Death, Doom and Detention

“I cannot believe you don’t trust me,” I said, but she was gone. So I called out to her. “Bring me a piece!”

Glitch sat at my desk, then yelled, “And bring me an orange soda!”

“Me too!”

I scooted onto the edge of my bed. “It’s like having room service.”

“So, you gonna tell me or what?”

I looked over at Glitch. He was holding a slice of pizza in one hand and checking his e-mail on my computer with the other.

“Brooke would kill me.”

He tossed an evil smirk over his shoulder.

Before I could say anything, Brooklyn burst through the door, a pile of pizza in one hand and two orange sodas balanced in the other. “Did she say anything?” she asked.

“My god, that was fast.”

Glitch’s mouth formed a straight line of disappointment. “No, she didn’t.”

“Perfect.” She handed me a slice and sat down to take a bite. After putting her pizza back onto her plate and wiping her hands on her napkin, she focused all her might on Boy Wonder.

“Okay, Glitch, pay attention.”

He turned from the computer and took another bite. “’Kay.”

Brooke grinned in anticipation and said, “Lor can go into pictures.”

He conjured a hesitant smile. “That’s great, Lor. I didn’t even know you wanted to act.”

“What? No, not those kinds of pictures.” She waved at him, as though erasing his words. “Like, pictures. You know, photos.”

“So you want to be a photographer?” he asked after taking a sip of soda.

With all the flair and drama of a silent screen actress, Brooke plastered her hands over her eyes and threw herself across her bed.

“A model?” he tried. “Aren’t you kind of short?”

“For the love of pepperoni, make him shut up.”

I laughed at her antics. “Brooke, you have to admit, it sounds a little far-fetched. You’re going to have to explain,” I said before taking a bite.

“Fine.” She sat up and tried again. “Okay, Lor has the ability to touch a picture and go into it. She can see what was happening when that picture was taken. She can enter the scene, look around, hear what people said.”

“But once the camera flashes,” I added, “I’m thrown out. I can see only the events that led up to that image in the photo.”

Glitch sat staring at us. We let him take it all in. Absorb. “That’s kind of cool,” he said, his voice uncertain.

“Kind of cool?” Brooke asked. “It’s the coolest thing ever. Well, okay, besides Jared being the Angel of Death. That was a tad cooler.”

I glanced at her and we shrugged in agreement.

“No, it is,” he said. “But what does it mean?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Brooke said.

“Have you told your grandparents?”

“No, not yet. It’s all still in test phase. As soon as I know more, I’ll go to them.”

“You said you’d go to them tomorrow,” Brooke said, accusing me with her eyes. “You pinkie swore.”

“I will.”

“Lor—”

“Brooke—”

“Can we get back to the picture thing?” Glitch asked, still absorbing. Wet newspaper was more absorbent.

So we spent the next hour explaining everything and going into a couple of pictures to prove I could do it. Everyone was a skeptic. But Brooke brought out some pictures from our grade school days. I went into a couple and recounted what happened in each. I was getting better. I could manipulate my position, could see the environment outside the frame of the picture.

Glitch didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure why this was any harder to believe than my having visions or Jared being the Angel of Death, but for some reason, he seemed to be having a difficult time with it.

Then he asked, “What about digital images? You know, like a picture on a phone or a computer?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. Let’s try it.”

He brought up a picture on his cell phone of him riding his dirt bike in the mountains.

“Who took this?” I asked.

He grinned. “You tell me.”

With a grimace of doubt, I touched the screen and concentrated. And just as before, I drifted forward, into the picture, into the scene, a curtain of pixels parting to let me inside. The shrill sound of his motorcycle as he kicked up an unnecessary amount of dirt hit me like a cannon blast. I covered my ears. Or at least, I felt like I covered my ears. No one else was around. Before I got cast out of the photo, I stepped to the side to see who was taking the picture, but his phone sat on a log. He’d propped it up and set the timer.

A split second before the picture snapped, I looked past the camera and saw his dad standing in the distance.

The light flashed bright and I was back. I blinked at him. “You took that picture. And really, must you stir up that much dirt?”

His smile faded.

“Wait, how did he take the—? Oh,” Brooke said. “Your phone has a timer?” She took it from me and started punching buttons.

“Yeah, but how did you know?”

“We just told you,” she said. Then she gaped at me. “He never listens.”

He stared at her. “No, I know what you said, but … that’s amazing.”

“Know what’s more amazing?” I asked, offering him a knowing grin. “Your dad was watching you that day.”