photographer

Entry #6 in the first Dreams of the Quill Writing Challenge.

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photographer

Too casually, Lee hands his phone to Shaina, screen open. Dean frowns at her, gesturing with his chin, asking what’s going on without saying a word. Shaina shakes her head, not knowing.

The screen shows a picture of the back of someone’s hand. Most of it is covered with a twisted shape, drawn in what looks like sharpie. “What is it?” Shaina asks as she passes the phone to Dean.

Lee leans harder against the chain-link fence, twisting his fingers through the metal loops. His thin face is twisting into something resembling a smile, and his eyes haven’t yet lost their spark. “It’s a mark. It’s a secret. It’s… power.”

Dean flicks the phone closed. “I don’t get it.”

Shaina throws a glance over her shoulder, back towards the school proper, then looks at Lee. “Is it some sort of cult thing? A club?”

Lee shakes his head. “It’s magic, apparently.”

Dean, hitting the joint, lets out a loud laugh that quickly turns into a cough. “It’s magic?”

“Come on, Lee,” Shaina says. “We’re seventeen, not seven.”

Letting his fingers detach from the wiring, Lee spreads his hands in a gesture of surrender. “So ignore me. Pretend I didn’t say anything. Go on with our lives. Keep doing nothing day after day, keep acknowledging how empty everything is. Continue dying a little bit inside every time you wake up in the morning.”

Shaina looks at the ground, trying to ignore the fact that no matter how pretentious he sounds, Lee is uncomfortably accurate. “I mean, we’re not going—”

“Fine. I’m curious,” Dean says, cutting her off. “What does it do?”

Lee smiles again. “I don’t know. You draw it on the back of your hand, and then you have to do something to the image that you feel represents who you are, and then…” He gives the same open-handed shrug.

Shaina shakes her head at Dean before looking at Lee with more than a hint of suspicion. “Where did it come from?”

This makes Lee pause. He thinks for a moment. “Someone sent it to me.”

“Who?”

Lee shakes his head. “It’s—that’s not important.”

“Someone from back home?” Shaina hasn’t heard Lee talk about his old friends—or her—since… well, she can’t think when, for some reason.

“Still miss them too much?”

Dean grins. “Gonna go home and cry about your missing friends, boy?” He takes another hit, and passes it to Shaina.

Lee raises his middle finger in a casual salute. “Yeah, it was someone from there. That doesn’t matter, I moved here… a whole six months ago, this is home now.” There’s an odd pause, like he’s forgotten how long it’s been since he moved to Wyoming.

None of them speak for a moment. Shaina lets out a long tongue of smoke. The distant sound of the bell ringing cuts between the three of them. Laramie High is officially done for the day. Unofficially, the three of them have been done since lunch.

Lee sighs. “Even if none of you are going to, I want to try it. Shaina, give me your sharpie.”

“What makes you think I’ve got a sharpie?”

He rolls his eyes. “Come on. What kind of wannabe artist doesn’t obsessively keep a sharpie on her?”

She scowls, but shoves her hand into her pocket and hands him the sharpie. Because of course he’s right.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” He mimes blowing her a kiss, and Dean punches him hard in the shoulder.

“You idiots have fun with your kids’ games. I’m gonna go driving.” Dean starts to walk away, but stops. He slings a harsh glance at Lee, then grabs Shaina and pulls her to him.

She obligingly leans up and kisses him, then rests her head against his chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll come over later tonight.”

Dean nods. “Good. I’ll leave the back door unlocked. Don’t let my dad catch you again.”

She gives him a flat-eyed stare. “I won’t be quite so high this time.”

Accepting that, he jams both hands into his pockets and walks off towards the parking lot. Shaina watches him go, watches the way the sinking September light sends his long shadow across the gravel. Leaving the joint in her mouth, she raises the boxy black camera that hangs at her side. She quickly glances through the viewfinder, making sure the shadow is just along the bottom edge of the frame, then snaps the picture.

Still holding the camera, she turns to Lee. He’s got the cap of the sharpie in his mouth, and the sharpie itself in his right hand. His left is holding his cell phone, and he keeps twisting his hand to see the picture, then again to keep drawing. She watches him for a moment, then takes a picture of him.

He stops, and passes the phone to his right hand, comparing his drawing to the one in the picture. Satisfied, he recaps the sharpie and pockets it.

“Now what?” She asks.

He flicks shut his phone, slips it into his pocket, and holds out his right hand.

