Author's Note: Hi, everyone! As you might have guessed, I gave up on my one-shot brigade. I'm still available for requests (one-word prompts, even), but I'm going to be devoting my time to this multi-chapter shindig for a while. Enjoy! (And if you have any ideas for Dave's gifts to John, please let me know! I need, like, 25 more).
You are especially proud of this project. It took lots of time, which is something of a commodity as a senior in high school. A few months ago, you had begun digging through some of your old photography things, and had found a bunch of well-preserved negatives from when you were younger and still really interested in photography. Many of these were snapshots of you and John from middle school – at the park, on the playground, in the café, and more. So you hit the dark room for the first time in ages and developed photo after photo until you had dozens of perfectly printed images.
In the end, you had purchased an old-fashioned scrapbook from the thrift store downtown that you and John used to love, dated and titled each piece, and slid them between the thin, plastic leaflets. Every single page displayed two photos.
Now, you hold in your hands the fruits of your labors, bound in a hardcover album. You are reminded of your hours of work and sigh inwardly at the thought. Crossing your fingers against the back cover as you forgo the sidewalk and tramp across the front lawn, you hope it was all worth it.
Today is Monday, so unlike the two week-end days preceding it, you had needed to time your arrival carefully. After school, you had raced home to dump your backpack in your room, grab the scrapbook, and make sure everything was in order. Then you had grabbed a chilly apple juice from the fridge and hit the road, pedaling your ancient red bicycle across the town at top speed. It was an antique old thing, that relic of a bicycle, paint chipped and peeling away, pedals too close to your body. You had long since outgrown it, and your lanky legs felt scrunched up against your body when you rode. But the drink holder for your apple juice had remained intact, and that was the important thing anyway.
The doorbell's hollow yet cheerful echo reverberates through the house, and your ears pick up on it more than usual due to the living room window that has been cracked to let in the refreshing spring air. Thirty seconds later, the door opens, and you and John go through the dialogue to a script that is becoming nothing short of a routine.
"John Egbert, I love you," you quote, same as the two days preceding it. And yet, you notice that your voice holds no less passion than the first time you uttered it.
"I'm not a homosexual," John intones warily as he takes the book from you.
"I know."
When the door closes, you sit on the stoop, flip open your notebook, and add to your record. You're not sure what to list the gift as. "Scrapbook" or "photographs" are both accurate and straightforward, but you know that pictures are more than that. They are the shadows of the past. They are the remnants of memories. They are proof that the old times we spent together live on.
In the end, you settle for a word, and scribble it down after the phrase, "Day 3."