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  "What are you doing?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  "Making macaroni and cheese."

  I could not have been more surprised if she'd said, "Mapping the human genome." My mother did not cook. Cooking was messy. Cooking took time away from hanging curtains and arranging throw pillows and watching HGTV. At home, cooking might scratch our stainless steel appliances. And on vacation? Hello?

  "Aren't we going out to dinner soon anyway?" It was almost five o'clock.

  She shook her head. "Not tonight."

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  A night stuck in one room with my parents? I tried not to groan. I failed.

  My next super-special surprise came when I tried to unpack. "Hey, Dad--where'd you put my suitcase?" No response. "Dad? My suitcase?"

  Still lying on the brown bed, he turned his head and blinked. "What does it look like?"

  "It looks like a suitcase," I said. "You know--square, canvas, has a handle? And inside? It's got these fabric things called clothes!"

  "Don't talk to your father like that," my mother snapped. (She talked to him like that all the time.) "Isn't it in the room?" my father asked.

  "If it was in the room, don't you think she would have seen it?" my mother snarled. (See?)

  My suitcase was not in the room. And it was not in the car. After some discussion, we all agreed it was right where I'd left it, in the hallway outside my bedroom at home. Instead my father had packed the shopping bag full of my old, outgrown clothes that I'd left in the kitchen, ready for my mother to drop at the Salvation Army store.

  I panicked for just a moment before realizing what an opportunity this was.

  "I passed a surf shop downtown today--they had some cute bathing suits in the window."

  When my mother didn't respond, I plowed forward. "We can go there tomorrow. Or maybe there's a mall nearby."

  My mother still didn't say anything. I took that as a yes.

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  4.

  Body snatchers.

  That's what I thought when I woke up the next morning and saw my mother bustling in the kitchenette--again. Was there no bagel store in this town? No Starbucks? Who was that woman handling unprocessed food?

  "Did you make breakfast?" I croaked from the couch, straightening my dad's extra-large T-shirt that I'd worn as pajamas.

  "There's cereal in the cabinet. Milk in the fridge."

  Okay, it was still my mother.

  I'd hardly gotten any sleep the night before. My father snored, my mother mumbled, and the pullout couch had spiky springs that jabbed through the thin, dusty, substandard bit of foam that pass for a mattress. In the early hours I'd finally folded the "bed" (I use the term loosely) back into the couch and slept on the scratchy cushions. Now my neck hurt from lying in an awkward position and my head buzzed from insufficient sleep.

  ***

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  We walked to the beach instead of taking the Escalade because "it's just a short walk" (not), "we could use the exercise" (speak for yourself), and "it costs ten bucks to park" (which my mother regularly spent on decorating magazines without a thought). Dressed in my black shorts and pink-and-black striped T-shirt, I carried my beach bag and boogie board, while my mom slung her purse and a bag full of towels over her shoulder. My dad hauled the rest: a hard-sided cooler, three folding chairs, a beach umbrella, and a plastic sack full of books, magazines, sunscreen, and assorted heavy stuff. He didn't complain, but his face turned red, and sweat soaked his T-shirt in a not-so-attractive way.

  They say that couples start to look alike as time goes on. Or maybe that's people and their pets. But what's weird about my parents is that the older they got, the more different they became. In our house in Amerige a framed snapshot hung in the upstairs hallway. Taken a month after they'd started dating, it showed my parents sitting on a couch holding hands, their heads tilted together. They both had thick, dark hair feathering out from their faces and thick, dark eyebrows on top of wide, happy eyes. I could barely recognize either of them. My mom had gone blond so long ago, I couldn't remember her any other way, and her eyebrows had been waxed into perfect crescents and dyed to match her hair. I called them her "Golden Arches." My dad's hair was half gray, half dark, as if it couldn't decide which way it wanted to go.

  Their differences weren't just about hair. My mother got thinner as she got older. She was skinnier than I was (which was actually kind of annoying). My dad, on the other hand, looked like he had eaten too many fast-food lunches on his construction sites. Which he had. Even his face was fat. Friendly rays fanned out from

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  his eyes, though; I liked that. My mother had a line between her Golden Arches that got deeper whenever something annoyed her.

