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H
IS BREATH, COLD AND MINTY,
woke me up. “Charles,” he whispered.

I opened my eyes and saw Duncan's face, the light behind him so bright I had to squint. I felt safe, not afraid at all. From now on, everything would be okay.

He smiled, revealing the chip in his tooth. At least that was the same. Otherwise he looked different: his hair was short and his earrings were gone. Was there a dress code in the afterlife?

He leaned forward and put his mouth on mine, his lips cool and gentle. He tasted like peppermint and sweet tea. It was nothing like kissing Rolf. Nothing like anything I'd ever felt before.

So this is why they call it heaven.

He leaned back and smiled, his lips redder now.

“Are we dead?” I whispered.

His mouth dropped open. And then he started laughing, and I sat up on the couch and looked around. Heaven looked just like our room at Home Suite Home in the late afternoon, with a slice
of sunlight sneaking through the front window. You'd think God would spring for better carpet.

“You're alive?” I said. “You're not even hurt?”

He spread his arms. “Sure looks that way.”

“But—what? How?” I shook my head. “You were in my camera.”

“Delilah told me.” He sat next to me on the couch and put an arm around my shoulders. “I'm kinda glad I didn't see the picture. It would've freaked me out. Though Ronald Young came out of his coma last night—I heard some people at the pier talking about it.”

“He did? Really? But…did you almost die?” I asked. “Was the storm bad? Did you fall off the boat or anything?”

He shook his head. “It was no big deal. We just got some rain and wind. And anyway, we were on land the whole time.”

I blinked with confusion. He tucked a piece of black hair behind my ear.

“There's this little island,” he explained. “South of here and about twenty miles out. It's a nature preserve—you're not even supposed to go onshore unless you have a special permit. Which we didn't. It's a great place to camp: totally deserted and there's tons of fish. We anchored the boat in this little hidden cove and turned off the radio.”

“Why?” I remembered Rose's frantic pleas, the harbormaster's attempts at radio contact.

“So no one would know where we were. Then this morning we were hauling in the fish like you wouldn't believe, and a frickin' helicopter flies over!” He began to laugh. “I thought Ray Clarke—you know, the guy who owns the boat—was gonna pee
in his pants. Now he's gotta pay all these fines because he didn't have a permit. He's way pissed at Rose.”

“What happened to your hair?” I was still not entirely convinced he was alive.

He rolled his green eyes up as if he could see the top of his head. “I did it for you. Well, for your parents, anyway.” His eyes shot to the sliding glass door. My father sat out there, facing the hill. He must have let Duncan in.

“But I liked your hair,” I said, missing the wild tangles, the touches of blond.

“You did?” He looked surprised. “I can always grow it back. It's just hair.”

“What about your earrings?”

“They're in my pocket.”

“Good.” I had one more question. “Who's Charles?”

“I am,” he said simply.

I shook my head. “But there's nothing wrong with that name. Why don't you want anyone to know it?”

He took a deep breath. “Can't we just go back to kissing?”

“Soon. But first I want to hear about Charles.”

 

Duncan's mother named him Charles after her own father, who let her move in with him when she got pregnant.

“I think it was just easier than coming up with a new name,” Duncan said. “She'd gone out with my dad for a couple of months, but they'd already split up. He didn't even know about me.”

She wasn't the worst mother in the world. She didn't beat him or burn him with cigarettes. She just, like, forgot she had a child. Some days she wouldn't feed him. Or change him. When
she went out at night, she'd leave him all alone. Social workers asked questions, but there was no place else for him to go.

When Duncan was three, his grandfather died. “He was a total drunk. So was my mother, I think. I've got this fuzzy memory of broken bottles and a really bad smell. I'll never touch the stuff. Genetics, you know?”

“Is that when she joined the cult?” I asked. “After your grandfather died?”

Duncan covered his face. “There was no cult,” he admitted, finally. “Nobody made her do anything. When I was three years old, she tracked down my father. He was living in a rented house in this crap neighborhood. She told me to go play in the backyard. When I came back inside she was gone.”

I stared at him. “She just left you?”

He nodded, and his nostrils flared a little. “My father didn't believe I was his kid. So she said she'd get the birth certificate out of her car, but instead she drove away.”

