If it worked when I took the pictures, could it work when I developed them?

“Hey, Solomon,” I said, and the strumming stopped. “Did we ever figure out what my ability was? On the other side?”

“Seeing things you shouldn’t be able to see,” he said. “Visions. Secrets. The past, and the present.”

I turned around to look at him, sprawled on the Totoro beanbag chair he had once been swallowed up in, and now dwarfed. But the look on his face, in the dim red light, was the same. Excitement over things I couldn’t get my head around.

Maybe he lived in a different world. A crazy one. It didn’t mean he couldn’t be happy there.

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“You think of an image you want to know more about,” he said. “Concentrate on it. Let it grow. Show you its connections to other things.”

I shut my eyes. Imagined the photo of Justin. The pouty look on his face when I told him what to do.

A tremor went through my chest. Like a second heart, beating beneath my breastbone. Like something was flowing through me, from some other place (the other side), some other me.

I smelled old popcorn, spilled soda. Body odor. Burning.

Eyes still shut, I focused on the dark clouds around Justin. They bubbled and swelled in my mind’s eye, and I began to try to . . . push them. Show me what I wanted to see.

His worst moment, I thought. His Induction Ceremony.

I opened my eyes and watched it take shape on the paper. First, the dark spots. Shelves stuffed with giant sacks of dog food. Distant people. And then the lighter pieces: Justin standing with his arm out, dropping a match. Bright flames blooming.

Justin setting the fire in Walmart.

“Solomon,” I whispered. “Come here?”

He stood, and came to my side.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“Just stupid Justin,” he said. “It’s a good picture, though. You captured how stupid he is.”

“Thanks,” I said, stepping back from the developer, mind racing, wondering what this meant, what I could do with this.

Solomon couldn’t see it. But—I thought, with sudden, electric certainty—what if Justin could? It was an unbelievable idea, an impossible one. Yet somehow it felt like another puzzle piece falling into place.

“Go upstairs and make us some tea?” I asked Solomon. “I have work to do.”

He went.

My phone rang. Connor. I answered it immediately, smearing the phone with wet chemicals.

“What the hell, Ash? What’s the emergency that has you blowing up my phone?”

“Connor, thank god.” I looked at my phone—it was almost eleven. Plenty of time before school let out. “Wait for us after school, okay? Me and Solomon are going to pick you up.”

Silence. “Solomon? Is everything okay?”