Chapter 1

While I was growing up, my best friend was Scott Carson. Our parents lived on the same street, and we knew each other our whole lives. I suppose, to be completely honest, I should say that Scott and I became best friends in third grade, when we both fell madly in love with Rebecca Nielson, and got in a fight about her. We were rolling around on the floor just outside the coat room in school, right in front of Rebecca, when Miss Tuttle came and stopped us. Of course she wanted to know what it was all about, and when we told her it was about which one of us was Rebecca's boyfriend, Rebecca said we were both stupid, and turned around and walked away.

We were instantly best friends. It started with our cooperative plan to get revenge on Rebecca for spurning us, but then flowered into an actual, real friendship. We did get revenge on Rebecca, by the way. Scott caught a Garter snake and I put it in her book bag. She screamed like a girl.

Anyway, after that, we were practically inseparable and did everything together. We didn't get caught for the snake, which made us feel that we were both clever and invulnerable. I could tell you lots of other stories about the clever things we did, but that's not the point. The point is that the bond that formed between us was unbreakable. We were like Marines, who would die for each other in battle. You know, like jumping on a hand grenade to save the other one and stuff like that.

We were absolutely sure that nothing could break us apart. As sure as the sun would come up tomorrow, Scott Carson would be my best friend. We knew we could survive any conflict, and vanquish any danger.

One of those conflicts turned out to be the time when Scott's mother caught his dad screwing the babysitter they'd hired to watch Scott one night while they went to his dad's company Christmas party. I wasn't there, of course, but Scott told me all about it. There had been a blizzard that night. I knew that part, of course. The next day school was cancelled and Scott and I played in the deep snow until we couldn't feel our fingers or toes.

Anyway, his folks had barely made it home because of the snow. His babysitter was Susan Phillips. She'd been their babysitter for a couple of years. She was also one of the cheerleaders at Shady Vale High School. She lived clear on the other side of town, and when she called her parents to come get her, they called back and said they couldn't get out of their driveway. It was decided that Susan would stay the night at the Carson's house, and that when the streets got cleared, somebody would come get her.

That was all fine and dandy, because Mrs. Carson liked Susan. Mrs. Carson had been a cheerleader when she was in high school too, so I suppose that gave them all sorts of things to talk about or something.

I sort of doubt that they talked about the fact that Mr. Carson got Mrs. Carson all knocked up while she was a cheerleader in high school, but I'm sure they had other things in common to discuss.

But the fact that he did knock her up while she was a cheerleader in high school might be why when, in the middle of the night, Mrs. Carson woke up and her husband wasn't in bed with her, she went looking for him in the guest bedroom where Susan was sleeping. Or supposed to be sleeping. Instead she was throwing her teenaged hips up against Mr. Carson, who was powering his adult prick deep in her belly. Scott said that when he heard all the screaming and shouting and went to see what was going on, all three of them were naked. I wasn't jealous of him then, except that he got to see Susan naked. If you don't think eight-year-old boys are interested in girls, then you need to get a reality check. As time went on, and he described Susan's naked body to me over and over, I started to get jealous. But after maybe the hundredth time, I felt like I had been there myself, so it was all good.

Fast forward eight years. We were sixteen, and we'd been through a lot together.

We'd both gotten used to the fact that after Mrs. Carson kicked him out, Scott's dad sort of fell off the map. We knew he'd gotten married again, to a girl right out of high school (not Susan, by the way). But he hardly ever came to see Scott, or took him anywhere. Mrs. Carson didn't get married again. In fact, she never hired a babysitter again. Even when the Scott was old enough to stay home alone, she never went out on dates or anything. She used all her spare time to attend college classes at the junior college in town. Any free moments she had at home she used to paint. She turned the spare bedroom where her marriage ended into a studio and she painted beautiful pictures of all sorts of things. She had majored in art in college, but I never knew that until she started painting. She also used her degree to get a job after the divorce. She was a graphic artist and she worked for a sign company.

Another big thing that happened was that she remodeled the house. I guess that with her salary and the child support payments Mr. Carson had to send her, they were pretty well off. When you're a kid you don't pay much attention to things like that. Well, not unless you want an Xbox or something, and your parents tell you they can't afford it.

She didn't want to sell the house and move, but she also didn't want it to look just like it had when her husband had cheated on her, so she changed it all around. It was an old house, with two stories. It was surrounded by houses just like it, probably built in the nineteen thirties, but most people had kept them fixed up, so it was a nice neighborhood. So she took out the flowered wallpaper and ripped up the thin carpet off the stairs and the upstairs hallway. It was held down by hundreds of little round-headed nails that turned out to be brass. Scott and I helped with this re-do project, and we thought of all those little brass nails as gold. We saved them in a can and imagined getting big bucks for them at the local recycling place. Turned out the guy gave us a dollar and fifty cents. Talk about being crushed.

Anyway, Scott and I helped with the renovation. We were only ten at the time, so there wasn't a lot we could do, like electrical or plumbing or cool stuff like that. But we hung around the contractors she hired to do things, and helped them if they let us. Like picking up the scraps of wood or screws that the guys who build their new deck dropped on the ground. Stuff like that.

So life went on, and it was a good life.

