Photographs of Graves
So It Goes.
I launched forward just in time to hear the bullet whistle past my left shoulder and bury itself into the metal crate I was in front of a moment earlier. My burka slipped back from the force and a few of the men shooting at us screamed something in Arabic. Hastily I pulled it back over my copper hair, making sure that the small microphone was still safely concealed on the back of my neck. Someone screamed nearby. I skittered across the gravel, sliding behind the wall of a makeshift hut, out of site of the gunmen.
A light flashed. I blinked and looked up, seeing him standing there staring down the armed extremists and holding his camera as if it was one of their heavy machine guns. The ground in front of him was littered with machine gun bullets from their spray the moment before. He was bleeding. Blood dripped down from his camera wielding arm. It fell in red drops onto his dust covered shoes.
“This is war journalist Arden Murphy reporting live from Jerusalem,” I coughed, “And war photojournalist Theodore Graves has been shot.”
“You spent two hundred dollars on a jacket?”
“It was on sale for a lot less. And it's going to give me a lot of good use,” I shrugged, sliding on the new leather coat. It even had that fresh leather smell and was light with great pockets. In one of these I had my phone; the other a metro ticket and my school I.D. I could hear the metro screeching across the rails as we descended into the station. The smell of alcohol and mold was pungent in the air and my boots stuck to the ground as I tried to pull my feet up, glued down by the remnants of spilled beverages. The lights flickered ominously with a sickly green glow that threw everything into sharp contrast that played shadow games against the walls. The creaking of the toll booths echoed and clicked as passengers passed through the gates.
My father was not convinced and looked around uneasily. Even after our two week trip in Chicago he was still hesitant to let me go, even though this was my second year in college and I'd been home for most of the summer. He slung a heavy backpack over his shoulder as we made our way up to the rickety gates, stepping aside to talk as figures washed by us with tickets outstretched.
“You sure you want to take the metro to school? You don't want to come home for a couple more days then have me take you down?” he asked.
“Da, term starts in a couple of days. I can't wait any longer,” I smiled, punching him in the arm before kissing him on the cheek. “I'll be fine, I promise. We've already taken my stuff back to school, so I really can't go back home now. Besides, I'll be back at break. Tell Courtney and Sam goodbye for me, will you?”
He nodded, promising to give my stepmum and little brother my sentiments. “Would you like me to shoot an email to Janine, too?”
“No, I'll just call her,” I lied. I knew I wouldn't call my mother. I shifted my satchel on my shoulder uncomfortably, pulling it close against my body. “See you later, Da.”
“See you later, Ari, he leaned forward and kissed my forehead, smiled, and messed my hair up. I laughed and gave him a short salute before backing into my terminal.
I think I slept for most of the ride there, arms wrapped tightly around my satchel all four or so hours. The other side of Illinois is a long way to go. In the meantime my father returned to our hometown in Michigan, escaping Chicago as soon as he was free of me. My father smoked so heavily that I didn't mind the cigarette smoke clinging to the guy next to me on the metro.
The next thing I remember clearly besides flashing lights of moving cars outside the metro station was sitting in my dorm room at College of Xavier looking at my schedule. Part of my room for picking Xavier was their gorgeous campus: Some of the older buildings looked like something out of an architecture magazine, all red brick and arches and glass windows with this cool little building that used to be an astronomy tower, renovated into a study area for honors students (like myself). Another big thing was that the name made me feel like I had walked into an X-Men movie. I hadn't shown any mutant powers yet, but it was still early.
However, the biggest thing was their really great program in multimedia journalism and languages. I wanted to do something involving writing and the world, so it was a good place to start. Unfortunately the list of eight AM classes in latin derivatives, 201 Multimedia Journalism and 200 level French and German classes made me a little queazy. I wasn't quite a morning person. I slumped my head against my desk.
That happened a lot over the next few months as I worked through homework, but everything went better than expected. The classes, albeit rigorous, didn't make me quit the school intramural swim team, nor the broomball team, nor the newspaper. (If you've never heard of broomball, it's this sport that's kind of like hockey except you use a tiny volleyball and a broom. It's kind of crazy.) I was kept more than busy, though, but it kept me out of trouble. I escaped to the astronomy tower a lot to cool off, sometimes falling asleep in one of the oversized armchairs. This happened more frequently as my roommate, Zoe, excelled in the extracurricular world of popularity. And men. And sex. Especially the third. She was great, otherwise I wouldn't have requested her for a second year in a row, but she was a both a New Yorker and a Jew and thus knew how to get what she wanted. She was bequeathed with golden blonde hair, blue eyes, and a prominent bosom, and used all to her advantage quite often. Rooming with her often got noisy, and most weekends I was kicked out in the place of some attractive male. Thus the chairs of the astronomy tower becoming my frequent bed. Huzzah.
I drank a lot of coffee in those months. I think if I were to be cut open I would have bled brown. So it goes. On one of these days, a Monday after a very long night of Zoe very much happifying a very attractive senior, I stumbled into class in a coffee induced coma. I blame the coma for not immediately noticing the very attractive man at the front of the classroom, holding a camera and talking quietly to my professor. But upon noticing him I was very glad Zoe had been kind enough to help me fake looking pretty and awake this morning.