She hands him the joint, the end of it smoldering red hot, a thin curl of smoke still rising from it.

Lee eagerly snatches the long white tube, but doesn’t bring it to his mouth. Instead he presses it slowly against the back of his hand, right in the center of the design. His initial grimace of pain quickly fades into a grin of satisfaction, and he lets the joint fall to the ground.

Shaina doesn’t react other than to raise her eyebrows slowly. “Is that it?”

He nods, still looking at the back of his hand. “Now I just wait.”

There’s another pause. Then Lee looks up at Shaina. His wild brown hair hangs around his face, a curtain in front of his eyes, but his teeth are visible in his wide grin. “You want me to do you?”

A strange thrill runs through her, and she nods. She holds out her left hand, and he takes it in his left, using his right to take out the sharpie and mark her.

“Now what?” She asks when he’s done.

“That’s up to you. Something you think represents you.”

She doesn’t have to think long. With her free hand she raises her camera, and snaps a picture of the back of her hand, then lets the camera fall again.

Lee hasn’t let go of her hand, and she curls her fingers around his. She smiles lazily at him, looking at him again. The way his neck meets his shoulder. The harsh angle of his eyebrows. Images flick through her mind, of his body against hers, of him taking her and—

“Do you want to go somewhere?” She asks.

He pulls his hand away, leaning again against the face. “I—can’t.”

“Why not?” She takes a step forward, then another, leaning against his chest.

“There’s… I have reasons. There are important reasons that I can’t.” Again, that tone of voice like he’s forgotten something important.

“Forget them. They don’t matter.” Her mouth is against his throat now, finding the place her eyes had lingered earlier.

He puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes her away, hard. “Go away, Shaina.”

She does.

 

Shaina lets her eyes sweep across the crowd, carefully selecting their next target. She finally settles on one of the hipsters sitting in the shadow of the building. The girl is wearing a checkered scarf despite the heat, and those idiotic massive rims. Smiling wickedly, Shaina points at the girl.

Dean, next to her, nods approvingly. He points the controller at her and holds down the sync button on the back of the gamepad.

It’s three days later, Friday afternoon, and the two of them are sitting on the roof of the school, watching the idiots eat lunch. Dean caved the next day and got Lee to mark him, and now he’s eagerly demonstrating what he’s capable of.

As he holds down the button, the mark—which has melted into his skin to become a tattoo, just as it did for Shaina and Lee—becomes warm for just a moment. One of the lights on the Xbox 360 controller he’s holding winks on, green. Player One, in control.

Shaina watches as Dean rests his thumb on the joysticks, and pushes forward. Down below them, the hipster gets to her feet, talking a faltering step forward. Her oblivious herd of friends start badgering her with questions. Dean presses the A button, and the girl jumps like a puppet on a string. Shaina laughs, and takes a picture of her. This is what real power is, then. This is real control.

Using the left control stick, Dean twists her head around on her neck until she’s looking straight up, right at them. Shaina gives the girl a little wave, relishing her look of utter confusion. Then Dean taps the Back button, relinquishing control. The girl falls to her knees, shaking, and wraps her arms around her shoulders. Her little friends rush to her, asking what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong.

Shaina smiles, because nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right, now.

Dean looks at her, and smiles back. “You look so good like that.”

She doesn’t respond, just looks down.

“Here,” he continues. “Give me your camera, I want to take a picture of you.”

Shaina shakes her head, holding her camera tight against her hip. She never lets anyone touch it, not ever. It’s the last thing her mother ever gave her. “Use your memory.”

She leans against Dean, then turns her head to kiss him. His stubble is rough against her cheek, but her lips are soft against his. He falls back against the rooftop, and she collapses atop him, mouth not leaving his. Her hand finds the hem of his jeans, slips under—

Her breath catches in her throat as she realizes she has made no conscious effort, has not thought to do that. Her hand is moving on its—

She can feel him smiling into her kiss, and out of the corner of her eye she can see his left hand on the controller, manipulating her, controlling her.

Her hand continues to move on its own, and now her spine is arching, pushing her into his chest, her other hand snaking around behind his back.

Shaina lets her eyes close as she feels her body moving, her mind free, unthinking. She fills the thrill of surrender as she never has before. This is what it truly is to become someone else’s, to let him use her as she has always wanted him to. She is his, now.

She lets her thoughts fall away and surrenders herself to his total control, to his power, to blind sensation.

 

wat r u doin?

