I spent twenty five years waiting to be seen ,to my expectations no avail.I had so much hope.
I was a disposable camera that happened to be forgotten on a wooden bench here inside the Grand station here in Queen state, Newyork in the fall of 1998.
The day I was forgotten,My owner betty cooper had a very fun day, taking pictures of the nearby beach ,her best friend Maya making ridiculous faces,different restaurants,the birds, people stepping off and getting on the subway. There was one photograph left,one trapped in me,that I would not forget.
During closing time the cleaner had picked me up and dropped me in the lost items box section,I witnessed the items I was packed with get picked up by their owners but no one came for me,I had been lost but never found.
After some months ,the box was cleared out and I was donated to a thrift store,other items came in the store and were happily purchased by customers,there were disposable cameras and smart phones coming in and out of the store,seems like no one wanted disposable cameras.
An events planner and decorator bought me,a college student here at NYU (University of Newyork) used me as a means of decoration in his lodge, an antique dealer also displayed me in a transparent glass cabinet that was visible to passers by.
No one wanted to use me for my purpose ,to develop a film inside ,make memories.No one even cared to look through still available old pictures of my original owner ,betty, that were still existent in my storage.
Twenty five years after Betty had lost me,I was bought for 4 dollars by a journalist named jughead,juggy for short.
He thought I looked interesting ,he didn't even scavenge the entire store ,he just saw me through the glass window as a passer by.He loved collected old things to see what they could do and to prove that old items actually work as good as new and latest ones or even better.
Two weeks later,juggy took me to a photo lab technician,
"Let's see if there's anything important I can find on this old thing"the technician laughed.
"Be nice" my new owner juggy scoffed in a playful manner as if I was a living thing.
The photographs emerged one by one.
Betty feeding the birds,couples kissing goodbye, before one boards the subway and the significant other doesn't.betty and here friend sticking their tongues out making funny faces.
Then came the final image,jughead pulled his face closer,all images seemed normal,until this one.
It was a picture of Betty standing with an old man beside her,the man looked familiar,very familiar,jughead recognized him instantly,his face had been on the newspaper for years now.
He was Richard hale,a business man that vanished in September of 1998 without any trace .
This disappearance had been one of new York's most questionable and famous cases.
The police searched , investigators did their jobs to no avail on that case,the case soon became cold,and now there he was smiling beside teenage betty four days before Richard hale disappeared,
Jughead published the photograph, television stations did a cover story,this gave investigators opportunity to reopen the case.There was a search warrant for Betty,a week later she was found.She was forty- three now and living quietly in another state .
" Yes ,I know him,I can still remember him" Betty said while looking at the photo .
" He asked me to take a photo with him" Betty had one photograph left on her digital camera and decided to share it with a stranger named Richard.
She further narrated that twenty five years earlier ,At the grand station a nervous man approached her and asked her to a picture of him and later a picture of her and him.
For years ,she thought that was just it, a casual photograph,but looking back at it now.
"He for sure wasn't alone" Betty said, trying to recall what happened twenty five years ago.
Looking closely at the pictures,the investigators observed a face near the edge of the photograph,you couldn't see it unless you looked very closely ,it was Richard Hale's business partner ,who had claimed he hadn't seen him that day.
The discovery reopened the investigation ,old records were reviewed ,new evidence emerged and the detectives later discovered a very big fraud scheme,one that Richard was trying to expose. He was so close in unravelling the case,but disappeared before he could .
After twenty five years,the mystery was solved by a single lost photograph and the camera that was abandoned that happened to carry the truth all along.
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