Faulty Camera

“Can I ask you a question?”

The words rang out over the sound of children playing nearby, screeching happily.

Rule looked over, his green eyes meeting her starkly different ones, his brow furrowing slightly. “Sure.” He sounded unsure and almost uncomfortable, as if he knew something she did not.

A look of confusion shrouded her eyes but she blinked it away carefully, only slightly pursing her already pouty lips before nodding.

Rule studied her face. Freckles from too much sun ran down the bridge of her nose and spilled onto her high cheek bones. Her blonde hair constantly caught the light breeze, messing the already unruly waves. His eyes ran over the way she gnawed on her lower lip before studying the depth of her hazel eyes. Brown stood prominently on the outermost ring of her irises.

“What was your first girlfriend like?”

The words tumbled from her lips right as another shriek of laughter echoed out in the not so far distance.

Rule glanced away only for a moment before returning Penelope’s curious gaze.

“My first real girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

He sighed softly to himself, searching his memory for the littlest of details.

“Her name was Alice,” he stated, almost distantly as each memory flickered past his eyes. “She was nice. Tall. Very much into dance. What we had wasn’t anything overly significant,” he stated, glancing towards Penny.

“We were young and our parents chaperoned our dates to the movie theatre.” Rule paused for a moment, thinking over a relationship he hadn’t revisited in years. A small smile flickered over his face. “We never even kissed, but we thought we were close enough to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“What happened?”

Rule shrugged, replaying the memories of his first break up. It’d been so painful at the time. “I don’t know really. One day, she just broke up with me. She pulled me aside in school, and that was the end of it – of us.”

Penelope narrowed her eyes only slightly and pursed her lips as she formulated another question. “Was Alice your first love?”

She watched as Rule shifted and leaned back. Penny could practically see the gears turning in his mind as the memories came back to him like movies flashing behind his eyes. For a second, he even closed them to watch, playing and replaying the filmstrip until a moment of clarity washed over him.

“No.” The word seemed blunt as it poured from his lips. “No. I thought it was when we were ‘dating’, but in retrospect I can see I was wrong.” The admission hadn’t been concluded recently. “My first love and my first girlfriend were two completely different things.”

A silence fell over the two of them. Rule stared out in front of him as Penelope studied his profile.

“Tell me about it?” she asked softly.

Rule lazily grinned at her. “What do you want to know?”

Penelope shrugged. “I don’t know. Anything you want to tell me.”

He closed his eyes again, the filmstrip rewinding further, to a time when he used to spend his summers playing army in the front yard of his mother’s house. He could remember the feeling of the sun burning into his skin, he could still smell his mother making grilled cheese for lunch and he could hear his brothers making walkie-talkie noises from their stakeout in their mother’s flower garden.

“She was a year younger than I was.”

He remembered turning his head and first seeing her, her eyes lifted to the sky above, as if searching for a cloud in the sky to try to make a shape out of.

“She was very quiet. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t see her without her journal.”

“Her journal?”

“Yes. She used to carry it around and doodle in it. She did a lot of sketching of the things she found interesting.” Rule could practically see her sitting in front of him, drawing his face. He remembered being amazed at how talented she was for being as young as they were.

She smiled. “Was she an artist?”

“No. I think she was, but she always denied it. She would write things down along the edges of her sketches – little notes, quotes, the words she heard and thought were interesting. She was more of a collector of things, I guess. She liked to be able to flip back the next day and see all the things she experienced…” He paused again, turning to look at Penny with an endearing smile. “She never took anything for granted. I loved her for that, even as a child.”

Penelope smiled back, resting her hand over his. Her fingers entangled with his, almost in a comforting way.

The film was playing. Rule closed his eyes.

He remembered calling her over every morning and flipping through the dirty pages of her book. He remembered watching her throughout the day, a protective body guard to her without her even knowing. He remembered his mother sitting him down and telling him about her – about why the neighbor girl seemed so different, why the other girls in the neighborhood couldn’t get along with her – and he remembered simply staring at her when she wasn’t looking purely out of curiosity and fascination.

Rule could practically feel the way the sunlight used to warm his skin on those early mornings and hear the younger version of his brother counting aloud to mark the start of their pretend attack on their enemies as she walked outside of her house, her eyes lifted upward to the clouds.

“She hated talking,” he mused. A small laugh escaped his lips as the memories flooded his mind. “And when she did, her voice never rose over a whisper – almost as if she would ruin something if she spoke any louder.”

He lost himself for one brief moment and surfaced with, “She loved strawberries.”

He opened his eyes again, his eyes staring directly into hers for a moment before scanning the environment once again. Penelope liked that he felt the need to constantly check on their surroundings. It was protective almost, constantly watching for danger and ensuring that everything was fine in the world around them.

“Strawberries?” she asked, interest in her voice.

He nodded. “She used to come over all the time. My mom used to bring her out to the garden. She’d eat them straight away. My mother cared for her too much to be upset with the shortage of strawberries she seemed to have every summer.” He laughed aloud, seeing the little girl in his mind, mouth stained berry blush and fingers painted red from picking the fruit.

“She used to go in our garden so much that her toes were permanently red from the time strawberry season came around to the end of fall from stepping on them.”

Rule watched as the corners of Penelope’s lips twisted upwards. “You loved her very much?”

He nodded, content smile folding over his features.

“I still love her, Penny. You can’t fall out of love with a girl whose kisses always taste like strawberries.”

Penelope felt herself staring at Rule, blush flushing over her cheeks as she glanced down to her stained fingertips – bright red from the fresh juices of the strawberries she’d picked and eaten just that afternoon.

Rule grinned, leaning down and pressing his lips to hers, inhaling the scent that had intoxicated him since childhood.

“How many times have I asked you to tell me that story?” Penelope asked.

Rule shrugged. One hundred maybe, a thousand possibly. He couldn’t keep track, but he would keep telling her the story of their love until she remembered it.

The film strip in Penny’s mind didn’t work nearly as well as anyone thought or wanted. The camera was somehow broken - it always had been. Short term memories didn’t last for her. Even now, she had her journal beside her as they sat on the porch swing with a list of the things she’d done and sketches of the things she didn’t want to forget. Among them was a rough sketch of Rule staring out at the lawn and three blonde children tottering along in the front yard – their children in sketch form.

Even as they enjoyed the last of their dwindling summer day, Rule had a close eye on the three trouble makers. Olivia, the oldest and the sweetest, was gathering daisies. Ryder, the middle and the most mischievous was trying to convince her younger brother Colton to do something with her.

Penelope found herself smiling once more, falling into Rule’s side. “Do you ever get sick of telling the same story over and over again?”

Rule wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “You can’t get sick of a story that’s still in the making, and I don’t see an ending nearing anytime soon for us, do you?”

Staring at their children for a long moment, Penelope felt her heart flutter. She turned her eyes up to his. “No, no, I can’t quite say that I do.”