Chapter Four #3
Weird angles, shaking hands, and blurred corners flashed before his eyes. Face flushed, Aiden stepped back, immediately dropping his phone back into his pocket. “Not a lot. Just two.”
“Can I see?” Brendan stepped forward.
“They’re really bad.”
“I’m sure they’re not.”
“Compared to yours, they definitely are.”
“Just let me see.” Brendan peered at Aiden. “Please?”
Please… The magical and foreign word compelled him to move without thinking. He pulled his phone back out and opened the gallery photo. The ancient tree was crooked. Worse, the photo was blurry.
“Oh! This isn’t bad.”
“You don’t need to be nice.”
“No, no, I’m serious. Is it amateur? Of course.
It’s not bad though. You see how you managed to capture the light?
” Brendan shifted into his space again, using his finger to trace the rays.
“It’s leading you toward the subject of your photo, so my eyes automatically gravitate toward the trunk first. It’s the trunk you wanted, right? ”
He blinked, looking at the photo anew. It wasn’t just the trunk. The markings of people left behind on its old bark from people’s love of circling and hugging the ancient tree caught his eye before anything else in the photo. He breathed in wonder. “Yeah. That’s what I wanted.”
“I told you. It’s not bad.” With that final conclusion, Brendan returned his phone. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About the scavenger hunt. You like it?”
“I think so.” A small bird with blue feathers landed in the corner of his eye.
He turned around as slowly as possible, snapping a crooked photo of the chirping animal.
The feet were cut off, but it still captured its beady eyes looking at Aiden.
He smiled. “Yeah, it’s fun. I like how there’s no right answer. ”
“That’s what we were going for. And uh…” Brendan paused. “You’re feeling better, right?”
Was he? He still hadn’t found the courage to tell his stepmother that he would accept his position within the Hui family business inside Infinite. His brother was still dead. Yet strangely, for a second, Aiden forgot about them. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m feeling okay right now though.”
Brendan beamed. “That’s good to hear.”
“Your friends…”
“Christina and Javier?”
Aiden nodded. “They were really nice. Javier didn’t need to offer his water, and Christina didn’t need to pick up the stuff I dropped.”
“Oh, they’re the best. You know how sometimes you just meet people, and you know that you’re meant to be friends? That’s how it was with them.”
“And it was kind of you to check on me that day.” Aiden squeezed his hands. “I don’t think anyone else would’ve.”
For whatever reason, sorrow passed through Brendan’s eyes. However, the warmth quickly returned to the other boy’s full smile. “Yeah, it’s no problem at all. Anyway, what are you studying here?”
He didn’t question the sudden shift in conversation. “Education.”
“Oh, that’s cool! What kind of teacher do you want to be?”
They talked.
The scavenger list forgotten, they walked around campus.
Brendan asked many questions, and Aiden answered all of them.
Sometimes the president took out his camera to capture a gorgeous shot that he saw with eyes no one else saw: a bench that looked romantic in the lens, two squirrels fighting over acorns, and a cloud that was nothing more than a blob that transformed into a puppy at a specific angle.
Aiden marveled at the photos, and stranger than everything else, his heart calmed at the attention.
Attention was never good in the world of the mafia.
However, when the sky darkened, when Brendan exclaimed about the overlooked time, when they ran back to the classroom where all the other students had already returned, Aiden found himself yearning for that sweet, gentle attention that siphoned him away from his reality and placed him in the hands of kind, fun people.
“Thank you everyone for coming! I hope you guys had fun today, but please let me know if you have any questions about the membership fee or just any other question you might have.”
Aiden avoided the stampeding students who rushed toward Brendan. Instead, he turned around and scanned the room to find the one other person alone and busy with cleaning up a table. He walked over to him. “Javier?”
Javier whirled around. “Yeah—what’s up?”
“Do you guys have any tutorials I can look up online? I want to get better at taking pictures.”
“Yup—we have a list of links on our site. One sec…” Javier tapped into his phone.
“Here’s our website. Click this page. We have a whole list of things you can do.
These are good YouTube tutorials. This article breaks down the types of cameras really well, and you can also compare them to the photographs in our club’s gallery.
” A satisfied Cheshire cat grin spread across Javier’s face.
“The beautiful architecture photographs are mine by the way.”
Aiden chuckled. “Got it. I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for today.” He glanced back to see that Brendan was still busy talking.
Javier glanced at him. “Do you want to talk to Brendan?”
“He’s busy right now. I’ll talk to him another time.”
Javier waved. “Yo Brendan!”
Brendan’s face perked up.
Aiden snapped his head around to Javier with wide eyes.
“Come over here real quick!”
Wait—I don’t actually know what I want to say to him! Aiden’s mind reeled at the surprise.
“You got a question?” The president popped up in front of his eyes, while his mind still raced.
Aiden’s heart shot to his mouth, and with a yelp, leapt several steps back, quickly putting space between the two. His feet stumbled against each other, his body started to fall backward, and his arms flailed.
“Oh shit—sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” Brendan grabbed his arms and helped pull him forward. “Sorry.”
Breaths came short. Aiden grabbed at his shirt in an attempt to breathe easier, but his heart only pounded louder. Stop it! This isn’t a shootout. No one is dying.
He tried to rebuild the world around him. He focused on the mundane topics that floated through the air of conversation: Christina’s sigh of exhaustion, Javier’s fake busying about in the background, and the students slowly filing out of the room like they did in every class he took.
It was normal, it was safe, and he had nothing to worry about.
Yet, his heart refused to calm. He kept his face down. “I…” he breathed. “I’m sorry to interrupt you.”
“You didn’t. Javier did.”
“Well, if it wasn’t for me.”
“Did you have a question?”
Aiden kept his eyes lowered, grasping at straws for anything to say. Finally, he could only tell the truth. “No. I just wanted to say I had fun today.”
“Christina—is this yours?” Javier’s blaring voice was distracting enough for him to glance up, catching Brendan’s face.
The widest grin Aiden ever saw stretched across the other boy’s face. The excitement simmered out of the top of his head like steam, and a childish tilt struck Brendan’s vocals. He bounced forward. “You’re joining, right? This club.”
Aiden caught himself smiling. “Yeah. I thought I would thank you anyway.”
“Then, as the newest official joined member, you get to choose the next outing.”
“Outing?”
“Yeah. We always pick a place to take pictures for the next meeting.”
“What are the criteria?”
“There aren’t any. As long as it’s something we can all afford, so not hopping on a plane and going to Disney World. But anywhere you’d like to go to take pictures.”
Whatever you want, I can give to you.
Aiden squeezed his wallet. “Maybe a garden? They’re usually pretty. If that’s okay?”
“You don’t need to ask.” Brendan gave a thumbs up. “We’ll go to a garden.” He turned back toward Christina and Javier. “I have to lock up the room, but I’ll see you next week!”
“Bye…”
Aiden walked out of the room, but for no reason at all, decided to stop. He looked back inside where the three friends were busy returning decorations into boxes, checking their backpacks, and picking up trash from the floor.
His body tensed in anticipation at the idea of seeing them again.
The creeping happiness of realization forced an uncontrolled smile on his face.
He quickly walked down the hallway. “Javier is easy to talk,” he said out loud.
“Christina is super cool and always chill.” His feet glided down the stairs.
“Brendan is…” He stopped at the base of the stairs.
“Brendan is warm.” Upon saying those words aloud, his body shifted.
He felt no sorrow and no anger. He felt no fear.
Yet, he still could not calm the beating of his heart as he imagined Brendan’s glowing smile fall into the distance.