When it was my group’s turn on the computer, I clicked through the pictures I’d taken at the fair. The ones from the bench were okay, but the best were the ones of Jake. I deleted all the pictures where he had his eyes closed or his mouth open and was left with three. Karly told us to enlarge the image to check focus, so I did. One was blurrier than the other two, and in another, I could see myself reflected in Jake’s glasses. I’d narrowed down the options and chosen the best.

“That’s the one you’re using for your portfolio?” Boy Sam asked, nodding toward my monitor. He had a close-up of ice cream on his.

“What do you think?”

“It’s a cool picture,” Boy Sam said. “It looks like an ad for glasses or . . .”

“White T-shirts?” I asked. We both smiled. “Thanks, I like yours, too,” I said, meaning it. I wouldn’t have thought to take a close-up picture of something as regular as ice cream. “The texture is interesting.”

Uh, what? Mean Me butted in. Stop trying to sound like you know what you’re talking about.

“Thanks, Tess,” Boy Sam said happily. We both refocused on our work.

I started applying filters to make the colors in the street-fair scene behind Jake super bright, because I thought Karly would like that. Compared to the plain colors Jake had on—tan shorts and a white T-shirt—I thought it could be a good contrast. Feeling like maybe I was getting the hang of it, I enlarged the picture again to take a closer look at what I’d done. Left to right, the street party was a sea of color.

A woman wore a purple dress.

There were one . . . two . . . three plaid shirts under out-of-focus faces.

A girl’s white-blond hair blew back in the breeze.

The boy she was talking to wore a stark black T-shirt.

And . . .

There he was.

Between two small clusters of people, but not with either of them, stood the man in the now sunshine-yellow scarf, thanks to the filters I’d applied. Even though the scene was blurred, I could easily see that he wasn’t chatting with a friend, buying something, or eating food. I could easily see that he was alone, facing forward, staring straight ahead.

Staring right into the camera.

Or at the girl behind it.

chapter 11

“Hey, Mom,” I said quietly.

I was on the boulder at the side of the cabin, which I now thought of as Colette’s. I sat in my spot, leaving room for her, smelling of bug spray and sleep breath.