  When we reached Restaurant Row (that's a joke; there were only, like, three places), I asked, "So, where are we going for dinner tonight?"

  just thinking about food makes me happy. At that moment I was having a pretty intense fantasy about nachos.

  "I've already bought hot dogs," my mother said, the line between her eyebrows deepening ever so slightly.

  "Oh." She was kidding, right? I shifted my load. The boogie board was getting pretty heavy. "It's not like we have to go someplace expensive. We can just get burritos or something."

  The line between my mother's eyebrows got even deeper, which meant she wasn't kidding. My father didn't say anything, just stood there oozing sweat.

  That did it. "This vacation blows!" I dropped the boogie board on the sidewalk and threw my beach bag on top of it, almost tripping a little kid who was walking by. "Why are we even here if we're not going to do anything? We should've just stayed home!"

  I swallowed hard to keep from crying. I'd save that for when my mother lectured me on how spoiled I was and how we all had to make sacrifices and how most fifteen-year-olds would kill to be able to spend this much time at the beach, blah, blah, blah.

  But she didn't lecture me. Instead, she bent over to retrieve my beach bag and slung it over her free shoulder. Then she handed the boogie board to my dad, who somehow managed to loop the cord around the beach chairs.

  We continued grimly down the street, heads bent, mouths turned down. I felt kind of embarrassed about making a scene, but

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  this whole vacation was such a bust. I would have been okay with staying home. At least then I would have had a pool plus my own TV, a computer, and a real bed. Sleep deprivation makes me cranky. Also, if we'd stayed home I'd have my clothes. Was I really supposed to spend a day on the beach without a bathing suit?

  And my parents were acting so weird--I mean, even weirder than usual. As we approached the Shopping District (photo shop, liquor store, T-shirt emporium, surf shop), I shuddered with fear--of what, I didn't know.

  I stopped in front of the surf shop.

  "You want to go in?" my mother said, finally.

  I nodded and pushed open the door. The store was dark and cool, crowded with swimsuits, rash guard shirts, sunglasses, shell jewelry, and flip-flops. Immediately I felt better.

  Like food, shopping makes me happy. The orange board shorts that I'd admired the day before didn't come in my size, but there was a super-cute bikini, white with green and orange swirls, and coordinating board shorts that had a green diagonal stripe across the front. The shorts were just the tiniest bit loose, which was good because I could eat a double cheeseburger on the beach without having to loosen them.

  "Okay, then!" I chirped, coming out of the dressing room and handing the stuff to my mom. "That was easy!" I'd needed a new suit, anyway; the ones I had at home were all stretched out.

  On her way to the front of the shop, my mother pulled at the price tags. Steps away from the cash register, she stopped dead. "Did you see how much these cost?"

  "No," I answered honestly.

  "Do you have a sale rack?" she asked the skinny girl in a turquoise

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  tank top who slouched on a stool behind the counter. The girl was a couple of years older than me,
with a pierced eyebrow and lip.

  The girl shook her head.

  "Is there a Target in town?" my mother asked the girl. "Or a Wal-Mart?" (Wal-Mart? Hello?)

  The girl shook her head again. "They're, like, forty minutes away." Her lip ring quivered.

  "Can you give us directions?"

  "Mom! I love these!" My voice cracked.

  She turned to face me. "It's a hundred and thirty dollars for these three pieces."

  "So?" It was my parents' fault I was at the beach without a bathing suit.

  From the doorway, my father spoke. "Just get the suit. It's fine."

  "It is not fine! It is--"

  "Just get the damn suit!"

  So I got the bikini. And the board shorts. That should have made me happy. Instead, all I could think about was the way my father had yelled at my mother. She snapped at him all the time, but he never talked to her like that. Never.

  The clerk rang up the purchase as if nothing had happened-- which for her, I guess, nothing had.

