God.
My feet pound through hallways, around corners, and down stairs my phone vibrating in my pocket theentire time, notifications from socials I can’t bring myself to look at even one more time.
When I finally stop, I blink away the anger and overwhelm to only to find my fingers curled around a familiar brass knob.
The scent of chemicals linger with the ghosts. I haven't stepped foot in here since... since before. Since a time the red light meant something other than warnings and the silence was a sanctuary instead of a reminder of everything I've lost.
My mother taught me to develop photos in a room like this. Not this exact room, but the same ritual.
Stripping sheet after sheet from the equipment and counters, I find trays in a neat line across the surface, positioned just so. As though the room has been waiting for this.
Waiting for me.
I drag my fingertip over the enlarger, trailing my way to the enlarger easel, to the edges of the trays used for the delicate dance of paper through liquid.
My heart pounds out of control in my chest remembering the magic of watching something emerge from nothing as she guided my hands through the process.
I listened. I learned. I made it my whole identity—the girl who preserves things, who captures moments before they disappear. Every picture her own personal white knuckled grip on everything she loves.
And then I let Everett in.
Into my heart and this room.
With my arms wrapped around him from behind, Iguided him through the steps. My cheek resting against his biceps. The pads of my fingers tracing over his. Every soft-spoken word only turning up the volume in our hearts until the beats became deafening.
Until his hands wound through my hair. His mouth on my?—
I slam the door on that thought so hard my teeth ache.
The safelight hums overhead, bathing everything in crimson. It's supposed to feel protective. Instead it feels like standing inside an open wound.
My fingers find the edge of the counter, tracing the familiar grooves of a developing station. The muscle memory is still there—how to time the bath and the gentle rocking motion that coaxes images to life.
I could do this in my sleep. Ihavedone this in my sleep, in dreams I won't admit to having.
“Some things are worth preserving,” I whisper to the empty room, my mother's words feeling hollow in my mouth. “Not because they're perfect, but because they're real.”
But real got hashtagged into irrelevance today.
Real is #SnowFestFail.
Real is watching my brothers take over without a backward glance.
I sink onto the stool in the corner—the same position I've taken in a hundred darkrooms before this one—and let the red light hold me.
Tomorrow, I'll documentwhatever circus they create. Tomorrow, I'll smile and pretend my heart isn't cracking down the center.
Tonight, I just need to sit in the dark with my ghosts and remember why I started preserving things in the first place.
Because I couldn't preserve her.
I couldn't preserve us.
And maybe I’ve been trying to save everything else to make up for the things I couldn't keep.
Chapter Thirteen
Everett
