seventeen

In his room, Henry ripped the photo of the birthday party out of his scrapbook. Green trees, against a high blue sky dotted with white fluffy clouds. The flash caught him just in the act of blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. A tear landed on the picture as he studied it.

The photograph trembled in his grasp, his fingers shaking, tensing around the edges and he dropped it to keep from crushing it into a ball. It fluttered to the ground and landed face-up, staring at him from the floor. Head in his hands, he stared back, unable to close his eyes and too scared to move.

“Breathe.”

A pushpin stuck out of the wall in front of him and he rested his finger on it, trying to feel the hard plastic edge. He let his hand fall, landing on the desk next to the scrapbook, the empty page with his own handwriting on it: Birthday Party: November 19.

It wasn’t autumn, in the picture still on the floor.

He turned the pages, flipping back to the beginning. He skipped the school portraits, going straight to the first candid shots. He leaned over the book, squinting to see better. He looked at the trees in the background, the grass, flowers, the clothing people were wearing, and the buildings in the corners.

One by one, he looked at them all, unable to even understand what he was looking for. Another birthday picture, an earlier age, the kids in shorts again. He picked up the photo from the floor and compared the kids surrounding him as he blew out candles on the cake. Same kids? Older, at least; similar, maybe.

He didn’t know. But again, it wasn’t fall.

More pictures, his nose brushing against the archival paper as he studied each photograph. His father had noted his mother where she appeared, a bright smile, dark hair curling around and down her face. Petite, she seemed so small next to his father, the two of them holding hands, smiling, happy.

He turned the page, picture after picture, looking for anything. Another page. Another. His face pressed into the book, he stopped. His mother and father, caught unaware by the flash of the camera. Not quite touching; not quite happy. Something had etched fine lines across his mother’s pale skin. That same something had drawn his father’s smile down into the beginnings of a frown.

After that, the pictures of them were far less frequent, those of him more staged. On another page, his father, caught in profile, watched his son doing nothing in particular. His father’s eyes were hooded, dark, with circles beneath them that were even darker, almost sad. But that’s not why Henry stopped.

There were no street names in any picture, no identifying marks of any kind for any reason. No buildings he recognized, no mountains towering in the background. No stray pieces of paper lying around for the camera to capture. He had searched every picture, studied every inch of them, and found nothing except for this one photograph of his father in profile, watching him. No, not sad; there was more pity in the look than that. And beneath the half-frown and the double chin, a faded T-shirt with half an O and an RD.

ORD?

Henry stared at the letters, blue and yellow against a gray background.

“Breathe.”

His computer hummed to life when he pulled the wireless mouse over. From beneath the pillbox he spread out the paper and added the letters to the random list. Elizabeth. Victor. Frank. Christine. CME-U. And, now, ORD. He hunched over the keyboard as he clicked open Google.

ORD.

Chicago, O’Hare airport; no. Fort Ord; no. He scrolled through the pages then froze, his fingers hovering over the keys.

ORD.

Livets Ord University, affiliated with Oral Roberts and located in Sweden; no. Then, in Google blue: STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

“Breathe.”

Henry clicked and clicked, exploring the maze of the various Stanford websites, deeper and deeper into the alumni sections, looking for … what? He didn’t know what he was searching for or why, couldn’t even figure out if ORD was a clue or not. There was no rhyme or reason to his clicking, each link taking him wherever it might. His tears fell on the keys, his breathing spiraling out of control.

Stanford.

“Breathe.”

Then, there was no place left to click, every avenue requiring registrations and passwords he didn’t have. He shuddered, struggling to draw a breath. His palm slapped against the desktop and his keyboard hopped into the air. The pills, in their plastic coffin, rattled and he dry-swallowed them all at once, coughing as they rubbed against his throat.

He stared at the monitor, resting his finger against the Stanford logo, the red S staring back at him. His finger slid down to rest on the desk and then pushed his mouse to put the computer back to sleep.

Staring at the blank monitor, he sat there, unmoving. He blinked, once, twice, then rested his head down on the keys. With a shove, he pushed himself backward, the wheels squeaking over the wooden floor. The chair bounced against the wall and Henry bounced with it.

He crawled into bed fully dressed, pulled the covers up over his head despite the heat, and tried to convince himself that pretending to sleep was as good as the real thing. Anything not to dream again.

NOAA Alert: Erika Upgraded
to Hurricane; Cuba on Alert

Miami, FL—August 24, 2009: The National Hurricane Center is reporting that Tropical Storm Erika has now been upgraded to a Hurricane as wind speeds have topped 100 mph. After the storm made a northward turn in the direction of North America, the government of Venezuela stopped broadcasting Hurricane Alerts for the coast. The projected path has been updated to indicate landfall in Cuba and the Gulf Coast by the end of the week.

A Tropical Storm alert has also been issued for the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao for the imminent arrival of Tropical Storm Danny, with sustained maximum winds of 65 mph.