Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman (beach books .TXT) 📕

I gazed around the room, which was much smaller than the other one. The walls were covered in framed photos: some yellowed newspaper clippings, some black-and-white, and even a few color Polaroids and prints. In the corner, a small TV sat on a card table, topped with a VCR. Static played silently on the screen.

“So Jamie told me you guys did a little research on thoughtography already,” Carrie said, gesturing for us to check out the pictures hanging near the door. “I’ve tried to curate only pictures that haven’t been debunked . . . which is pretty hard to do, because most of the ones out there are fake.” She tilted back her head, glancing at the ceiling. “You should see the number of boxes I’ve got upstairs, all filled with what I was told were psychic photographs that turned out to be bogus. It’s really easy to do.” Carrie grinned at me. “Well, you probably know that already.”

“What?” I asked, startled. “Why?”

“Because you’re a photographer,” she said. “You know, you can mess with the exposure, the printing . . . although, I guess it’s a little different with digital cameras. Have you ever played around with analog cameras?”

“A little,” I said. “A really long time ago, though. My, um . . . my mom’s a photographer. She brought me to a darkroom a few times in elementary school.”

“Do you remember much about developing?”

I frowned. “A little bit . . . you put the negative in the enlarger and set a timer for how long you want it exposed to light, then put the print in the developer, then a . . . um, a stop bath? I think that’s what it’s called. And then a water bath—no, the fixer, then the water bath—and then you hang it up to dry.”

“Exactly.” Carrie pointed to a small framed black-and-white photo behind me, and I turned to look. “So what do you think went wrong there?”

Jamie leaned closer, too. The slightly blurred picture featured an older man in a suit sitting in a chair in what looked like a study or office. He had no beard, but thick, dark hair covered the sides of his face and extended down to his chin. His expression was stern yet exasperated, as if posing for this photo was a massive waste of his time. Behind him, a bookshelf was just visible next to an open door. Beyond that, the corridor was dark, save for a blur of white.

“A ghost?” Jamie asked immediately.

I shook my head. “Nope. Whoever printed the photo just underexposed that part, that’s all.”

“Exactly!” Carrie said. “But in 1896, this guy published a whole paper about what he called evidence of psychic photography. You’d be amazed at how many people tried stunts like this back then. Even though they were almost all proven to be frauds, a lot of people still totally bought it.”

Jamie looked half-amused, half-embarrassed. “I probably would’ve,” he admitted.

“Because you want to believe,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He smiled at me in a way that made my heart thump a bit faster, and I hoped Carrie didn’t notice the blush creeping up my neck. “So why’d you include this one if you know it’s fake?” I asked her.

“As an example,” she replied, leading us over to the next photo. “So that people will understand the real thing when they see it.”

“Whoa,” I whispered, stepping closer to study the picture. It was taken at the foot of a grand wooden staircase, at the top of which stood a woman in a silk gown with a high waist and lace sleeves. She was smiling in a posed sort of way, seemingly unaware of the other, transparent woman huddled at the bottom of the stairs, this one in a dark, long-sleeved dress with full skirts. Her features were blurred, so all I could make out were two dark spots for eyes and a thin line for a mouth.

“So, Kat,” Carrie said. “Any idea how you could fake that?”

“Photoshop?” Jamie joked, and she laughed.

“Not really a thing a hundred years ago.”

“Long exposure?” I suggested, pointing to the woman in the silk gown. “With a slow shutter speed, she would have to hold her pose for several seconds while the photographer took the picture.” I pointed to the other woman. “If she was walking down the stairs at the same time, she’d appear all blurry and transparent in the photo.”

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “Wow. I think you remember more from your mom than you give yourself credit for.”

I tried to smile, even though my skin prickled uncomfortably at the mention of my mom. “Thanks.”

“But,” Carrie went on, “how do you explain this?”

She tapped the photograph hanging next to it. The two were almost identical, but taken from slightly different angles, as if the photographers were standing a few feet apart at the base of the stairs. The woman in the silk gown stood in the same pose, the same small smile curving her lips. But the other woman wasn’t there at all.

“These were taken at a mansion up in Harlem in 1912,” Carrie said. “Two photographers. The one who captured the image with the ghost, his family owned the place. He’d grown up believing it was haunted by his great-grandmother, and as he was taking this picture of his niece, he was thinking about her. Really focused. That’s why she appeared in his photo, but not the other. At least, that’s the story his son gave me when he donated this to the exhibit.”

“Awesome,” Jamie said fervently.

“I know there’s no way to prove this is a real psychic photograph,” Carrie said. “But there’s one other detail that pretty much convinced me. Any guesses?”

Jamie and I studied the picture again. “Oh!” Jamie exclaimed. “Her dress—the great-grandmother’s dress.”

Carrie beamed. “Exactly!”

I must have still looked confused, because Jamie continued. “This was taken in 1912, but her dress has petticoats, a high collar, long sleeves. Totally different than what the niece is wearing.”

“But very much in fashion in the mid-eighteen hundreds,” Carrie finished. “When great-grandma here still lived in