THE THIRD P3RSON

•Chapter 23•

We walked side by side on the boardwalk. I was starting to relax. My shoulders weren't as tense as they were before. Ryan and I talked about the project, saying we were going to focus on ourselves on presentation day because, according to him, Christina hasn't written a single word. He was going to talk to Grey about it later.

Ryan kept asking me questions, saying it was so he could add in later. One of them was on what I aspired to be in the future. I told him I wanted to grow up to be an artist like my mother wanted to be.

"Did she paint a lot with you?" He asked me, brushing his hair back.

I reached up and tucked a couple stray bangs behind his ear. His hair grows pretty fast. "She had her own art studio at home. She was pregnant with me when she was painting the walls." I laughed looking at a guy who was drawing a caricature of a mom and her daughter. "Awe."

"Is that the best memory you have of her?" Ryan continued.

"As funny as it is, the best memory I have of her is when I told her I was hanging out with this guy in seventh grade," I replied. "She was like 'Momma Bear don't like that'. It cracked me up all the time."

Ryan made a sound of disapproval and muttered something under his breath. The slight wind of the morning took the words like leaves.

"What was that?" I probed.

"I said, 'so this is how you felt'." He muttered again.

"With?"

He just wanted me to forget he said anything but I was still confused. I asked him to tell me more about him. I told him to tell me anything he wanted to.

"Well, you told me your life story I'll do the same." Ryan motioned for me to let him speak. "My parents died within a year of each other."

I stayed still and waited for him to continue.

"Uncle Grey never tells anyone exactly what happened and I don't remember much. I know I fell from a window-"

Ryan keeps talking, saying how he never really knew his parents. I kept quiet the entire time, nodding my head to signal him that I was listening. He had his arm over my shoulder, saying the story would be told best if I'd listen closely.

One day, when he was three, he was at home with his older brother. Ryan told me he was in his apartment building and their mother had to step out. His mother had told his older brother to watch over them. She had been gone for four hours and the boys were hungry. They didn't have money and Ryan's brother didn't have a cell phone yet. So, Ryan was leaning out the windowpane, looking for his mom, when he ripped through the window mesh and fell out the three story window.

After he fell, other neighbours from the street helped him into the ambulance. There were wooden platforms that broke Ryan's fall so he survived with a broken arm and a large scar on his back.

His parents were charged. His mother was arrested. He had no idea what had happened to his brother and his father. By the age of four, he remembers Grey telling him to call him Uncle but Ryan, without pronouncing the end of the word, said "Unc."

At this point, we were a whole state away from the car and the sun has risen high enough to be a dimly lit lamp. I wasn't sure how to ask. I asked so quietly I didn't think he could hear me,"Have you looked for them? Before..."

"I did," Ryan assured me while reaching for a side hug. "Sometimes things happen for a reason. I have always believed in that. I fell that day because I was searching for my mom. I got the scar. In the hospital room, she was arrested as soon as I woke up. My brother was taken with her and I don't know what happened next. I tried to remember but I get nothing. My dad died in sixth grade from a heart attack. In seventh grade, my mother, and my brother were on a bus heading to New York for an interview so that my brother could come to school with me when the bus was hit by a truck."

They died on impact.

I kissed Ryan's palm this time. "I'm here for you."

He chuckled. "That's what Unc said."

"Well, I'm here too."

"I know."

Ryan kept pulling me towards different vendors and I kept pulling in the opposite direction while laughing. We looked at hermit crabs with colorful shells, necklaces made out of beautiful pieces of glass, and colorful sand.

We both seen Jewel Beach millions of times when we were kids. We've had a field day on the sand in elementary school. I teased Ryan as he played with the colored sand. He pulled his hands out, shook them, and handed me his phone so I could take a picture.

When I did, I laughed because Ryan winked at the camera. While he leant over to tell me to redo it, an elderly Chinese woman asked us if we wanted her to take a picture of the both of us.

Ryan nodded and said thank you.

As the woman is finding the focus on the camera, Ryan whispers. "I want to get my face painted. Think 'lion whiskers'."

I turn to him, the words you're so stupid but you should!' on the tip of my tongue when Ryan leans over to kiss me on the cheek.

My cheeks burn and I try to hide my smile.

The woman snaps the picture.

When Ryan gets back his phone, his eyebrows raise in surprise. He complements the woman and points out everything he liked about the photo. It turns out, she used to work as a photographer in Michigan. She retired and moved to Ocean City recently. Ryan asked her if it was possible if she could give him recommendations for job opportunities. She said she'd be delighted to help him find one and that she'd mention it to a few of her friends.

Ryan had told me about his love of pictures a long time ago. I think he wrote it down. He loved pictures since he was a kid. He used to keep the demo photos that came in the picture frames when you bought them. He loved how happy the people looked and how the person behind the camera captured that one moment in time with a simple click. He loved how a picture meant a thousand words. I snap out of my thoughts to see Ryan waving a goodbye to the wonderful woman as he passed me his phone. Cute. The woman captured a pretty nice picture of us.

The joy I felt when the picture was taken made me smile before I realised it.

Then I caught a whiff Channel Number *5. I looked up at Ryan.

"Great." Ryan sighed as he turned around to block my view.