Jimmy had been in the phone booth for four hours. With nowhere else to hide, he sat between the leather seat and the metal phone that the town had kept in operation for sheer historic desire. The phone booth, carefully constructed at the crossing of a dirt road and a paved one, was completely useless and inoperable in 2093. Everyone was looking for Jimmy and the piece of money he held in his hands.

“I’ll give you a million.” A well dressed, bald business man from Forbes begged.

“Two point seven million.” A woman with a feather in her hat called off the number as if it were change in her debit account.

Jimmy shrugged. He could feel his mother’s poor plea for the money, he could smell the sweat dripping down his father’s face. That money could build them a new home, twelve new homes, food for ever.

But it was his Papa’s camera. His Papa’s last piece of film.  He was gone, which meant that even if he had left the camera in Jimmy’s possession, it was still not his right to waste it.

“Forty million.” An offer came in that morning before Jimmy ran away.  His mother’s eyes glowed iridescently as if the dollar signs had plagued her irises.

“Please give the camera to the man.” His father eyed the case the camera sat in, locked.

“He only wants to help us Jimmy. It’s only the last…”

“The last polaroid.” Jimmy mouthed. “They stopped making them almost a century ago. They stopped processing film before you were even born. You want me to hand it over?”

“Please, Jimmy… free us of poverty. Your mother has been crying herself to sleep at night. I am too sick and injured to work, we eat dollar menu foods and can’t afford the nine dollars for a gallon of milk. You have one piece of film and want to keep that liberty from us? Why?”

“I will go to my room and sleep on it.” He sighed and left for his room, a teenage bungalow, but snuck for the phone booth instead.

And so he sat crunched in the small space even with his legs aching, his back stiffening, touching the precious black piece of photography, now to be known as the last. So many memories of his grandfather, snapping away pictures, pulling out the film and waving it dry, watching a picture grow and hanging it on his wall in his cabin.

His grandfather had died. His parents were broke. He too, was on the road to be broke. The key to freedom, in his hands, the last piece of film.

When Jimmy thought of his Papa’s cerulean eyes and smile, factors the many Polaroid’s had saved for him, he knew what he would do. So he raised the camera, pointed it to him in true selfie fashion, and used the last Polaroid. When the picture printed, he waved it and stuck it next to the phone booth, smiling.