Photographs

Hot tears trickled down his plump cheeks and dotted the album’s pages. Livid yells and screams ran through his mind, even though he had stuffed his fingers tight in his ears. Doors banged outside and crockery fell to the ground as Evan lay muddled in his blankets, crying over an old album. The photographs now stained with his tears were of a young couple, smiling broadly, standing on a sandy shore with big straw hats, sipping cool water out of the same coconut.

“I don’t want to see them fighting, I don’t.” thought the eleven-year-old boy, stuffing his ears further until they hurt. “They despise each other more than anything. Their condition, it’s worse than that of divorcees. They live together yet ignore the existence of each other and when they accept it, this is what happens, always.” He thought, his mouth parch dry and eyes swollen red. A twinge of fury ran through his throat as he tried to swallow his temper. “They never think of me!” he said to himself in a heated voice. Frustration twinged in his veins, “Not once in my life have I seen them happy together as this photograph, never.”

A chair flew across the hall to hit his mom as she let out an anguished scream. “Enough is enough!” Evan advanced towards a hall, stood in between his parents and yelled in a voice hoarse with rage, “Just stop fighting! If not for me, for Jesus’ sake, just stop it! Who’d want to see their parents fighting with each other all their lives!” he poured out all that had been lying in a dark corner of his heart for years. “There is a way to solve things. Throwing chairs at each other for a decade won’t do it.” Said Evan. “Your mom, she’s the one who-” his father tried to interrupt but Evan didn’t wait for him to finish, “Quarrels won’t last this long if the fault were on one side only.”

His lungs were screaming for breath, burning hot with the agony that had troubled him all his life, accumulating in his mind, occupying almost all of his early memories. He ignored the heat; all he wanted now was this to end. Now both his parents turned silent, their faces void of any emotion but guilt. Suddenly they became aware of the fault in their actions. 13, Panem Drive turned silent.

Evan, a fifteen-year-old Evan, stared at the ancient album. He turned the page to the smiling couple and stared hard at it. The wind flew in through the window and the pages fluttered. The album, whose every other page was earlier blotched with tears was now covered with photographs, photographs of a happy family.