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Dave Strider was many things, professional photographer, internet celebrity, and the creator of the best fucking series in the world, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. But right now he was none of those. Right now he was just another tourist walking along the boardwalk, taking in the beauty of the wilderness. He does not particularly find nature like this to be as appealing to photograph, but something, some ironic tug at his consciousness he thinks, told him to buy a plane ticked from Texas to Seattle, rent a car and drive to Maple Valley.
And he stuck out like an egg in a snowstorm, not that he knows what the fuck that even means. He's the darkest person in the county, he is sure and judging by the lack of autographs being given out, all these people are not doing a double take because they know who he is. It doesn't bother him as much as he might have thought. It was nice to be able to just be a nobody again.
Dave leans against the railing for a brief moment, camera in hand, and watches the people pass him by. His favorite pastime, when not doing all the other amazing shit he does, was to people watch. And these Washington people were an interesting bunch.
Dave pushed his shades up his nose before he points his camera at a child, no more than two, pointing through the railings down at the water. After a batch of un-ironic shitty photographs clogging up the camera's memory chip, Dave continues down the boardwalk.
Dave's hands are jammed in his pockets, his camera hanging from its strap around his neck bounces against his chest with each step. He walks past a large group of college students and glances at the faces within the group before he shifts his eyes away, as if they can see his gaze, anyway.
But he stops dead in his tracks. His heart jumps into his throat. His hands are out of his pockets and on his camera as he turns back towards the group, now further down the boardwalk.
He doesn't know how to explain it. He's never felt such an intense feeling of Déjà vu before. But that face, that god damned buck-toothed smile, those almost too-large square horned-rimmed glasses. Dave swears he's seen his face before. He knows he's seen that face before.
But where, god dammit?
Dave stands in the middle of the boardwalk, scanning for something familiar, anything to jog his memory.
It's like he knew him. Like he was some distant friend from Dave's childhood that he grew away from and never really remembered, but he never completely forgot. One that, while sitting in his kitchen eating a bowl of cereal as the dawn breaks, his vision stuck between this world and your dreamselfs', he thinks about and wonders what ever happened to them and just why they never kept in contact. And there is a name on the tip of his tongue. He does not know where this name has come from and he is pretty sure he has never known this boy, but there is a name and it is right fuckin' there.
But what is it?
Egg… No, who would be so cruel to name anyone that? But why is that the first thing to come to his mind?
Dave closes his eyes and remembers what he looks like. He had dark hair, in a generic style, he remembers, and glasses. He definitely had glasses. Square, you think. And he was smiling, buck-toothed, something he could have gotten corrected when he was younger but never did.
Once he's got his image burned into his memory, he opens his eyes and scan the boardwalk again, hoping that maybe he's separated from the group and was looking out at the river. But he was nowhere to be found and Dave is forced to lean against the railing, camera forgotten around his neck, trying to remember.
Dave stands in the same spot, starring blankly at nothing in particular, well past sunset. But his mind is stuck on Egg-something. He can't help but keep being briefly distracted by thoughts of a childhood he doesn't quite recall, of friends he doesn't ever remember meeting (but he knows them), of time spent chatting with a buck-toothed boy….
A buck-toothed boy Dave isn't even sure really exists.