Gone in a Flash
#1 of Flash fiction
Flash fiction piece (373 words) about missed opportunities.
When Evan Turner first started taking pictures of the foreign exchange student, it had been a joke - just his way of teasing. No one at Rosedale High had ever seen a striped hyena among the cats, dogs, horses, and other more domestic species crowding the hallways. Later, Evan would realize that looking at him through the lens of a camera all throughout senior year was like having a filter over his own perception of the budding relationship between them.
"Get that damn camera out of my face," Amadi would hiss, and the tabby's outdated model would be slammed back against his eye socket.
For some sick reason that was funny. At least, it was more entertaining than the projects Evan was supposed to be working on for the school magazine. Mother always said he had a knack for getting himself into trouble, and there was no trouble like the obsession of a 17-year-old boy.
"Smile for the camera," he'd said at the end of first semester, "no one around here's ever seen a porcupine in a plaid sweater."
Then they'd had lunch.
They were both lonely. That was obvious. The difference was that Amadi made no effort to hide the fact that he was out of his element while the shit-eating grin never quite left Evan's face. That day in January they'd simply been too tired to do anything but down the cafeteria's lunchmeat sandwiches of questionable origin out in the crisp winter air, and after that neither of them had been lonely for the next 6 months.
Evan had been disappointed to send him off that June back to a country whose name he couldn't even pronounce, but he hadn't realized just how deep the sinking feeling in his stomach could go until he began developing the photos in the increasingly decrepit darkroom. Old-fashioned cat, old-fashioned camera - just the way mom and pop had wanted it. With every new square hung up to dry, he saw his arm around Amadi's shoulders, their bodies just a little too close to be friendly, and always his hands on that electric mess of hair highlighted by the garish neon lights of the sushi bar uptown or the bowling alley downtown.