It’s Saturday night, a week later, and Shaina is in her room, texting Lee. She can hear the TV coming from the living room. Her dad is drinking beer and watching football, like every night.

Her room is a wild disarray of discarded clothes, half-finished paintings, and the dozen books that she’s reread more times than she can count. All four walls are plastered with pictures she’s taken. On top of the dresser, her bong sits next to the vibrator she lifted from the adult superstore in Cheyenne two years ago. She stopped bothering to hide them in a drawer when she realized it had been years since her dad had even knocked on her door, let alone gone inside. Her laptop is on the floor next to her bed, with the camera plugged into it, uploading.

Her phone vibrates, and she flips it open to read the response.

nothing.

She smiles, and her thumb types out the next text eagerly.

come over 2nite

This time he will. He’s out of excuses, now. Another buzz—another response. A single word.

no.

She almost snaps the phone in half, but takes a deep breath. She’s been trying for weeks—since he got here. He should be hers by now, she should be letting him take control, letting him…

y not?

Whatever his excuse is now, she can fix it. She can make it go away. The pause this time before he responds is a longer one.

i haven’t known you very long. a few weeks isn’t long enough for something like that.

Shaina stares at the phone. This can be handled. She pulls her laptop up onto the bed, and opens up her torrented copy of Photoshop. As it’s loading, she flips through iPhoto and finds a suitable picture. It’s one she took six months ago, of her and Dean sitting together in the woods, the left half of the picture just negative space. Then she goes to Facebook and finds just the right picture of Lee to use.

When she’s done, she saves the picture and texts Lee again.

how logn have u been here, xactly?

His reply takes a full minute to arrive.

six months.

Shaina smiles again at the text, and replies.

nd thts not long enuf? ;]

i guess it is, now that i think about it.

She admires the tattoo embedded in the back of her hand, impressed, then sends Lee another text.

so come over 2nite

not tonight. sorry.

then wut r u doin 2moro?

i guess we’ll see.

That’s good enough for her. She flips the phone closed, satisfied with her handiwork.

 

Sunday, the next day, and Shaina is wandering the thin woods off Route 30, in the hills halfway to Cheyenne. The wind is icy, with the first snow only a few weeks away. She pulls her coat tighter around her, suppressing a shudder. She comes to the edge of the little lake, barely more than a pond. Not frozen yet, but it will be soon enough. September in Wyoming.

For no good reason, her vision blurs for a moment, and she feels a familiar buzz in the back of her head. A slight sensation of gravity lessening, of the world tilting backwards, of everything in front of her slowing, just a touch. She shouldn’t be feeling like this. She hasn’t smoked anything since Tuesday.

A snapping twig behind her makes her spin, and she almost loses her balance. Lee is sauntering down the hill towards her. His gray-green coat makes it hard for her eyes to focus on him. He keeps shifting, not stable, as the world spins behind him. What’s happening? What is this?

He closes to her, and now she can see his smile.

He opens his teeth to speak, and each word hangs in the air like something solid, melting syllable by syllable through the sides of her skull. “Do you like it?” She hears him ask, his voice impossibly thick in her ears.

She tries to respond, tries to say anything, but her mouth is full of cotton, full of clouds, full of too many teeth, and her tongue can’t find its way out.

Then without warning, without transition, her vision is clear, her mind is clear, her ears are open, and she falls to her knees as the world grinds to a halt. “What—what was that?” She chokes out.

Lee’s voice comes through perfectly sharp now, jarring contrast to the way he spoke earlier. “Pure weed. Straight to your brain.”

“What? What?” She’s still reeling, not quite understanding him.

“Well, not weed itself. But the neurochemical effects of it. Cool, isn’t it?”

Then she remembers in a flash, as the last traces of his newfound power leave her mind. He offers her a hand, and she takes it, letting him pull her upright.

He’s still smiling. She’s still shaking.

She doesn’t let go of his hand, just falls against his chest. She can still feel the edges of the numbness on her memory, the way that thoughts were impossible when she was like that. “Bring it back,” she whispers. “Bring back that emptiness.”

He says nothing, and a burst of wind howls through the trees, stinging the back of her neck. Too much sensation. Too much of the world. Too much Wyoming.

She tilts her head back and presses her lips against his, hard, not caring if he responds. After a moment, he does.

She pulls back. “Please,” she says. “Take this away.” She leans in for another kiss, but he turns his head to the side.

“No. I still can’t.”

He’s lying. She knows he’s lying. He doesn’t have any more reasons.

“Yes you can. Do you have someone else? Some back home?”

