Fish Eyes

21

Those Brown Eyes

I'd still yank the stars out of the skies,

Just to put the twinkle back into your eyes                                                                                                                 

some unnamed genius on the internet

"This isn't fair, Lawrence."

"What isn't?" he asked as he fixated his lens on Dalia's face. "Stand still, this thing won't focus."

She put on her ugliest face and looked into the camera. "Don't act stupid. You're bad at lying, we've already established this."

They both stood in the brightly lit room. Summer had just ended, and the sun was shining brighter than ever. Lawrence and Dalia both liked it dim, but they couldn't flip a switch on the sun and make it disappear. 

Her dad had just bought a house plant to put in the studio against Lawrence's wishes. He said it took away from the "vibe" he was trying to create. The light bounced off of the plant's shiny leaves and into her eyes. She squinted and held up a hand in an attempt to silence it.

"And what exactly do I lie about?"

"You act oblivious because you have problems being up front for whatever reason. I literally just burped like a sumo a second ago and you don't see me having any shame. I don't think you should either. I can handle the truth."

Okay, the last part was a lie. The bottom line was that she was a better liar than Lawrence, and that was all that mattered. Dalia knew that she was a bigger liar than Lawrence would ever be; but he didn't have to know that.

"So, again I say, this isn't fair."

"You didn't say that to Wendy when she got with Dean."

"So we're playing that card."

He shrugged his shoulders and snapped another picture of her.

That camera gave her so many conflicting emotions. She'd loathed it since she was a child; it took her dad's time and it put an immense amount of pressure on her to be great.

She learned to avoid it, but in a moment of desperation, last last summer, she'd tried it out. She learned that she was terrible with it. Then, in turn, she met someone who was the opposite of terrible with it.

Then the whole thing just went to shit.

There was no problem with the camera making her feel insignificant; there were many things that did that. It was nothing new.

The problem was that she liked it more than she let on.

She didn't know what was in Lawrence's fingers to make him so gifted, but she wanted more. She felt beautiful on the other end of it, but she'd never say that.

The same camera that made her feel beautiful, and the same boy alongside it, made everyone feel beautiful. She'd be setting herself up for failure if she believed otherwise.

That's why it didn't make sense for girls like her to develop crushes on guys like Lawrence. It didn't even make sense.

Karielle was a testament to that. The universe had shoved the girl down Dalia's throat so forcefully that she didn't even have the option to be blindly optimistic. Karielle and Lawerence looked well together.

Then she really took a while to look at Karielle. Dalia thought she herself was hot shit until she saw that girl. Then realized there were a thousand more just like her. Then she felt like cold shit.