“Don’t miss the moment!” Grandma Louise would always say. “Make sure it lives forever. A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose.”
Mary tried to do just that, but not everyone appreciated her enthusiasm.
“Oh, Nosy Mary, you’re taking pictures again!” moaned her mother that morning as Mary swung her backpack over one shoulder. “Please take someone else’s photo. I don’t like to be in front of the camera. Why do you have to stick your nose into everything?”
Mary pretended not to mind, but the nickname clung to her anyway. At school, it wasn’t much better.
“Don’t get me,” a boy warned, ducking behind his locker door.
“Mary, stop,” a girl groaned, covering her face with a sleeve. “I’m not ready for my close-up.”
Mary lowered the camera slightly. “It’s just the yearbook,” she said, trying to sound casual, like her heart wasn’t thumping. “You’ll want these pictures someday.”
“Sure, Nosy Mary,” someone muttered as they passed, and a few kids laughed.
Mary kept walking. At least her larger-than-average nose hid behind Grandma Louise’s camera, and she now had a reason to feel special.
Because the camera was magic.
Mary had discovered it in her secret darkroom at home, the tiny space she’d made in the laundry room with a curtain, a red bulb, and a lot of stubbornness. With the very first photographs that Mary took from Grandma’s camera, extra people and things mysteriously appeared in the pictures when developing them.
“What’s this?” Mary had whispered the first time, holding up a dripping print. In the photo, a shy girl’s sketchbook glowed faintly gold. In another, storm clouds hovered above a boy’s math worksheet even though the classroom had been bright. Once, a thin silver thread connected two classmates who pretended they couldn’t stand each other.
Mary learned the camera didn’t change reality. It didn’t predict the future. It revealed what was already there—feelings, intentions, secrets hiding in plain sight. And it only worked when Mary used Grandma Louise’s camera and developed the film herself. If Mary used a school camera, the photos were normal. If anyone else developed Grandma’s film, Mary suspected the magic would disappear, so she never let anyone else touch it.
She never told anyone. It was hard enough being “Nosy Mary” without also being “Mary Who Thinks Her Camera Is Magic.”
“I see you!” Mary declared one afternoon, snapping a picture of Mr. Rockwell, her eighth-grade English teacher at Lancaster Valley Middle School. She meant it as a joke, but it came out bold.
Mr. Rockwell looked up and smiled. “Well, since you see me, why don’t you apply to be yearbook editor? I think you have the nose for it!” he suggested, peering into her lens. “It’s my first year overseeing the yearbook, and I don’t know much other than how to teach English. You might know more about photography than I do. It’s time for you to shine.”
Mary’s stomach flipped. “I’m not your best student, Mr. Rockwell,” she argued, unsure of her capabilities. “I’m more of a geek with a camera.”
“I need you to be a leader, Mary,” Mr. Rockwell decided, handing her the school’s yearbook camera. “Finish the yearbook by March 1st, so it can be ready for graduation. No excuses! Get the job done, and keep your nose clean, Nosy Mary!”
Leader. Mary almost laughed. She felt more like a blurry photo—present, but not the main subject. Still, she nodded, because Grandma Louise’s voice echoed in her mind: Don’t miss the moment.
The yearbook office turned out to be a glorified closet down the hall from Mr. Rockwell’s classroom. It had a desk, a squeaky chair, and shelves that leaned a little like they were tired. Mary called it her office anyway. If she said it like she believed it, maybe she would.
Over the next few months, Mary photographed middle school dances, basketball games, cafeteria lunches, band practices, special assemblies, ski trips, swim meets, and more—even when students did not want their pictures taken.
“Don’t turn up your noses!” Mary called to her classmates. “You’ll thank me twenty years from now that you have pictures of yourselves from your younger days.”
Some days she felt proud. Other days she felt like an insect pinned to a bulletin board—noticed for the wrong reasons. When she was alone, she told herself the yearbook mattered. It was a memory book. It was proof that moments existed.
