Henry

There are times when you realise that your camera is rather useless. There are times when the moment is so beautiful and so pure that you're content with just looking at it, breathing it in. You're sure that you don't need to take a picture to remember it because all the details are already being engraved into your memory. One etching at a time, stroke by stroke. You know that no lens in the world would do the moment any ounce of justice. So you don't bother to try.

I've had my fair share of such moments. Sunsets. Sunrises. Some stars up in the sky and some stars in my family's eyes.

But up until tonight, I'd never thought that there could be any other reason, any other scenario in which I would feel my hand drawing away from the shutter.

It has been over an hour since I've been sitting here. At the rooftop. My back against the cold concrete wall, my arms resting on bent knees. A soft wind ruffling through my hair.

My eyes burn from tiredness. My limbs ache. My mind aches.

And for once, the camera lying beside me on the ground offers no help at all.

All the way up here on the sixth floor, under the clear night sky, with the soft wind and the softer stars, it's so peaceful. It's like this bubble of isolation and stillness. Like a quiet rest stop. Only that inside my head it is so impossibly loud. So bright and glaring and restless.

Like Irisa's drawings.

The day keeps replying in my head, a film on a loop I can't seem to stop. It had started so that I could try and make some head and tail of just what had happened today, but after the first few times, now I just feel lost inside the maze of my own thoughts and feelings. Unable to tell what actually had happened and what I think had happened.

I close my eyes and I see myself in the counsellor's office, when I'd first seen Irisa and her unsure smile, and had promptly frozen. And then in the cafeteria, at her table, when I'd first seen her. The drawings on her arms were such a contrast to what I'd thought of her before. Before when she had seemed quiet, as if she were someone who was fading along the edges, one unnoticeable layer at a time. But then the drawings made me rethink it all because then it seemed as if she were the boldest, the loudest, the brightest thing in the whole room. The only thing that remained unchanged were her eyes. Her deep blue eyes, bursting with an emotional depth I was trying very hard to not fall into.

Because it feels like that if once I start falling, I'll never stop.

I take in a deep breath, pushing air past the block in my chest. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I scroll through the list of starred contacts and hit dial. I rest my head against the cold wall behind me and close my eyes, hearing the dial-tone fill the quiet night.

"Hey man, what's up?" John asks.

"Hi," I say, my voice a silent plea.

There is some shuffling on the other end of the line and then John grunts. "What happened? Where are you?"

"Rooftop."

"Ry-you. What?" Before I can reply, John answers himself, "Never mind. Come to that park near your rooftop. I'll be there in 15."

"No, don't," I say urgently, and then put an abrupt stop to my sentence. "I just-I just wanted to talk."

"Mate, you're calling me at 3 in the morning from the place where you don't ever call anyone."

My silence speaks for itself. It speaks leagues and bounds, much more comprehensive than I find my words capable of being just then.

To be honest, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't remember feeling this lost ever since my father's trial concluded all those years ago. And then I tell John as much, because what else can I do.

"Alright then," he says after a few moments, "tell me what's up."

I take in a deep breath and then exhale loudly. Open my eyes and gaze up at the endless stars. "I'm confused," I say at last.

"About what?"

"Irisa Adams." Her name escapes me like a whisper, like a shout. Like this moment of me sitting here, late at night, alone on this rooftop, speaking her name, was already written in time. As if it's déjà vu.

Only that it shouldn't be because that makes no sense and even I know that.

"Man you literally met her just today. And yeah, I'll admit she's a little... different, but you still just met her."

"That," I almost spit out the word with a frown, "is the frustrating part. I've just met her and already I feel like running away."

"Because she has a psychological diagnosis?" John asks, and it sounds like he is trying really hard to not to scoff.

"No," I say indignantly. "Yes... no. Look, I'm not sure. I really don't know, okay? But it has nothing to do with her diagnosis, I'm not that kind of an arsehole, c'mon. And it's not like I even really know whatever it is that she has."

"Okay. What then?"

I look down and stare at the floor, at the bits of gravel and dust. The grey concrete, smooth in places and scuffed in others. "I'm afraid of her," I say, slowly, sifting through the chaos in my head as I say it to understand what I'm even talking about. And I find that I am afraid of her. Of her eyes. Of her drawing-filled arms and hands. Of her sharply cut hair and her sharper bones, making it so that it's almost impossible to tell where she ends and the background begins, only that that makes the possibility of cutting yourself on her all the more real.

I think that I'm losing my mind, but then John says, "That makes sense."

He has replied after so long that I'd forgotten I was even talking to him. His reply startles me, brings me out of my heedless thoughts, and grounds me. And then I want to shake him and ask what the hell is that even supposed to mean?

"Yeah, that makes sense," he says again with a soft chuckle.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because," he says, and laughs a little louder. "Because you're a stubborn guy. And I think you've never met anyone like her before. I think that that scares you. And that's okay, man. You're afraid of the things she might change."

And it's right then, when John says change that I finally understand. Irisa isn't like anyone I've known before, but she's also uncannily similar to things in my life I try to forget every day. That's what I'm afraid of. Not of the things she may change, but of the person that she might. Me.

"Thanks man," I say into the phone's receiver and hear only John's soft chuckle before I press end.

I'm filled with an intermingling sense of fear. The kind of fear that is mostly dread arising from the unmistakable understanding of something you think you'd rather have left misunderstood. Only that you're not sure which one is actually worse. The not knowing or the knowing.

I shrug my shoulders, as if I'm shrugging off a heavy load shaped like Irisa Adams, then replace the phone in my pocket and snatch the camera off the floor. Stand up and begin adjusting the settings to match the night's light.

I look away from the viewfinder and gaze up at the stars, closing my eyes as I let a single breath escape my lips in the form of sigh. In the form of a quiet prayer to whoever may be listening. Then I press one firm finger on the shutter, and click.