I support the flashlight under my chin and shove another handful of cheddary goodness in my mouth as I turn the pages of a scrapbook I’d put together to give Declan last year. I never could take a good photo with my phone to save my life, but he was a master of selfies. He’d take them and text them to me, so after he died, I had more than a thousand of them.

Hence, smashing my phone. My parents packed me off to Shady Brook after that, before I could turn my wrath on the scrapbook.

I lean forward, squinting. In every shot, he has that same enormous smile. We’re usually hugging tight, cheeks smushed together for the camera. Declan was a hugger. Unlike Kane, he was always touching me, and in all the best ways, making my spine dance and tingle, my every nerve bend toward him.

I’ve been through the Book of a Thousand Selfies so many times, and though every picture is essentially the same, I can tell you where each one was taken. I have my favorites, like the one taken after the giant slingshot ride at the shore. Or the one in front of home base at the Phillies game.

But God, that smile. You could harness its power and light all of Jersey with it for a year. It wasn’t a sly, mischievous one like Kane’s. Imagine a five-year-old boy’s smile after catching his first fish on the Seaside pier. That was Declan’s smile. Declan was never up to no good.

At least…

I shake crumbs off my T-shirt and unfold the envelope Mrs. Weeks gave me earlier. I turn the tiny photo around, adjusting the flashlight to illuminate the parts of it I want to study, but it doesn’t become clearer. The light skin blurs with the dark, and the image is too pixelated and grainy to figure out. But something about one blotch looks familiar in color and shape.

My eyes burn from not blinking, so I squeeze them shut, then open them and try to refocus.

THIS ENDS HERE.

It’s a threat.

I say the words over and over again, as the memories threaten to break through the dam and spill everywhere.

No.

Though Kane has the all-American looks, it was Declan who was the golden boy, the do-no-wrong kid who everyone would’ve hated if they didn’t love him so much. Declan was a proud member of the geek club—he knew an unhealthy amount of information about Tolkien and Star Wars, and he rocked the astronomy club. In comparison, Kane never picked up a book, preferred sports, and raised a little hell. The Weeks boys might have been different in many ways, but they shared one attribute: charisma. It was hard not to love them.