He closes his eyes, trying to think, trying to remember. “No,” he finally says. “Not since Joanna. Two years ago.”

“And how long have you known me?”

“A few—six months.”

“Isn’t that long enough?” She wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her body against his, all of her pleading for his warmth, begging for the nothingness he can bring.

“What about Dean? You’ve been together forever, he’ll—”

Two years isn’t forever, she thinks. “Let me worry about Dean. He doesn’t have to be your problem. Just forget worrying. Forget everything. Fall with me.”

She leans into him a little more, pushes him just that last bit, and he falls backwards, into the dry leaves on the icy ground, into the nothingness behind it.

 

“Dean?”

Two weeks later, and Shaina is lying awake in Dean’s bed. The clock blinks a steady 4:13AM, casting an uncomfortable red pallor over the room. In an hour, she’ll get up and sneak out the back door, before Dean’s dad wakes up. But tonight, she can’t sleep.

“Dean?” She asks again.

He stirs next to her. She’s lying on his arm, which she knows from experience will stay asleep once he wakes up. She rolls over and looks at his face. His eyes are starting to flutter open.

“Hmm?” His voice is low, coming from his throat. He’s barely awake, barely conscious, just enough to acknowledge that she wants something from him. She can feel his arm muscles flexing beneath her neck, as the pins and needles set in.

“Dean, why do you—” Why do you love me? is what she wants to ask, and she almost does. Then she thinks of him reaching out his hands, grabbing her ass with one and putting the other to her chest, and decides she doesn’t want the answer to the question.

“It’s nothing,” she finally says. “Go back to sleep.”

He seems to accept that, and in a moment his breathing returns to the gentle rhythm of sleep.

Her mind doesn’t accept it, though, and keeps processing.

There isn’t anyone else, she realizes. Before Lee, she never cheated on Dean before. Never had cause to, never had desire to, not because she never tired of Dean, but because there was never anyone else.

There never has been anyone else.

In Laramie, there isn’t a lot of choice. You have the people you’re born with, the people your age, and that’s who you hang out with. Dean will never care about her photography, never ask to see one of her eternally unfinished paintings.

They’re together because there isn’t anything else to do, not because she loves him, she finally realizes.

She is attracted to Lee not because he’s attractive but just because he’s an option, finally a choice, finally something for her to decide instead of just doing the same thing every day, instead of just going through the motions.

The more she thinks about it, the more terrified she is.

The clock reads 4:27.

She rolls over and puts her head on Dean’s chest, wraps her arm around him, and tries to make herself forget.

 

“It’s easy,” Dean says, one hand holding the steering wheel loosely, eyes half on the road. “We find some businessman. I walk him into an alleyway. You pump him full of some knockout drug, and take his wallet. No one ever knows, we make cash.”

A month has passed and the three of them are in Dean’s dad’s car, on the way to Cheyenne.

Lee thinks about it, sprawled across the back seat. “It’s a good idea.”

Shaina watches the rainbow fish dance past outside the window. She blinks and they’re gone. A glance to the back confirms Lee’s devious grin. He’s been doing this more and more lately—sending pulses of things like acid and peyote through her brain, for a few seconds at a time. He’s also been doing it in class, just to keep entertained. Last week he got Mr. Schug fired for going on a delirious cocaine-fueled rant in the middle of a lecture on 18th century something-or-other.

Dean looks back to the road as they wind through the mountains. The world outside the windows is a heavily desaturated shade of stormy. “You don’t like it, though.”

“You’re just not thinking big enough, man.” Lee smiles lazily.

“Fine. What are you thinking, then? ‘Cause you’re so much smarter than me.”

“Not smarter, just more ambitious.” Lee sits forward, leaning between the two front seats. “Come on, man, we have all this power. We can do anything we want with it. Why settle for petty businessmen? We could be so much more.”

“Like what? There’s nothing to be ambitious about here.”

“Exactly my point. Your thinking is stuck in Wyoming.” That makes Dean stop and think, so Lee continues. “Get out of here. We can leave. Just get on a train and go. Head to wherever we want. You can make businessmen transfer funds to us. I can make people blank out, or be as suggestible as I want, sign things they never would.” He leans further, waving his hand across the air between the three of them, out towards the front windshield. “Just think about it! The three of us, living like royalty. A mansion, on a cliff, on the Pacific…”

Dean grabs the other boy’s wrist and shoves Lee into the back. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re not gods.”

“Why not? We could be.”