At home, Mary developed film from Grandma’s camera whenever she could. The magic photos revealed all kinds of things, like who had a crush on whom, who was thinking of their dog, and who was worrying about their science test. Mary didn’t use the magic to embarrass anyone. She used it to understand them. If she noticed what other people missed, maybe that wasn’t nosy. Maybe that was… kind.
Then the disturbances began.
One afternoon Mary opened her closet office and found the chair pulled out when she knew she’d pushed it in. Another day, her radio—which she used to keep herself company while sorting photos—was missing. She searched under the desk, behind the shelves, even inside a box of old yearbooks that smelled like dust and glue.
“Where is my radio?” Mary asked Mr. Rockwell after school, confused, looking under the office table. “I was just playing it. Oh, where are those pictures I developed yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Mary,” he replied, rolling up his plaid sleeves. “No one else uses the closet but you. I hardly even come in here because I am too busy.”
Mary forced a laugh. “Maybe my office is haunted.”
Mr. Rockwell smiled, but Mary’s stomach stayed tight. Haunted wasn’t the word. Used was the word. Like someone else had been here when she wasn’t.
She decided to be careful. “I’m going to develop my pictures in my secret darkroom at home tonight,” Mary explained. “That way, I can keep track of my photographs until we find out where the missing items went.”
Picture Day arrived with a cranky photographer from School Pictures USA named Frans Robert.
“Oui, oui, if you don’t want to smile for the photo, fine,” Frans snapped as he took pictures. “It’s no skin off my nose if you look unhappy in your lifelong portraits!”
Mary took a behind-the-scenes photo of him for the yearbook. Later, in her darkroom, the developed print made her pause. A thin red gleam—sharp as a line—seemed to slice toward the stack of yearbook proofs in the background.
Mary had seen red once before in a photo of two students arguing over a solo in band. Red didn’t mean “crime.” It meant heat—competition, jealousy, a feeling that wanted to win.
“Is Frans mad about the yearbook?” Mary whispered. She pictured him stomping into her closet office, snatching her work like a villain in a movie. The idea was ridiculous… but the red gleam wasn’t nothing.
The next day, Mary biked to school, forgetting the school camera at home, so she took pictures with Grandma Louise’s camera, which she usually carried in her backpack everywhere. A camera is a camera, she thought.
“Smile, Hank!” Mary laughed, snapping a shot of Hank the janitor at lunchtime as he mopped a sticky patch of cafeteria floor.
“Put that stupid camera away!” Hank yelled at her, holding up his fist.
Mary’s cheeks burned, but she lifted her chin. “It’s my job to take your photo, sir!” she blurted out. “Mr. Rockwell put me in charge of the yearbook. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to my office.”
That night, Mary developed Hank’s photo. A strange gray shadow swirled around Hank’s mop and bucket, thick as smoke that couldn’t find a way out.
Mary stared until her eyes watered. “What is wrong with him?” she wondered aloud. “I have to figure this out!”
During the next week, Mary paid attention. She didn’t chase Hank like a detective in a trench coat. She just noticed. Hank was often near the yearbook closet. Hank’s footsteps echoed in the hall after the last bell. Hank’s mop bucket appeared in the corner of photo after photo when Mary developed Grandma’s film—faint, ghostlike, almost like the camera was underlining a sentence.
Mary laid the prints on the laundry room floor. Red gleam near Frans. Gray shadow around Hank. Missing radio. Moved chair. Warm closet door.
The camera only revealed what was already there. But Mary still had to decide what it meant. Gray could be guilt. Or sadness. Or secrecy. Gray could be someone carrying something heavy.
Mary tried not to jump to conclusions, because jumping was how people fell on their faces. Still, the closer March 1st came, the tighter her chest felt.
At last, after hours alone organizing the perfect selection of photographs and captions, Mary decided she had completed the keepsake.
“The yearbook is finally finished!” Mary announced, showing Mr. Rockwell right on time.
