The Polaroid's on the Wall

Chapter 35: Photofinish 1

Glancing at the wall I painfully noticed the tiny holes in it surrounding my pride flag and felt another wash of guilt. I told him I'd never take them down.

But I did.

I reached the drawer to my desk and pulled it open slowly to stare down at the great woven box I stored the rejects of our project inside as well as the photos from my wall I had deemed as too painful to look at. I picked it up and dumped it on top of my bed, crossing my legs and picking up the first one.

It was of an album by The Beatles which featured mine and Cyrus' legs at the top and bottom of the picture with the caption:

Here comes the sun
11th May 2019

I dropped it beside myself and picked up the next one that was in the box

This one was one Cyrus had taken on our walk back from Adrenaline City. It was of my converse trainers standing on the pavement which was lined with weeds and small, dainty flowers.

Damn Daniel
May 17th 2019

I laughed at his use of an extremely outdated meme. That was so him.

I flicked through more pictures of us including ones I didn't even know existed. One in particular made me stop for a moment, it was a picture of me-or my back rather-as I was obviously walking to school with my backpack on. You can see all of my pins on it and I was most likely on my phone because my head is tilted down. The caption read:

I love the real you
20th May 2019

The day we handed the project in, I realised, the first day I was myself at school. He still took pictures of me?

Suddenly my heart skipped a beat when my brain processed the caption.

Love?

In disbelief I went to drop the photo on the stack with the others but did so with so much force that it flipped over, revealing more writing on the back.

Picking it back up I squinted as he had written so small since the writing covered the whole back of the Polaroid.

I thought this moment was worth documentation :) though I doubt you'll ever find this because you're oblivious but hey, maybe you're reading this 50 years into the future? Just wanted to say I'm super proud of you for being yourself today, I did not expect it but this just shows how much you've changed. I'm running out of space but anyways, I hope you continue to keep being yourself and know I will always be here tosupportyou:)

My heart ached as my eyes traced the lines over and over again until I couldn't bear to look at them any more. My legs dragged and I opened my cupboard, pulling out the project that had also been hiding for quite some time now and bringing it over to my bed, the weight of it landing making it wobble up and down, disturbing the stack of Polaroids in the box.

I stared for a moment at all the memories captured in one place of our story together. I mean, that was the whole purpose of this project, to tell our story but I didn't realise it was going to mean as much to me as it does right now.

There was me and Cyrus at the spoon with him eating taters and drinking his milkshake, us watching shrek together, him eating candyfloss, the first time we held hands.

It was all here, in one project.

One that I thought I had finished but maybe.....maybe it wasn't.

I bit my lip, rushing back to the open drawer to get my glue stick and coming back to get to work.

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