Brooklyn reemerged with a grin and a picture. She passed it to me. “Try this. Try to see into it like you did at lunch.”

I handed it back. The girl was a menace. “Brooke, it’s been a long day. I think I’m visioned out. And I need a break.”

“Oh, okay, I can respect that.”

She turned back to the program projected on the screen that showed some kind of yellow squishy stuff and swore it was good for building muscle and keeping the body lean, but I could tell from the tone of her voice that this conversation was nowhere near over.

Sure enough, about twelve and a half seconds later, she leaned back to me. “When the apocalypse begins and the world is ending, let me know if your break is over yet, okay? I’d sure hate for you to miss that.”

I rolled my eyes until I saw stars, then snatched the picture out of her hand. Without even looking at me, she grinned again. A wickedly conniving thing that would’ve made Stephen King proud.

“I don’t even know what to do.” The statement was more of a whine than a … well, statement.

“Do what you did before.”

“Touch it with my elbow?”

She chuckled, then caught herself and looked over at Ms. Phipps.

“I honestly think she’s out,” I whispered.

She was sitting up straight, her head unmoving, her body rigid.

“How can she sleep like that?” Brooke asked.

“I don’t know, but I want lessons.”

We laughed softly together before Brooke grabbed the picture. “Okay, tell me if you get anything,” she said. She touched it to my elbow, and we burst out in more hushed laughter that, had Ms. Phipps not been taking a siesta, would surely have deserved her attention.

Snatching the picture back before we woke her, I took a deep breath and focused on the image. It was a picture of Brooke at her seventh birthday party, which would have been about a year before I’d met her. A banner hanging in a doorway said HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY, BROOKLYN!

She nudged me with her shoulder. “I want you to tell me three things,” she whispered. “One, what was in my shoe?”

“Your foot?” I offered.

She grinned some more. “Besides that.”

“Okay, sorry. Two?”

“Two, I want you to tell me how it got there.”

“You’re getting very demanding in your old age.”

Then she leaned closer. “Three, I want you to tell me why this picture is so very special to me.”

Cool. Intrigue. I looked at it more closely, studied the kids as they ate ice cream and smiled for the camera. It wasn’t a posed picture but a candid, random record of the events of that day. Brooke was running into someone’s arms, a tall, African American man’s, her mouth open in surprise.

Okay, I could do this.

I concentrated for several minutes, but nothing happened. I held my breath and squinted my eyes. Nothing. I clenched my teeth and ordered myself inside the image. Nothing.

Brooklyn swayed toward me again. “You weren’t concentrating today at the lunch table. And you don’t concentrate when you get visions throughout the day. Maybe that’s what we’re doing wrong. Maybe I’m pushing you too hard.”

“You think?”

“Smarty pants. Okay, just relax. Think about something else.” She paused a moment, then added, “Not Jared, though.”

She had a point. I let my fingertips rest on the photo and relaxed with deep and steady breaths, calming my heart and letting the rest of the world fall away. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth several times. Then I imagined a sheer curtain over the party. I reached out mentally and pulled it back. It slipped through my fingers a few times like smoke before I got a good grip and swept it aside. I blinked, waited for the image behind the curtain to crystalize, then slid inside.

Everything in my periphery dissolved. The colors melted together, then reshaped themselves, molecules fusing into patterns until they formed the items in the Prathers’ living room nine years ago. On the day Brooklyn turned seven.

“Mom!”

I heard a little girl yelling above the roar of grade-schoolers and looked over at Brooklyn, fascinated that I was there, at her seventh birthday party.

“Mitchell poured juice into my shoe again.”

Juice, compliments of Mitchell Prather, Brooke’s little brother. Two down, one to go.

Brooke’s mom, a beautiful African American woman with a stylishly spiked do, stepped out of the kitchen. Wiping her hands on a towel, she gave Mitchell a withering look. “Mitch, if you can’t behave yourself, I’ll send you upstairs and you’ll miss the party.”

“No!” he shouted, his voice edged with the fear of someone facing certain death. His short legs dangled off the chair. He crossed them at the ankles, locking his feet together, and folded his hands in his lap. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

Brooklyn’s dad chuckled and scooped her little brother into his arms. Mr. Prather was like a sand-colored stick wearing a polo shirt. Tall and slim with pale skin and sandy-colored hair, he was so opposite Brooke’s tiny, dark mom that, when I first met Brooke, it had taken some time for me to realize they were married. Then I started noticing little things about them. About their relationship. How her dad doted on her mom. How her mom ordered her dad around. Oh, yeah. They were definitely married.

“There’s someone here to see your sister,” Mr. Prather said. His eyes sparkled with mischief when he indicated someone behind Brooklyn with a nod.