The Last Polaroid

In the summer of my sixteenth year, I had a job that most kids my age would kill for: shooting photos for a local indie label in Austin. My name is Mara, and I was the youngest photographer on their roster, which meant I got to hang around tiny, sweat-soaked venues where the air smelled like stale beer and desperation. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was mine. The highlight of that season was the annual Sunstroke Festival, a three-day marathon of noise and heat that turned the city into a furnace. I had a press pass, which felt like a golden ticket, and I was determined to make a name for myself.

The morning of the second day, I was queued at the media check-in behind a group of roadies who looked like they hadn’t slept in a week. The sun was already punishing, and the pavement shimmered like a mirage. A girl in front of me turned around suddenly, as if she’d felt my gaze. She was maybe a year older, with hair the color of burnt sugar and eyes that seemed too dark for the daylight. She asked me the time and when the band ‘Hollow Hymn’ was playing. I barely had time to answer before I noticed her sneakers: they were pristine white, except for a single dark smear on the toe, like dried paint. I wanted to compliment them, but when I looked up, she was gone. The line had moved, and there was just empty space where she’d stood. I shrugged it off, telling myself she’d just slipped ahead.

The day blurred into a haze of bands and bodies. I shot rolls and rolls of film, the click-whirr of my grandmother’s old Pentax a comforting rhythm. By late afternoon, I was exhausted, my back against the chain-link fence that bordered the festival grounds, taking a break under the meager shade of a dead oak. The music thumped in the distance, a bass heartbeat. I was fiddling with my camera, checking the exposure, when I heard a voice.

‘Hey, you made it.’

It was her. The girl from the line. She stood a few feet away, arms crossed, a faint smile playing on her lips. Up close, I noticed her shoes were now caked with mud, though the ground was dry and cracked. ‘Yeah, I guess I did,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘You’re with Hollow Hymn?’ I asked, because she’d asked about them.

‘Something like that,’ she said, and her smile widened, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘You take pictures, right? I’ve seen you with that camera.’

I nodded, a little flattered. ‘I’m trying to get some good shots for a zine.’

‘Can I see?’

I hesitated, but she had a way of making you want to show her things. I handed her the camera, and she cradled it like a newborn. She pressed the shutter release, and the lens extended outward, clicking. Then she turned it over, inspected the back, and handed it back to me. ‘It’s got a good feel,’ she said. ‘Old ones are better. They hold onto things.’

I had no idea what that meant, but I laughed it off. ‘This one’s been everywhere. It’s been to shows in Detroit, Chicago, even New Orleans.’

She hummed, then said, ‘I have something that might interest you. A trade. Your camera for a night.’

I laughed, thinking she was joking. ‘No way. This is my baby.’

‘Not for good,’ she said, her voice dropping. ‘Just until tomorrow. I’ll bring it back. I promise. There’s something I need to capture, and I don’t have a camera that works. I saw you, and I thought you’d understand.’

My gut said no. But there was something in her eyes, a flicker of desperation that made me curious. And I was young and stupid and wanted a story. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But you better bring it back, or I’ll find you.’

She took it from me, and for a second, our fingers brushed. Her skin was cold, even in the hundred-degree heat. ‘I’ll find you,’ she said, and walked away without a backward glance.

I spent the rest of the day feeling antsy, snapping photos with my phone, but it wasn’t the same. I kept scanning the crowd for her, but she was a ghost. By the time the sun set and the last band was packing up, I was ready to write the camera off. I slumped against the fence again, exhausted, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. She was there, holding my camera out to me. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and her smile was almost warm. ‘I got what I needed.’

I grabbed it, checking it over. It seemed fine. But when I looked up to ask her more, she was already gone, swallowed by the crowd.

I didn’t develop the film until I got home. I was in my darkroom, the red light casting everything in a bloody glow, and I hung the film up to dry. Twenty-four shots. Twenty-four frames of the festival: a guitarist mid-jump, a crowd surfing pit, a child on their father’s shoulders. All normal. But the last frame made me freeze.

It was a photo of a girl, but it wasn’t her. It was me. I was sitting against that fence, eyes closed, head tilted back. But there was something wrong. In the photo, I was holding a camera, but it wasn’t mine. It was older, a film camera I didn’t recognize. And behind me, just at the edge of the frame, there was a shadow that didn’t match the angle of the sun—a tall, thin figure with no face, its head tilted at an impossible angle, as if it was looking down at me.

I dropped the photo, my hands shaking. I ran to the trash can and almost threw the whole roll away, but something stopped me. I looked again. The figure was closer in the next photo, but I hadn’t taken a next photo. The last frame was the only one, but as I stared, the image seemed to shift. The shadow grew, its form expanding, and in the next instant, I saw her. The girl from the festival. But her face was hollow, eyes like empty sockets, and she was reaching for the camera.

I didn’t sleep that night. I locked the camera in a drawer, but I could feel it pulling at me. The next morning, I called my friend Dana, who was into the occult, and she said, ‘You brought something home with you. That girl—she’s not a girl. She’s a collector. She trades cameras for souls. You gave her your lens, and she gave you something worse.’

I didn’t want to believe it. But then I started noticing things. Every photo I developed from that day on had a shadow in it, always in the background, always growing closer. In a photo of my living room, the shadow was behind my dog. In a photo of my sister’s birthday, it was in the mirror. And in every photo, the same figure, head tilted, reaching out.

I tried to find her again. I went back to the festival grounds, but they were deserted, the stage already dismantled. I asked around, but no one remembered a girl with dark eyes. I even posted on a forum for photographers, and someone replied with a cryptic message: ‘If you want to be rid of her, you have to give her what she wants—a picture of someone who never existed. A ghost of your own.’

I didn’t understand until I was in my darkroom one night, developing a roll from a shoot I’d done at a cemetery. The last print came up, and I saw it. A photo of a young woman, standing in front of a grave, but her face was missing. Just a blank smoothness where her features should be. I realized with a jolt: that was my next target. She wanted me to take a photo of a blank face. And if I did, she’d take my face instead.

I panicked. I burned the photo, but the camera started shaking. The images on the wall started flipping—frames I hadn’t developed, pictures of me sleeping, me screaming, me dead. I threw the camera against the wall, but it didn’t break. It just lay there, lens pointing at the ceiling like an eye.

I don’t have the camera anymore. I threw it into Lady Bird Lake, hoping to drown it. But last week, I got a package in the mail. No return address. Inside was a new camera, vintage, same model as the first. And a note in handwriting I didn’t recognize: ‘Your turn to collect.’

I haven’t taken a picture since. But every time I close my eyes, I see the viewfinder, and in it, there is always a girl with burnt-sugar hair, smiling, waiting for me to press the shutter.

And I know, one day, I will.