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I nodded, accepting the inevitable. It didn't really matter what Lexie had said.

“Dad, where's my camera?”

“In my backpack,” he said. “In the bathroom.”

The camera was buried under a stained, smelly sweatshirt that I tried, unsuccessfully, not to touch. I turned off the overhead light, sat on the edge of the tub, and pressed the power button. There were no windows in the bathroom; with the lights off, it was as black as a moonless night.

First I came across my dad's shots: a ditch, a hill, a cinder-block wall—thrilling stuff. I zipped back until I got to the pictures from Delilah's apartment, afraid of what I might see. If Ronald Young's blue halo had disappeared, everyone would think I had been lying.

But there he was, still rimmed by the ghostly light. I savored relief for only an instant before anxiety took up its now familiar residence in my gut. I examined the other pictures from that day but found nothing out of place.

My mother rapped on the door. “Hurry up. I need to use the restroom.” (So formal: just once I'd like to hear my mother say, “I gotta pee.”)

“One sec,” I said.

In my hands, the shots on the screen followed one another like flashes of lightning. When I got to the pictures I'd taken the night before, a tingle passed through me. The shots around the tunnel were murky, the shadows ominous. Were these pictures really that scary, or was I just projecting my remembered anxiety onto them? I could still hear the scampering of the rats, smell the urine, feel the wind.

When I reached the final shot, my anxiety turned to terror. The moon, freed from the clouds, glowed in the night sky: a shining, happy face edged in blue.

In the sphere I saw two eyes, a nose, a mouth. But the face grinning back at me wasn't the man in the moon.

It was Duncan.

B
EYOND
P
SYCHIC
P
HOTO'S FRONT DOOR,
the printer's lights glowed like fireflies. Behind me the rain fell in needles.

Rose was at the counter. I must have looked like a crazy person, still in my board shorts and bikini top, my hair a mess of salt and rain, my face streaked with tears and snot. But Rose was good with crazy people. She led me to the back room without a word and rummaged through some of Delilah's eBay boxes until she found a blanket. She eased me onto a couch and sat next to me, quiet, waiting.

“Duncan,” I said at last.

“He's not here,” she said. “They went fishing, but they're probably back by now. The storm—”

“He's in danger!” I sobbed. I couldn't say “dead.” Or “dying.” Not yet.

She shook her head. “We get these storms all the time. I know it seems scary, but it's not that big a deal.”

Her voice was so calm and soothing. As she picked up the phone
to call Duncan and Larry's apartment, I almost believed that someone would answer, that everything was going to be okay.

Several seconds passed. I forgot to breathe. Rose shook her head and put down the phone. “I'm sure they're fine.”

Tears blurring my vision, I turned on my camera and found the moon shot.

Rose froze, her eyes wide with horror. “No,” she whispered.

She grabbed the phone and punched in some numbers; she shut her eyes, her breathing ragged. “Is this the harbormaster? I'm trying to find out about a charter boat, the
Peggy.”
She nodded and said, “Right, Ray Clarke's boat. He took it out early this morning, along with Larry Vaughn and his son, Duncan.”

Her features clenched in frustration. “I'm not his wife, I'm his—I'm a friend. I don't know where they were planning to go. But I thought they'd be back by now, and—” Her gaze fell on the camera burning hot in my hand.

“Can you radio them?” she pleaded. “Just make sure they're okay?”

When she hung up, she crumpled to the couch next to me and dissolved into tears.

There were footfalls down the back stairs, and the door opened: Delilah. Her face was paler than usual. She looked upset but not surprised—not even a little bit.

“Duncan?” she asked in a small voice.

 

After I'd shown Delilah the photo; after the harbor patrol had called back to say they'd been unable to make contact with the
Peggy;
after Rose had phoned Larry's friends and neighbors
and fellow fishermen and then his home number again—just in case—we piled into Rose's car and headed for Kimberley Cove. Outside, the car was small and gray, scratched and dented. Inside, duct tape held the black vinyl upholstery together. A cardboard Christmas tree, its piney scent long gone, hung from the rearview mirror.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Rose set the windshield wipers on the lowest setting. Every time I thought they were off for good, they'd screech an arc across the chipped glass, leaving a half-moon trail of misty dirt.

We didn't talk. When we reached Kimberley Cove, Rose brought the car to a jerky halt, hopped out, and dashed across the small rutted parking lot to the weathered gray shed that was the harbormaster's office.

