“All of your photographs should be personal,” she said.

“I guess I could take them out,” I said, “and leave the rest of the book.”

“You’d lose.”

I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open right about then.

“Bring it here,” she said, motioning me over. Something in her manner made me obey. She flipped directly to the first of the photos I would have removed. “Do you mean these?”

“Yes,” I said.

“This is you?”

Yes. It was a self-portrait, taken in a mirror: me sitting next to my new camera as warily as the bride and groom in an arranged marriage. It had taken forever to set up that picture, because my collarbone and wrist were broken. I was all bandaged up; there was a cut on my cheek, and some of my hair had been singed off, but I hadn’t been to the salon to get it trimmed yet. I’d spent a frustrating hour trying to understand all of the camera’s fancy automatic settings, and I still wasn’t sure if I’d gotten it right.

I looked wild, battered, exhausted—but it was a good picture.

She flipped the page.

The two facing pages had pictures of my parents. I’d based them on that old painting, American Gothic, of two farmers just standing there. For the first one, I’d made them stand in front of the town house, dressed in their work clothes. It was about forty degrees out, and neither of them had a jacket. Mom is trying to smile through the cold. Dad is stoic, favoring his right leg the way he does when his leg injuries bother him (yet another Because of Kasey). They look miserable but determined.

The second one is the same pose, but they’re standing in front of the burned out shell of our old house. The pillars that once held up the roof of the porch jut out of the ground, looking like they fought their way to the surface, zebra-streaked with ash and scorch marks. Beyond lies all that remained of the grand front hallway—the first couple of stairs, the frame of the basement door, the fireplace against the back wall.

I waited for a reaction, but she wordlessly turned the page.

The next photo was a close-up of two naked wrists, lit sharply from one side, causing the crisscrossed scar tissue to stand out in vivid relief. I had to fight the urge to hold my hands over the image, to hide it.

They were Carter’s wrists. His wounds, from when he tried to kill himself during his freshman year at All Saints. I remembered the day we shot that picture, how Carter’s arms shook as he held them under the lights. And how I wondered why he was okay with my taking a picture when he never showed his scars to anyone but me and his parents. He’d worn nothing but long-sleeved shirts since the day I met him.

The one after that was Megan, sitting on her mother’s grave, the first time she was ever allowed to visit it. She slumped against the tombstone, her eyes closed, her face turned toward the sun. She’d forgotten about me, about everything except her grief.

And the last one was my sister in her Harmony Valley loungewear, smiling wanly over her fourteenth birthday cake in the visitors’ lounge. Except we weren’t allowed to light the candles, and we weren’t allowed to have knives, so the cake was an uneven grid of presliced pieces with unlit candles sticking out at crooked angles. The scene was drab, joyless. The bite came when you looked into Kasey’s eyes—which were like the eyes of a caged animal.

I’d betrayed myself and the people I loved most, letting those photographs be seen. It was almost as if I’d posted their naked pictures on the Internet or some-thing—only this was worse, because these moments were more private and painful than being caught naked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, picking the book up—more gently this time. “I can’t.”

“If you take those pictures out, you won’t win,” the woman said. “If you leave them in, you have a chance. They’re excellent. You’re very talented.”

I turned to look at her. “Excuse me—who are you?”

She switched off the work light. “I’m Farrin McAllister. This is my studio.”

I took an involuntary step backward.

Farrin McAllister?

The Farrin McAllister? The photographer who’d shot every major celebrity and half the rest of the important people and events in the world? Who had thirteen Vogue covers and who knows how many Pulitzers?

And she’d said my photos were…excellent.

I felt a little queasy.

“I’m closing up for the night,” she said. “You’d better make your decision.”

I hugged the portfolio to my chest. “But…if I enter, who will see these pictures?”

“Quite a few people.”

“But I don’t know if it’s okay with my”—I gestured at the book—“for other people to see them.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “What did they think you were doing—bird-watching?”

I swallowed hard.

“Am I even still eligible?” My last escape hatch. I wasn’t sure which answer I wanted. “Since we’ve talked?”

“This is a competition based on talent,” she said, grabbing her purse from the counter. “Not a bingo game. You have until I reach the door to decide whether you’re in or out.”

But she was walking so fast!

Without thinking, I stuffed the book into the blue envelope and set it on the table.

Farrin—Farrin McAllister—held the door open for me and gave me a little wave as she stayed behind to lock up.

I’m not sure I exhaled once, the entire drive home.

THE WEEK WORE ON. Miss Nagesh and I cleared the 000s and were most of the way through the 100s—philosophy and psychology. She was young and cool, and while we worked, she told me all about the novel she was writing. I told her about the photography contest, even though I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else. Not my parents—not even Megan or Carter.

Kasey and Adrienne continued to eat with the Doom Squad, but Lydia didn’t seem to be outright mocking them, so I didn’t interfere.

Friday night, Mom and Dad were going to dinner with Mom’s regional managers. Mom put on her swishiest dress, with her blond hair in a low bun; Dad wore his only suit and gelled his hair back. Mom kept calling him her trophy husband. I thought it was sweet, but Kasey huffed back to her room, muttering about having embarrassing parents.

I wiped down the kitchen while I waited for her to finish packing her overnight bag. Finally she came out and sank onto a barstool.

“Almost ready?” I asked.

“I think I’m going to tell Adrienne I can’t come,” she said, dragging her fingertip along the countertop.

“But you said you’d go.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, but…I don’t feel like it.”

“Kasey, you can’t do that to people—back out when you say you’re going to do something.” I wrung out the sponge and set it on the edge of the sink. “This probably means so much to Adrienne. If you had a party, how would you feel if everybody canceled?”

“Ugh, fine! Quit nagging!” She heaved an enormous, woe-is-me sigh and went back to her room.

To be perfectly honest, my reaction was probably as much about me as it was about Adrienne. If Kasey didn’t go to the sleepover, I’d have to figure out what to do with her. Leaving her home alone wasn’t an option, and—selfishly, I’ll admit—I didn’t want her at Megan’s house. I just wanted to relax with my friends, and having my sister around virtually guaranteed that wouldn’t happen.

A few minutes later, she came silently back to the great room, dragging her duffel across the floor by its strap.

I made a mental note to remind her of that next time she made fun of me for sweeping every two days.

Adrienne lived a couple of miles away in a neighborhood called Lakewood, which was built in the 1970s and filled with bizarre, asymmetrical wooden tract houses. Near the entrance was a small man-made lake and a few acres of woods.

As we pulled into the driveway, my phone rang. It was Megan.