“This is fabulous, Mary!” Mr. Rockwell exclaimed, hugging her. “I’m so proud of you! You’ve given your student body a wonderful reminder of this glorious year of school! I’m sending it to the printer tomorrow afternoon.”
Mary’s throat felt thick. Proud. That was a word no one used about her very often. She imagined students flipping through the yearbook years later and pointing—There’s me! There’s you! There’s that day! She imagined Grandma Louise nodding.
Mr. Rockwell left the masterpiece on the desk in the yearbook office to show the principal the next day. Mary told herself it would be safe. It was just a closet, after all.
In the morning, when Mr. Rockwell returned, the finished product was gone.
“The yearbook has been stolen!” Mr. Rockwell announced over the school intercom. “If anyone finds it, there is a reward waiting for you in my office. Bring it to me immediately!”
Mary sprinted to her closet office. Paper scraps. Empty film canisters. An open drawer that should have been shut. Her stomach dropped like an elevator.
“What do you mean the yearbook has been stolen?” Mary cried, rummaging through the shelves. “I’m going to search the school! The yearbook has to be right under my nose.”
Distraught, she searched through the entire school, taking pictures with Grandma Louise’s camera, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the missing yearbook. The gym. The library. The band room. The main office hallway. Even the trophy case, like someone might have hidden it behind awards for fun.
After school, she rushed home and developed the film with shaking hands.
Hank’s mop and bucket appeared in every photograph that Mary developed. Not always big. Sometimes only a corner. Sometimes only a shadow of a shadow. But it was there, like an arrow pointing the same direction again and again.
Mary swallowed. “All the clues lead back to Hank,” she murmured. Then she hesitated, thinking of the red gleam in Frans’s photo. “Or… am I missing something?”
Mary didn’t want to accuse the wrong person. She could already hear the hallway laughs. Nosy Mary stuck her nose in it again. But she couldn’t do nothing. She had worked too hard.
“I’m going to try to talk to him tomorrow after school before I come to any conclusions,” she decided, pressing her palm flat on the prints as if she could press the truth out of them.
The next day, Mary waited until the halls emptied. She found Hank near the yearbook closet, moving slowly, like he didn’t want the day to end.
“Hank, can I please speak to you for a minute?” Mary asked, trying to keep her voice calm and grown-up.
“What do you want?” Hank raged, but his anger sounded tired, like it had been used too many times. “I have had enough of you and your camera.”
Mary’s hands tightened around her backpack straps. “The yearbook is missing,” she said.
Hank’s eyes flicked toward the closet door.
Mary’s heart hammered. “Have you seen it?” she asked.
Hank pushed her into the yearbook office and locked the door with his key.
For a moment, Mary forgot how to breathe. “Wait! What are you doing? You can’t lock me here!” she yelled, flipping on the light. “Help! Someone, help me!”
No one answered. The hallway swallowed sound.
Mary pounded once, twice, then pressed her forehead against the door. Fear buzzed under her skin. She imagined her mother’s face. She imagined Mr. Rockwell’s disappointment. She imagined never living this down.
Then she noticed the corner behind the stacked boxes. A folded blanket. A small bag. A thermos.
Mary’s breathing slowed.
The gray shadow. The warm door. The moved chair. The missing radio.
Hank wasn’t just near her office. Hank had been in it.
Mary sank to the floor, hugging her knees. She still felt scared—being locked in was wrong, and she was allowed to be afraid—but another feeling slid in beside the fear. Understanding.
Maybe Hank wasn’t hiding a crime so much as he was hiding a need.
Mary cried quietly, not because she wanted to, but because her body didn’t know what else to do with all the feelings stuffed inside her chest. Then she remembered Grandma Louise’s words and wiped her face with her sleeve. Don’t miss the moment. Even the awful ones taught you something.
Eventually, Mary curled up and fell asleep to the hum of the building, the closet smelling faintly of paper and soap.
The next morning, when Mr. Rockwell opened the yearbook office door, Mary stumbled to her feet.
“What are you doing here?” Mr. Rockwell cried. “You look awful.”
