by Carol Snow
I retreated back to Home Suite Home and continued past it, following the sidewalk to a murky tunnel under the freeway. Around me, the walls shook from cars passing overhead. The smell of urine burned my nose. I scurried through as quickly as I could, but when I emerged on the other side, the night sky seemed even blacker. Trees hung low, and clouds swallowed the moon.
At a fork in the road, I tried to remember which direction we'd taken to see the apartments. Did I even want to go there? The complex had been creepy in the daylight; at night it could be dangerous. Besides, I didn't even know Duncan's apartment number.
I paused on the cracked sidewalk, heart pounding, palms sweating. In my pocket, the camera sat warm and heavy, like something alive. What would happen if I snapped a picture here, on this deserted street? Would someone new turn up? I slid the silver camera out of my pocket and turned it on, its chime tinny
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in the hushed air. Aiming for nothing but darkness, I clicked the shutter: nothing. Next, I snapped the cloud-covered moon, and at the mouth of the underpass I captured the silhouette of a tree. After each picture, I checked the screen, but there were no figures, no faces, only the sad shapes of a gloomy night.
On my way back through the underpass, I held my breath and tried to ignore the scratching sounds of small creatures scurrying around. By the time I reached the other side, the murky clouds had traveled beyond the almost-full moon, which lit up the sky like an enormous night-light. My pulse slowed. I sighed with relief. I aimed my camera at the man in the moon and snapped a picture as a gesture of appreciation.
My mother was sitting up in bed. "We'll get you a cell phone. But you need to be home by midnight."
"Okay," I said, as if I were giving her permission. And then, after a pause: "Sorry."
"Me too," she whispered.
I zipped my hot camera back into its case and placed it on the kitchen table. I didn't want it too close to me while I slept.
When I woke up the next morning, the camera was gone. Okay, truth: it was afternoon. But the camera was really gone. For a single, sweaty moment I thought it had been spirited away, but my mother, seeing my panicked expression, said, "Your dad took the camera. He wanted to take some pictures of the work site."
"But I need it!" I croaked.
"He needs it," my mother corrected, putting her empty coffee mug in the little stainless steel sink. "They're having problems
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building a retaining wall, and your father had some ideas." She looked me in the eye. "This could be a big deal for him."
"What? He could be promoted from ditch digger to wall builder?"
I regretted the words as soon as they were out (though my mother should have known better than to speak to me before I'd had my coffee). The crease between her eyebrows deepened to a near-canyon. "This is difficult for all of us."
"My camera is the only thing I have left!"
"That's more than I have," she said.
I was about to say she had about twenty ceramic roosters in a storage unit in Amerige, but I held it in, asking instead, "Where's Dad's job site? Because maybe I could walk down there, and if he's done taking his pictures, I could get my camera back."
"No." For added emphasis, she said it like it had two syllables: No-wah.
Aargh. I really wanted to show Delilah the blue lights, but there was no point arguing with my mother when she was like this. Actually, there was no point arguing with my mother most of the time.
She was dressed in regular clothes: a pale blue polo shirt, khaki shorts, and bright white sneakers. My mother cleans her sneakers in the washing machine.
"Aren't you working today?"
"It's my day off," she said, her eyes narrowing. "I hope that's okay with you."
There was no way I was going to hang around that room. I put on my bathing suit and headed for Psychic Photo.
***
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Delilah wasn't in the shop. Instead, Rose flitted around the room, arranging things on the shelves. There was a new crystals section, I noticed, right next to a photo album display.
"Hi, Madison." Rose smiled as if she had been expecting me. In a simple white sundress, with her auburn haired pulled back in a tidy clip, she looked almost old enough to be a mom. Her ears, neck, and hands were free of jewelry, but she made up for it with an anklet and four silver toe rings.
"Going to the beach?" she asked.
For a moment, it freaked me out that she knew that without being told--but then I realized that my board shorts, bikini top, and beach bag may have tipped her off.
