Picture This

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Ian

I was standing at the door, looking through the window as Charlie sped off.  I could still feel her in my arms, though, could still smell her perfume on my shirt.  Even though she'd been sweating from dancing, that was all I could smell.  An intoxicating combination of lavender and vanilla.

"What did you do, Ian?" Mom asked from behind me.  She put a hand on my shoulder to spin me around.  Her eyes were wide with shock.  "What happened?"

"She doesn't want to talk to me," I said tonelessly. 

"What?  Why?" she asked.  "I thought you two talked every week?"

I rubbed a hand down my face.  I'd told my mom a few weeks after Charlie left that we talked every few days.  That had been a total lie.  Well, not totally a lie.  It was just more of a one sided conversation. 

"I lied to you," I said quietly.  "I haven't talked to her since the day before she left.  And even then I only did it to hurt her."

"What did you do to her?" she asked.  I could hear anger creeping into her voice.  "I thought you two were best friends."

"We were but I don't know about now," I said, and then walked out the door.  

I drove in complete silence back home.  When I pulled into the garage, Dad's car was still gone so he wasn't home yet.  I grabbed my bag and headed up to my room. 

When I put my bag down, my eyes automatically went to the mirror over my dresser.  Walking slowly toward it, I didn't look at myself in it but something on it. 

Taped to the mirror were two pictures.  They were the same, only six years in between them.  They were both taken December seventeenth and both were of me and Charlie in the same pose. 

The one on top was taken on Charlie's sixth birthday.  Her mom was the one to take it.  Charlie had wanted to take a picture with me.  When we were sitting beside each other, I started tickling her before her mom took the picture.  Right when she did, I had leaned over and kissed her cheek.  In the picture, Charlie was laughing at me as I did. 

The one under it was taken six years later, on Charlie's twelfth birthday.  We looked older, of course, but the picture was the same.  I was kissing her cheek and she was laughing.  Again, her mom had taken it.   It was just a few weeks before her mom found out about the cancer.  Charlie still looked happy with me. 

I couldn't help but think if we were going to be friends again before her eighteenth birthday and we could keep the tradition of taking the picture every six years. 

I turned toward my desk and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen.  When I sat down, I did something that I'd done every week since the day after Charlie left for England. 

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