Delilah and I headed for the pier, longing to see the
Peggy
bouncing over the waves on her way to safety. I checked my camera. Duncan was still there, laughing with the man in the moon.

It was low tide. At the end of the pier, a steep gangplank led to a dock. I clutched the wet, splintery railing and took baby steps, trying not to stumble over my flip-flops.

At the bottom, the dock swayed under my feet. The sky looked like a double exposure: a stormy day overlaid on a sunny one. Rays of sun snuck through the clouds like spotlights among curtains of rain. Had this been a week earlier—or even a day earlier—I would have pulled out my camera and shot the view.

Anchored boats cluttered the harbor, but the
Peggy'
s big round mooring bounced around like a child's abandoned ball. The other vessels lurched on the waves, the sky-high captain's
chairs plunging here and there like amusement park rides. Of course, in an amusement park, you'd be strapped in. A picture flashed in my brain: Duncan perched high on the lookout tower, scanning the water for fish, ignoring the waves until a big one launched him off his perch and into the shark-filled sea.

I must have made a sound because Delilah said, “What?”

“Maybe the boat's okay but he fell in the water. From the top.”

She held my gaze for a moment, her gray eyes drenched with pain and loss, before turning her stare to the horizon. “Sometimes, before something bad happens—I get a feeling. Not anything specific, just this…sense.”

“And?” I whispered.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“But you knew,” I said. “When you saw me at the shop, you knew I was there about Duncan.”

“I could feel your fear,” she said. “That's all.”

A few minutes later, wet and shivering, Delilah and I approached the harbormaster's office. Rose stood in the open doorway, letting in the rain.

“Can't you send someone out to look?” she pleaded to the gray-haired man who sat behind a big steel desk.

The harbormaster rubbed his faded blue eyes. “Lady, I'm not that worried. A couple of boats just came in, and they said it wasn't that bad.”

“What about the Coast Guard?” Rose pressed. “Can we ask them to look?”

“A family member could call,” he said with a shrug.

“We're like family,” Rose said.

The harbormaster raised an eyebrow at the “like”—but he called anyway.

“They'll find 'em,” he said once he'd hung up. “They'll give me all kinds of grief for sending them out for no reason, but they'll find 'em.”

 

But they didn't. A few agonizing hours later, the sun broke through for real, just in time to splatter the clouds with orange paint. There had been no sign of the
Peggy.
The harbormaster locked the office, muttering that he'd already stayed way past closing time.

“They're probably fine,” he told Rose. We all wanted to believe him.

On the wet dock, in our clammy clothes, we watched the sun slip below some more clouds and then pop out again before bumping up against the horizon. We squinted against the orange glare, searching, searching for the boat.

Rose was quiet. Every once in a while she'd close her eyes and whisper, “I'd know if he was hurt.”

And maybe Duncan was still alive. Ron Young hadn't died—at least not yet. Maybe we could save Duncan, if only we knew where he was.

When just the faintest rim of pink remained in the dark sky, Delilah spoke. “We should go home.”

“But we can't,” Rose and I said at the same time.

“If they hear anything, they'll call us. Leo's probably wondering where we are.”

As the final color drained from the night sky, I checked the camera one last time, my hands shaking so badly that I released the
shutter, snapping a picture of the dark, endless water. I skimmed past my father's construction photos until I reached the picture of Duncan smiling through the moon.

“Don't go,” I whispered to him.

 

I asked Rose to drop me at the beach on the way back. I wasn't ready to go back to the motel room.

Moving across the sand, I felt weirdly disconnected. It was like I was walking on someone else's legs, seeing through someone else's eyes. The ocean was black, sprinkled with moonbeams. A single flip-flop, patterned with flowers, lay half buried in the sand. A line of shells shone like a giant's crooked smile.

How could I feel so miserable when the world was so beautiful? Had it always been this way?

The soaked sand was mushy cold on my feet. The salty air felt damp and alive. The stars shone like pinpricks: so many suns, light-years away. We were so small, really, and our time on earth so short.

I sat on the wet sand and closed my eyes. So what if we didn't have a big house anymore. Now I got to live in a place with sweet air and watercolor sunsets, where ghostly morning fog gave way to golden afternoons. I still had my parents. I had friends. I'd go to school and work hard, and in a few years I'd go to college—there were scholarships. Everything was going to be all right.

Tears soaked my face before I even realized I was crying. Duncan understood. He knew that nothing mattered more than the people you loved. He'd learned to live every day as if it might be his last.