"Uh-huh. I thought Delilah might want to come with."
"She's not big on the beach--burns too easily--but you can ask." She gestured toward the back of the shop, which led to the stairs.
At the doorway I paused. "Did Delilah tell you that we figured out who the guy in the window picture was ?"
"Leo did." Her mouth twisted. "Delilah doesn't like to encourage me. At least Larry can calm down now that he knows that guy won't be hanging around."
"Isn't it kind of a weird coincidence?" I said. "You know, that he got hurt right after showing up in my camera? And that Mrs. Lunardi died?"
"Yes," she admitted. "But coincidences happen. In my business, you have to admit that. Otherwise, people won't ever believe you."
"But what if the lighting was weird in both pictures, like something I've never seen before? What if Francine Lunardi and Ronald Young both kind of...glowed?"
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"Larry thinks it's just sunlight. He's probably right."
"It's more than that," I said, dropping the bomb. "I couldn't see it until I looked at my camera in the darkness, but the figures are surrounded by blue light."
She froze for a moment before asking, "Both of them?"
I nodded and took a deep breath. "Francine Lunardi and Ronald Young weren't there when I took the pictures. I'm positive. There's something going on."
She didn't say anything at first. And honestly? She didn't look all that surprised by what I'd said. Something flickered behind her eyes. "Do you want to tell Delilah or should I?"
It wasn't an easy sell.
"It was late morning. The sun was overhead." Delilah sat on the couch in her apartment, knees drawn up to her chest.
"It's about the same time now," I said, pointing to the window permanently shadowed by a cramped tree and the inn next door. "You see anything but shadows?"
She chewed her freckly lip. "Maybe the flash went off."
"Then it would have reflected against the pane," I said calmly. "And anyway, it wouldn't have turned their edges blue."
"Where's the camera?"
"My dad has it."
Oh, God. What if he deleted the pictures by accident? Then Delilah would never believe me. I was tempted to dash over to my dad's work site and reclaim the little Canon, but if my mother found out, she'd kill me.
Delilah caught me looking around the room. "He's not here."
"Huh?" I said.
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"Duncan," she said. "He went out on the boat with his father this morning."
"Oh," I said. "Whatever."
Footsteps sounded on the steps outside the apartment.
"Energy," Rose said, bursting in.
"Who's watching the shop?" Delilah demanded.
Rose waved at the air. "We can leave it for a couple of minutes." She plopped down on the floor and pretzeled her legs into what I think is called the Lotus position: crossed with the feet on top.
"Please don't launch into your energy routine," Delilah moaned.
"What energy routine?" I asked.
Rose took a deep breath before speaking, her hands moving like a hula dancer's. "There's electric and magnetic energy all around us. We can't see it. Sometimes we feel it, but we attribute it to something else: a breeze, a virus, a cold front. In my work, I tune in to this energy, try to make some sense of it."
"Can we just cut to the photo?" Delilah snapped.
Rose i
gnored her. "Sometimes energy trumps time and space. Time folds in on itself, and if you tap into the right energy and the right place, you can--"
"Don't say it," Delilah moaned.
"So you think my camera is giving off energy?" I tried. "Making things happen?"
"No." Hands on knees, chin tilted up, she paused for a moment before continuing. "I think it's just really...sensitive. I think it's picking up on energy that people--even sensitive ones like myself--can't detect." She looked me straight in the eye. "I
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think your camera is seeing the future."
"Her camera cannot see the future!" Delilah insisted, but she sounded more frightened than assured.
"It's seeing something," Rose said.
"I've had the camera for two years, and nothing strange ever happened before the repair," I said.
"It wasn't the repair," Rose said. "It was the energy. The forces in the back room were off the charts the day you dropped off your camera. A night immersed in that kind of electromagnetism must have sharpened your camera's sensitivities."
"But what if it happens again? What if someone else shows Lip?" I asked, suddenly afraid to take any more pictures. "Do I try to find the person? Do I warn them?"
