I couldn’t think of a title

When we got home, Ellie went to her house and I told her I’d see her later at the star party. Dad was in place on the couch, laptop stuck to his knees, and he said a bunch of cheery stuff to me as I went upstairs to change. I looked at myself in my seersucker dress one last time before I took it off. I slipped the fifty thousand dollars out of the pocket and put the card and the check on my desk.

I stared at it.

I looked at the numbers. 5, 0, 0, 0, 0. I took a picture of it, but I couldn’t think of a title.

This was Darla’s graduation present for me.

I didn’t think the obvious things here. I didn’t think about how I’d rather have her than money. I didn’t think that this could buy me a new future or some path that made some sort of sense to a high school guidance counselor.

Anyway, Darla left me a lot more than a dumb fifty thousand dollars. She left me her sketchbooks. Her darkroom. Her cameras. Her knees. Her hair. Could fifty thousand dollars buy my way out of following in her footsteps? I had no idea. Because I still didn’t know why she took those footsteps.

I put on a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt and flopped back downstairs so I could get back to Why People Take Pictures.

“I’m going to Ellie’s star party tonight, okay?” I said.

“Sure thing.” Then Dad looked up at me. “Shit, Cupcake. Should I have asked if you wanted a graduation party? Crap. I never even thought of that.”

“Nah. Who would I invite?”

“Friends? Family?”

“So Aunt Amy could come over and try to tell me about the Virgin Mary again? Yeah. That would have been comfortable.”

“True,” he said. “But Ellie’s mom shouldn’t be the one throwing you a party.”

“She’s not throwing me a party. She’s throwing the stars a party. I just get to crash,” I said. “Anyway. Until then, I’m printing.” I waved and walked toward the basement door. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t ask me what I was printing. He didn’t point out that I didn’t have new paper yet. He didn’t point out that I probably wasn’t printing. He didn’t point out that I couldn’t really become Darla, even if I wanted to. Even if I took over her quest for the everlasting print. Even if I wore Dorothea Lange Dust Bowl dresses every day. Even if I stuck my head in the microwave and turned my head into Hiroshima.

I retrieved and opened up Why People Take Pictures and paged directly to Bill, the man with no head. I stared at his exposed connective tissue and broken bones. Every color you could think of was there. Different shades of yellow—fat cells, bone particles, tendons, parts of teeth. Oranges and reds and deep purples and blues. A rainbow of death. All that color, but still no head. Just a neck and part of a jaw. All that color and still max black for Bill. Nothing. Zero. No more anything for Bill.

Could I ever really wish this on myself? I liked my knobby knees. My dumb Irish nose. Why was I looking at this? Why was Darla?

I turned the page and there were four black-and-white pictures of a tooth. A pulled tooth—the whole thing, long, curved roots and all—lying on different backgrounds. The first background was white, which made the tooth look several shades of gray. The second background was a bunch of pebbles, and the tooth was barely visible in the chaos, but when it popped, it was particularly creepy. The third background was dirt. Darla had built a 6-inch-high mound of dirt and laid the tooth right on top like an offering on an altar, and the focus was the tooth, with the dirt beyond it fading into blurry nothingness. The fourth background was black and the stark contrast between the tooth and the black made the texture of the tooth more obvious. Ridges and burrs and layers of enamel all wrapped into one dead tooth. Who knew a tooth had so much texture? So much life—even though it was dead?

She drew an arrow to that picture, the fourth one, and wrote: Max Black and #46. She drew a frowny face next to it like this.

Then she wrote: Now #46 and Bill can go preserve peaches with my mom.

My mother had clearly gone bonkers.

This is why she stuck her head in the oven rather than making perfectly N-shaped Rice Krispies Treats for my preschool class thirteen years ago. This is why she chose to concentrate more on making pictures last longer rather than herself.

I wanted an answer. That had to be the answer. Now #46 and Bill can go preserve peaches with my mom.

I turned the page and found three more naked pictures of what looked like the same photo shoot from the first naked picture. This time the head wasn’t ripped off, though.

This time, the head was there in full view.

And it was Jasmine Blue Heffner’s head.

The creepiest thing about this was that young Jasmine Blue looked exactly like Ellie in the pictures. It was like looking at a naked picture of Ellie and it felt twenty shades of not right.

We are all naked under our clothes.

What does she have that’s so special?