7. Teddy
TEDDY
LIGHT’S RIGHT. SUBJECT UNPLANNED
I didn’t come here to take photos, but that’s a little hard to prove, considering the camera is already in my hand, the familiar weight settled into my grip like it belongs there. I carry it the same way I carry my phone or my keys—without thinking. It’s part of me at this point.
The plan had been simple: drive into town, check things out, grab something to eat, head back before the noise got under my skin.
I met Beverly earlier and was relieved when she told me her daughter wasn’t coming to the festival.
Thank God for small mercies, especially since I had forgotten about that whole matchmaking conversation.
If I’d remembered, I wouldn’t have come.
Instead of making it an in-and-out situation, though, I’ve been weaving my way through the festival like an invisible tether of sorts was wrapped somewhere around my ribs, pulling me forward one slow step at a time.
I blame the lights. They’re everywhere. Colorful bulbs strung between stalls, wrapped around poles, woven through branches like someone tried to copy the constellations and almost got it right.
Almost.
The air is laden with sweet and savory scents.
Hay mixed with pumpkin spice and cider. Music drifts through the air, each stall competing for the loudest beat.
With all the sounds clashing and overlapping, it should be chaos, but somehow it works.
It settles around me, a constant hum of people and laughter that feels dangerously close to belonging.
My shoulders should be tight by now. My jaw locked. The familiar itch to leave already building. But it’s not.
In LA, my nights were always crowded, loud, full of people, but it never felt like this. Everyone there was in their own orbit, their own head, performing for the masses and deeply alone. Even when I was in the middle of it, I wasn’t in it. This here is teeming with life.
“I loooooove the harvest festival!”
The voice cuts across the noise, and I turn to see a little old lady in the middle of the walkway, wearing a floral dress and sensible shoes, her gray curls set just a little too neatly.
But something’s not quite right. Her face is too smooth, too perfect, the smile stretched just far enough to feel deliberate instead of natural.
“I really love it,” she adds, beaming at a group of strangers who look like they’re wondering if they should call social services.
One of them nods politely. Another takes a step back.
I watch for a second longer than I need to as she adjusts her shawl with complete confidence, like this is exactly where she belongs. Like this is normal.
“I love the harvest festival,” she says again, as if repetition might make it less unsettling.
I huff out a laugh just as a blur of motion barrels past me. One of the kids I recognize from the diner. Caramel is smeared across her face like war paint, sticky fingers already reaching for the next shiny stall with absolute, unapologetic intent.
“Got it!” she yells.
I track her without meaning to. Another kid—her twin, if I had to guess—chases after her, clutching something that might’ve once been a candy apple but is now mostly just evidence.
He skids, nearly wipes out, then keeps going like gravity is more of a suggestion than a rule.
Their laughter cuts through the noise, bright, unapologetic, completely unfiltered.
“Hey, no, come back here!”
Their mother appears a second later. Also familiar from the diner.
She’s very pregnant and very outnumbered.
Her arms are loaded with prizes—plastic, plush, things that light up and absolutely did not need to be purchased.
She stops long enough to shift everything higher against her chest, already half-laughing, half-exasperated.
“If you drop that, you’re not getting another one!”
The little boy clutches what’s left of his treat tighter, his eyes wide and pleading. She shakes her head, but her face, split wide with love, laughter and joy gives her away. I lift the camera before I can overthink it. I aim.
Click.
A bell clangs somewhere to my left, loud enough to slice through everything else. I turn just in time to catch a teenage boy bringing the hammer down again, the impact rattling up through the stand and into the air around us. I can almost feel the energy coming off him. He’s wired and restless.
His girlfriend beams as if he just did something extraordinary, instead of just winning her a prize.
She bounces on her toes and presses a loud, unapologetic kiss to his cheek.
He grins, already handing her a giant teddy bear that’s almost as big as she is.
She wraps her arms around it, laughing, the plush feet dragging through the dirt as she half-skips, half-struggles her way toward whatever catches her eye next. I bring the camera up again.
Click.
