Thirty-Six Photos

Anya’s father gave her his old film camera in March. It had no screen. She took a photo, and then she had to wait a week to see it, and at first she hated that.

Her first roll was buildings: thirty-six photos of the grey flats near the station. They came back sharp and correct and boring. Her father looked at them for a long time. “Buildings don’t move,” he said. “That’s why they’re easy. Humans are the hard part.”

Her second roll was the cats on her street. Better, but the cats never looked at her. The man in the photo shop said the light was good. He said that about everything.

On the third roll, she was learning to be quick. She was the only teenager in the Saturday class, and the teacher kept saying the same thing: don’t think, look.

Thirty-five photos were nothing. One was her grandmother at the kitchen table, waiting for the water to boil, laughing at something outside the window. Anya hadn’t planned it. She looked at it for a long time, and realized that every photo she liked had a person in it.

She put that one on her wall and the other thirty-five in a box. Then she took the camera into town, where the people were.