Camera

5 - Pictures (edited)

Scooting off the bed, I crossed the room quickly, opening the door with my foot. To my relief, the hallway outside was empty. Making my way as quietly as I could, I nudged open the door to Maya’s room. I lay her down slowly onto her pillows, and she settled into them comfortably.

 The room, however, was stiflingly warm. I grabbed her AC remote from her table and put the air conditioning on. Despite my paranoia that someone might find me there I took the opportunity to look at her room. It was smallish, smaller than mine, a perfect square. Her single bed was pushed to one corner – I took a moment to appreciate the fact that she had a single bed before moving on – and had more than enough throw pillows and cushions scattered all over it, in bright girly pinks and yellows and blues. The corner with her bed in it was plastered with posters so extensively I could barely see the wall behind it – there were two Floyd posters, one fabric poster of the cover of Animals, one of the iconic naked-girls picture. Above those was a Tame Impala poster, the cover of Innerspeaker. There were various Led Zeppelin posters – one of them had what looked like a lipstick imprint on Robert Plant’s crotch. I had to resist the urge to laugh.

 The corner opposite was a stark contrast – a plain white desk faced the wall. In one corner of the desk I could see a pile of SAT manuals and textbooks. There were two pencil holders – one was a plain black metal one and was full of ball point pens, the other was a yellow wooden one and held a few broken colour pencils. There were two rolls of ribbon kept one on side, black and pale pink, a strip of Orbit and her blue fabric wallet with little mirrors all over it.

 It was all surprisingly neat. I guess I was expecting the room of a wild party girl, but here we had something that was relatively normal but in a way very Maya-like. Her closet was closed and, I imagined, very neat inside. Her bathroom door was closed, and had a little oval pink furry rug outside it. A magazine rack on the floor held a few issues of Vogue and even more of The Rolling Stone. An open shelf had all her schoolbooks – I saw hugely fat volumes of physics and chemistry and math.

 On the wall near her table, I noticed, there was just one framed photograph. I drew closer to look at it. It was one of Maya and another girl, and it looked recent, Maya looked more or less the same, only her hair looked a bit shorter. The two girls were standing in what looked like an orchard, but the setting was magnificent. The angle was a bit low, so through the leaves of the trees behind them I could see frosty blue mountaintops. They were in a valley of some sort. The other girl had her arms around Maya’s waist, and Maya had one arm around her shoulder, the other arm sticking out and making a peace sign, silhouetted against the bright green leaves. They were both laughing so hard their eyes were reduced to slits. The other girl was smaller, skinnier; she had long, straight dark hair and glasses like Maya’s, only she was actually wearing them. It must have been warm, because they were both wearing shorts and they were barefoot.

 I don’t know why I stood staring at that picture for a while. I found myself wondering who took it, why they were there, when they went there. When I pulled my eyes away, I glanced at Maya, asleep on the bed.

 Then I heard a noise somewhere outside so I quickly hurried out of the room and back to my own.

Maya Sumedh

I woke very abruptly, and when I did I was in my own bed, in my room, and the AC was on.

 I frowned at that, sitting up, because I remembered clearly that Luke and I had fallen asleep in his room – and I vaguely even remembered cuddling with him. At the thought of it, my cheeks burned. I knew I did the strangest things whilst asleep – but still, that was hardly excusable. I hoped he was half-asleep too and didn’t remember. Fat chance.