Chapter Excerpt

There’s a picture in the bottom of the middle left drawer of my desk. It’s buried underneath notebooks and books and pencils and pens and other pictures. I haven’t looked at it in a while. I remember all the details just the same as if I’d looked at it yesterday. It’s from about six or seven years ago, I can’t remember, now. In it, there’s a girl and a boy. They’re about ten or eleven, arms around each other. They’re both smiling.

“Cassandra, you haven’t been here in a while. You keep missing appointments. How have you been?”

They’re both smiling, with their innocent little faces, messy hair, carefree shoulders.

“Okay.”

It’s the middle of summer, and her hair is still a little wet, while his has already dried. Their clothes are soaked, water guns lay forgotten behind them, along with all the games they used to make up and play, switching the rules, screaming, adding new devices, laughing.

“Why just okay?”

The sun’s out, even though it’s not as bright in the picture as it was in real life

“Because it would be a lie if I said great, because I’m never great. And I’m not terrible. And I always say fine, so I figured I’d switch it up a bit.”

There’s a pool in the corner of the picture, with a couple floaties in it.

“Why do you think you’re never ‘great’?”

The grass is green, dying in a couple patches, sure, but green, nonetheless.

“I mean, look at my life, does it look like any part of it was destined to be ‘great’?”

The sky is blue. I mean a beautiful blue. Not pale blue, or too blue, but just right, so perfect that even the picture can’t mar its image.

“But don’t you think that everyone has a chance to have a ‘great’ life, or at least great parts of it? I don’t think anyone is ‘destined’ to have a bad life.”

They were so young, then.

“I don’t know.”

They were so innocent.

“Can you name five good things about your life, right now?”

They were so... carefree.

“I can name fifty bad things.”

 They were so... hopeful.

“Let’s focus on the five good things, okay?”

They were so... so...

I blew a strand of hair out of my face.

I don’t know.

“Five things, that’s it, okay?”

There aren’t really any words to describe what they were.

“Okay.”

I mean, how can you describe something like that, something so pure and untouched that to add a description to it would be to tarnish its image?

“One. My friends.”

You can’t.

“Two. School. My grades.”

I haven’t looked at the picture in a long time. Years, even.

“Three. It’s winter break, I guess. School’s halfway done.”

I remember every detail.

“Four. Hiking.” The world I run away to when I can’t face reality.

Every detail hidden in the faded polaroid.

“Five. My... my boyfriend.” Conversations in class.

The faded polaroid hidden in the bottom of the middle left drawer of my desk.

“Good, see? You named five good things about or in your life!”

 I dug it out when I got home. I picked it up, gingerly, and held it in my hands. It was so fragile that a single misstep could shatter it.

“I guess.”

I couldn’t decide what to do with it. I just sort of rotated it in my fingers for a while, studying all the details.

How well did she really know him? How well do I know him now? What secrets is he hiding?

No one is devoid of secrets, as much as we like to think that we are.

“Five good things are better than fifty bad things. Remember that. The good always outweighs the bad. Five good things are better than fifty bad things.”

Eventually, I tossed it back into the drawer and shut it. In a cliché book, or movie, the protagonist would have laid back on their bed and held the picture to their chest, mulling over all the memories that came with it.

It’s stupid. Mulling over all the memories. They’re memories for a reason. They don’t need to be mulled over.

“Okay.”

So back in the drawer they go.