—Oh my God. You still have this camera?
—Of course. That’s, like, a first generation digital camera. It might be a classic in a couple decades.
—You used to carry this around everywhere.
Victoria twisted the camera around in her hands, like some vestige of our teens still clung to the surface, maybe tucked away into a crack or in between the batteries. I held the camera and twisted the button on top. The digital start-up bleeps made Victoria giggle.
—Are there still pictures on the memory card? she asked.
—Memories are all intact, as far as I know. I have no idea what’s on it though.
It was dark, and the square inch screen lit up our faces. I watched the wrinkles at the corner of Victoria’s eyes deepen as she flicked through the first few pictures of grass and clouds. Then her face filled the frame.
—Oh man.
—Wow.
—I look so young.
Victoria paused for a moment on the pic. I gently reminded her that there were others. A few of Victoria followed: blurry, dark, or overexposed, making her glow like a plaster skeleton.
We were under the Bridge, sitting on the riff raff along the river, getting high, as the evidence showed, on April 20 no less. There was a set of pics I recognized: Victoria had stuffed my hand with the hash pipe, took the camera and artfully framed her legs, short white skirt, and brand new iPod. The next few photos were selfies before the word selfie was disseminated: her and I, portraited at arm’s length, carefully looking morose or crafty, like we were both dreadful and amused about sitting under the Bridge together at sun set. We were sitting so close we were touching. I remembered the night well.
—This is embarassing, but I don’t remember this at all, Victoria said.
—It was a long time ago. I said it apologetically, sorry that I did remember so well.
I remembered Victoria’s perfume and the shade of her lipstick on the cigarette butt, even the way it rained so hard later that night that we sat in my car watching the street lights distort through the windshield and disappear in clusters of lightning.
—Do you see it? Victoria asked, pausing on the last selfie.
—See what?
—Look at us.
I saw it, but I didn’t say anything.
—We fit so well together, Victoria said.
—It was a long time ago.
She puffed out a long breath and stared at the tiny screen. The white glow glinted in my eyes and lit Victoria’s face. She looked at me, and we stared long enough that we imprinted our faces here and now, together under the same Bridge on the same date nine years after our faces had dissipated from the tunnel air but remained encased as pixels on a digital memory card in our hands.
There we were. And here we are.
Jack Caseros is a Canadian writer and scientist whose work has recently appeared in Cactus Heart, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Epigraph Magazine, among other cool places. You can read more from Jack at www.jackcaseros.wordpress.com, or read his sporadic aphorisms on Twitter @JackCaseros.
–Art by Natalia Drepina