Lost Friend, and other stories.....

I barely have any memories from my childhood. I'm not sure what all that is about, but last night I remembered something. I remembered being in primary school with my three friends, we were in the Botanical Gardens for P.E. , solving a crime. We were, after all, the Mysterious Four. We discovered an area with a shredded, polka-dotted, red and white dress after we drifted from the rest of the kids. We followed a trail that led us further away from our class. We came to a patch surrounded by bush and tall trees. We saw a foam mattress that was covering something. I picked up a long stick. I prodded the mattress. There was that torn dress everywhere. I jammed the stick under the mattress, turned it over quickly, and jumped back in horror as I saw....

more bush.

I've always had a big imagination, and I'd pull my friends into my world. I used to tell the kids at school about our mysteries that we were solving, and about the "red eyes" I would "see" under the main school building, revel in freaking out everybody. I was a weirdo with a destiny.

I'm horrible at keeping in touch with people, but thanks to Facebook, I had eventually reconnected with everyone from my childhood. Except one. She was that important best friend that you have when you're still in the single digit age. One day, Sachi disappeared. I couldn't understand what had happened back then, but throughout the years I would ask my mother if she knew anything. Was she kidnapped? was she dead? We had no answers. She was there one minute, and gone the next. I blinked and I grew up. I still thought about her, but my memories were fading. I imagined her being married with kids, if she were still alive. I thought about how nice it would be if she had a boy the same age as my son, what was his name, what did he look like. Was her husband hott - grats to her if he was. What happened to her mom, her aunt....the other people in her life that were also in mine. What if she never disappeared...would we still be friends.....

I'm checking my Facebook, and there it is. A friend's request from Sachi. My chest hits my brain. She's very much alive and living in the US. We reconnect, I get the MSN-chatty-version of what happened to her, but I know I have to hear it in person. Fast-forward to my Florida trip that I mentioned in my last post. I shop til my card cries, and get my thrills on front row Sheikra. My vacation is coming to an end , but Sachi lives in this State and I'm not going to leave without seeing her.

I call her , and I hear this...American voice. She's so excited to see not just me, but my mom. We plan to meet at Dadeland Mall in the food court. I'm sitting there nervously looking around. I can't remember if I saw her first or if she saw me (the blonde poof isn't hard to spot). We have a long hug, and I step back and take her in. This is really Sachi, back from the dead....or back from the UFO that took her. Memories unlock , things start coming back to me. She remembers all these hidden moments. As she talks about them, I light up, because it's all coming back to me. We are so alike, but our lives are very different. She loves fashion and credits my mother for that. So many things, it helped open up that horrible memory of mine.....it was....refreshing. In the end, we got the real story. Her mother kidnapped her, grabbed her one random day and flew her out of the country with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her family in Trinidad didn't know where she was for many years. She was afraid that no one would remember her.

I was waiting to dig up some old pictures of us before I posted this, but that'll take another lifetime to do, so I took the liberty of MS-painting a few memories that I have of us as kids.

Sachi and I playing Mario Bros. on her ginormous tv, it was a Sony or something.


The shady casino in St. James her mom used to take us to

Last memory of Sachi before she disappeared. We were playing with my then baby brother Brandon. You can thank me for the glowing tan later.

At Dadeland Mall where we met up

Sachi and I , 17 years later.

Who knows what the future holds for us, can't wait to see her again! Now for some work. When I did my shoot with Mckey Sullivan (ANTM), there was this mini-beauty onset named Jade. I took a few pictures of her between a wardrobe change but then completely forgot about them with all the new work I had to keep up with. A family member of hers passed away recently, and her uncle thought that one of the photos would cheer her up, since she's a big fan of fashion and ANTM. I sent them this one, and I was happy to hear that it put a smile on her face.

Some more recent work:

Hyperballad. Sarah was in Trinidad for a bit so we did a quick shoot before she left. The look of this one was fueled by lots of Pendulum and Bjork music.

Gypsy. From my shoot with Leah in Macurepe. Don't you love my wire-guys?

A self-portrait - needed an updated pic for Advanced Photoshop magazine

Cashell @ La Vega