“Oh, and that”—Quattro nodded at the camera—“shoots video, too, if you wanted to try something new?” Then Quattro lifted his chin at Ruben and raised his hand. “I’ll play.”
As Ruben gave the volunteer soccer team directions to the field, Quattro kicked the ball to my mom, who stopped it easily with one foot. The roar of the nearby river grew louder, and a breeze blew my hair back out of my face. Maybe I had approached my photography all wrong. It wasn’t about beautifying people so they looked their best in senior portraits, erasing acne, thinning the girls, beefing up the guys. Maybe it wasn’t even about documenting destruction. Maybe it was about telling stories, the ones that people were living and I was viewing. The ones that knocked my heart open.
I let my self-doubt go and left the volunteers and makeshift soccer team to scout around town and find stories to share.
Two dark-haired men digging through the debris on the swollen riverbanks. Planks of wood mingled with mud, the remains of their home. One pulls out a shard of a ruined plate and bursts into tears.
Muddy tendrils surging and swirling, ready to grasp and drown the unaware.
An iceberg of cement bashing against rocks.
A middle-aged mother, hair braided into a single plait, slumped in despair outside her home, a hovel of wood and recycled aluminum. Upon seeing a photographer, she stands and vanishes inside. In a moment, she returns with a feast of a bruised banana for the two to share.
A tourist filling a plastic bag with beer bottles and empty wrappers, tidying one corner of the town square.
A tour guide who could have trekked back to his own home and family like half the other guides. But instead, he stayed. And while he waited to get his group to safety, here he was, working to make conditions better for everyone, not for any money, not for any applause, just because it was the good and right thing to do.
A young man with strong features tucking two squealing kids under his arms and dashing down a soccer field. A young man who takes off his long-sleeved T-shirt and literally gives away the clothes on his back to a boy who’s lost everything.
Afterward, the kids gathered around me as if I were a candy vendor when I bent down to show them the photos and videos. It didn’t matter if some of the videos were shaky or if most of the photos would never make it anywhere near my portfolio, much less CNN. For me, nothing compared to this very moment, when the children laughed with pure delight as they saw themselves through my eyes.
Chapter Twenty-One
Not soon enough that evening, our group turned in, one by one, leaving my parents, Quattro, and me in the spacious lounge adjacent to the closed restaurant at our hotel. The stress of daily uncertainty was wearing on everyone. Mom yawned widely for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes.
“I’m calling it a night,” she said. “Boy, those kids could play soccer.” At last, she stood up from the well-worn leather couch across from the potbellied stove and held her hand down to Dad to pull him to his feet. “You two going to stay up a little longer?”
Quattro and I glanced at each other. When he nodded slightly, my own tiredness vanished.
“Yeah,” I said, and then flashed Mom the key card just as she asked me if I had mine. “Got it.”
Dad warned us, “Don’t go into town tonight.”
“Dad,” I said, barely refraining from clobbering him with the throw pillow. “It’s not like anything’s open.”
“Just saying. People can turn into animals when they’re scared. Be back in the casita in an hour.”
I shot a silent plea at Mom. Understanding, she slipped her hand through the crook of Dad’s arm and told him, “Okay, honey, I’m wiped out.” With one final don’t-mess-with-me look at Quattro, Dad paused at the door before telling us, “An hour.”
I sighed. Loudly.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Quattro with a wry smile as the door swung shut behind my parents. “They used to be so normal.”
“Nah, now I’ve got a model for how I’ll talk to all my sister’s boyfriends.” As if he only now heard the implication of those words, he flushed.
My heart actually thumped with excitement. More times than I could count, I had caught myself wanting Quattro to be my boyfriend, but did he subconsciously do the same? But no, what was I thinking? Since our moonlight conversation outside the hostel on the Inca Trail, we had barely even talked to each other until today. And even then, it was Quattro urging me to photograph, all friend, no hint of boyfriend.
Silence stretched between us. I hugged a throw pillow to my stomach.
“Hey, can I see the pictures you took today?” he asked.