"Say Cheese! Click."

“It’s the end of the ceremony and we haven’t taken a picture yet,” he whispered into my ear as he pulled me into a clumsy hug. He smiled at my mother who stood next to me, and my mum smiled back, that sympathetic smile she’d been giving the close to 100 young men and women who’d just walked across the make-shift podium in the back of my school library to receive their A level diplomas. My classmates and I had been stumbling into each other’s arms since morning, often bursting into tears before mumbling our congratulations. However, our eyes seemed to communicate one unanimous message - we’d all be getting drunk together later that night - silly drunk on cheap Jo’burg wine, and unabashed tears before we packed our bags and drove away from each other’s lives for what could be forever.

 

Graduation.

 

 

I shuffled next to him as he too-firmly took hold of my left shoulder and squeezed it. We turned to face the camera with plastic smiles, well aware of the battle going on in our heads - and hearts. My brain went fuzzy for a moment, and all I could think of was that if my mother had the slightest idea what this boy’s role in my life had been, she would not have smiled so apologetically. Scratch that. I guarantee she would not have smiled at all.

 

Perhaps it was because I moved away from him too quickly after the picture was taken - I’m not sure - but he was wearing that look again. The one that said, “I’m not that repulsive Liv.” It was graduation after all, and maybe I should have tried harder to be more accommodating. I could feel my muscles slowly turn to steel as my face started to hurt from all the hard smiling I’d been doing. I awkwardly thrust my hand into his, and firmly shook it, hoping that it somehow made up for my behavior a few minutes ago.

 

“Sorry, I have to go,” I said as I stalked closer to my mother’s side and eventually out of the library, past more tears and more hugs and more congratulatory messages. His eyes followed me out, and I could hear their question - are you really? Sorry?

 

My mother appeared a few minutes later, and though she pulled me into one of her long mum-hugs, and talked about how much she enjoyed the ceremony, I could tell she didn’t quite understand why the whole school had been bawling since morning. It was 9p.m. and still teachers, students and their alter egos moped around, spotting sniffs and wildly fresh tear streaks. I couldn’t blame her. It was hard to pack what seemed like a lifetime of love, loss and learning into one ceremony, and I didn’t dare try - it hurt too much.

 

“Okay sweetie, I’ll meet you at the airport around 9a.m then?”

 

“Do I have to?” I almost asked.

 

I didn’t want to leave. No, that’s not true. I wanted to leave. I very badly wanted and needed to leave. I just wasn’t ready to. It felt a bit like an abusive relationship (picture girl on floor, bruised and beaten, but still madly in love with said b*****d.) This place had done that to me, but I was still scheming and dreaming of how I could possibly ‘miss’ my flight back home and perhaps spend a few more hours in my little Jozi bubble.

 

My mum dragged one of my suitcases with her as she reached for her phone to let the driver know she was ready to leave.

“And before I forget, here’s the camera in case you want to take more pictures. See you tomorrow then, I love you!”

 

I turned away as the white Toyota drove off and sighed audibly before I turned the camera on. The black of the screen came alive, and after a momentary blinding flash, the grey frame slowly settled on the last picture taken. Sure enough, there we were - two star-crossed lovers frozen squarely in time.

 

I winced. The image was painfully blurry. I could barely see his face, and my nose was so pixilated I might have been able to play checkers with the right kind of software to blow it up. But there we stood all the same, his stiff arm and my stiff heart, side-by-side, proclaiming to the world that we were sometimes able to settle our differences, even if it lasted approximately 2.43 minutes.

 

“We couldn’t even get a picture right,” I mused as I walked back to my dorm to continue mourning my departure.

“We should have worked on that first before trying out this love business…”

 

My fingers made their way down to the delete button as I walked up the red-tiled stairs and into one of my girlfriend’s rooms.

 

Beep - One picture deleted.

 

Empty grey faded to blinding white and finally a quiet black replaced the screen as I turned the camera 0ff.

 

“Momo, I swear my brain needs one of these delete button things,” I muttered as I crawled into her bed to cry one last time.