Sitting on a velvet cushion inside a locked cabinet was a camera. It wasn’t a sleek DSLR or a digital point and shoot. It was a boxy, plastic brick with a rainbow stripe down the front. A Polaroid.
I stared at the lens.
I thought about my phone. It was full of secrets, but not the kind I wanted. I had no pictures of us. Not real ones. I didn’t have selfies of us on the couch. I didn’t have pictures of Cal sleeping. I didn’t have pictures of us kissing.
We couldn’t. It was too dangerous. One iCloud hack, one lost phone, one vengeful ex, a friend, and our lives would be over. The internet was forever, and it was terrifying. So we existed in the dark. No evidence. No proof that we wanted each other.
But this?
This was analog. There was no cloud backup. No digital footprint. Just a piece of paper that developed in your hand and existed only where you kept it. Physical. Tangible. Safe.
“Can I see that?” I asked the woman behind the counter.
She unlocked the case and placed it in my hands. It felt heavy. Real. She told me she had film, the “Impossible Project” kind that worked in the old vintage bodies.
“I’ll take it,” I said instantly. “And all the film you have.”
“Silas?” Evan called out from the front of the store. “Please tell me you aren’t buying the squirrel.”
“It’s a camera,” I said, paying the woman.
Cal wandered over. “A Polaroid? What are you, a hipster?”
“It’s vintage,” I defended. I looked at Cal, holding the boxy camera up. “And it prints instantly. No digital copies. Just… the one photo.”
Cal stopped. He looked at the camera, then he looked at me. He saw the logic immediately. No evidence. Just us.
His smirk softened into something genuine.
“Buy it, Si. It’s cool.”
“Why are we here?” Evan asked, his voice pitching up an octave. “Seriously. Why.”
We were standing at the gates of Cave Hill Cemetery. It was massive, nearly three hundred acres of rolling hills, lakes, and thousands upon thousands of Victorian graves.
“I came here once with my dad and Uncle Scott,” I explained, adjusting the strap of the Polaroid camera around my neck. “When we were on the road one time. We had a day off in Louisville, and they brought me here. They loved it. Said it was ‘gothic architecture appreciation’.”
Evan stared at me. “Of course Maverick and Scott thought a graveyard was a fun field trip for a teenager. That explains so much about you. You’re basically an Addams family member.”
“It’s cool!” I laughed. “Come on. There’s a lake.”
“It’s filled with dead people, Silas,” Evan hissed, sticking close to me as we walked through the gates. “If a ghost touches me, I’m suing the Reed family.”
“Relax, giant,” Cal grinned, running ahead. “I’ll protect you.”
Despite Evan’s complaints, the mood shifted as we got deeper into the grounds. It was beautiful, sunny, green, and quiet. We started running around like kids, dodging behind massive oak trees and reading the oldest headstones we could find.
We took pictures.
I snapped one of Evan looking terrified next to a statue of a weeping angel.
I snapped one of Cal planking on a park bench.
Then, we played hide and seek.
“Hey, Evan!” Cal called out near a cluster of mausoleums. “I found your grave! It says ‘Here Lies Evan, Died of Being Boring’!”
“Shut up!” Evan yelled, marching over.
