I am looking at some polaroids. There are duplicates of some of the images, all of them of a luminous girl on whom I have a crush, a vibrant red head with porcelain skin and large endless eyes. I have taken numerous photos of her in a tree, the leaves surrounding her, obscuring her, and yet her face still glows, framed by her hair, as she reads a book in her lap or looks directly into the camera, aware of my presence but still distancing herself through the lens. Some of the duplicated images have her face blacked out, as if she were inked out in black and all of the photos are ghostly soft, blurred black and white pictures of a day the two of us were out and having fun. Even the photos in which her face is removed are surprising and haunting but I keep returning to the others in which her face is there, where she is looking at me through the camera or away, her chin curled down into her chest as she curls herself around a book. I want to show her the photos and I go to find our group of friends and see most of us gathered, piled up in little herds of couples. One guy, in a red polo shirt with blue horizontal stripes, plops himself into an overstuffed chair. I go to him. "Steve, don't fuck with her today, okay? Seriously. I have something she needs to see." I am angry with him, angry because he has used her sexually and dumped her but still likes to mess with her emotions. I am being very confrontational but mostly because of my very strong feelings towards her. I am still looking for her, eager to show her these incredibly haunting images of her but she is nowhere in the coffee house where I saw the rest of my friends. I grab my backpack to go find her, stepping outside as, behind me, I hear our "friends" mocking me, saying I am a lesbian and in love with this girl, which I know is true but don't appreciate how they are teasing me about it. The sun is incredibly bright when I get outside, the glare of it directly in my eyes, blinding me for a moment as I continue my search for this girl.