"That's my sister, Melanie."
"Where is she now?" I asked, then wished I hadn't. As I gazed at her face, a strange feeling came over me. I knew she was dead.
"She died about six months after that picture was taken."
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."
"Don't worry about it," Brian said. "It was a long time ago. I was only five at the time."
I kept looking at the picture. With her dark hair and puffy party dress, Melanie reminded me of a young Liza.
"What is it?" Brian asked gently. "You look so-so sad."
"It is sad," I replied, tempted to tell him what we shared. I thought about the way Maggie watched us campers like a worried mother hen. Since Liza's death, I had caught my own mother watching me that way.
I placed the picture back on the table, and Brian reached over and picked up another. "This is my favorite photo of Melanie," he said, laying it in my lap.
"This is how I remember her."
I held the picture gently. His sister was wearing little green overalls with a bunny on the front. She had a wonderful, merry smile and eyes full of mischief, as if she were keeping a delicious secret.
The image grew blurry and I felt tears in my eyes, helpless tears for Brian's family and mine. I blinked them back, but the image still wavered before me, its edges softening and shifting, another image rising up through it, like an object at the bottom of a pond that suddenly clears. The little girl was in a long, narrow box and she was scared. A soft black blanket dropped down over her. I felt horribly afraid. Then Liza stood next to me. I couldn't see her, but I knew it was she. "Don't be scared, Jenny," she said. "I'll help you."
"Jen," Brian said, "Jenny!" He pulled me close to him. "I didn't bring you over here to make you sad."
My eyes cleared; the little girl was smiling up at me again. "How did Melanie die?"
"In a fire. She became frightened and hid in a closet."
My throat tightened. "In a closet?"
"The baby-sitter couldn't find her. She died from smoke inhalation."
I swallowed hard. What in the sunny picture before me had allowed me to see her in a long box-a closet-with a blanket of black smoke descending upon her?
"Have you ever been in a fire?" Brian asked.
"No. No, it must be very frightening."
"You feel so powerless," he said.
Powerless was how I felt now, unable to stop the images that invaded my mind. I had been careful the last two days, but as soon as I let down my guard, Liza crept back into my head.
Was there something real about these images, I wondered, something true about them?
Liza and I used to watch Mom's old films and laugh ourselves silly at one called Teen Psychic. There were a lot of close-ups of Mom's green eyes widening with terror as she gazed at photos of murder sites and touched things that belonged to dead people. In a singsongy voice she would describe the visions she was seeing, images that would help solve mysteries. I wished I could laugh about it now, but I was scared and desperate to believe there was nothing psychic about me and my visions.
I glanced up at Brian.
"Good move, guy," he said to himself. "A girl comes over, you get time alone, and you depress the heck out of her."
I forced a smile. "I like knowing about your family-family is what makes a person who he is. And I like seeing your house," I said, seizing the excuse to get up and walk around again. "Houses are full of clues about people."
"You know a lot more about me than I know about you," Brian pointed out.
"Well, I don't have much to tell. My family's boring."
Another picture of Melanie sat on a desk, and another on a bookcase.
It would be easy to guess that the child was dead, I reasoned, since there were no pictures of her growing older. And knowing she had died, it would be natural to imagine her in a long box-a casket, not a closet-with a symbolic black blanket drawn over her. These images had been triggered simply by my empathy with Brian as someone who lost a sister. And that, of course, was why I had thought of Liza. Liza was not sending me messages from the dead, and I was not "Teen Psychic."
I pulled a worn book off the shelf, Handbook to Acting, and started paging through it as if I were interested.
"How do you think it's going between you and Walker?" Brian asked.
"A lot better than I thought it would."
"He likes your feistiness," Brian said. "And it doesn't hurt that you're new to theater. I know you won't believe it, but Walker is easily threatened by people with talent and experience."
"You're right, I don't believe it."
Brian laughed and swung his feet up on the love seat, sitting sideways, watching me as I closed the book and chose another.
"To understand Walker," he said, "you've got to understand his history. When he bombed in New York, he really bombed. The last show he directed, his big chance, the one he thought would bring him fame and fortune, starred Lee Montgomery."
I turned toward Brian-a little too quickly, I realized. I knew my father had worked with Walker, but I had been too young to remember anything about the situation, "It didn't do well?" I asked aloud.
"Montgomery pulled out. He saw the ship going down and jumped fast. The show sank immediately, closing three days after he left the cast."
I turned back to the bookcase so Brian couldn't see my face. "Are you sure? Did Walker tell you this himself?"
"Walker would never tell me anything he'd consider so humiliating. My mother did, last summer, when Liza Montgomery came here. I had seen Walker go after actresses he thought were prima donnas but never with such passion as he did with Liza. Of course, Liza could defend herself. She dished it back, right in front of the other kids, and wasn't shy about reminding him that he had failed in New York, that he was just some drama teacher in the middle of nowhere."
I winced inwardly. I knew how sharp Liza's tongue could be.
"I don't think she realized what a tender point it was with him. Anyway, my mother, who knew Walker from her grad school days in New York, explained the situation to me. Don't repeat it, Jenny, I wasn't supposed to.
"I won' t."
There was a clinking of silverware in the next room.
"Sounds like it's almost time to eat," Brian observed.
I returned my book to its place, and he rose from the sofa. Just before I reached the dining room door, he pulled me back. "Jenny, I realize I'm blowing my chance with you," he said softly. "I promise we'll talk about all happy things during dinner and after."
We did, and there was a lot of laughter as we discussed high school life from math class to prom dates, even Maggie chiming in with a funny account of her first date. But I felt like a person split in two, one part of me chattering away and putting on a good show, the other plagued by a growing uneasiness.