Dean just scowls. Shaina is looking intently at Lee, though, her mind working overdrive. Leave Wyoming. She could be gone. She could get out of this place. Without thinking about it, she lifts her camera and takes a picture of Lee, leaning across all three back seats, looking into the lens.

As she lowers the camera, she realizes that Lee is staring at her. “Hey, Shaina. It’s been two months now. You still haven’t told us what you can do.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, you’ve gotta do something cool too.”

“I—” She falters.

“With all three of us together,” Lee says, grinning. “We could be anyone.”

Shaina shakes her head. “I—I can’t really do anything. I guess it didn’t work for me.”

“Yeah?” Lee looks at her suspiciously, but doesn’t say anything else.

“You’ve got another hand,” Dean says. “We can try it again.”

She slides her left hand deeper into the sleeve of her hoodie, sharply aware of the tattoo melted into the skin on the back of it.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, maybe we can try again sometime.”

 

It’s an unseasonably warm night, and none of them want to be home yet, so they stop at one of the ravines in the mountains along the way back.

They leave the car off the side of the road, and wander up to the top of the ridge overlooking the ravine. This particular hill is barren, the dirt an ashen brown in the thin moonlight. The other hillsides at least have jagged brush and occasional trees, but this one seems to be forgotten even by nature.

Dean sits down far from the edge of the small cliff, and pulls one of the wallets out of his pocket. Shaina watches as he starts leafing through it, counting bills. They spent the afternoon going through with his idea in downtown Cheyenne, to great success.

In front of Shaina, down through the end of the ravine, the plains stretch to infinity. The dim lights of Laramie are like a cluster of fireflies just beyond the foothills. Past Laramie, there’s nothing but emptiness. She looks away from it, wishing she knew where to look for a way out.
She lifts her camera, and takes a picture of the pale crescent moon. It’s momentarily visible through a break in the drifting clouds, framed perfectly.

She turns to Lee. “I’m bored,” she says.

He nods, understanding, and walks closer to her, eyes locked on hers. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and his other on her forehead, smiling.

Dean looks at them, face blank. Shaina chooses to ignore him.

Then Lee winks at her, and the world falls backwards. Shaina lets herself fall with it, into the hollow dirt. The clouds overhead swirl tighter, and the nothingness seems to swallow her again for a time.

Distantly, she can hear Dean and Lee talking, their voices getting louder, their words getting hotter. The angry pressure on her ears strengthens, harshens. Time is passing behind her eyes, and she has no sense of it.

She moves to hold her camera against her chest, to feel its safe solidity in her hands, and it is not there.

Her camera isn’t in her hands.

Her camera is gone.

Shaina forces her mouth to sound out the words, one by one, through the impossible slowness inside her face. “Where’s… my camera?”

She starts to fade back into reality, Lee’s effects lingering heavily in the edges of her eyes. She can see again, though, see what’s happening in front of her. Lee is glaring at Dean, who is holding the camera, looking down at the back of it.

“You took my camera,” Shaina says in shock, still trying to process through a mind full of stormclouds.

“No,” says Dean, smiling bitterly, not looking away from the camera. “You gave it to me.” In his other hand he is holding the Xbox controller.

Lee walks towards him slowly. “Dean—”

“How long?” Dean cuts him off. “How long have you two been—”

“Hand me the camera, Dean.”

“No, fuck you, Lee. How long have you been fucking my girlfriend? Two months? Three? Since the day you got here?”

“That’s not what—”

“I’ve got the pictures right here.” He waves the camera, and Lee tackles him.

She’s not sure whose name to call, so Shaina doesn’t say anything as the two boys fight. Dean is moving again, fists are flying, and she loses track of the two of them in a blur of limbs, her eyes still not moving fast enough to keep up with them.

Dean is down on his back, one hand wiping blood from his lip. Lee backs away, holding the camera.

“Come on, man,” Lee says. “It doesn’t have to go like this.”

“Fuck you,” Dean spits back. He raises the controller, points it at the other boy.

Shaina wants to stop them, but her limbs still aren’t responding properly. She manages to get to her feet, takes a step towards Dean, opens her mouth. She does nothing.

Lee looks at Dean, a discomforting calm in his eyes. “Don’t.”

“Give me one good reason not to, then.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Like hell you will.” Dean presses the sync button, holds it. From where she’s sitting, Shaina sees the green light wink on. Control. Dean rests his thumb on the stick, and moves it backwards.

