Camera Shy 〈100% Legit〉

The old man ducked under a black cloth behind the camera. “Smile,” he murmured. “Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

It was wedged between a ring-toss and a haunted house, draped in velvet so black it seemed to drink the surrounding light. A handwritten sign said: “Vintage Portraits. One-of-a-Kind. You won’t look the same.”

Her blood chilled. “What?”

She’d been leaving them behind, one flash at a time. Camera Shy

Her family called it a quirk. Friends called it annoying. Lena called it survival.

Mia found her ten minutes later, sitting on a bench, staring at the tintype. “Lena? You look… different. Did you do something with your eyes?”

“No.” She clutched her Pentax like a crucifix. “I don’t get my picture taken.” The old man ducked under a black cloth behind the camera

And standing just behind her in the photo, a faint, blurred shape—a smaller girl with a missing tooth and a red barrette. The girl Lena had been at seven.

“Because you’re afraid of losing what you can’t get back,” he said softly. “But what if I told you I can give you the piece you already lost? The one from when you were seven?”

“Just one picture,” her best friend, Mia, pleaded, grabbing Lena’s arm at the summer carnival. “For the memories.” It doesn’t matter

That night, the carnival was a blur of neon and laughter. She photographed everything: the cotton candy machine spinning pink clouds, a toddler crying over a dropped ice cream, Mia shrieking on the Zipper. Her viewfinder was a safe, rectangular world.

When she came to, she was alone. The booth was gone. The velvet, the camera, the old man—vanished as if they’d never been. In her hands was a single photograph: a tintype, sharp and strange. In it, her face stared back, but her eyes were wrong. They were the old man’s eyes. Tarnished silver. Empty.

Lena shook her head, a familiar tightness coiling in her chest. “I’m the one who captures memories, not makes them.”