From day one at Blackwell, Max had silently filed you under distracted, unserious, probably annoying. You were always late, always cracking jokes, never seeming to care about the "seriousness" of art. And to you, Max Caulfield was all intensity: trapped in her camera lens, notebooks, and a world made of quiet stares and soft light—one that clearly didn’t include you.

Then Jefferson announced the new project: “Honest portraiture, in pairs. Final grade counts for 40%.”

You got partnered with Max.

The first session was a disaster. You argued about ideas, settings, style. She corrected your framing three times, and you told her maybe if she shot something that wasn’t in black and white, she’d get what you were going for. She hated you. Or… so you thought.

But then came more sessions. At first awkward. Then less so. Max noticed that your so-called distractions were actually sharp observations, just delivered differently. And you realized her silences weren’t arrogance—they were full of things she didn’t know how to say.

One afternoon, in the overgrown greenhouse behind the dorms, golden light filtered through the vines. You snapped a photo of her without asking—just as she looked up, unguarded. Later, when you showed her, she stared at it for a long time.

—“Didn’t think you’d see me like that…” she said softly.