"You have to," Delilah said.
"I thought you didn't believe in this stuff," I said. It came out wrong, like an accusation. In truth, I wanted Delilah to remain skeptical, to tell me the world made sense. It was one thing when I thought my little Canon could see ghosts. That was kind of fun. Now it had turned into an electronic Grim Reaper, and it was really starting to scare me.
"It wouldn't do any good," Rose said from the floor. "The past, the present, the future--they're too intertwined. You can't stop the future because it's already happened."
Delilah wasn't nearly as creeped out as I was. "You need to know that my mother is infantile, egocentric, and deluded," she said, twisting the pole of her beach umbrella into the sand. She'd dressed for the beach in knee-length board shorts, a long-sleeve rash guard shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, I'd never seen
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someone expose so little skin at the beach. It was like she was Amish or something.
I rummaged through my beach bag and pulled out a bottle of store-brand sunscreen. "What your mom said made sense, though, didn't it?"
"No." She popped up the umbrella. "That energy stuff is ridiculous." She tilted her pale, freckled chin toward the sky and sighed with frustration. "I wish I could just sit in the sun like a normal person."
"If you're mom's wrong, why is this happening?" I pressed.
She pulled an enormous pair of round white sunglasses out of her straw beach bag and slipped them on. "Your camera's haunted. It's the only thing that makes any sense." She peered over the glasses. "But don't tell my mother I said that."
We spent a surprisingly normal day at the beach. Delilah sat hunched under the umbrella while I baked on the bright warm sand. The store-brand lotion left white streaks on my body, but it smelled nice, like pineapples.
When my fingers began to swell from the heat, Delilah smeared her exposed bits with an additional layer of SPF, a gazillion sunblock, and we headed for the water. I made it to my waist in the icy froth before I stopped, jumping and shrieking as the waves hit my belly. Delilah pushed ahead and dove under a breaker. She swam a few strokes out and motioned me to follow. I held out my arms for balance and shook my head: this was as far as I wanted to go.
She caught a tiny wave and swam back to me. "When the water's this cold, you've just got to dive in and keep swimming
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until it doesn't hurt anymore."
I shook my head. "I mostly swim in pools. It's not like I've never been in the ocean, but..." I had been about to say that the water was a lot warmer in the Caribbean when I realized how obnoxious that sounded. Above us, the sky was bright blue, but angry clouds darkened the horizon. I thought of Duncan out on the fishing boat.
"You can swim, right?" Delilah asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Of course." The waves really weren't that bad, hut the current tugged at my legs.
"Follow me." She pointed to a yellow float way out, bobbing in the waves. "It's really calm out there." Beyond us, the float lurched on a swell.
A wave slammed into my chest and splattered my face. I stumbled backward.
Delilah caught my arm to steady me. "Come on." She plunged into the water and swam away with choppy strokes.
When an oversized wave charged toward me, I had no choice but to dive under. Soon, I was beyond the breakers. I swam with my head above the surface until I caught up with Delilah treading water.
"See?" she said. "Just like a big swimming pool."
It was nothing like a swimming pool. The water was dark and unpredictable, and the currents did everything they could to pull me off course. My legs disappeared in the churning water below me; the ocean floor could be two feet down or twenty. It could be dotted with sand dollars or swirling with eels. Anxious, I scanned the choppy surface for fins. I never should have watched "Shark Week."
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When we finally reached the swim float, I hauled myself up, panting from exertion and fear. From here, the sunny shore didn't seem so far away, but the horizon had grown even blacker, turning the water at the edge of the earth a steely gray. Wind blew in violent gusts. Goose bumps rose on my wet flesh.
"How far out was Duncan going?" I asked.
"Pretty far, I think," Delilah said. "No one booked the boat for today, so they can stay out as long as they want." When she saw my expression, she added, "The boat has radar. When they see there's a storm, they'll either steer around it or come back early. Rain is no big deal."
