Page 15 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

There was nothing particularly helpful about the records. No mention of whether Johnny was working alone or alongside someone else, and other than what seemed like an irregular schedule, the dates were somewhat consistent with entries appearing at least once a month.

I cross-referenced each sleeve with the notebook until I reached the end so that I could make notes of ones Quinn might be able to use in the study. By the time I was finished, the processed film wasdry enough to be touched. I cut the negatives and fed them into a fresh sleeve before I put them on the light box. The details of the images were more visible under the magnifier, and it looked like there was at least one where I could make out the speckled feathers of an extended wing. But it was the one of the rockface that confirmed it was Trentham Gorge. The distinct sediment stripes that marked the cliff face were clearly visible in two of the shots.

I slid the magnifier over the others, a series of tree lines and rock formations. The little thumbnails were a smear of gray and green, except for a little blot of pink in the last photo. Maybe from a lens flare or a speck of dust on the negative I’d missed when I was cleaning it off.

The enlarger thrummed on the counter as I filled the tubs with the chemicals, settling into the calming pattern of the movements. The walls around me felt like a protective casing that kept everything else out. I put the first negative into the carrier and turned on the lamp, adjusting the projection of the image onto the easel. I exhaled, relieved, when the image came into focus. Johnny had caught the owl straight on, eyes wide and intensely focused.

“Gotcha,” I whispered.

I set the timer before I hit the button, and the lamp clicked on, exposing the image for seven seconds. When I pulled it out of the water bath a few minutes later, I smiled wide. The print dripped as I hung it on the line and turned on the gallery light, studying the details of the picture. Then I circled the negative number on my list and put a star beside it, going to the next. The last on the roll was the image with a blur of pink in one corner, a smudge of color that was starkly out of place in the thick overgrowth of green.

I lowered my face to the magnifier, squinting. It wasn’t a speck of dust on the negative. The discoloration was exposed onto the film in a distinct shape, which meant it wasn’t an imperfection in the film. It was something actuallyinthe photograph.

I slipped the negative from the sleeve and loaded it into the carrier. When the lamp of the enlarger clicked on, I adjusted the projection,making it bigger until I was zoomed in on the corner of the image. My brow pulled as the shape came into focus.

The distant jitter of air vents and the resonant hum of the building filled the hallway outside the door as my fingers gently adjusted the focus.

The cold in the air around me sharpened, making me shiver. There was a sudden feeling in the room like it had grown smaller, like there was less space around me. I turned, eyes scanning the darkness. It was silent except for the sound of the enlarger and the trickle of the water bath in the sink.

I ran a hand through my hair, shaking off the feeling, and turned back to the machine. The timer and the light flicked on, making me wince against the brightness, and when it clicked off again, I opened the easel and took the paper out.

The image surfaced within seconds of me lowering it into the tray, and I pushed the print from side to side with the tongs as it darkened.

James.

My name filled the darkness and I jolted, bumping the developer in front of me. It sloshed over the edge of the tray, and I turned, scanning the small room. The red light was almost viscous, like if I lifted my hand into the air, I would feel it between my fingers.

My heart pounded as the developer dripped onto the floor, and I reached for the light with a shaking hand, flipping it on. I blinked furiously as my vision sharpened. The shadows were gone, that thick, muted sound dissipating as the seconds ticked by, but I could stillfeelmy name buzzing in the air. I could still hear the voice that had spoken it. Johnny’s voice.

The cramped walls of the darkroom felt too close now. The cold air too thin. I propped the door open and tore a handful of paper towels from the roll fixed to the wall, sopping up the mess on the counter and trying to dry the notebooks. Johnny’s handwriting was already smearing on the pages of one of them. I absorbed as much of the liquid as I could, and once the mess was contained, I pulled the print I was developing from the water bath.

I sat on the stool, pushing my hair back from my damp forehead and willing my pulse to slow. The blob in the photograph was a backpack. The pink canvas was covered in winding doodles like the ones I used to draw on my Converse with Sharpie, making me think that it hadn’t belonged to Johnny. He had either accidentally gotten it in the shot or he’d hit the shutter without meaning to.

It wasn’t exactly evidence, but it did mean that only two days before he died, he was out in the gorge with someone else. And it was possible that whoever was with him that day could have also been with him on November12.

The question was, who? My eyes trailed to the empty hallway, where the light was cast in beams from the windows. I knew so little about Johnny’s life here in Six Rivers that I didn’t even have a guess. But I had an idea of who would.

Six

Every time I’d been to Trentham Gorge, it was with Johnny, and that’s where we were the first time I remember it happening.

The memory was still so clear. The sound of our voices echoed down into the cavern above the cool blue-green water the first time we drove out to the swimming hole by ourselves. The ravine along the bottom of the gorge was rocky and shallow in most places, but there was one perfect pool deep enough to dive into just a quarter-mile hike from the trailhead.

Johnny, Micah, and I traversed the maze of steep rocky paths up the ridge, where there were at least six different heights you could jump from, and I’d taken the lowest one, watching from below as Micah and Johnny plummeted through the air, howling until they hit the water.

I could still see it, too—the view before I stepped off the ledge with my arms floating up over my head. I hit the water, my body piercing down past the surface, and my eyes opened just in time to watch the light race away from me the deeper I sank.

Johnny had already climbed back up the rocks to take another jump when I surfaced, and when I looked up again minutes later, mystomach dropped. He was standing high up on the cliffs. Not on one of the levels of well-worn jumps that looked out over the gorge. He was at the very top.

There was a razor-thin silence between me and Micah as we looked at each other, but Johnny’s feet were already running toward the edge when the scream left my mouth. His legs kicked as he flew out into the air, and instantly, my heart was a metronome syncing to Johnny’s. That’s when it happened. Not the third-eye sense I’d always had with my brother—the undercurrent of awareness that had been there as long as I could remember. No, this was something else.

The feeling of falling flipped my stomach on itself as the ground disappeared beneath his feet, and suddenly, I was falling with him. Sinking down, my head plunging below the water, and I couldn’t breathe. But the only thought taking shape as I sank was that I was about to watch Johnny die. And when he did, my own heart would stop beating.

He hit the water with a deep whoosh just before Micah’s hand found me and yanked me toward the surface. I was gasping for air, coughing up the cold water, and when Johnny didn’t come up right away, I put my face back under, searching for him. The trail of bubbles hid him in the deep blue for an agonizing, terrifying moment before they began to clear. And then he was moving, his long legs kicking him toward the surface.

I came up, the burn of tears exploding in my eyes and nose when he finally appeared. He had an enormous smile on his face, his hair plastered down the sides of his neck. My heart was still pounding so hard that I felt like I was going to choke on it. It was several seconds before I realized what was happening—that the chaotic race of my pulse didn’t belong to me. That the adrenaline I could feel coursing through my body wasn’t really there. My own paralyzing fear was fused to it. I couldn’t pull the two apart.

Micah pushed me toward the bank, and I was barely able to keep myself afloat until I was climbing up the rocks. But Johnny was laughing, the sound echoing through the gorge. He was completelyoblivious as I stared at him, trying to catch my breath. Behind him, Micah’s face was red, his eyes furious. He shoved Johnny into the water, his own chest heaving, and it was the first time in my life that I really began to see my brother clearly. I’d always thought that we were the same. That we were two shades of the same color. But as I sat there, watching Johnny swim back to the bank, I had only one thought: that he was a storm in the clouds, just minutes away from breaking.