Snapshot

By Rajeshwari Bhaduri

There is a box peeking out from under my bed, older than the bed sheets and older than the hands that gifted it. Inside, trapped, is everything I do not need and everything I cannot let go of: beads, friendship bands, shards of rose glass. A photograph: blue, faded, crumbling at the edges.

I kick the box firmly under the bed, fixing the sleeves of my shirt in the mirror.

Today is unusual. I smoothen my outfit, curl the ends of my ponytail. My eyes look fresh, my face looks decent. All this would not matter on usual days, but today is unusual.

“Hey,” I smile as the voice on the other end of the line filters through. “Yeah, I’m heading out now. Yes, see you there.”

There is a bite in the air and the sky is startlingly blue. The bus honks and rumbles as I press myself between the window and a sweaty shoulder, plugging in my ear-buds. Cars and streetlights pass by in blurs. Distantly, waves are crashing against a bone-white shore.

In the crumbling blue photograph under my bed, there are two girls, holding hands. They look barely older than five. I have a wide grin plastered on my face, unabashedly delighted. I am looking at the camera, and she is looking at me.

“Thank you,” I murmur to the young boy who hands me my tea, the bus hunkering out of the bus stop behind a cloud of steam. I sip on my tea, and it is warm. The breeze is cold and wet, and on my tongue it tastes sweet.

I look down to my watch, toes dancing. A second bus comes to a standstill at the stop.

Through the cloud of noise and noisier passengers, she walks up to me. “Hi,” she exhales, dark eyes wide; tall, so tall. “It’s— it’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I breathe in. Vanilla and tea and saltwater. “Yes, yes, yes.”

It is too real. I know it is supposed to be, but this is still too real.

“It’s so real,” she says, a tentative smile pulling at her lips. “I— I know, I’ve known it, but after all this time only texting and calling, this feels too real. I’m still not sure we are actually here.”

“Me neither.” Seagulls are trilling in the distance. “Me neither. But— it’s okay. I think.”

She smiles. I am falling for her all over again.

Today is the day I meet my childhood online friend and girlfriend of two years for the very first time. Today is unusual.

I extend a hand towards her. “Do you want to roam around the beach a bit?”

She curls her hand in mine. “Why not?”

We should click a picture, the two of us walking hand in hand, frothy waves lapping at our shoes. She thinks we are meeting for the first time, but I know we are only reunited. The little girl I played with at the beach waved me a teary goodbye fifteen years ago; yet here I am today, and I am looking at her.

If lives were snapshots, mine would be captured between the sky and the sea and this unreal girl’s fingers around mine.

I have not told her yet: about us, about the photo, about meeting her randomly on the internet and thinking about fate, just briefly. Will she be shocked, I wonder? Will she be pleased?

As she buries a smile into my shoulder, I grasp her hand tighter. One day, I am going to take out the box from under my bed. One day, I am going to give the photo away— and with it my breath, and my heart.

That day, if my heart is returned, maybe we can click another photograph.

By Rajeshwari Bhaduri