The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At her sister's engagement party, Dani hears her death date announced to forty guests, has her phone taken, and steals the camera that says she dies. Her one photo of her own face shows her alive at the same terrace.
My sister told forty people the date I was going to die, and then she asked them to raise a glass.
It was her engagement party, in the back garden of our mother's old house, under string lights.
I was passing crab cakes when Briana tapped her fork on a wine glass and stood up on the patio step.
Her fiancé stood beside her with his arm around her waist.
"Before the toast, I need everyone to know something," Briana said. "My little sister has a hard month ahead."
Forty faces turned and found me with the tray in my hands.
"Our mother owned a camera that photographed the future," Briana said. "You've all heard the family joke. It isn't one."
Someone laughed and stopped.
"When Dani was born, Mom took her picture. It showed her at twenty-six, on a terrace, and the note on the back says she dies there."
I set the tray down on a lawn chair.
I had known that much since I was twelve.
I had never known the day, because Briana always said Mom hadn't written one.
"It's the ninth of September," Briana said. "Thirty days from tonight. Her twenty-sixth birthday."
A woman near the hydrangeas put her hand over her mouth.
Oliver's father said, "God, that's awful," quietly.
I walked up the patio steps. "You told me there was no date."
"I told you what I thought you could carry," Briana said. She took my hand and held it in both of hers. "I've kept you safe for fourteen years. Haven't I?"
She had.
She had stayed home from college to raise me when Mom got sick, and she had checked every balcony I ever stood on.
That was why I believed her.
"Can I see the photo?" I asked.
"No."
"I've never seen the front of it."
"Dani, there's nothing in it you need." She let go of my hand. "It's one woman at a table. Old film goes dark. It would only make you picture it."
She had the envelope with her. She had carried it out to the patio.
She held the print by its corners with the picture pressed flat against her own chest and showed me only the back.
Mom's blue handwriting: D. Terrace. 9 Sept. She does not get up.
"Nothing can touch you in this house," Briana said. "I've checked the windows myself. You'll sleep in your old room until the tenth."
"I have work."
"I called your manager this afternoon. You're on leave."
Her fiancé, Oliver, stepped in with his kind, sad face. "Phone, Dani? Briana thinks you shouldn't be reading the news. Just until the tenth."
I hadn't agreed to anything, but he was already holding out his palm.
Forty people watched me, and I could see which way they would lean if I said no.
They would lean toward the sister who had been right for fourteen years.
I gave him the phone.
Somebody started clapping, softly, and then the whole garden joined in.
Briana raised her glass.
"To Dani," she said. "May we get through it."
Everyone drank.
I drank too, and I smiled, and I told Briana I needed the bathroom.
I went up the back stairs to her bedroom instead.
Her jewelry box was on the dresser, and the envelope was already back inside it, on top of Mom's pearls.
Beside the box, on the shelf, was the camera.
It was a square, brass-ringed thing with a cracked leather strap, and it still felt heavier than it should.
I took the print out of the envelope and turned it over.
A wooden terrace over the sea. A small round table, two chairs.
A woman sat with her back to the camera, in a white sundress, her head tilted toward the water.
Across from her a man had half risen from his chair, one hand stretched out toward her.
A wine glass lay on its side on the table.
Her hair was dark brown. Mine is light brown, and I held the print up to the lamp to be sure.
Old film goes dark, I told myself. Briana had said so.
I put the print in my back pocket.
I took the camera down the hall to my old room, where my bag was, and zipped it inside.
Then I did the thing I had never once done in fourteen years of being kept safe.
So I stepped out.
I went down the back stairs and out through the side gate, and I did not say goodbye to anyone.
My car was on the street, and my keys were in my other pocket.
I sat behind the wheel with the engine off and the camera in my lap.
A little dial on the side showed one frame left.
I held the camera at arm's length, pointed the lens at my own face, and pressed the button.
It whirred and pushed out a square of white.
I watched it for a minute while the picture came up out of the gray.
A wooden terrace. A small round table, two chairs.
I was sitting at it, in a white dress, laughing, with my face turned straight to the camera.
A man's hand held mine across the table.
Behind my shoulder, on a painted post, were the words Gull Point Inn, Port Hallam, Maine.
In the white border, the camera had stamped the date: 9 SEPT.
I was alive in it.
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