Mary’s voice shook, but she made it steady. “Hank locked me in the closet last night. He stole the yearbook.”
Later that morning, Mary stood outside the principal’s office while the adults spoke in low, serious voices. Mary didn’t hear everything—only bits. Safety. Rules. Consequences. Help.
When Hank finally stepped into the hallway, his shoulders sagged. He wouldn’t look at Mary at first.
“I just liked the yearbook so much,” Hank mumbled. “I wanted to look at it. No one ever takes my picture.”
Mary swallowed hard. Hank had done something wrong. Very wrong. But the gray shadow hadn’t been evil. It had been heavy. Lonely.
Hank returned the yearbook, holding it carefully. Mary inspected it closely. “I don’t see a scratch on it,” she whispered, relief washing through her so fast her knees felt wobbly.
The principal gave Hank a stern warning and told him he would have to meet with someone from the district. Hank nodded over and over, like a person trying to be smaller.
Mary looked at Hank’s hands—rough, careful hands that had held her yearbook like it mattered. She made a decision that surprised even her.
“You should be in it,” she said softly.
Hank blinked. “What?”
“You work here too,” Mary said. “That makes you part of the story.”
Hank’s face crumpled for a second, like he was trying not to feel anything. “I’m sorry, Mary,” he whispered. “I acted really stupid.”
Mary nodded. “Try not to rub your nose in it,” she said, and for the first time, Hank gave a tiny, embarrassed smile.
That afternoon, Mary went home and developed one last roll of film from Grandma Louise’s camera. She had taken a picture of Hank in the hallway as he handed back the yearbook.
As the image appeared in the tray, Mary held her breath.
The gray shadow was gone.
In its place was a faint golden glow—small but steady—around Hank’s hands.
Mary blinked fast. The camera wasn’t excusing what Hank had done. It was showing a turning point, a chance to do better.
The yearbook went to the printer that afternoon.
At the next assembly, Mr. Rockwell hurried to the school’s loudspeaker and made his announcement. “The yearbook has been found!” he cheered. “Mary solved the mystery on the nose! Nothing gets past her! Order your copy today!”
Students clapped. Mary’s face warmed, part embarrassment, part pride.
When the printed yearbooks arrived, Mary flipped straight to the back. She had added one extra photo at the last minute: Hank the janitor, smiling shyly beside his mop bucket.
Mary traced the edge of the picture with her finger. She still wasn’t sure if people would stop calling her Nosy Mary. But she knew something now. Noticing things didn’t make her annoying. Sometimes noticing things made her brave. Sometimes it made her kind.
Grandma Louise had been right. Don’t miss the moment. Sometimes the biggest truths weren’t the loud ones. They were the quiet details hiding in plain sight.
Right under your nose.
Pen Jen's Inkwell Podcast version:
“Smile!” called 14-year-old Mary Nose, who loved to take pictures with her magic camera, inherited from her maternal grandmother Louise Jenkins, a famous photojournalist who took pictures all over the world.
“Don’t miss the moment!” Louise would always say. “Make sure it lives forever. A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose.”
Mary tried to do just that, but not everyone appreciated her enthusiasm.
“Oh, Nosy Mary, you’re taking pictures again!” moaned her mother. It seemed that Mary’s friends and family always teased the gawky girl. “Please take someone else’s photo. I don’t like to be in front of the camera. Why do you have to stick your nose into everything?”
At least this time, her larger-than-average nose hid behind a magic camera, and she now had a reason to feel special.
“What’s this?” Mary asked, holding up a developed picture in her secret darkroom. With the very first photographs that Mary took from her grandma’s camera, extra people and things mysteriously appeared in the pictures when developing them. “I just don’t know how that person ended up in my photo. He wasn’t there when I took the photo! I wonder what it means?”
Despite the unusual additional people and things that magically appeared in Mary’s new photos, she had obvious talent and a keen eye for what other people missed.
