Pictures
I never took pictures when I was younger. It didn't interest me. I'd pose for them of course, but I didn't really care to take them myself.
No wait, that's not true. I did like to take photographs, but when they were developed they were always such a disappointment. They weren't nearly as well done as my friends, and I was always so jealous. And if I couldn't be the best, why bother? Such a spoiled brat I was. In any event, my friends would take the pictures, and I'd take the occasional double that I wanted.
I always hated having to sit through my friends showing off their new pictures. Either I didn't know the people in them, or I had been there myself, or I had purposely avoided the event and I really didn't care to hear about what silly thing they'd done. It was painful, not entirely unlike having teeth pulled.
"And this is the pool at the hotel with the cute lifeguard, Monet, you would have just died!" Oh, God.
And then it didn't matter anymore. I entered a period of my life that I don't really remember clearly and I am quite glad for it. What I do remember is colored with pain and horror. It is largely unrecorded, up until I was dropped at the Massachusetts Academy.
I was poked and prodded (as much as possible, I suppose) and photographed. From every angle. In every way possible. There's a file three inches thick somewhere in the Academy's archives. I wanted to burn it. They were so humiliating in their cold, clinical light.
And then later, when I was part of the 'team', there are pictures of Jono and I, he brooding, myself catatonic. Several of Jubilee clutching an apple as she tries to 'lure' me out with them. Trying to relate to me in their own ways, but I didn't understand that at the time. I always thought Jonothan was using me to fuel his own misery. The two outsiders together. I couldn't figure out Jubilee at all. I resented those pictures because they stood to remind me of a time I'd rather forget, that I wished never had existed. If not for them I could have pretended that it was a dream, a story.
Afterwards, when I was freed from that form, I avoided having my picture taken. The thought scared me, irrationally. What if I somehow regressed, or worse? The pictures would be there to remind me of my failure. I rarely appeared in pictures during those next few years.
Now that we've gone our own ways, I wish I had more to remember them by. I have a few pictures, a class photo from before the school was destroyed, some odd informal pictures, and the pictures of Paige's graduation. The class picture is one of the only shots of Everett I possess, the only picture that I'm in. The graduation pictures are so joyful. I regret that I didn't take the time to get to know them better, that we weren't friends. I wish we were now.
I'm take my own pictures again. I bought a nice little camera and have been slowly filling up several photo albums. I want to show them off to the others, to say here, see what I've been doing. But they're not here now, are they?
And that's my fault.
[ Back ]