Finally, I got up and brushed the mucky sand off my legs.
Above the sea, the moon, slightly fuzzy, rose above the horizon, dodging between clouds. I'd never again look at the moon without thinking of Duncan, without wondering if he was up there in the sky, looking back at me.

From now on, I'd have to live for both of us.

 

When I got back to the motel, my parents were lounging on the bed watching a sitcom. They smiled at me absently before returning their attention to the small screen.

I headed for the bathroom. In the shower, no one would hear me cry.

“Lexie phoned again,” my mother called out.

I paused in the doorway. “I'll call her tomorrow.” I would, too.

When I got out of the shower, my parents were still watching television. Head down, I grabbed my mother's cell phone and my camera and hurried out to the patio, where I collapsed on a white plastic chair and listened to the noises of the night. Funny: I'd never noticed before how much passing traffic sounded like the ocean.

First, I called Psychic Photo, feeling bad when I heard Rose's anxious, “Hello?” I hadn't meant to get her hopes up. Duncan and Larry were still gone.

Next, I turned on my camera, almost afraid of what I might see. Would Larry be in a picture, smiling with his son? Would Ray Clarke, the boat's captain, show up? Rose's clients paid to have their fortunes told. But what good was knowing what was going to happen if there was nothing you could do to change the outcome?

The Canon felt even hotter than usual, like the metal could burn my palms. I zipped to the moon photo, a final spark of hope still simmering in my chest. And then the spark went out. Duncan was still there, trapped in the small screen, cursed by the moon.

I checked the construction shots again, just in case. Duncan being Duncan, he could have snuck into a different frame. He could be playing with shovels, digging in the dirt. But he wasn't there.

There was a picture I hadn't seen: the snap I'd taken on the pier, when my shaking hands had accidentally released the shutter. It was the kind of poorly lit, blurry mistake I'd normally delete without a second glance. When I'd pushed the button, there was nothing in front of the lens but dark, choppy sea.

But my camera had seen something else. Just under the surface of the water, a person floated, arms and legs spread out like a starfish, wide eyes staring up at the sky.

It wasn't Duncan. It wasn't Larry. And it wasn't Ray Clarke.

It was me.

I
DIDN'T CRY.
I
DIDN'T SCREAM.
It's almost like I was expecting to see myself in the camera.
So this is where the story ends.

I turned it off and laid it in my lap. It burned my bare legs, but I didn't move it.

My mother slid open the glass door. “It's late. You should come in.”

I didn't answer. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, but none of them would make things right.

“Did you hear me?”

“Soon.”

I should tell her I love her.

She slid the door closed.

This is where it ends.

Sleep eluded me. I lay on my back on the scratchy couch, tears sliding silently into my ears. I cried for myself: the things I'd never do, the people I'd never meet. I cried for sweet, lost Duncan. I cried for the foolish girl I used to be. I cried for my parents and
the pain this would cause them. I cried for Lexie, who I'd never see again.

How would it happen? The possibilities jostled my brain: a rogue car jumping the curb. A piece of hot dog caught in my windpipe. A carbon monoxide leak, a stray bullet, a meteorite. There were so many ways to die. Maybe I'd just drown, like Duncan probably did. They say it doesn't hurt. Maybe I'd go into a coma like Ronald Young. Had he regained consciousness yet? Somehow I knew that he hadn't.

Sometime after four
A.M.
I gave up on sleep. I got off the couch and tiptoed through the room, pausing to study my sleeping parents. Were they dreaming of our old house? Or of carnations and ditches?

My mom's cell phone in hand, I slid open the glass door and went out to the patio. For a moment, my heart raced as I imagined a knife-wielding psychopath popping out of the darkness. But then I thought,
No. I will not let fear rule the rest of my day. The rest of my life.
Were they the same thing?

I wouldn't normally call Lexie—or anyone—in the middle of the night, but I had to make things right before time ran out.

The phone rang four times before going to voice mail. I hung up and hit the number again. And again. After five tries, she finally picked up.

“Madison?”
she croaked.

“Hey.” I hadn't actually figured out what I was going to say.

Suddenly, she sounded very awake. “I called you earlier—did your mom tell you?”

“Yeah.”

Her words tumbled out. “I needed to tell you that I feel, like,
so unbelievably bad about what happened—you know, with Rolf and everything. He's an awesome guy and I really like him, but your friendship means more than anything. If the only way we can stay friends is if I break up with him, I'll do it—I swear. I told him that tonight and he was bummed, but it doesn't matter. You're my best friend, and I need to know that you don't hate me.” Her voice cracked.