Okay. I probably should have waited to say, "Fast forward eight years" until now. What can I say? I'm not an author. I'm just telling you how things happened.

Scott and I stayed over at each other's house all the time. At sixteen we were heavily into girls, of course. Neither one of us had a girlfriend, but we talked about dozens of girls as candidates to fill that position. We treated them like baseball cards, being ridiculously careful not to claim the same girl. If that happened, one of us would give her away. In cases like that, it usually went something like this.

"Did you see that new girl in school?"

"You mean Jennifer Thompson?"

"You know her?"

"She's in my biology class. She's pretty hot."

"You can say that again. I'd do her in a New York minute."

"Okay, then, she's yours."

"But she's in your class. I don't have any classes with her. You can actually talk to her."

"Okay. How about if I give you Theresa Goodwin?"

"Deal!"

Yes, I know it was ridiculous, but we were just boys. And boys have big dreams.

Such as the photography I got into. I will always believe I got interested into photography because of Mrs. Carson's hobby of painting. I got to see her paintings in all stages of completion. They were hanging all over the house, and she didn't ban us from her studio, as long as we didn't touch anything. She did good work. I told her she should sell her paintings. She said I was her favorite little man, but still didn't try to sell any of them.

She did give me tips about composition and lighting and stuff like that, when she found out I was getting interested in photography. But it wasn't lessons or anything like that. It's not all that hard to tell if a picture you took is interesting or not. I showed some of my pictures to my grandfather and that's when I found out what it used to take to get a picture on a piece of paper. Digital photography hasn't just made printing pictures easier. It's also helped budding photographers get better faster, because they can see instantly whether or not a shot is worth keeping. They can also try again with the same subject, assuming it isn't an action shot or something like that.

That camera became one of the most powerful things in my life. And it affected my life in ways that would turn my world upside down. It almost lost me my best friend in the world.

What happened was that I was staying over at Scott's house one night and I got up early the next morning to see if the sunrise was worth taking some shots of. It was June, and we'd been out of school for a couple of weeks. It was that perfect weather, where the mornings are cool, but not chilly, and the flowers are blooming. The grass is at that place where it's being cut for the first time that season, and that smell is kind of in the air.

Mrs. Carson had also decided it might be a good morning to paint, and had moved her easel out on the deck. She was sitting there in that kind of odd position she got into when she painted. She sat up rigidly straight, which made her look tense, but her ankles were crossed where her bare feet lay on the deck wood, which made her look relaxed. Her right arm moved constantly, making the brush touch here, and stroke there and tap over there, while her left hand held the palette, but let it lay on her left knee limply.

She was still wearing her nightgown, which was white and so long that if she were standing, it might almost touch the floor. But while she was seated, it came up above her ankles. I had seen her in this nightgown dozens of times, usually when she came into Scott's room and said we sounded like a Bon Jovi live concert, and that it was time to settle down and go to bed.

I walked up behind her to look at the painting she was working on. It was barely begun, with a few pencil marks to delineate this from that. I couldn't even tell what it was going to be.

"Morning, Bobby," she said. I shivered.

I should mention, since I said I shivered, that Mrs. Carson has a deep voice. It's really mellow, but it's the opposite of most girls voices, which are high pitched and can even kind of grate on the ears. I think she could almost sing first tenor if she wanted to. I mean I've never heard her sing, but I sang first tenor in choir, and her voice sounded like she could get that low without trying too hard.

I loved that voice. I loved listening to her talk. And sometimes, when she said something, I just shivered. I didn't worry about it. I didn't even think about it really. I was a kid. I didn't know diddly.

Anyway, She said, "Morning, Bobby," in that beautiful voice, and I shivered and said, "Hi, Mrs. Carson."

She turned her head toward me and took in the camera in my hands. It was a good one, with interchangeable lenses. My folks got it for me as a combination birthday and Christmas present.

"What are we killing this morning?" she asked.

"Killing?"

She smiled. "Shooting," she corrected.

I didn't get it for a second, until she looked at the camera.

"Oh!" I said, feeling stupid. "Sunrise." I lifted the camera., "If it's worth it," I amended.

"Ah," she said. "May I ask you a favor, Bobby?"

"Of course," I said.

"Call me Janet."

I blinked a couple of times as I thought about that. I even tried to imagine it in my mind.

"I can't," I said.

"Why not?"

"Well, first of all, my parents would ground me for a month if I did, because it's not polite. You're my elder."

I will never forget the look that flashed over her face.

Shit. You don't know what she looks like.

I'm sorry. Like I said, I'm not an author, so I'm not too good at this stuff. I should have told you what her face was like so you'd understand how important this moment was.

Mrs. Carson was one of those women who don't have to wear makeup to look good. Without a single speck of any of that stuff women slather on, she looked like a princess who grew up. And if she did wear makeup, she was just fricking gorgeous. I saw her one time get all dolled up to go to an award dinner where she got some kind of award for something she did at work, and I about croaked.

That was also the first time I got a boner for Mrs. Carson.

So you have to understand that, when I tell you that the look that flitted over her face when I called her my elder was one that marred something beautiful. I knew right away I had hurt her feelings, and I knew right away what I had said to do it.