Page 7 of Seven Lost Summers
Nothing happens.
The door stays shut.
She sighs, like it’s just one more bullshit inconvenience stacked on top of a hundred others.
“It gets stuck sometimes,” she mutters, shoving her shoulder into the frame.
The door bursts open, slamming against the wall.
Darkness waits on the other side, staring back at us.
Even though it’s mid-morning, not a trace of daylight gets in. The blinds are clamped shut, sealing the place like a tomb.
Quinn steps inside without a flicker of hesitation, like none of this rattles her. Just another room full of ghosts.
Nate and I hang back, letting our eyes adjust, instincts flaring like alarms that won’t shut off.
Suddenly, Quinn yanks the heavy curtains open.
Harsh light floods the room, driving the shadows into the corners. She turns back to us, her figure framed in the glare.
“Come in,” she says, tossing her bag onto something half-buried under clutter. It could be a pile of forgotten crap, hard to tell.
Nate and I stay in the doorway, stuck there like two useless fucks hovering in the silence.
I step across the threshold, and Nate follows.
The moment we’re inside, Quinn slams the door shut behind us.
My eyes sweep the room, my pulse finally easing off the edge.
Black-and-white photos cover the walls—stark shots of twisted metal, crumbling buildings, bridges disappearing into fog. Every frame feels deliberate, as if Quinn caught the last flicker of something fading and trapped it before it disappeared for good.
That’s when I see it… and everything stops.
One photo.
Larger than the rest.
Framed in black.
The four of us, caught mid-laugh, faces lit with something close to joy.
I remember that day.
Quinn shoved the camera into Scarlet’s hands, muttering that if anyone was going to take the damn photo, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her. Scarlet rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t get stuck, then spent ten minutes fumbling with the buttons like the thing was some alien device sent to ruin her life.
It took three tries. Scarlet had the skills of a blindfolded drunk with a personal vendetta against focus.
Each time, Quinn got up to check, muttering curses under her breath before barking at us to move left, tilt our heads, stop blinking. We groaned, swore at her, called her a psycho, but we still did it anyway.
Back then, it was nothing more than another moment, just another dumb photo to roll our eyes at.
Now… I’d stand there a thousand more times. Say the same shit, laugh the same laugh, suffer through every retake, if it meant holding onto that one second a little longer.
The burn hits before I can brace myself.
There she is… our girl.