On the other side of the hill, a truck rumbled by. A few doors down, a baby began to wail.

I said, “Of course I don't hate you. We'll be best friends…for the rest of our lives. And Rolf…” I tried to remember why I ever thought he mattered. “I don't care if you go out with him. I mean, I think he's kind of a jerk, so be careful. But if you want to give it a shot, go ahead.”

“Celia's being a total cow,” Lexie said. “Telling everyone that I stole him from her, which is so not true. She even called Melissa to say that…”

My attention wavered. I thought of Delilah and her crazy clothes and her funky art. I thought of Leo's disco ball.

“…and so I can, like, talk to my mom,” Lexie said.

“Huh?”

“I don't think she'd let you move in with us forever, but maybe for a few months. Do you think that would give your parents enough time to figure things out?”

“You want me to move in with you?” I said, surprised.

“No guarantees, but I can ask.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But—I'm happy here. I have friends, and I have…” Should I say it? Oh, why not. I'd be with him soon enough. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Ohmigod! You gotta tell me!”

“Later, maybe,” I said. “The sun will be up soon. I think I'll hit the beach.”

 

When my parents woke up, they'd find a note on the little kitchen table.

With luck, I'd come back from the beach unharmed. But I was going to catch a final sunrise, even if it killed me.

 

The alley behind Psychic Photo was shadowy. Something skittered and I jumped, but it was just some animal (a cat, I told myself, even as I suspected that the “c” should be an “r”). I placed four plastic grocery bags next to the purple back door, trying to keep the rustling to a minimum. There was no need to wake Delilah. There were no wrongs to right between us, nothing to explain. In some ways, she understood me better than anyone.

The bags were stuffed with my old clothes. They were kind of worn, but they were all good brands. I'd even put my new swimsuit and my Seven jeans in there. They wouldn't do me any good where I was going. I hoped Delilah would keep some of the clothes for herself instead of selling everything on eBay. But the
decision was hers to make, as she'd understand from the short note I'd stuffed into one of the bags.

As for me, I was wearing my old black shorts and the pink-and-black T-shirt. My mother had finally washed them.

I checked the parking spot in front of the shop: no motorcycle. I hiked over to Kimberley Cove and checked the mooring: no boat.

By the time I got to the beach, the sky had lightened, but the water was still calm and silvery, the shadows long, the post-storm clouds a watercolor pink. The clouds were drifting away already, leaving a clean, sharp, blue sky. For once, there was no fog.

It seemed pointless, in a way, to take pictures. My camera couldn't stop time or save me. A photograph isn't real life. It's just what we think we see.

But right now, instead of coming between me and the world, the camera brought us closer. It allowed me to really see the beauty around me—not just in the shapes and the shadows, but in the things that were actually there: the sand and the seaweed, the water and the rocks. There were birds and seals and the occasional human being.

There was beauty in other things: a torn volleyball net, spider-web cracks on the sidewalk, Delilah's favorite trash cans. You just needed to look harder to recognize the wonder of the shadows, the miracle of the shapes.

It made me feel better to know that the world would go on without me, even as I ached to realize how much I was losing. A breeze kissed my cheek, and I thought:
Duncan.
His spirit was all around me, in the cool morning air, in the coarse sand, in the sound of the waves.

Was Duncan looking down on me now? My family had never been big on religion, but I suddenly felt sure that death wasn't the end. There had to be something more, something that comes after. There had to be a piece of Duncan and a part of me that would live forever.

When the first beachgoers showed up, lugging coolers and beach bags, chairs and umbrellas, I pushed myself off the sand. At the water's edge I let the cold froth lick my toes. Something glinted in a wave. I reached down and pulled out a sand dollar. Duncan said they brought good luck. I tossed the shell back into the waves for someone else to find.

As I walked away, I once again felt that peculiar sensation, as if I were seeing the world with someone else's eyes. In the parking lot, deliciously greasy smells were already pouring out of the white-and-blue snack shack. If I lived until lunch, I'd come back for a cheeseburger. I passed the ice cream store where Ron Young had bought his last sorbet and a burrito shop that Delilah said was the best. Soon I reached the surf shop. Had that green-and-white bathing suit really mattered in the end? Had it really made me any happier?

Well, yeah. That suit was awesome. In fact, the very thought of the green diagonal stripe on the board shorts made me smile through my pain.

