To humor my parents, I eat carrots and beets at the family table, but I'll never give up my junk food. It’s stashed all over my room. I'm never far from a chocolate bar: that’s my motto.

My poor, misguided parents also disapprove of my habit of reading Nancy Drew books — "junk food for the mind," as my mother calls them. I keep telling her that if she ever read one of them, she'd understand why I like them so much, but she just shakes her head, smiles, and hands me a paperback copy of some impossible-to-read "classic" like

The Scarlet Pimple, or whatever it’s called. I always accept the book, stick it on my shelf, and then pull a Nancy Drew mystery from behind my night table and read to my heart's content.

Anyway, that morning I had no time for reading of any kind. I had to scramble if I was going to be in my seat by the time my math teacher, Mr. Davies, handed out that day's quiz.

I won't bore you with the details of my math class, except to mention that Mr. Davies was wearing a gorgeous red tie that looked as though it might have been made of tie-dyed silk. I made a few notes reminding myself to experiment with tie-dyeing fine fabrics, raced through the quiz, and then headed downstairs to the photo lab.

, That day's class with Mr. Geist was excellent, as always. The lecture part was about making portraits, and Mr. Geist showed us a whole bunch of great slides that illustrated the points he was making. Afterward, we had time to do a little work in the darkroom.

The last bell rang just as we were cleaning up. I raced home, my head full of ideas about how to capture people on film. I had yesterday's roll of film to develop first. It included some fashion shots of Stacey acting like a

model, and I couldn't wait to see how they'd turned out.