I gaze around. An older couple dances off to the side, just beyond the chaos.
The way he looks at her makes it seem as if this is the first festival they’ve ever attended together, like fifty-ish years haven’t passed at all.
They move slowly, stiffly, their joints not quite allowing for fluidity anymore, but there’s something in the way they hold each other that makes it irrelevant.
Their energy could outshine half the teenagers here.
They’re out of sync, steps missing each other by inches. They’re dancing to a rhythm no one else can hear. They’re dancing to their song.
Something in my chest tightens; it’s piercing and unexpected. A gap I never thought needed filling and don’t want to ponder right now.
I lift the camera.
Click.
I walk through the rows of games. Snap a photo of the largest pumpkin I’ve ever seen. People form lines to jot down their guesses on the weight. Someone drops a tray of something fried and sugary on the way to a picnic table full of guys in their early twenties.
There’s immediate chaos and laughter. Shouts and insults flying as fast as the food hits the dirt.
One of them scoops up a handful of donuts, lunging toward his friend, trying to shove them into his mouth while the others lose it around them.
I don’t adjust the settings or check the light. I just lift the camera and click.
The motion is automatic. Pure instinct.
For the first time in months, I’m not thinking about whether it’s good or worth anything beyond the moment it captures. I’m not running it through the usual filter of whether it holds up against my previous work, whether it measures, whether it fails before I’ve even looked at it.
I just shoot. Something loosens behind my shoulder blades, and it’s weirdly freeing.
I think about Dannica, and how her expression kept shifting like there was a whole conversation happening under the one she was actually having.
I don’t know why that surfaces now. It doesn’t make sense.
This place is full of people, full of moments, yet for some reason, that’s the one my brain lands on.
I exhale, dragging my focus away from thoughts that won’t serve me.
I came here to stay away from distractions, and if there’s one thing my wandering thoughts have shown me, it’s that Dannica is a huge distraction I can’t afford.
Of course, I keep thinking that and still get distracted.
No wonder my work is failing. How do you capture clarity through a lens when your own mind feels blurred?
The smell of processed meat wafts through the crowd, and my mouth begins to water.
Nothing like junk food to change my thought process.
I stroll over to the hotdog stand and order one with sauerkraut and mustard.
When was the last time I had something as simple as a hotdog?
I can’t remember. While I wait, I gaze around.
My brain automatically takes the images.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The jovial guy with a Zorro mask hands me my food, and I sit down at a table and eat the best hotdog I’ve had in my life.
Crumpling the wrapper, I lob it into a nearby bin.
Leaves rustle above me, and I look up to find a cheeky raccoon sitting perched halfway up a tree, eyeing the overflowing trashcan like it’s planning a heist. I huff out a quiet laugh, adjusting the lens and flicking the flash on to catch the detail.
“Don’t do it,” I mutter. “You don’t have the upper body strength for that kind of ambition.”
The raccoon doesn’t even look at me as he scuttles down the tree and gathers his spoils. My grin spreads fast and wide.
Click.
Still smiling, I lower the camera and glance toward the big tent when the music shifts to something louder, fuller, pulling people in like an evangelistic healer in a religious town.
It presses at the edges of my awareness, low and insistent.
It looks interesting, which is exactly why I head toward it.
My mask shifts slightly as I move, the edge brushing against my cheek.
I bought it online three nights ago, an impulse purchase, somewhere between boredom and bad decisions.
A jester mask. It felt appropriate at the time since my career seems to be a joke.
It still does. I have no intention of joining the dancing.
I’m simply here to observe and feed that quiet, restless curiosity that feels like a personality trait at this point.
The closer I get, the more it builds. The bass settles low in my chest, movement blurring at the edges.
The fabric of the tent glows from the inside, shadows shifting across it like something alive and breathing.
I stop at the edge of the crowd, close enough to feel it without getting swallowed by it.
I raise the camera, bringing it up between me and everything else, letting the lens narrow the world into something I can handle. Something framed. Controlled.
I snap portraits of costumes and masks. Identities swallowed whole, inhibitions set loose.