 

I made it back to the motel without any problem. My father was finishing his cereal, and my mother was tucking her green polo work shirt into her black pants.

Tears blurred my vision. “I love you guys!”

They stared at me like I was a total nut job.

“We love you, too, honey,” my dad said, blinking away tears of his own.

“Is everything okay?” my mother asked.

“Yeah. It's fine. I just—Yeah.”

“We have wonderful news,” my mother said. Her eyes were shining, happy. I tried to remember the last time she'd looked like this.

“You know that funeral I did recently?” she said. “Francine Lunardi?”

My stomach clenched. “Kinda.”

“I just got off the phone with her daughter. Mrs. Lunardi owned a little cottage: two bedrooms, one and a half baths. Not big, but just two blocks from the beach. She left it to her daughter, but the daughter wants to wait until the market picks back up before she sells it. Besides, the cottage needs a lot of work.”

I nodded, trying to follow. “And she wants Dad to be the contractor?” I wanted to know that they'd be okay.

My mother shook her head. “Even better: She's going to let us live there—free! For two years, at the very least. In return Daddy will renovate it, but she'll pay for all the materials. We're on our way to see it now—will you come?”

I was so tired, it felt like someone had tied a big band around my forehead. But I liked the idea of knowing where my parents were in case I got the chance to look down on them.

 

Mrs. Lunardi's yellow cottage looked like something out of a storybook (a happy storybook—nothing with witches or trolls). It had a white picket fence and an overgrown rose garden. A blue front door opened into a boxy living room with a brick fireplace and wide-plank, scratched wood floors. There was a kitchen with black and white checkerboard tiles, a bathroom with a claw-foot bathtub, and two tiny bedrooms under a sloping roof.

“First thing I'd do is bump out the back of the house and add a master suite,” my dad told Joanne Torres, Francine Lunardi's daughter. “Then right away you're up to a three-bed, two-bath house—much better for resale.”

We all sat at the kitchen table so my parents and Mrs. Torres could sign papers. Mrs. Torres was older than I expected, with gray roots in her one-tone brown hair, and sad lines around her mouth.

“The house is darling,” my mother said, visions of flowered curtains and shabby-chic furniture probably swimming in her head. “I can see why you might want to move back here sometime.”

Mrs. Torres shook her head. “It's not that. It's just—this house meant so much to my mother, I'm not ready to let it go.”

She chewed on her lip before continuing. “My mother and I didn't talk for over twenty-five years. It was my fault. I was…a bad kid. Alcohol and drugs, and…I stole things. But my mother kept forgiving me, over and over, until…” Her voice drifted off.

“You must miss her,” my mother said.

Mrs. Torres nodded, eyes tearing. “I stole her engagement ring,” she blurted. “When I was nineteen. My dad had just died. I pawned the ring and we couldn't get it back.”

My father looked at his watch. My mother covered her ring.

Mrs. Torres cleared her throat. “I grew up, cleaned up my act, but my mother just couldn't get past it. And then, a couple of weeks ago, it was like someone had flipped a switch. She called to say she forgave me—and she hoped I could forgive her. I flew out here right away, and we had the most amazing couple of days. It was like we were starting over.”

My mother didn't know what to say. My father, who hates this kind of touchy-feely stuff, said, “I promise you I'll do a nice job on the house.” And, “I should really be getting back to the job site.”

I sat rooted to the heavy wood chair, wishing Mrs. Torres would explain why a person had to face death in order to have the kind of wisdom that had come at last to Francine Lunardi—and now to me.

 

We dropped my father off at the construction site. “Okay if I borrow your camera again, Maddy?” he asked, getting out of the car.

I hesitated. What would he think if he saw the picture of me floating in the water? But then I decided it was okay. Maybe he could make sense of it someday.

“Let me check one thing.” My black hair hung over the screen like a privacy curtain as I looked at the dark water picture. I was still there, floating like a starfish just under the surface, my eyes round as sand dollars.

I turned off the camera and handed it to my dad. “Keep it as long as you like.”

 

My mother left me at the motel and then went off to do some errands. I longed to sink onto the big brown bed, but I couldn't
be sure I'd wake up. It would be four days before my parents could move into the yellow cottage. Risking death in their bed just seemed inconsiderate.

As I settled myself onto the couch, I wished I'd worn nicer clothes. If it was my time to leave this earth, I'd rather do it in something other than my Goth Girl getup. But as I drifted off to sleep, I realized that it didn't really matter.