  This was not turning out to be one of our better family-bonding trips.

  Psychic Photo was across the street.

  "I need to check on my camera." I kept my eyes on the ground. "You don't have to come in."

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  There was a green bench right outside the shop, but my parents stayed standing, weighed down by all of the beach crap and--what? Frustration? Guilt?

  Walking into Psychic Photo, I felt the strangest sense of peace and relief, which I attributed to getting away from my parents. The tall girl with the striped hair, in an orange smock over jeans, stood by a photo album display talking to another girl--well, a woman--in cutoff white shorts and a tight black tank top. The woman's long, reddish brown hair was pinned haphazardly on her head, little wisps spilling around her face. Her pale gray eyes were almost freakishly huge in her thin face, giving her a hungry look. She looked around twenty-five, maybe a little younger. They had to be sisters.

  The tall girl gave me a half wave. "Hey. I was just about to go check on your camera." She widened her light eyes as if in a trance and fluttered her hands in front of her face. "I must be psychic."

  The auburn-haired woman in the tight tank top scowled. "Not funny."

  "This is my mother, Rose," the tall girl told me. "She's doing readings today, in case you want to find out if you were, like, a cat in a former life."

  It took all of my willpower not to scream, "That's your mother?" Instead, I just stared like a dork.

  Rose thought I was reacting to the cat thing. "I don't do past-life regressions--not enough training. And I don't believe in inter-species reincarnation, as Delilah well knows." She shot a quick, annoyed glance at the girl--Delilah--before continuing. "But the energies are exceptionally strong today--the full moon

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  and the season--so if you have any chakras that you think might be blocked or if you have any unresolved issues that are manifest' ing themselves in..."

  I don't know what else she said. I was too busy adding and subtracting in my head. Say Delilah is sixteen, and her mother was twenty when she had her. That would make her...thirty-six? Not a chance.

  Okay. Say Delilah is fourteen, and her mother gave birth at eighteen. That would put Rose at thirty-two: still too old. But maybe Delilah is an especially tall and precocious ten-year-old and Rose became a mother at fifteen. Wait, that's my age!

  "...so any minute now," Delilah said, strolling over to the counter.

  "Huh?" I had no idea what she had been saying.

  "He's actually a fisherman," she said.

  "Who?" Maybe my chakras really did need unblocking.

  "Larry. The guy who does our repairs. He's in the back room, finishing work on your camera right now."

  "Have you gone in the back room today, Dee?" Rose said, her voice suddenly trembling. "Did you feel the energy?"

  Delilah's pale eyelashes fluttered with irritation. "I'm not psychic, Mom."

  "You don't have to be." She looked at me with her huge gray eyes. There were funny shapes in the irises, like snow-flakes. "Did Dee tell you about my work with transformational experiences?"

  I shook my head. Delilah and I hadn't covered transformational experiences in our previous ninety-second conversation. "We all see the world differently, through our personal filters."

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  Rose explained. "Just like a camera--you change the filter over your lens, you change what you see, right?"

  I nodded. Now she was getting somewhere. I'd been saving money for a camera: one of the complicated ones with lenses you could change for distance shots. My parents had said they'd pay half. It would be less portable than my little Canon, but the picture quality would be better. I could take it to the choir concerts, the school plays, the sporting events--all the stuff I'd be covering for The Buzz- Now that everyone was going to be seeing my photographs, they had to be good. I hadn't given much thought to filters, which were tinted glass disks that screwed onto the lens. I'd have to look into it.

  "Most people's filters are dirty or cloudy," Rose continued. "So they see the world as dirty or cloudy--and even worse they see themselves as dirty or cloudy."

  "You can't see yourself through your own camera," Delilah muttered. (Actually, my camera has a feature where you can pull the viewing screen to the side and take a self-portrait, but I didn't say anything.)

  Delilah settled herself on a stool behind the counter, which, I noticed for the first time, was covered with all kinds of--there is no nice way to say this--crap: bottle caps, straws, broken shells, pop tabs, a big wooden plank.

