I wake up after midnight.

Music thrums from one of the rooms down the strip. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. A small sliver of light is above me, from a minute gap in the curtains, and Culler is next to me. I turn my face to him. His lips are parted. The way he breathes makes me feel something about him that I don’t think there are words for.

I get out of bed quietly and lock myself in the bathroom, keeping the light off. I lean against the door and text Milo too many times, but he never replies. He must be sleeping too. The things I say to him are going to scare him when he wakes up, but I can’t help myself, because it’s what is in my heart and what is in my heart is killing me.

TODAY I FOUND OUT I’M A BURDEN.

& NOTHING WAS WORTH STAYING FOR.

IT’S BAD HERE.

BUT I THINK I MUST’VE KNOWN.

ONE MORE PLACE.

I WANT THIS TO BE OVER.

I WANT IT TO END.

I MISS YOU.

I’M SORRY.

I turn off my phone. I shower in the dark and let the water run over me slow and hot. It feels like suffocating and that almost feels like a distraction. Almost.

I cry.

I press my palms against my eyes and try not to be loud, but really I want to scream. I turn off the water and grab a towel, wrapping myself in it. I press my forehead against the door and then step back into the room and the light next to the bed is on. Culler is sitting up, awake. I don’t say anything to him. He doesn’t say anything to me. The carpet feels rough and dirty under my feet. I walk over to the window and look out. The station wagon is parked out front. There are people down the way, sitting on the curb. They look drunk and unhappy.

I move from the window and my eyes drift to Culler’s camera in its case, open, staring up at me. I pick it up and raise it to my face. Blackness. The lens cap is still on.

I twist it off and look through it and I can feel Culler’s eyes on me.

I turn to him and see him through the lens, a photograph waiting to happen.

Or it would be, if I could see it. But I can’t. Nothing about his face, the place around us, changes. It’s not art. It is still, unforgivably, the same. I wonder if my dad looked through his camera and saw the same nothing special I’m seeing right now.

Maybe that’s what happened, why he killed himself.

Because how can you live with that, when you’ve known something so extraordinary?

But that wasn’t it, was it, because if I know anything after today, it’s this:

“It wasn’t his art,” I tell Culler. “It was everything else.”

He holds his hand out.

“It was me,” I say.

I hand him the camera and he turns it on me. He turns it on.

I don’t say, take a photograph, and I don’t say, take a photograph of me like this, but maybe it’s understood.

The towel slides down until it’s off, and I’m naked in front of him, and I’ve never been more exposed in front of someone else in my life, but it doesn’t matter because I want to be.

“You are beautiful,” Culler says, staring at me, as though this has only truly occurred to him now. He looks at me like I’m the only person in the world, like even he’s an afterthought in this space. Like it’s me and only me.

The soft sound of the shutter release. I wrap my arms around myself and my skin is cold, my hands are cold. I run my hands over my arms and try to imagine the way the light looks on my body. I take three steps toward Culler and I’m shaking. This is forever, these photographs. His taking them. For some reason I think of Beth and how old she is and how she’ll always be old, and how she was probably never this young. I am so young.

I step between Culler’s legs.

He lowers his camera and stares up at me.

“You trust me,” he says quietly.

I nod, and then I lean forward and kiss him, bringing both of my hands to his face. He stays still and lets it happen, kisses me back. His lips are soft.

We separate slow.

He picks up the camera again.

Maybe one day, I’ll decide I don’t want to be here anymore, and this is what I will leave behind. Photographs. And whoever I leave behind can pore over them and try to make sense of it. Scratch their heads. She was young and alive, untouchable. Why did she want to go?

But they’ll never make sense of it. Never …