“No cult,” I reiterated. A cult actually made more sense.

He shook his head. “My dad asked me what my name was. But someone—maybe my mom, but I doubt it—once told me if a stranger asks you your name, don't tell them.”

I ran a hand over his prickly hair and swallowed the lump in my throat. “What did your dad call you?”

“At first he called me Buddy. And then he said I could pick my own name.”

“And you chose Duncan?”

He grinned. “Flash.”

“Flash?”

“Yeah. But when I turned eight, I decided that maybe wasn't
so cool. So then I went through a bunch—Jake, Ricardo, Frankie, Dean—until I found one that felt right. I've been Duncan since I was twelve.”

“Did you ever tell your dad your real name?”

“Oh, yeah. When I was five, my dad needed a birth certificate for school. The town where I'd been born only had one hospital, so it was pretty easy to track down. Then there was some more legal stuff my dad had to do to get official custody and change my last name to his, but it wasn't hard since my mother had deserted and no one else wanted me.”

“Why didn't you just go back to Charles, then?”

His lips tightened. “It was the name she gave me. I didn't want anything from her.”

I thought of Delilah's lost father. “Where's your mother now?”

He shrugged. “Don't know. Don't care.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.” He gazed off for a while, seeing something that wasn't there. “My dad's got his faults, but he would never leave me.” He turned his head and looked me in the eye. “That's what I realized when I was on the island.”

I shook my head in confusion.

“We landed, and I went around the shore and inland a bit because I had to…well, whatever. Anyway, afterward I started exploring, looking at the cliffs and plants and stuff, and I kinda lost track of time. And my dad came after me. I heard him calling out, and he sounded totally freaked. I mean, really terrified. I found him, and his face…” He bit his lip at the memory.

“What?”

“He was really pale and his eyes—it looked like he'd been crying. And he was all, ‘Oh, my God, I didn't know where you were.' And that's when it hit me. If I tell him I want to stay here, he won't go off without me.”

“You're staying,” I whispered. “You're alive and you're staying.”

He took his arm from around my shoulders and held my face in both of his hands. “There's something else. The other night…I thought about what you said, about helping me with my schoolwork. If you're still up for it—I'm in.”

“You decided that…the night you walked me home?”

He flushed. “I felt like you were treating me like I was dumb, and it kind of pissed me off. But after I left you it suddenly hit me: ‘Dude, don't be mad at her. It's totally your fault.' Like, maybe if I showed up to class, I might actually learn something.”

I pictured Duncan's walk home from Home Suite Home: the dark street, the rustling trees, the tunnel under the highway. I pictured the fast-moving clouds and the night-light of a moon.

Relief bubbled up inside of me. “I'm not going to die!”

“Huh?”

“The camera! The pictures! They don't predict death at all. What's that thing Rose kept talking about? The transformational experience?”

He shook his head. “You lost me.”

“Rose said that if we're lucky, we'll have transformational moments in our lives—realizations that change us forever. And during the transformation, a person sheds old energy. I think my camera captured that energy—just as if it were capturing light!”

“I still don't get it.”

“Okay. First there was Francine Lunardi. We all knew she died. What we didn't know is that she'd just realized how much she'd loved her daughter. She'd finally managed to move beyond some bad stuff that happened years ago.”

Duncan nodded.

“And then there was Ronald Young,” I continued. “His wife came to see Rose yesterday. Turns out, as soon as he found out he was going to be a father, he became more responsible, more mature. Now you're telling me that you've decided to turn your life around. Don't you see? You'd all been transformed!”

Duncan stared at me.

“Am I starting to sound like Rose?” I asked.

“Worse.”

“Well, maybe that's not such a bad thing.” Okay, actually it was.

“But I don't get it,” he said. “Why would you think you were going to die?” And then he understood. “Wait. You were in a photo?”

I popped off the couch and grabbed his hand. “I'll show you.”

My dad was still on the patio. He turned and smiled. Wait till Duncan grew his hair back. There might not be so much smiling then.

“Hey, Dad, can I have my camera back?”

My dad's mouth and nose twitched. His face flushed. Something was wrong. “Yeah, um. Your camera. The thing is, that I, um…”

“What?”

