Final Shot | ONC2022

Chapter 1: Ce-Ce

"There's a delivery for you," Zomi called as soon as she heard the front door close behind me.

"Yay!" I dumped my backpack in my room and hurried into the kitchen. "I hope it's the photos."

"I think so." Zomi smiled over a freshly made cup of tea. "It's the right shape."

I picked up the flat, cardboard package. "I think you're right!"

I tried to tear the package open but there was way too much tape for that. I scrabbled in our general purpose kitchen drawer, searching for a box-cutter but only finding scissors. It was the work of a moment to slice through the tape and unbox my photobook.

I pulled the book out, ready to squeal with delight...only...it was all wrong! The cover was supposed to be Cradle Mountain at sunset, but instead it was a plain black cover with Ce-Ce embossed on the front in gold letters.

My fingers stiffened around the edges of the cover. "No way!"

I snatched the book open, hoping against hope that they'd attached the wrong cover to my photos, but the first page confirmed my fears. Instead of a photo of Zomi and I standing outside our unit, there was a photo of a young woman and a girl at a beach. The beach looked familiar. The people didn't.

The woman was beautiful. Long, blonde hair fell around her face in a shimmer of gold and her eyes were a startling green. It was her smile that really caught me though. It was wide and white and genuinely happy. Her smile made me feel like smiling.

The tween holding her hand was obviously her sister, though her hair and eyes were much darker. She had that same rapturous smile. Whoever these people were, they looked like they had something to smile about.

I did not. I was so disappointed I could have screamed. I looked up at Zomi. "They've sent us the wrong photobook."

"Are you joking?"

"Nope. These are definitely not our shots."

"Oh no. I was really looking forward to seeing them."

"So was I."

I turned the page. The woman smiled at me from outside an Asian-fusion restaurant I'd been to in Kingston. The page was headed 'Ce-Ce at Samira'. The next photos showed her drinking a glass of wine, then eating noodles and then smiling over a bowl of mango ice-cream. The page after that showed Ce-Ce walking a small, scruffy dog on the beach. 'Ce-Ce and Teensy at Kingston dog beach' the heading informed me.

I flipped through the rest of the pages. All the photos were of Ce-ce, or Ce-Ce with the girl and Teensy. The caption under a photo of Ce-Ce and the girl feeding ducks informed me that the girl's name was Charlotte and she was Ce-Ce's younger sister.

"Her name's Ce-Ce and I think she lives in Kingston Beach," I said.

"Who?"

"The woman in these photos."

Zomi came over to take a look. "Ooh, she is hot."

"Yeah. She looks good in, like, literally every photo. Even when she's eating noodles."

"Sickening." Zomi's eyes lingered on Ce-Ce's face. "If you go looking for her, I'll help. I want to meet her."

"Why would I go looking for her?"

"If you've got her photo-book, she might have yours." Zomi shrugged as if this should have been obvious.

I laughed. We had no way of knowing how many photobooks got mixed up and besides, Ce-Ce was a total stranger. "How would I even find her? I don't know anything about her."