A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Amy

A wall of stories.

Or, rather, a wall of pictures. All pictures I have taken with my old blue Polaroid camera. Each one is with a person that has touched my life in ways that are difficult to explain. They have built me up with bricks where the cement has been damaged. They have reached down to me, from the stars they live on and pulled me up to visit them. Meanwhile all the others have just reached up from their cavernous pits to drag me down. Let's start with the first star.

It was before I brought my camera everywhere I went. I was five and she was sixteen. I was sitting in the park, alone, feeling down. Some kids had made fun of me and refused to play with me because of my eyes.

You see, I was born with two blue eyes, and when I got a bit older one of them turned green. A rare condition called Heterochromia Iridis.

I felt the weight change in the bench as someone sat down beside me, and I smelled a sort of flowery scent coming off them. They didn't say anything. I looked up and saw a girl who was, by my five year old standards, pretty much an adult. She had long straight black hair that touched the bench where she sat. Her lips had been painted a delicate pink, making her coffee brown skin look even darker. I looked into bright green eyes that danced with laughter and were framed by big black glasses. She wore a knee length flowery dress and there was a daffodil tucked behind her left ear.

"What do you want?" I asked her in a less than friendly manner.

"Someone to talk to." She said in a benign tone. "You look like you might want one too, and maybe you just don't know it yet."

"Go away." I spat. She didn't leave. I looked up at her, and narrowed my mismatched eyes. She looked right into them, prying me apart, finding all my secrets and insecurities. I guess she did it so she could patch them up with her words of magic and heal me. "I don't need anyone. No friends. No one." I spat the last two words out.

"Everyone needs a friend." She continued talking in her calm, soothing voice, as if what she said was obvious.

"I don't have any." I looked at my sandaled feet and pink sparkly toenails. "Do you?" I glanced back up at her to see if she was still looking at me, but she was watching a couple kids on the swing.

"Oh, I've got lots of friends!" She laughed quietly. "Do you want me to introduce you to them? Don't worry, they're really nice." She added, noticing my skeptic look.

I shrugged. "Sure."

She smiled widely and reached into her big brown leather and denim purse. After rummaging for a few seconds she pulled out a book. A book? How could her friends be in a book? She handed me the thin, battered hardcover. You could tell it was well loved. On the front there was a a surprised looking boy with a lightning shaped scar on his forehead. "My friends live in Britain and they go to a school full of magic." She said in a hushed tone, eyes alight with wonder.

"What's it called? I'm not that good at reading." I was curious now.

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It's probably my favourite book!" She said, proudly presenting the name, as if it was her child, and she was sending it off to school.

"Really?" I lowered my voice so I was barely speaking. "Are you a witch?"

"Of course!" She replied in the same low voice. "I'm also an astronaut and a pirate and a princess and so many other things!"

"Wow." I breathed, wondering how someone could be so many things. "What are the names of your friends?"

"Well, there's so many, but my absolute best friends are Harry, Hermione and Ron! Ron and Hermione are arguing all the time, but we're all still great friends."

"Wow!" I said again, and then, hoping desperately that someone would entrust me with something so close to their heart, I asked, "Do you mind if I borrow it?"

"I don't mind if you keep it!" She exclaimed.

"Are you sure?" No one had ever lent me anything this precious before, on account of my clumsiness, and tendency to drop things in water.

"Yeah! My name's Amy, by the way."

"Skye."

"That's a pretty name." She said. "Almost as pretty as your eyes."

"My eyes?" I asked, touching one of my small hands to my rosy cheek, just below my emerald green eye. Nobody had ever complimented my eyes before.

"Yeah, I'll never decide if blue or green is prettier, but for you it doesn't matter, because you've got both!" She divulged.

I laughed at what she said, covering my mouth with my hand.

"Do you want to take a picture?" She asked, extracting a lime green Polaroid camera out from the same purse the book came from. The paint had been scratched off on some of the corners, and there was a dent on the side, where I supposed it had been dropped.

"Um, okay." I said. She put her arm around me, held the camera out in front of us, and snapped it twice, blinding me momentarily.

"Here's one for you, and one for me." She said, as they came out of the little slot and slowly an image of the two of us appeared right before my own eyes. "So we'll never forget each other." I looked at the image and saw Amy with a huge smile, and me with a small smirk.

And to this day, I still think about the encounter every time I see the slightly faded photo. It featured a cheery teenager and a grumpy five year old on a rusty park bench, sharing friends.