There’s no way your mom knew she was punning with “artsy,” because your real name isn’t Art. Do you think of yourself as Art now? Is this Artception?

“I think both.”

“How are you feeling? What do you want for dinner?” Sometime during those earliest days after my return from the hospital, Mom had taken to tacking on another question right after the How are you feeling? to leave me an easy out to not have to answer it. Mom was as scarred as I was by the surgery summer, and she would continue couching or seeding questions about my well-being in the same manner for years that silted into sediment.

I ignored her first question but precipitately answered the second. “Can we get a pizza? I’m starving.”

Likely due to the quirks of that old camera, the last picture in the pack always came out “undeveloped,” as you described. Always. Nothing foreboding or metaphoric or supernatural about it. You know that, of course.

Fine, we’ve already established this is fiction, but just in fucking case the life-sucking vampire bit doesn’t tip off an editor/agent/whomever to this book’s fictionness, I again want the following on record, even if it makes me sound like the doth-protest-too-much neurotic mess I might be: Not only did I constantly complain to you about the wasted picture in every pack—that film was goddamn expensive!—I frequently stuck the camera in your face, shot the last/lost photo, then blamed you for breaking the camera with your face, which was a silly “dad joke”—in today’s parlance—and you laughed and knew I wasn’t serious. There’s no mention of this last-photo-in-the-pack bit anywhere in your text despite your featuring my camera prominently while taking every other opportunity to self-denigrate your physical appearance. I would say “how odd” if I didn’t think the omission was purposeful and in service to your novel’s storyline. If I sound pissed, it’s because this scene out of all the scenes in the book so far is the one that strikes the hurtiest nerve. How you write about the sinister nature of the photo and cereal box leaps off the page. I—your friend and poor, besmirched, and betrodden beta reader—left those gifts as my olive branch to you. It was an apology, Art. I was being the bigger person. I figured you’d find the Flakes and mucked-up photo, recognize it as a playful callback to the joke of my always using the last pic in the pack on your mug, and then you’d have a warm, rueful laugh and realize it was my way of saying sorry for breaking into your basement, which I admit, was all kinds of weird and wrong, one of those wrongs that became impossible to admit because it was so far afield.