Page 37 of Stay Scared

I push past him.

A second door has opened near the stage. The hallway beyond resembles the one outside our final apartment, though this version stretches farther than the original building ever did. Framed photographs line one wall, beginning with our first date and moving through birthdays, trips, and ordinary afternoons. Smiling pictures occupy the spaces between fights nobody photographed.

Cade follows after lowering the skull fully over his face again.

“Did you keep all of these?”

“Most came from old accounts.”

“Mine were deleted.”

“We could still recover them.”

“Did Owen supply some of them?”

“He did.”

I keep walking.

A beige apartment door waits at the end. One final photograph hangs beside it, and I nearly pass before the image stops me.

It shows my current apartment.

I am standing at the kitchen counter in a long shirt with my hair pinned loosely above my neck. The photograph was taken from across the alley. The microwave clock reads 2:14 a.m., and the date beneath the frame is four months after Cade and I broke up.

He stops behind me. “What is that?”

I look at him. “You tell me.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“This is your section.”

“I didn’t give them that picture.”

I take the frame from the wall. Glass catches the skull mask over my shoulder.

“You remembered our laundry detergent but missed a picture taken through my current window?”

Cade reaches for it.

I pull it away. “Do not touch it.”

His hand stops. “I need to see the date.”

“You can read it from there.”

He focuses on the lower corner. “That was after you moved.”

“You knew I moved.”

“I knew the city. I never knew your building.”

Cold settles through me. “Someone did.”

Cade turns toward the camera mounted at the end of the hallway. “Control, answer me now.”

Nothing responds.