Devastating was a word Sulli often used to describe it when people asked how it felt when she heard the news. Or maybe drowning, because without the feel of a camera in her hands or the weight of one around her neck, Sulli was swimming in what felt like sadness. She and her father had been close, and losing him was kind of like the earth losing the sun. Her light was gone the moment his last breath slipped from his throat, and she froze over in horror, the only thing that made her feel better again was the camera. It took quite a lot of coaxing from family and friends before she finally thawed out of shock and hurt, but even after she’d melted from that hard shell of her’s, people close to her always knew that her smile would never have the same amount of sunlight they used to hold. 

    Her friends were the best of the best, she figured that out early on. Everyone she hung out with was accepting of the metallic item that was always somewhere on her person, but that didn’t mean that everyone she’d meet would be. It had just become a part of life for Sulli and her buddies, the camera was a sign of normality, of okay-ness. Some stranger wouldn’t help her collect the countless rolls of film that’d spilled from her purse if she’d dropped it, like Victoria did, wordlessly, in the hallway at school one day. Not just anybody would smile for every single picture that she took, like Luna and Amber always did. It wasn’t like she meant to be weird when she took photos of everything and anything. It was just that she was driven on never forgetting a moment of her life ever again, like the times she spent with her father, and it had become so important it seemed like the only point of living for her. It was something known throughout her little group of tightly knit friends: Sulli’d spent so much time behind the camera, that she’d forgotten how to live life without it. 

    “If there was only some way we could get that camera off of her,” Amber muttered, picking at her one piece. It was summer, and even though there were clouds coating the smoldering white moon, it was still warm. Amber didn’t know about the rest of them, but she was already missing the sun. Luna and Victoria sat next to her on the soaked stone edge of the pool’s wall with their feet drifting in the crystal clear water, confiding in a quiet moment when Sulli was still changing into her bathing suit. These brief periods of secret exchanges on their true feelings about Sulli’s coping mechanism always ended shortly and unfinished. Luna shook her head while Victoria kept mum, and Amber began to grow flustered at the girls’ stolidness on the subject. Being the one who had been Sulli’s friend the longest, Amber felt the strongest about attempting to wean Sulli off of the machine. “I mean, come on, you guys, she’s gonna come out here with that camera in a waterproof case! It’s never going to end!” Her ranting was cut off shortly by the sound of a screen door sliding open, and all three heads turned to watch Sulli step out of Vic’s house and into the dim lighting of the pool light’s glow. Even with the poor vision they had in the dark, each of them could make out the midnight colored camera blackening Sulli’s brightly colored bikini like a permanent stain. “I swear, it’s like a virus on her,” was the last thing Amber whispered before they hopped in, a sort of a promise to both herself and to Sulli, that she would be the one to bring back the sunshine.

Make sure you leave some feedback~ :) Thanks for reading!