On his tenth birthday there was an envelope in the mailbox addressed to Jake. There was no return address, and inside was a single Polaroid of a girl about his age.
“Who’s that?” his mom asked.
“I dunno.”
“Weird. You should just toss it.”
Jake nodded, but when she wasn’t looking he slipped it into his keepsake box. Over time it got buried under other treasures.
When he was twelve, he was digging through it for a baseball card when he came across the photo. It showed the same girl but older, about his current age. He studied it for a long time trying to figure out how it worked, but it was just a normal picture.
A few days later he pulled it out again, and it had changed. Still twelve, but this time she was outside with her family.
Jake checked the photo every day. It often showed her at home, but sometimes in other places, too. Her moods varied, and he liked seeing her face. He wished he could see her for real.
When he was fourteen, it showed her outside her new school, Meyer High—his school’s rival. His eyes bugged out. She was here in his town? Could he meet her at last?
But it wasn’t that simple. Without her name or enough clues, even the internet didn’t help.
When a Meyer team came to his school for sports, he’d search their members for her face, but she wasn’t there. He went to a play at their school once, but she wasn’t on stage or in the crowd.
He hated being so close, yet so far away.
A month after sixteen, the photo showed her in an arcade he frequented. He raced over in his car, but she wasn’t there. The photo teased him each day with more backgrounds he recognized, but even if he could get there, she’d already be gone.
One day, for the first time, he saw it change. It faded to white, then faded in to show her driving past a house in his neighborhood.
His neighborhood?!
He bolted out the front door, barefoot and photo still in hand, to see a car driving slowly down his street. It jerked to the side to park, and then a girl clambered out. His girl. She held up a Polaroid, her eyes flitting between it and him.
“It’s you,” she said, her face beaming.