Chapter One: After the Flashbulbs

Her precise fifteen-degree smile was gone from all seven group shots: bewilderment in the first, anger in the second, suppressed pain in the third. With each image she looked more frightened. In the final portrait, Wen no longer looked down. She stared directly into the lens, eyes rimmed red, lips parted as if speaking through the frozen frame. Jianwei enlarged it. Wen's mouth formed the words: Don't let me forget her. Then the makeup mirror deep in the photograph lit up. Where Wen's reflected back should have been, there stood a short-haired girl in a school uniform. She raised one hand and wrote two characters on the dusty-looking glass. Qiao Sui.