Lee’s feet carry him back, one step at a time, inch by inch, towards the edge of the cliff.

“Dean—” Shaina finally manages to say. “Stop.”

“Fuck you too,” he says.

Lee stops at the edge. Dean’s thumb hovers over the A button. The Jump button.

Then Dean lets out a choke, a gasp, and the controller falls from his fingers. It hits the ground with the sound of breaking plastic, and the battery pack rolls away into the dirt. Dean stumbles and falls to his knees. “What—what is this?”

“Cocaine,” Lee responds. “Acid. Meth. PCP. Heroin. Ecstasy. All at once.” As he lists each drug, Dean pitches forward, one hand clutching at his throat.

“Dean!” Shaina yells, running to him. His eyes are bloodshot, and he is shaking all over. He twists on to his back, spasming violently. His eyes lock onto Shaina for a moment, full of pain and shock. A trickle of blood runs down from his nose. Then his eyes roll up into his head and he goes limp, head slumping back onto the hard ground.

Shaina gets to her feet, shaking. “You killed him.” Slowly she raises her head, looks to where Lee is standing, unmoving, at the edge of the ravine.

“He tried to kill me. But a puppet can still think.”

“You killed him,” she repeats, voice completely flat, taking a small step towards Lee.

“Yeah,” he says. “I did.” She’s close enough to see his eyes, now, even in the dimness. They’re hollow.

“He’s dead.”

“He’s gone,” Lee counters. “We’re—you don’t have to be held back by him any more. We can—the two of us can—we can go anywhere—”

“Give me back my camera,” Shaina says quietly.

Lee stops, and looks down in surprise at the camera clutched in his hands, like he forgot he was holding it. He frowns at it, and looks up at her slowly. Then he spins and throws the camera.

Shaina’s mouth opens wide in shock as she watches the camera spin out into the open air, the shoulder strap trailing behind it. It fades into the blackness of the distant fields, but the crash of it landing on the rocks below is far too audible.

Lee is standing at the edge, staring out towards that darkness. Shaina’s desperate steps forward have brought her just behind him and to his left. A chill wind howls down the ravine, swirling up to them.

“Look out there,” he says quietly, voice barely audible over the wind. “What do you see on that horizon?”

“Nothing,” she answers honestly.

“So we change it. We take that horizon and make it ours.” He’s not even talking to her, now, just speaking words into the unhearing void.

“He’s dead,” she says again, as the reality of it starts to sink in.

“He is,” says Lee. “He’s dead and gone. You can’t bring him back.”

Something in Shaina goes cold, when he says that. She opens her mouth to speak, but only the thinnest of whispers comes out.

“What?” Lee asks.

“I said you’re wrong.” Shaina’s voice is full of ice. “You’re wrong.”

Then she takes the last step forward and puts her hands on his shoulder blades and shoves.

He doesn’t say anything as he falls out into the world.

Slowly, she reaches into her pocket and takes out her cell phone. She turns it away from her, and takes a single picture of herself.

Then she walks to Dean, and finds the car keys in his pocket.

 

There’s a moment when the tears almost start, when Photoshop opens, and Shaina sees the last thing she worked on. It’s a picture of the three of them, together, what was eight months ago now. She had changed it to make things work for her. She closes the window and keeps moving.

Her cell phone uploads the picture, and she sets to work. In the picture, she is atop the cliff, the rest of the hill clearly visible behind her, Dean’s body sitting just past her shoulder. Carefully, meticulously, she paints over it, filling it in with dirt, with the ground around it. Then she opens up a picture she took a week earlier, of him standing in the moonlight. She traces around his shoulders, his head, highlights him, and then drags him into the picture of her on the cliff.

The resolution doesn’t match. The lighting doesn’t match. It’s far from perfect. It’s good enough.

She saves the picture.

There’s a pause as her mouse pinwheels, hard drive working, and then she feels the now-familiar tingle on the back of her hand as the world changes to match the picture.

Just like it did when she made it so Lee had moved here in March instead of August. Just like it did when she spent hours wiping out every trace of him ever knowing Amber, the girl Lee had been in a long-distance relationship with when he got here, the girl who sent him the picture of the tattoo in the first place.

The world is different now, and she knows Dean is alive, somehow, but there’s still one thing more to do.

It takes her almost an hour, but she downloads all 566 pictures of Lee on Facebook.

She opens the oldest one in Photoshop. It’s of him with his parents at some picnic five years ago.

She looks at it for a long time.

Then she selects the eraser tool, and goes to work.