4.9 Camera Tests

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“Are you kiddin' me?” Whit zipped from his hiding spot in the closet to the safety of the folded ping-pong table. He took a shot with his suction-cup dart gun, but missed. “You're a real buzz-kill, Jamesie-boy.”

I poked my head from the trench of pillows and worked another Nerf arrow onto my plastic bow. “All I'm saying is that we know what happens when other boys find out where she lives. They broke into her house! I just don't see how we can shoot the war scene without--” Another dart whizzed by my head.

“She's gonna get us friends!” Whit said. “She'll make us popular! It's perfect timing!”

“Yeah, but--”

“Shut up and listen.” He rolled into the open--unarmed--and made a “T” with his hands. “We need to show this girl off. For once in our lives we have something totally awesome that nobody else has, and you wanna giver her a suit and glasses and turn her into Clark Kent!”

“She's too special.”

He sighed. “Don't rule it out, okay? We'll move the war scene to early August. That way we can see how the first scenes go, then if there's nothing out of the ordinary, we'll invite a few kids to your house for a film shoot and sleepover. That was your idea, remember? Your parents'll be there, Livy'll be there, and we won't make Mara do anything she doesn't want to do. Just don't rule this out yet, okay?”

I nodded, “We'll see what happens.” I grabbed my bow, pulled back the plunger, and shot Whit in the chest. “Gotcha.”

*  *  *

There was one more experiment I proposed to Mara alone in the cave between the walls. “What if you can heal yourself?” I asked. “What if you can never get sick, never get hurt, or never die?”

Mara looked at me with an expression so devoid of emotion that I feel her pain today. Without a word, she removed her left tennis shoe and rolled down her sock to reveal a mark so obvious that I wanted to shoot myself in the head for the suggestion. A ring of flaky tissue encircled her ankle where the handcuff held her to the stage, emphasized by a fading rim of green bruise.

As an adult, I think of that scar often to remind myself that a cut was still a cut and blood was still blood. Mara Lynn's appearance may have been otherworldly, but that ring of torn flesh would always serve as a memento of her mortality.

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