“I dropped it,” he admitted. “I was climbing up this rocky slope so I could get a picture of the building site. My feet slipped
and…” He sighed. “It's at the camera shop downtown. It's going to take a while to fix—three or four weeks.”

I closed my eyes in irritation. “You made a psychic joke, didn't you?”

 

Duncan and I had almost made it to Psychic Photo when it hit me. “My clothes!”

He stopped and looked at my black shorts and black-and-pink-striped T-shirt. “I like what you're wearing. It's what you wore the first time I met you.” He thought for a moment. “And also the second and third.”

“No,” I said. “My
good
clothes!”

When Duncan and I walked through the purple front door, Delilah beamed with pride. “I listed everything you gave me as a lot—you know, they'll all sell together for one price. Saves on shipping. You've had three bids already. You're up to twenty-nine dollars!”

“Oh, no!” I laid my head on the counter.

“Don't worry,” Delilah said. “It's a seven-day auction. I bet it'll hit fifty bucks by the time it's over. Maybe more.” Today Delilah wore a red sundress with white polka dots. Her dark hair was done up in two high pigtails. She looked like a punk Minnie Mouse.

“Do you know how much those clothes cost in the mall?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Something ridiculous. I can't believe what people will pay when you can find the exact same thing at the thrift store for almost nothing. Remember how much great stuff I found last week?”

“Yeah, because
they were all my clothes!
Can we take the listing down?”

She shook her head. “Not once you've got bids. Didn't you want me to list them? I thought that's why you gave them to me.”

“I did. It was. It's just—complicated.” Delilah didn't know that I'd seen myself on the camera. I didn't feel quite ready to talk about it, to explain just how much I had changed. And anyway, changed or not, I still wanted my clothes. “Can I bid on the lot? And then just take the stuff back?”

Delilah considered. “You can set up a PayPal account if you've got a bank account or a credit card.”

“So that would be a no.”

She held her hands up in defeat. And then she remembered something. “I did save one thing out for you, though.”

My Seven jeans? My board shorts? I was almost afraid to look, but when she held up the orange monstrosity I had to laugh. “My Dennis's Building Supply T-shirt. How did you know?”

She smiled. “I like it. It's got this whole hard-hat chic thing going on. I figured you'd be bummed if you sold it.”

Maybe she wasn't psychic, after all.

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
I
STARTED MY SOPHOMORE YEAR
at Sandyland High School. It's a regional school, which means there are kids bused in from all over. Like: from underground caves. And from jail. Okay, not really, but some of these kids are freaking scary, man, with dead eyes and greasy hair and, I swear to God, tattooed necks. They make Delilah look like she just walked out of Nordstrom.

Mostly, though, I still hang with Duncan and Delilah. And Leo, of course—who sold his disco ball for twenty-eight bucks on eBay (go figure) with an announcement that it's time to move on to the eighties. We're seeing a lot of neon and spandex these days and hoping the nineties are just around the corner.

After checking out the high school newspaper and declaring it lame beyond repair, Delilah and I launched an art-and-literary magazine called
Flash.
(That was Duncan's suggestion.) We let everyone interested join the staff because we wanted to be inclusive. Well, and also because there were only three other people who signed up, one of whom was Duncan, who mostly comes for the snacks.

Duncan has made remarkable progress. He is reading at an eleventh-grade level, studying calculus, and learning Latin.

Ha! As if. But after, like, twenty hours of intensive practice, I think he finally knows how to use quotation marks. At least, most of the time. When he thinks about it. Next we are going to tackle apostrophes. I can hardly wait.

Truth is, we both get frustrated sometimes. Often. Almost all of the time. But there are moments of triumph and I know it's all been worthwhile. Last week he took a test on periods (not that kind of period), and he got everything right. I was so proud of him that I photocopied the test at the grocery store (as an employee's daughter I pay…full price), and then we both taped it to our refrigerators.

Yes, we have a refrigerator now: full-size. There's also a real stove and oven—not that my mother knows how to use them, but at least the possibility exists. Most days she looks pretty tired, and I hate to say it, but she looks older than she did when we lived in Amerige. But she gets up every day and she goes to work, and then she comes home to her family. It's not a perfect life, but it's a life.

