I think he may be having some sort of mini meltdown. He tinkers with his flash for a solid five minutes, even though with everyone else he snapped two rapid-fire shots and voilà, high school memory complete. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his shirtsleeve.

“Let me try one more thing,” he says, starting another round of button pressing.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I say. We both know the equipment isn’t the problem here. “You can just take it.”

He resumes his position behind the camera. “Okay, on three. One, two…”

I swear he winces when he pulls the trigger. As I get up to leave, he waves me over behind the tripod.

“I have an idea.”

He pulls up my digital picture on a laptop next to him. My pink hair fills the top half of the frame.

“So, this is totally up to you, but we do offer an editing package,” he says. He moves the mouse over my image, hovering it above my nose. “Just watch.”

As he moves the cursor around my face on the screen, my skin blurs beneath it. The smudging effect erases the lines separating my skin grafts and washes out the wrinkles of my scars. He does one entire side of my face, which is now a little out of focus but still—better.

He grabs another tool with his curser.

“And this can just kind of fill in some…problem areas,” he says. He clicks around my eyes, filling in the skin beneath my eyelids. Then, he shapes the lines around my mouth so the pink of my lips doesn’t bleed into my face.

He turns to me, smiling. “What do you think?”

“I think that’s amazing.”

“So do you want it?

“Want what?”

My old face? How much?

“The editing package. This picture would go in the yearbook instead.”

I stare at the girl on the screen. Ava Before the Fire. A little blurry, but still—there she is.

“People really do this?” I say.

He nods. “Oh yeah. All the time—wrinkles, scars, unsightly moles. It all comes down to how you want people to remember you.”

The girl on the screen tempts me. I want people to remember her, not the thing they see in the hallways. I want them all just to forget about that girl. Photoshop her into oblivion.

“But it’s not really me,” I say.

The photographer smiles like we’re coconspirators.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point—it’s better.”

A hushed whispering behind me makes me turn, instantly aware that all the other students in line are also staring at the fantasy me on the screen. Their eyes shift from the photoshopped version to reality and then back again.

Next to this smooth-faced girl on the computer, I feel more hideous than ever. Hot hatred for her rises in my chest.

“Just erase it,” I say under my breath.