CHAPTER 31
She leaned back against the brick wall. "No, just noticing things. Like how your shadows are thicker than usual."
I didn't respond. Partly because she wasn't wrong.
Instead, I muttered, "I'll catch you later," and spun, vanishing into the night before she could pose any further questions.
Because I did have a place I was supposed to be.
And a person I was supposed to watch.
\---
The rooftop had become mine. Unclaimed, mostly forgotten, secreted above the west wing of the journalism building. I'd found it by accident one night during a campus-wide blackout. It had felt like rebellion then to scale the fire escape. Now it felt like retreat.
I set my camera on the ledge beside me and scanned the field below.
There he was.
Tony.
Alone.
Again.
He paced the perimeter of the football field like a ghost trapped in grass and empty bleachers. Hoodie over his head, hands jammed in his pockets. From way up high, he didn't look like the boy who made people flinch. He didn't look like the boy who crushed Nate's ego with one clench of his jaw.
He looked. small.
Lost.
I reached for my camera before I even realized what I was doing.
The lens clicked into place. I worked the zoom, slow and controlled, until I had framed just what I was looking for.
Click.
He was kicking at the grass.
Click.
He stopped and looked up at the lights—still burning though no one was playing.
Click.
He tilted his head back like he was trying to drown in the dark sky.
Click.
The shutter became a metronome. A heartbeat. A question.
Why are you really like this, Tony Zacks?
\---
I stood there for about an hour.
Watching him.
Not following.
Not chasing.
Just documenting.
He did not know that I was there. And maybe that is how I was finally able to see him.
Not the curated version. Not the weaponized strut and menacing grin.
But the weight of him. The droop in his shoulders. The way he moved like he was made of glass and anger and memory.
I documented that.
The boy behind the storm.
\---
I returned the next night.
Same place. Same time.
And there he was again—different hoodie, same distress. He didn't pace as much. Just sat on the bleachers with his head in his hands for a bit. Like the air hurt to breathe.
Click.
He didn't cry. I half hoped he would.
Click.
He just sat there until the sprinklers coughed to life and sent him running.
\---
By the third night, I didn't need to pretend not to exist for him.
This time, he stretched out on the field as if waiting for the sky to open up and swallow him whole.
I didn't shoot right away.
I just watched.
Watched how the boy who had almost destroyed me seemed to be destroyed by something deeper. Something older. Something I hadn't yet understood.
Click.
His hands fisted into the grass.
Click.
He moved his head to the side, eyes wide open, like he'd heard something—or wanted to.
Click.
And then, for a single passing second, he smiled.
A real one.
Small. Sad.
The kind of smile people make in dreams they don't expect to remember.
Click.
\---
Later that night, I was in the darkroom, his face emerging on the paper like a ghost being exorcised.
Each print a different version of him. A different mood. A different secret.
Tony walking. Tony resting. Tony breaking.
Tony bleeding.
Not literally.
Emotionally.
Quietly.
I had a wall of him before I knew I'd constructed one.
And for the first time, something clicked.
The more I gazed at him through the lens, the more I recognized pieces of myself.
Alone in a crowd. Worn by silence. Torn between fire and frost.
We were both living in aftermaths.
His of a reputation.
Mine of a photograph.
And maybe that was why I couldn't walk away.
Because we were survivors of the same war, just on different sides of the explosion.
\---
He texted that night.
Tony: You okay?
I stared at the screen for an entire minute.
Then replied.
Me: I saw you on the field.
The typing bubble appeared. Then vanished.
Appeared again.
Tony: Why didn't you say anything?
Me: Didn't want to interrupt.
Pause.
Then:
Tony: So you just watched me?
I hesitated. Then:
Me: I was taking photos.
More bubbles.
Tony: What did you see?
My chest hurt.
Me: Something real.
He didn't say anything.
And in some manner, that said more than words.
\---
The following day, I skipped class.
I stayed in the darkroom and printed the photo of him smiling in the grass.
Pinned it up beside the one of him doubled over, fists clenched.
Two sides to a story no one else had.
The predator.
The broken boy.
And somewhere in between—the version only I had captured.
\---
When I left that night, my fingers were ink-stained and my eyes blurry.
But I was lighter.
Not whole.
Not healed.
But seen.
Even if only by a boy who didn't know how to be gentle without breaking something.
\---
I didn't know what I was doing.
What this was becoming.
But in the viewfinder, it did.
And sometimes, that was enough.