  "So what I'm doing," Rose said, ignoring Delilah, "is helping people change their filters and see the possibilities for a new life."

  "You mean like therapy?" I asked.

  "God, no!" Her face twisted in disgust. "Therapy is all about, like, talking and antidepressants. A transformational experience

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  is about energy. When a person undergoes a transformation, it changes them forever--they actually release their old energy and become a different person." Maybe it was just the light, but the snowflakes in her eyes appeared to be dancing.

  Delilah cleared her throat. "I'll see how Larry's doing."

  I remembered that my parents were still waiting out front so I stuck my head out of the door. "This is going to take a few more minutes," I told them. "You guys can head down to the beach-- I'll meet you."

  I offered to carry some of the heavy stuff, but they said they could handle it. I shrugged and went back inside to meet Larry.

  He looked nothing like a camera repairman. He didn't look like a fisherman, either. He wore a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt, with a blue bandanna tied around his head. He had dark stubble on his chin, heavy eyebrows, and a cross dangling from one ear. Only his puppy-dog brown eyes saved hint from mad-biker scariness.

  "You the girl who's been playing catch with her camera?" He held up my Canon and scowled.

  I flushed with embarrassment. "Actually, I was just taking some pictures, and I stepped on a shell. I usually leave the strap around my wrist--I don't know what happened. I guess it slipped, and--"

  When I realized he was laughing, I shut up. "Larry!" Rose scolded.

  He winked at her. I'd never actually seen anyone wink without it looking dorky, but Larry pulled it off. Rose jabbed him playfully on her way to the back.

  At the door, she turned to face me. "What was your name again?"

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  "Madison."

  She nodded as if I'd given her the right answer, tilted her head to one side, and chewed on her lip. Her unlined skin was the same translucent shade as her daughter's, her nose sprinkled with freckles. "I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of you," she said.

  Once Rose had gone, Larry handed me the little silver camera, which felt lighter than usual and oddly warm, as if it had been baking in the sun. "You got lucky," he told me. "Just needed to be cleaned."

  I pushed the power button, and the screen blinked to li
fe with a reassuring chime. "Like magic," I said.

  "Nope--not magic at all." Larry pointed to the little screen, which showed my mom pruning a rosebush in front of our house in Amerige. We used to have gardeners, but my parents fired them to save money. Now half of our yard was overgrown and the other half was more or less dead. The roses looked good, though.

  Larry fingers were square at the edges, his nails cut very short. "You know how digital cameras work?"

  I shook my head. As much as I loved photography, I'd never thought much about the technical stuff.

  "You got your lens here," Larry said, pointing to the front of the camera. "The lens sees the light from an image--just like the lens in your eye. Inside your camera, there's a chip made out of silicon covered with millions of these tiny dots called pixels."

  Larry took the camera from my hand. "When you take a picture, the pixels get all excited, and they change the energy from the light wave into photoelectrons."

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  I smiled politely. This was kind of boring, and I really wanted to get to the beach.

  The camera flashed in my face, and I yelped.

  "Sorry," Larry said, handing back my camera. "Didn't mean to scare you."

  "It's okay." My heart raced. On the camera's screen I looked pale and lost, like a ghost of my usual self. Delete.

  "After you take a picture, the camera stores the electrical charge," Larry said. "Then it converts the charge into a number--you know, a digit."

  When I didn't say anything, Delilah said, "As in 'digital photography.'"

  "Oh!" I said. "Got it." I imagined a billion tiny pixels in my head, all lighting up at once.

  After Larry returned to the back of the shop, Delilah pulled a yellow slip of paper from underneath the counter and put it next to the junk.

  She punched a couple of buttons on the cash register. "That'll be...fifty-three dollars even."

  I stared at her, horrified. With all the family drama, I'd forgotten that I'd need money for the repair. What was I thinking, sending my parents away? Not that I loved the idea of asking them to pay for anything right now. My wallet was back in the room. How much was in there?

  "I don't have the money," I said, finally. "At least not with me."