick didn't come to school that day. Also absent is the student council president who was photographed by Derrick the evening before. Megan gets her address and leaves school again to drop by. Jolene says she's tired but it's probably just a cold.

Megan goes back to school for a few periods (is nobody keeping track of these kids?!!?!) and then heads to the hospital. She finds that Cynthia's room has been quarantined off. Cynthia has had a relapse and is on the brink of death. The city newspaper has done an article about the “mystery illness” so the hospital has been forced to quarantine Cynthia's room to appease the public's fear of contagion. After questioning the nurse, Megan learns that Derrick had been to visit Cynthia in between her feeling better and her getting worse. He had his camera with him.

Bunny and Roxie are sharing a hospital room. They are both on the mend and say that Derrick didn't come by to visit them. Megan tells them to call for a nurse if he does and they are puzzled by this directive. Megan is convinced that Derrick took more pictures of Cynthia and that's why she's gotten so much worse.

That evening, Megan calls Robert and asks him to meet her at the hospital. By the time she gets there, Cynthia is dead. She tells Robert her theory about Derrick and the camera killing Cynthia and he labels her as hysterical and takes her home.

The funeral is on Saturday. Megan's parents are concerned that she looks so pale and tired so they tell her they're taking a trip to Vail the next week. Robert overhears and says that he will reassign her newspaper photos to other people. Derrick presumably. Derrick comes up to her with a hair clip in his hand and asks her if she dropped it somewhere. She's afraid she dropped it in his dark room.

So.....Steiner goes through all the trouble of telling us that Megan's parents are taking her to Vail the next week and then....she just goes to school on Monday like she's not really on vacation with her parents. In fact, Steiner tells us she's at school all week. So Steiner completely forgot about the trip two paragraphs after writing about it. Nice.

Saturday comes again. Megan's mom is flying off to the Caribbean on a modeling job.  Unless Steiner forgets that too.  Derrick, Robert and Megan are supposed to take their trip to Denver to do their photography thing. Megan doesn't want to go but she does. They snap pictures around a construction site until a police officer shows up and tells them that they have to leave. Megan notices that Derrick has both his cameras again and she begins to feel uneasy. They drive back to Boulder and drop Derrick off. They're at the mall when Megan suddenly feels like every last ounce of strength has been drained from her body. Robert begins to panic and he helps her to his car. He begs her the whole ride to her house to hold on and fight it. By the time they reach her house, she's barely conscious. She wonders if Derrick was taking her picture without her knowledge.

Megan sleeps for most of two days. Steiner tells us that she actually dies but Cynthia meets her and encourages her to go back and to fight so Megan does. On Monday, Megan's father has to go in to the office for an hour or so to get some things so he can work from home. Megan waits for him to leave and then summons all the strength she can muster to make it to Derrick's house. She knows she has to destroy the photos and the camera. She's heard Bunny and Roxie are back in the hospital and she suspects Derrick has been taking photos of them all with a telephoto lens.

When she arrives at the house, she can hear his mom calling out for help. She's on the couch and looks to be on the brink of death as well. Megan makes her way up to Derrick's room and takes all the pictures of her and his mom that she can find. He catches her in there and starts to snap picture after picture of her while doing the PH bad guy monologue thing. Megan records the entire thing on a recorder she brought along with her.

Derrick ties Megan's wrists and ankles, sits her in a chair and begins prepping for a portrait session. He snaps away as he tells her how he's been ignored and ridiculed by beautiful women and how they are useless to the world. Megan feels herself getting closer to death with each shot. Then he tells her he has to kill her because she knows too much and he leaves the room. Megan is about to lose consciousness when she smells the smoke.

She dies a couple more times and Cynthia keeps pushing her back. It's not so effective and dramatic when it keeps happening over and over. In fact, it starts to feel more like a hallucination than an actual event. She rocks herself onto the floor and squirms her way out of the room to the staircase. The whole time she's vowing to lose weight so she can squirm faster next time because, you know, things like this happen frequently in a teen's life. She begins to feel a bit better as she goes and she realizes that the pictures Derrick took of her are burning and giving her soul back to her.

Carefully she slides herself down the stairs. She can hear someone pounding on the door and Cynthia's ghost voice tells her it's Robert. Megan manages to make it to the door and open it. Robert and her father rush in to save the day. Megan tells them that Derrick's mom is still in the house but they are unable to save her as the fire spreads.

Later, Megan tells her father and Robert everything. Neither of them believe her still and she's lost the recorder. It's not like Derrick ever actually admitted his camera was magic anyway. They decide she shouldn't tell the cops the part about the camera because they'll think she's “crazy”. Which is, of course, the absolute WORST thing a person could ever be. Fuck you, Steiner. I have no idea what reason she's planning to give the police for being in Derrick's house and, apparently, Steiner has no idea either because she simply ignores that part and heads for an epilogue.

In the epilogue, Derrick has relocated to the “south” (it sounds like Arkansas to me since they mention Little Rock being nearby) and opened up a photography shop.

Final Thoughts: I hated pretty much everyone in this story except Cynthia, Roxie and Bunny. It's always hard to get through a book when you hate the protagonist and her love interest. I hated that Steiner never bothered to tell us where Derrick got the camera, why he used it on the Homecoming candidates pretty much exclusively (yes, I know they were pretty and he hated pretty women but were there really only FIVE pretty girls in the whole damn town?) or how it even worked. I don't think Steiner had a fucking clue how to answer any of that so she just didn't write it. Lazy lazy. I can't fathom how Megan could want to be with a boy who laughs at her, dismisses her feelings, calls her hysterical and doesn't believe a word she says. This does not sound like the hero of the book to me at all. But she's not much of a heroine, so I guess we'll just put a fork in this one and move on. All in all, it wasn't an awful book, but it wasn't good either.