His nose is slightly crooked; it leans a little to the right side of his face. His cheekbones—sharp and shadowy in his professional photos—don’t look like they might cut through glass without the aid of professional lighting. His shoulders are not at all proud and stalwart, as they appear at the end of the Orman Chronicles. Instead, they are slightly hunched and deign to make the great N. E. Endsley a mere mortal.

He is staring, and it’s the most eye contact I’ve managed in weeks. My cheeks warm as something inside me both fortifies and breaks. The anger I felt after the festival floods away and leaves me with one simple need: to know if he remembers Jenna, too.

“She met you,” I blurt out, taking a shaky step forward. When I realize this won’t make sense to anybody but me, I add, “Jenna. My friend. She met you at CCBF. She said you were…” I pause, looking for a tactful word. “Troubled.”

N. E. Endsley still doesn’t break our weirdly charged standoff. It feels like mutual recognition, which is impossible, since he’s never laid eyes on me.

He opens his mouth and takes a minuscule half step forward and I think he’s going to say something. Instead, he stares for another stretch of uncomfortable time, his mouth partially open, before turning to Alex and saying, “I’ll wait by the car.” And he disappears into the inky darkness.

When I meet people, I always imagine what world hides inside them. Most people are the same: rows and rows of busy cubicles with pictures of their kids tacked to the walls and piles of paperwork waiting to go somewhere. I prefer the different ones. Those are the people I love to photograph, the reason I try so hard to shrink entire worlds down into a single shot.

Behind Jenna’s eyes was a shopping mall that ran like a well-oiled machine. There was never trash on the food court floor, no crying toddlers wailing from strollers. People walked with purpose from store to store, with a task to be accomplished, but sometimes one of those mall playgrounds would suddenly form and everyone, no matter their age, would scramble to play.

Adults would abandon bags of protein bars and vitamins and compete on the swings. Little kids would throw down their new school clothes and clamor onto monkey bars and scooch down slides. Old women would chuck aside their canes and take turns spinning each other on the merry-go-rounds. And just as quickly as the playground appeared, it would disappear, and the shoppers would return to their tasks.

That was Jenna.