“I see you!” Mary declared, taking a picture of Mr. Rockwell, her eighth-grade English teacher at Lancaster Valley Middle School.
“Well, since you see me, why don’t you apply to be yearbook editor? I think you have the nose for it!” he suggested to Mary, looking into her camera. “It’s my first year overseeing the yearbook, and I don’t know much other than how to teach English. You might know more about photography than I do. It’s time for you to shine.”
“I’m not your best student, Mr. Rockwell,” Mary argued, unsure of her capabilities. “I’m more of a geek with a camera.”
“I need you to be a leader, Mary,” Mr. Rockwell decided, giving her the school’s yearbook camera. “Your pictures are wonderful. Finish the yearbook by March 1st, so it can be ready for graduation. No excuses! Get the job done, and keep your nose clean, Nosy Mary!”
The next day, Mary biked to school, forgetting the school camera at home, so she took pictures with Grandma Louise’s camera, which she usually carried in her backpack everywhere. A camera is a camera, she thought.
“Smile, Hank!” Mary laughed, snapping a shot of Hank the janitor at lunchtime.
“Put that stupid camera away!” Hank yelled at her, holding up his fist.
Ignoring Hank, Mary took his picture anyway. Later that afternoon when she developed the pictures, Mary noticed a strange, ominous glow around Hank.
“What is wrong with him?” Mary wondered aloud. “I have to figure this out!”
During the next week, Mary followed Hank around the school, taking more pictures.
“Give me the film from your camera!” Hank demanded. “I told you to stop taking my picture. Stop putting your nose where it doesn’t belong!”
“It’s my job to take your photo, sir!” Mary blurted out. “Mr. Rockwell put me in charge of the yearbook. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to my office.”
During the next few weeks, Mary noticed that the yearbook office—a glorified closet—was not always found the way that she left it. The closet was down the hall from Mr. Rockwell’s classroom, and the best office that he could find for the school’s yearbook editor.
“Where is my radio?” Mary asked Mr. Rockwell one day after school, confused, looking under the office table. “I was just playing it. Oh, where are those pictures I developed yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Mary,” he replied, rolling up his plaid sleeves. “No one else uses the closet, but you. I hardly even come in here because I am too busy.”
“I’m going to develop my pictures in my secret dark room at home tonight,” Mary explained. “That way, I can keep track of my photographs until we find out where the missing items went.”
Over the next few months, Mary photographed middle school dances, basketball games, cafeteria lunches, band practices, special assemblies, ski trips, swim meets, and more—even when students did not want their pictures taken.
“Don’t turn up your noses!” Mary called to her classmates. “You’ll thank me twenty years from now that you have pictures of yourselves from your younger days.”
The magic photos revealed all kinds of things, like who had a crush on whom, who was thinking of their dog, and who was worrying about their science test. She also oversaw Picture Day with a cranky photographer from School Pictures USA named Frans Robert.
“Oui, oui, if you don’t want to smile for the photo, fine,” Frans snapped as he took pictures. “It’s no skin off my nose if you look unhappy in your lifelong portraits!”
After hours alone working on organizing the perfect selection of photographs for the yearbook, Mary decided she had completed the keepsake.
“The yearbook is finally finished!” Mary announced, showing Mr. Rockwell in early March.
“This is fabulous, Mary!” Mr. Rockwell exclaimed, hugging her. “I’m so proud of you! You’ve given your student body a wonderful reminder of this glorious year of school! I’m sending it to the printer tomorrow afternoon.”
Then, Mr. Rockwell left the masterpiece on the desk in the yearbook office to show the principal the next day. In the morning, when he returned to the larger-than-life closet, the finished product was gone.
“The yearbook has been stolen!” Mr. Rockwell announced over the school intercom. “If anyone finds it, there is a reward waiting for you in my office. Bring it to me immediately!”
“What do you mean the yearbook has been stolen?” Mary cried, running to her office. She rummaged through the desk and shelves, to find nothing but paper scraps and empty film canisters. “I’m going to search the school! The yearbook has to be right under my nose.”