“Good morning, class,” my professor waved with a bemused smile to the groggy students trickling in before the bell, “You all look bight eyed and bushy tailed. I would like to introduce to you Theodore Graves, young but decorated war photojournalist. He's on leave due to injury and is here to tell us about his side of the Journalim world. Please pay attention.”
A light flashed. I blinked and looked up, seeing him standing there staring down the armed extremists and holding his camera as if it was one of their heavy machine guns. The ground in front of him was littered with machine gun bullets from their spray the moment before. He was bleeding. Blood dripped down from his camera wielding arm. It fell in red drops onto his dust covered shoes.
“This is war journalist Arden Murphy reporting live from Jerusalem,” I coughed, “And war photojournalist Theodore Graves has been shot.”
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
“You spent two hundred dollars on a jacket?”
“It was on sale for a lot less. And it's going to give me a lot of good use,” I shrugged, sliding on the new leather coat. It even had that fresh leather smell and was light with great pockets. In one of these I had my phone; the other a metro ticket and my school I.D. I could hear the metro screeching across the rails as we descended into the station. The smell of alcohol and mold was pungent in the air and my boots stuck to the ground as I tried to pull my feet up, glued down by the remnants of spilled beverages. The lights flickered ominously with a sickly green glow that threw everything into sharp contrast that played shadow games against the walls. The creaking of the toll booths echoed and clicked as passengers passed through the gates.
My father was not convinced and looked around uneasily. Even after our two week trip in Chicago he was still hesitant to let me go, even though this was my second year in college and I'd been home for most of the summer. He slung a heavy backpack over his shoulder as we made our way up to the rickety gates, stepping aside to talk as figures washed by us with tickets outstretched.
“You sure you want to take the metro to school? You don't want to come home for a couple more days then have me take you down?” he asked.
“Da, term starts in a couple of days. I can't wait any longer,” I smiled, punching him in the arm before kissing him on the cheek. “I'll be fine, I promise. We've already taken my stuff back to school, so I really can't go back home now. Besides, I'll be back at break. Tell Courtney and Sam goodbye for me, will you?”
He nodded, promising to give my stepmum and little brother my sentiments. “Would you like me to shoot an email to Janine, too?”
“No, I'll just call her,” I lied. I knew I wouldn't call my mother. I shifted my satchel on my shoulder uncomfortably, pulling it close against my body. “See you later, Da.”
“See you later, Ari, he leaned forward and kissed my forehead, smiled, and messed my hair up. I laughed and gave him a short salute before backing into my terminal.
I think I slept for most of the ride there, arms wrapped tightly around my satchel all four or so hours. The other side of Illinois is a long way to go. In the meantime my father returned to our hometown in Michigan, escaping Chicago as soon as he was free of me. My father smoked so heavily that I didn't mind the cigarette smoke clinging to the guy next to me on the metro.
The next thing I remember clearly besides flashing lights of moving cars outside the metro station was sitting in my dorm room at College of Xavier looking at my schedule. Part of my room for picking Xavier was their gorgeous campus: Some of the older buildings looked like something out of an architecture magazine, all red brick and arches and glass windows with this cool little building that used to be an astronomy tower, renovated into a study area for honors students (like myself). Another big thing was that the name made me feel like I had walked into an X-Men movie. I hadn't shown any mutant powers yet, but it was still early.
However, the biggest thing was their really great program in multimedia journalism and languages. I wanted to do something involving writing and the world, so it was a good place to start. Unfortunately the list of eight AM classes in latin derivatives, 201 Multimedia Journalism and 200 level French and German classes made me a little queazy. I wasn't quite a morning person. I slumped my head against my desk.
That happened a lot over the next few months as I worked through homework, but everything went better than expected. The classes, albeit rigorous, didn't make me quit the school intramural swim team, nor the broomball team, nor the newspaper. (If you've never heard of broomball, it's this sport that's kind of like hockey except you use a tiny volleyball and a broom. It's kind of crazy.) I was kept more than busy, though, but it kept me out of trouble. I escaped to the astronomy tower a lot to cool off, sometimes falling asleep in one of the oversized armchairs. This happened more frequently as my roommate, Zoe, excelled in the extracurricular world of popularity. And men. And sex. Especially the third. She was great, otherwise I wouldn't have requested her for a second year in a row, but she was a both a New Yorker and a Jew and thus knew how to get what she wanted. She was bequeathed with golden blonde hair, blue eyes, and a prominent bosom, and used all to her advantage quite often. Rooming with her often got noisy, and most weekends I was kicked out in the place of some attractive male. Thus the chairs of the astronomy tower becoming my frequent bed. Huzzah.
I drank a lot of coffee in those months. I think if I were to be cut open I would have bled brown. So it goes. On one of these days, a Monday after a very long night of Zoe very much happifying a very attractive senior, I stumbled into class in a coffee induced coma. I blame the coma for not immediately noticing the very attractive man at the front of the classroom, holding a camera and talking quietly to my professor. But upon noticing him I was very glad Zoe had been kind enough to help me fake looking pretty and awake this morning.
“Good morning, class,” my professor waved with a bemused smile to the groggy students trickling in before the bell, “You all look bight eyed and bushy tailed. I would like to introduce to you Theodore Graves, young but decorated war photojournalist. He's on leave due to injury and is here to tell us about his side of the Journalim world. Please pay attention.”
♠ ♠ ♠
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