She turned and stared at me, but it was as if she wasn’t really looking at me. Like I was a stranger who looked vaguely familiar.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Kasey’s wide eyes got wider.

“Something really weird is happening,” I said.

I thought about the story, the way it poured out of my mouth without permission. About the basement door swinging open. The cloud of cold air in the dining room.

With a start I remembered the lights we’d seen outside the night before.

“What could it be?” I whispered.

Kasey wrinkled her forehead. “Lexi, don’t be mad, but…I think…maybe you’re just tired,” she said.

“No!” The burner! “The water was boiling and I—”

“Lexi,” she said, putting her skinny arm around my shoulder, ” I turned the burner on.”

“But…when? Why didn’t you say something?”

She swallowed. “When you were in the dining room a minute ago.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You need to relax,” she said. “You’re getting yourself all worked up.”

I glanced around the kitchen, which was lit warmly and smelled pleasantly of the spicy beef I’d just thrown away.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“I know I am,” she said. “Now, sit. Finish the tree.”

I obeyed, feeling too bewildered to protest.

I don’t think I’m a great artist, but Kasey seemed enthralled by the lines I drew. She leaned forward, her chin on her hands, and watched me.

“You’re making me nervous,” I told her.

“Sorry,” she said, slumping back.

I concentrated on the silhouette of the tree trunk, plump and shapely, with gentle curves and little hollows. I drew a stub of a branch that had broken off, and another spot where a fresh layer of bark almost covered a gash in the side of the trunk.

I was vaguely aware of Kasey fidgeting across the table, making a click-click noise, and I could tell she was interested but trying not to show it.

Finally I sat up and looked at my drawing.

Wow.

Click-click.

It was totally different from anything I’d ever drawn. Usually I did well enough to get by in Pictionary— casual but effective line drawings.

There was nothing casual about this tree. It was covered in details. Even the drawing style was somehow different. The lines looked like they’d been drawn by someone else….

Just like the story had been told by someone else. Click-click.

And suddenly I felt sick. Click-click.

I pushed my chair away from the table and looked up at Kasey.

“STOP!” I shouted, scaring both of us.

She paused midclick, and her eyes widened in distress when she realized what she’d been doing—

Opening and shutting the back cover of my camera.

Letting light spill in and expose the negatives.

“I’m sorry!” she squealed as I yanked the camera from her hands and snapped the cover shut. “Lexi, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t talk to me, Kasey!” I said. “Or I will be forced to murder you!”

I rushed out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Kasey followed me into the foyer but kept a safe distance away, staring up at me, her mouth an O, her eyes red and streaming tears.

“I can’t believe you!” I called down to her, and then I went into my bedroom and slammed the door.

Mom’s voice came faintly from behind her closed door.

“Girls, stop yelling. I’m trying to work!”

I let out an angry grunt and smacked my pillow.

A few minutes later I heard Kasey trudge by and close her door. I felt kind of bad, but not bad enough to go comfort her.

Let her think about what she’d done.

Alone.

9

I didn’t sleep well. Can you blame me? I kept having those falling dreams, where you jolt yourself awake just before you hit the ground.

After waking up and checking the clock every half hour or so, at 5:30 a.m. I decided to get out of bed. I’d be sleep-deprived, but at least I’d have time to work in the darkroom.

Walking to the tiny guest bathroom at the end of the hall, I tried not to think about my ruined film, which left plenty of mental space to think about all the other strange things that had happened the previous night. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I passed Kasey’s door, but when I reached the darkroom, a sense of calm washed over me. A sense of well-being.

As soon as I turned on the safelight (don’t be too impressed—it’s just a red lightbulb) and snapped the black curtain into place to keep light from leaking through the cracks around the bathroom door, all thoughts of boiling water and unstable sisters and absentee parents melted away.

A lot of people shoot digital pictures now, which is fine—it’s just not for me. To me, taking digital pictures is like finding something. But working with film is like making something.

Besides, I cherish the time I get to spend in the darkroom—away from my family.

It’s a pretty decent setup: an old enlarger (bought used from the junior college) and a table Dad and I built over the bathtub to hold trays of chemicals. Rolls of film and finished prints hang to dry on a clothesline behind the table.

What’s funny is that when we moved in, the tub was already dotted with chemical stains, and we found darkroom supplies under the sink. So somebody else had had the same idea once upon a time. I guess a house like ours brings out people’s creative tendencies. Maybe, in its own wacky way, Kasey’s doll collection could be seen as an expression of creativity, not just a passive consumerist obsession (which is what I call it when I want to get a rise out of her).

I rolled the film into the coiled silver cage and filled the cylinder with film-developing chemicals. While that processed, I carefully took my camera apart and cleaned the lens.

When the timer dinged, I unrolled the film and clothespinned it to the cord hanging over the tub. I turned Mom’s old hair dryer to COOL and spent a few minutes drying the film off. It had to be totally waterless—handling it when it was just mostly dry or a little tacky would ruin the images.

Next I cut the long strip of film into rows of five frames and made a contact sheet. That means you lay the film right onto the photo paper (so they’re in “contact” with each other) and get a whole page of little tiny black-and-white photos. You use that to choose the pictures you want to make larger prints of. You can’t just print everything or you’ll waste a lot of photo paper, and photo paper is expensive. Not every picture is worth blowing up.

I hit the button and reached for the negative sleeve, then leaned down and held the negatives to the light— expecting to see a whole lot of nothing, after Kasey’s disastrous actions last night.

A huge breath I didn’t know I’d been holding escaped from my lungs.

They weren’t ruined.

I got a piece of photo paper out from the triple-sealed black bag under the sink and set the page of negatives down directly on it, then hit the expose button. The light shined on them for a few seconds, then went off. I grabbed the paper and dropped it into the first tray of chemicals—the developer, which is where the images start to show up on the paper. I love watching this stage, seeing what comes out first.

I lifted the contact sheet out of the developer and put it in the next tray, the stop bath, which stops the emulsion from reacting to the developer chemicals. From there they go into the fixer, which gets rid of any extra light-sensitive materials left on the paper, and from there they go into a tray of cold water. Then they get inspected by me with my little magnifying glass.

I set them on the enlarger and turned the timer as far as it would go. I leaned in to look at the photos.

They were beautiful. You could see black sky, a big white moon, and the pinpricks of tiny stars. The house loomed in the foreground, glowing a kind of milky gray. The whole thing was slightly hazy—which I could assume was Kasey’s fault. Never mind that it was kind of a cool effect…I was still totally annoyed.