Camera Shy -

Her blood chilled. “What?”

“Just one picture,” her best friend, Mia, pleaded, grabbing Lena’s arm at the summer carnival. “For the memories.” Camera Shy

It wasn’t entirely a lie. But the real reason was darker, sillier, and utterly irrational: Lena believed cameras stole pieces of her soul. Not in a poetic way—in a literal, visceral way. The first time a flash went off in her face at age seven, she’d felt a sharp, cold tug behind her navel, like a fishhook yanking something loose. She’d cried for hours and refused to be photographed since. Her blood chilled

And standing just behind her in the photo, a faint, blurred shape—a smaller girl with a missing tooth and a red barrette. The girl Lena had been at seven. But the real reason was darker, sillier, and

The old man ducked under a black cloth behind the camera. “Smile,” he murmured. “Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

It was wedged between a ring-toss and a haunted house, draped in velvet so black it seemed to drink the surrounding light. A handwritten sign said: “Vintage Portraits. One-of-a-Kind. You won’t look the same.”