Distraught, she searched through the entire school, taking pictures with Grandma Louise’s camera, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the missing yearbook.
“All the clues lead back to Hank the janitor,” Mary quipped, as the magic pictures came together. Oddly enough, Hank’s mop and bucket appeared in every photograph that Mary developed. “I’m going to try to talk to him tomorrow after school before I come to any conclusions.”
“Hank, can I please speak to you for a minute?” Mary asked in a confrontational tone.
“What do you want?” Hank raged. “I have had enough of you and your camera.”
Hank pushed her into the yearbook office and locked the door with his key.
“Wait! What are you doing? You can’t lock me here overnight!” Mary yelled, flipping on the light. “Help! Someone, help me! Hank is a thief! Oh, I wonder what Grandma Louise would do in a pinch like this?”
Mary curled up in a ball on the floor and cried until she fell asleep.
The next morning, when Mr. Rockwell opened the yearbook office door, Mary burst into tears again. “What are you doing here?” Mr. Rockwell cried. “You look awful.”
“Hank locked me in the closet last night!” Mary mumbled. “He stole the yearbook. After I call my mom, I’m calling the police. My mom must be worried sick as to where I am.”
Later that morning, Mary’s mother charged down the hall, throwing her fist in the air.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Mary questioned. “You can’t beat up Hank! I called the police. Please, go powder your nose and calm down.”
“He deserves a good reality check!” Mrs. Nose demanded. “What was Hank thinking? Mary, taking all these nosy pictures got you into a lot of trouble, young lady. Please give up photography. You could be a cheerleader instead. I was a cheerleader in high school!”
“Enough, Mom,” Mary insisted. “I am a serious photographer like Grandma Louise.”
When explaining how Mary figured out that Hank was the perpetrator, Mary left out the part about the magic clue-giving pictures that her grandmother’s camera made. She did not want anyone to think that she was imagining things.
“Mary did a wonderful job on the yearbook,” Mr. Rockwell explained to Mrs. Nose. “I’m so sorry for this nonsense. I had no idea that Hank was so destructive. Everything is going to be okay.”
By noon, the police arrested Hank the janitor. Sadly, he had been homeless for months and had to sleep in the yearbook closet from time to time, which explained Mary’s missing items from the office.
“Last night, I slept next to the school’s dumpster since I locked Mary in the closet,” Hank explained. “I just liked the yearbook so much that I took it with me,” he whispered, twisting the truth with a straight face.
“Well, that’s a bit of a stretch,” the police officer declared, putting Hank in handcuffs. “Don’t cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Give Mary back her yearbook now!”
“I’m sorry, Mary,” Hank pleaded, returning the yearbook to its editor.
“I forgive you, Hank,” Mary whispered. “At least you took good care of the yearbook. I don’t see a scratch on it,” she decided, examining it closely. “I didn’t know you were homeless. I’m going to hold a fundraiser for you through a special photography exhibit. Hank, you need a home.”
“Please let Hank go,” Mr. Rockwell explained to the police. “We don’t want to press charges. We just want Hank to promise to never steal again. Definitely never ever lock anyone in a closet again. Do you promise, Hank?”
“Yes, sir,” Hank agreed. “I promise.”
“Ask for help next time,” Mr. Rockwell instructed. “Hank, you need to speak to the principal to see if the school will allow you to keep your job.”
“I’ll try to do better,” Hank mumbled as the police took off the handcuffs. “I acted really stupid. I’m sorry. Try not to rub my nose in it.”
“We love you, Hank!” Mary announced, snapping his picture for a special addition to the completed yearbook. “I just got your mug shot, and it’s going in the yearbook as one of my favorite memories.”
Then, Mr. Rockwell hurried to the school’s loudspeaker to make an announcement.
“The yearbook has been found!” he cheered. “Mary solved the mystery on the nose! Nothing gets past her! Nosy Mary’s yearbook is the best yearbook ever. Order your copy today!”
Copyright 2023 Jennifer Waters
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