And by the way, I was totally right about her decorating the cottage with flowered curtains and shabby-chic furniture.

My dad's looking better than he has in years, if only because he's outside all day getting sun and exercise. Plus, he's trying to save money by bringing his lunch, which he packs in a cooler the size of New Jersey. My mom gives him bagged salad and deli items that have passed their sell-by date—which is exactly what I will tell the emergency room doctors on the inevitable day when he is rushed in with food poisoning.

After Rose's mini-breakdown when she thought Larry was dead (don't blame me; I was just using the information I had available at the time), we all thought they'd get married, but they haven't. The weird thing is, now it's Rose who's doing all kinds of nice things for Larry and begging him to commit. He does nice things back—I think he can't help himself—but he wants to make sure she's in it for the long run. Or maybe he just wants to focus his energies on Duncan. Or maybe he just likes hearing her beg. Can you blame him?

About a month after we moved into the little yellow house (which my mother, no joke, has taken to calling “The Rose Cottage”), Lexie came for a weekend. It was weird. When she got off the train, my first thought wasn't about how much I've missed her or about how nervous I was, but:
I wish I had her shirt.
It was pale blue with a picture of a pink pig with white wings.

I said, “I like your shirt.”

She said, “It's from Glamour Kills. I had to order it online because they didn't have it at the mall.”

And you'd think I'd be above it all by now after my big transformation, that I'd realize that shirts don't matter, but this emptiness shot through me that I recognized as
want.
It's a nasty feeling, and it hits me more than I'd like. Maybe my transformation wasn't complete—or maybe we never truly shed our old selves but just uncover the better parts that were there all along.

Lexie and I met up with Duncan, Delilah, and Leo at the beach. Though it was starting to grow out, Duncan's hair was still shortish, which made his new skull earrings (seventy-five cents at a yard sale) that much easier to see. I flushed with embarrassment at my freaky boyfriend—and then I flushed with shame at my
embarrassment. Delilah's and Leo's clothes were relatively normal, but Delilah was sporting a fresh magenta streak in her hair, while Leo's bright orange locks had been gelled and blown like an eighties pop star's.

Later that night, after Lexie had changed into a soft white camisole and flowered boxer shorts while I put on—shoot me now—my Dennis's Building Supply T-shirt, she said, “I like your friends.” She didn't meet my eyes.

“Yeah, they're nice,” I said, hoping that was all we needed to say on the subject. We'd already spent a good two hours talking about Rolf (who—surprise!—was turning out to be a wiener), but I thought we could get a little more mileage out of Celia.

“They're…different from our friends at home.”

“Mmm,” I said, thinking—those aren't “our” friends anymore.

She sighed sadly. “They're so much more
interesting.”

I put my arms around her. We hugged and had a good girl-cry. I said, “You'll always be my best friend.” And she said, “You'll always be my best friend, too.” And we both meant it in some way, even as we both knew it wasn't true.

After Lexie left, I found the flying pig T-shirt with a note that said, “For my BFF.” But I couldn't take Lexie's charity, so I put the shirt in a padded envelope and sent it back to her.

Oh. My. God. Please tell me you didn't fall for that. Of course I kept it! It looks fabulous on me.

My camera didn't take three or four weeks to fix. Larry had it back to me the next day, along with a new memory card. He said the old one was fried, the shots all gone. At first I was upset about losing the memory card because I'd wanted to print the
pictures of Duncan and me, but I got over it. Sometimes you have to move on.

My camera still goes everywhere with me. Delilah lets me download my pictures onto her computer, and we study the shots together. In the fall, when there's hardly ever any fog, Sandyland's light is so clear it's almost magical.

Nothing strange has turned up since my camera spent another night at Psychic Photo. I'm okay with that.

 

I'll leave you with a final snapshot.

I stand at the ocean's edge in the late afternoon, the colors deep and the shadows strong. The foamy water rolls in, ready to splash, and—
snap!
I catch the very instant when the sea touches my toes, as dry becomes wet and warm becomes cold.

But we all know that time doesn't stop like that. It's just a photo, after all.