“Constance Song!”

“Present!” Squeaked the pint-sized girl, her face already turning a bright shade of red from hearing her own nasally morning tone leaving .

Media Arts class. Constance’s favourite period out of her entire school day, and maybe even out of both of her semesters. She loved photography and cinematography with all of her heart. There were two stacks of hard drives in her desk drawer, filled with pictures and video clips she had taken from absolutely everywhere to prove it.

She had always loved the tone of nostalgia that every photo or video brought, even if it did make her heart ache a little. Her parents encouraged her creative passion by surprising her with a new camera model every year for her birthday. Constance had treasured every single one of them, making sure that all of them, at least, had the chance to explore ten different destinations with her. Constance had taken the bus/train to many places before, most of the time with just a small knapsack filled with her wallet and camera. Those were the moments that she valued the most, the ones that made her feel infinite and blissful.

The only thing that Constance disliked about this class (and all of her other classes), were the copious amounts of group/partner projects that the teacher always assigned. There was absolutely nothing else that Constance hated more in the world than partner projects. It was already hard enough facing her classmates every day, but having to be forced to work and actually socializing with them was a whole different case of difficult for her. Thankfully, her love of taking pictures always trumped her social nervousness around people, and they always ended up getting a spectacular mark on their project (mainly because of Constance). It would seem that the rest of the class also knew about her knack for taking pretty pictures, because every time partners were called, people would fight over the spot of being her partner; leaving Constance flustered and unsure of what to do. Constance was an easy push-over and would always hurriedly agree to the first person that asked her, not wanting to disappoint anyone or cause any small trifles. So, it was always a constant battle of who would be the lucky person to yell out her name first.

Constance patiently glanced around her unusually sunny-lit classroom, tapping her fingers against the hard wooden desk subconsciously, before deciding to bring out her sketchbook from her backpack. The corners of couldn’t help but tug up at the sight of the tattered chestnut-coloured book. Every single blemish on the sketchbook held a memory. The left corner of the stained brown pages reminded her of the night that she had spilled coffee from trying to stay up all night perfecting a sketch. The back slightly crumpled pages of the book reminded her of when someone had accidentally knocked the poor book out of her hands, straight into a rain puddle. Thankfully, she had quick reflexes and was able to snatch up the small sketchbook before the rain could seep through every single one of the pages. She had stayed up all night blow drying each page individually, then stacking three dictionaries on top of it.

As everyone dawdled around the classroom, conve