She giggles. “You’re living the dream. Hence the shrine. Continue the tour, please.”
“Are you sure? It’s actually kind of creepy.”
“I’m sure.”
I continue panning slowly. “See what I mean? This room feels like more of a mausoleum than a museum.”
“Yeah, it is a little mausoleum-y. Wait, go back. Were those photo albums, Matthew?”
“You’ve got an eagle eye, Miss Tennison.”
“Are there any childhood photos of you in any of those albums, perchance?”
“In all of them.”
“Oooh. Any of them highly embarrassing, I hope and pray?”
“That’s redundant. I could open literally any album to any page, and you’d be treated to a highly embarrassing and/or awkward photo of me.”
“Let’s put that hypothesis to the test!”
I aim my laptop at the photo albums stacked in the bookcase. “Pick a color. Any color.”
“Red.”
I grab her selected album and randomly open it on the desk. And, as expected, my theory is instantly proven. The random photo shows me at age nine or ten. As usual, I’m desperately in need of a haircut. Not to mention, I’m two years away from getting the braces I so desperately needed. I’m also skinny as fuck. I’ve actually been crazy skinny my whole life, other than these past couple of years, thanks to Colin making it his mission in life to “bulk me up” with protein shakes. Which, to be clear, have only resulted in me finally looking semi-normal, rather than like the doppelganger of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. But, anyway, from about ages nine to fourteen, I was at my all-time skinniest, as I stretched taller and taller, and my poor body simply couldn’t keep up in terms of weight.
“See?” I say. “One embarrassing photo, per request.”
“I don’t see what’s embarrassing about it,” Alessandra says. “You’re adorable in that photo.”
“Dude, I look like a tragic mix of Gumby, Bugs Bunny, and a haystack.”
She bursts out laughing. “You could say something similar about me at that age. Back then, I was a mix between an otter, a dust bunny, and a Swiffer.”
“A Swiffer?”
“Google it.”
I google it and discover a Swiffer is a puffy thing used to clean dust bunnies off wood surfaces. “I’m looking at a Swiffer now,” I say. “And I can’t for the life of me understand how you resembled one.”
“If you saw my hair back then, before I learned to tame my waves, you’d get it.”
“Okay. So, show me a Swiffer-fied photo of you.”
“I don’t have any with me in Boston. The only childhood photo I’ve got with me is one of me with my dad, but my hair is pulled back in that one.”
“Show it to me.”
She gets out her phone and shows me a heartbreaking photo of a beautiful little girl sitting on the shoulders of a kind-looking dude. The two of them are standing on a beach and Alessandra is glowing with pure joy.
“You’re so beautiful,” I say softly. “You’re smiling so big.”
“I always smiled when I was with him.”
Sighing, she quietly puts the photo away, and my heart strains for her.
“I’m sorry, Ally.”
“It’s okay.” She smiles thinly, but her eyes are sad. “Continue the tour. I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of this mausoleum.”
“I think you’ve pretty much seen it all.”
“Then show me another page from an album. I like seeing you as a kid.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re a sadist? Good to know.” I flip to another random page. And, once again—surprise, surprise!—I look like a dork. In this particular shot, I’m about twelve years old. Wearing braces, thank God, although they make my mouth look way too big for my face. Yet again, I’m skinny as hell and in desperate need of a haircut. All of which is made more apparent by the fact that I’m standing next to three golden gods in the shot—Dax, Keane, and Kat—all of whom always foiled my extreme awkwardness growing up with their extreme lack of it. In the shot, the four of us—Dax, Keane, Kat, and me—are smiling in the sunshine in the Morgans’ backyard, near their family’s small swimming pool, while all of us are holding large slices of watermelon.
“Is that Dax and Kat?” Alessandra asks.
“And Keane. If I’d had any sense as a kid, I never would have let anyone take a photo of me standing next to them. Those three never had an awkward phase. Never an awkward day. Actually, the whole damned Morgan family was like that. I take that back. Keane had maybe an awkward month as a kid. But only the way a golden retriever puppy is kind of awkward and fumbling—but still super cute, you know? Not genuinely awkward, like me. Like how I was a human scarecrow combined with a haystack.”
She lets out a stern tsk. “Stop. If you ask me, you’re the most beautiful one in that photo. Your sweet soul shines right through. You honestly melt me in that photo.”