My breath escaped me, and I lowered the knife. "Why can't you use the front door like a normal person, Milana?"
"Where's the fun in that?" she smirked, pulling herself through my window, stepping carefully over the window bench.
A breeze blew through my window, shaking Milana's dark curls off her back. Her dark brown eyes scanned my room, and her smile dropped.
"Please tell me this is not what you're doing with your free time. We just graduated." She said, disapproval dipping into her voice.
I followed her gaze, finding my walls covered in a soft slate gray, almost blue in the right light, littered with a dozen of photographs pinned, taped, and layered like a mosaic across every inch of the space.
They were like snapshots covered the room, like my diary. From blurred shots of bonfires, my adopted sister, Selene, asleep in a field of wildflowers, the crumbling edge of the old falls, twilight over Wickery Bridge. Each photo caught something unseen—something half-lost in the light.
But my eyes lowered a little to the left, where Milana's gaze stopped. The wooden door of one of my closets was open, and my darkroom was on display for her and anyone to see. Although I'd mostly gone digital by now, there were still shelves lined with film rolls, dried petals, and glass jars of developer solution. My equipment rested beneath soft cloths, the lenses arranged, but my camera was missing.
"And what should I be doing with my free time?" I grabbed my camera from my wooden dresser across from my bed, flipping through it.
"To start, you got to get out of your head, O." Milana snatched my camera and reached for it just as she put it on the bench along with the rest of my equipment. "Now you are going to go into your closet and find the sluttiest outfit you have, and then you are coming with me to the falls."
She grabbed my arm and pulling me to the right side of my room, and I grumbled, "Do I have to?"
"Yes," Milana said, her tone wasn't budging. She pushed me, and I stumbled into my closet. "It's one last bonfire."
