Pinhole: Spying on the Neighbor
Clean short story about innocently mischievous young teen girls curious about a quirky gal who doesn't try to fit in.
"The other girls and I liked to sneak over and take photos of Wren, the girl who lived at the end of the road at the top of the hill, using our leader's pinhole camera. Anything involving Wren got our group of girls speculating. Some girls weren't even neighbors but spent the night with us to get a chance to stalk her. The photo shoots became legendary. Missing out on one of those could mean exclusion from the deepest levels of our secret society. Terry knew private things about Wren and would release the info to us whenever we passed initiations in the game.
Terry's big idea was this: "Hey, I know. Let's sneak something into Wren's overnight and put it someplace in her yard that she likes to go to a lot." I wished I'd thought of that. But I thought of everything else. Like putting the statue of a swan in her yard. Temporarily of course. And taking a photo of Wren and the swan with the pinhole camera. That would make beautiful art. Really, really beautiful. Magical. But what if Wren caught us taking the picture? Would she shoot us with death ray hands?"
7500 words. This realistic, quirky Coming of Age tale is meant for YA Romance or adult Literary readers, as long as you don't judge girl crushes.
Clean short story about innocently mischievous young teen girls curious about a quirky gal who doesn't try to fit in.
"The other girls and I liked to sneak over and take photos of Wren, the girl who lived at the end of the road at the top of the hill, using our leader's pinhole camera. Anything involving Wren got our group of girls speculating. Some girls weren't even neighbors but spent the night with us to get a chance to stalk her. The photo shoots became legendary. Missing out on one of those could mean exclusion from the deepest levels of our secret society. Terry knew private things about Wren and would release the info to us whenever we passed initiations in the game.
Terry's big idea was this: "Hey, I know. Let's sneak something into Wren's overnight and put it someplace in her yard that she likes to go to a lot." I wished I'd thought of that. But I thought of everything else. Like putting the statue of a swan in her yard. Temporarily of course. And taking a photo of Wren and the swan with the pinhole camera. That would make beautiful art. Really, really beautiful. Magical. But what if Wren caught us taking the picture? Would she shoot us with death ray hands?"
7500 words. This realistic, quirky Coming of Age tale is meant for YA Romance or adult Literary readers, as long as you don't judge girl crushes.
Amazon Customer Review:
Pinhole: Spying on the Neighbor at first seems like a frolicking, cruel story about carefree teenage girls’ master plans of trickery. But Pinhole is a quick, satisfying literary bite about a teenage girl’s maturation, self-discovery, and transcendence.
The narrator, who is also the protagonist, starts the story being self-aware that they are of a young, immature mind with juvenile objectives. The main objective was to impress the ringleader of the camera game to increase her own status and authority. But this objective changes, with the protagonist coming to fear and distance herself from the ringleader.
There is quite a bit of appreciation in the story for pinhole camera photography. The pinhole camera and its style of photography is a metaphor for the concept of “subjective truth” and the perception of beauty, which does go through a progression with the story. You can feel the author’s fondness for photography.
The idea of a mysterious, unrelatable person as the vehicle for the plot is satisfyingly a la The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is also a young adult novel with themes of transcendence. There are even mentions of the subject being “witchy”. The story well written from a child’s perspective, in that the rules of the world are not yet fully known, understood, or constrained.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wistful about the duality of innocence and deception in young teenage girls’ machinations, but also hopeful for redemption.
Pinhole: Spying on the Neighbor at first seems like a frolicking, cruel story about carefree teenage girls’ master plans of trickery. But Pinhole is a quick, satisfying literary bite about a teenage girl’s maturation, self-discovery, and transcendence.
The narrator, who is also the protagonist, starts the story being self-aware that they are of a young, immature mind with juvenile objectives. The main objective was to impress the ringleader of the camera game to increase her own status and authority. But this objective changes, with the protagonist coming to fear and distance herself from the ringleader.
There is quite a bit of appreciation in the story for pinhole camera photography. The pinhole camera and its style of photography is a metaphor for the concept of “subjective truth” and the perception of beauty, which does go through a progression with the story. You can feel the author’s fondness for photography.
The idea of a mysterious, unrelatable person as the vehicle for the plot is satisfyingly a la The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is also a young adult novel with themes of transcendence. There are even mentions of the subject being “witchy”. The story well written from a child’s perspective, in that the rules of the world are not yet fully known, understood, or constrained.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wistful about the duality of innocence and deception in young teenage girls’ machinations, but also hopeful for redemption.