A bunch of little kids dangled from the float, splashing and laughing. A couple couldn't have been older than eight, which made me feel like a major wimp for being scared. There were some teenagers in red bathing suits sprawled around, too, including the gorgeous blond guy who'd made Delilah blush last week.
"Hey, Nate," Delilah said. "You doing the lifeguard thing?"
He grinned, and dimples sprouted in his tanned cheeks. "Sea guard camp; I'm a junior counselor. We're done for the day, though, so I figured I'd come out here and hang." He squinted at the dark horizon. "Looks like a storm's coming, though."
Delilah smiled. She nodded. She blushed and stared--speechless for once. I turned away and covered my mouth so she wouldn't see me laughing.
Back on shore, we wrapped ourselves in towels and pulled down Delilah's beach umbrella so the wind wouldn't carry it off.
"So I guess you like that guy," I said.
"Who?" she asked, all innocent.
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I snorted with laughter; she knew exactly who I was talking about.
"Of course I like him," she admitted. "It seemed mutual."
"Nah." She rolled her eyes. "He's nice to everybody. Nate's completely out of my league--which is the point, really. I don't plan to date until I'm thirty."
I raised my eyebrows. "Thirty?"
"Maybe twenty-nine. If I meet someone really special." She shot me a half grin before slipping on her big sunglasses. The sun still glared, even as the clouds took over the sky. "Before I get involved with anybody, I've got to finish high school, go to college, establish a career, and pay off my student loans. I can't risk any distractions." It was almost as if she were talking to herself, convincing herself.
She angled herself toward the water. "My mother had Leo when she was fifteen, and she had me a year and a half later." She turned her head. "By two different fathers."
I tried not to look shocked. I failed.
"Duncan didn't tell you?" she said.
"Just how old she was. I guess I just assumed--"
"That it was one guy? Nope. Though she was in love" --she held up her fingers to indicate quotation marks--"so it was okay. Leo's father was on the football team--which, when you think about Leo, is actually pretty funny. He dumped her as soon as she got pregnant. And then his parent
s moved out of state, which was really convenient for them."
"And your father?"
"Valedictorian of the class. If you can believe it."
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I looked at Delilah: genetics in action. "I can believe it."
She shook her head. You wouldn't think someone so smart would be stupid enough to get his girlfriend pregnant. My mother thought he was her Einstein in shining armor--you know, asking her out even though she had a baby. And he did stick with her after I was born--for almost a year, I think. But he said it would be better for them both if he got an education. So he left. And I guess he just forgot to come back."
Out in the water, the last kids abandoned the float and made for shore.
"And now?"
"He's an architect. Lives in Seattle with his wife and their two children. Max and Sophia. A boy and a girl---just like us." So I wasn't the only one around here living life in a parallel universe.
Around us, moms pulled sweatshirts over toddlers' heads while dads gathered towels and trash. Delilah and I stayed planted on the sand.
"Do you see him?" I pressed. "Does he send money or anything?"
She shook her head violently. I thought of her eBay business, her long work hours, her cramped apartment. "But he should. He's your father."
"No, he's not. He's just some guy." She exhaled with frustration. "And the thing about my mother? She threw herself at those boys--just like she threw herself at lots of guys after them. None of them even cared about her. And now she's got Larry, who'd do anything for her--he'd do anything for Leo and me--and she's just pushing him away. She says he can't stay in one place, but he's already said he'll stay if she marries him. Her real problem?
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She refuses to grow up. If she gets married, it means she isn't a kid anymore." Her voice grew wobbly. "She doesn't even think about what the rest of us want."
"Do you think Larry and Duncan are going to leave?" I asked, hoping she'd say no.
She reached under her sunglasses to rub her eye. "If she doesn't come to her senses, then, yeah--they'll leave. Duncan knows he can stay with us. But I think he's afraid that if he doesn't go with Larry, he'll never see him again."