Hall looked through the pictures on his camera. He hadn’t been to school that day. He had called and pretended to be his mother to say he was sick, his parents didn’t mind anyway.
He had pictures of his nine month old baby sister and pictures of the football team, as well as the cheerleaders. He had discovered that the football players and cheerleaders made very unlikely subjects for his pictures.
They had so much raw emotion during practice that he almost loved them for the great pictures they gave him. ‘Almost’ being the key word. They had picked on him so much that he did as much as possible to avoid them. Because of them, he was now failing classes from skipping school and the situation at home weren’t much better.
He had spent his whole day taking pictures at the train station. He had an amazing one of some Rastafarians drumming on buckets for change and one of the train speeding away…which was his personal favorite of the day.
He froze when a picture of Andii came into view, she lived about twelve blocks away from him and he had come across her at an art gallery three blocks from his home a few Saturdays ago.
The picture was an up close picture of Andii admiring a painting. She was so beautiful with the blonde streaks flowing through her hazelnut brown hair. He had titled the picture as ‘art appreciating art’.
He remembered the day vividly, he had pretended to be a journalist covering the gallery and they let him in with his camera. When Andii had seen him, she had pretended not to notice him and soon she had disappeared, almost as though she didn’t want to be seen anywhere near him; so much for childhood best friends. Sure it had been years ago but he never forgot her, not once.
Her parents were never for them being friends as they belonged to different social classes but his mother worked at the elementary school where she went and got him in on worker’s discount.
He had loved Andii because she didn’t care about their social differences, she had only cared about being a great friend. At least that was before, they entered junior high. All of a sudden social status mattered to her.
She had joined an off school cheerleading team where she had met some of her present friends and then she began avoiding him like a plague.
Till date, she just sat by and watched as her friends made a fool of him daily and he couldn’t help wondering how she would have handled being picked on if the tables were turned.
He still had video tapes of when they used to hang out as kids. He had loved making videos of Andii because she had such an amazing spirit that bounced off the screen every time he watched it.
He wondered where that spirit had gone. Now, she just looked like a societal-zombie without a mind of her own. She wore those cute cheerleading uniforms all day and acted like the world revolved around her. When did she get so self centered?
He looked at the next picture, it was one of his immediate younger sister with a paint covered face. The little rascal looked cute when she was not up to anything.
He looked at his watch. It was a little after two in the afternoon. He stood up from the bench he was seated on in the park and began to hurry home. He had promised his parents that he was going to make lunch for his sisters.
He knew what happened when he didn’t do as he was told. His father’s temper could not handle disrespect.
