SECOND PLACE

PHOTOGRAPH OF HOPE
Mia Thompson
15 years old, California

It was the first thing he did in each apartment they moved into. He pulled the old Polaroid camera and tattered poster from his backpack. Standing in the doorway, he filled the empty room with memories of past rooms. It was not difficult to imagine that they were all the same, to make their faded wallpaper and dusty floors blur into one.

His mother's approaching steps brought the truth of this into sharp focus, their anxious tapping a reminder that neither of them could help seeing the past in the present, the pattern of their life repeating in every city. As she squeezed him from behind in a tight hug, he felt her desperate fear of losing him, of being alone, the same fear that drove her into the arms of men who hit her, giving her bruises to hide, ashamed, only finding the courage to leave when they appeared on her son. Then, a new city, and the pattern began again.

"You and your poster," she said, "Always the first thing up. Must be tape somewhere in this mess…maybe tacks…" Her steps retreating down the hallway were less worried, calmed by purpose and this little ritual of hanging the poster, one of the many ways they had embellished their pattern over time, distracting each other from the tragic rhythm at its core. Family traditiions usually spring from celebrations, fireworks or colored eggs amplifying the holiday joy, but their traditions sprang from tragedy, draped over it in the same painful simulation of carelessness with which his mother wore turtlenecks on hot summer days, her laugh as strained as the explanation that she had forgotten to do laundry.

He knew that she needed this new beginning to be a celebration, that soon he would be standing with her in front of cautiously opened doors, balancing plates of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies as an offering to wary neighbors. Back in the apartment they would almost forget that they weren't just being impulsive by eating sushi and staying up late watching old movies, that they did these things every time, each trying to convince the other that everything was okay.

"No tacks, but these walls seem smooth enough for tape," she said as he flattened the poster's curling edges. Taping each corner, their hands moved in unison. He stepped back and held up the camera, framing in the lens the two ideals that gave him hope in the cramped apartments and new schools, through the long nights when he wished he was strong enough to stop their blows and her cries, almost wished she didn't love him too much to let him try. A click and a flash, then he pulled out the photograph to watch the image appear: his mother, her smile pure with love, and the poster, a dove soaring over the question which held the answers that could break the pattern of violence, not just for him and her, but for the world: What about peace?