“We came to hire your dad. Our dad’s in there now.”
“Yeah?” he said. “My dad is good at making things go away.” He didn’t say it in a bragging way. He said it in a way that made his mouth twist. “You got kicked out?”
“Yeah.”
He regarded me silently for a moment. I’d never met a boy with a gaze like that, unblinking, like his camera, just taking me in. Most boys never met my eyes. They stared at the ground, or hooted at me, or pulled my hair, or ignored me completely even though I knew they were aware of me the whole time.
“You want to see what’s going on in there?” he asked. “I’ve got a way.”
I shrugged.
“It’ll cost you a nickel.”
I shrugged again. I knew better than to show too much interest.
“We need a lookout.” Billy looked at each of us appraisingly. “Her,” he said, pointing to Muddie.
“Okay,” Muddie said, relieved not to have to join in whatever he was planning.
He held out his hand for the nickel.
“Forget it, then,” I said, even while Jamie fished in his pocket. “How about it’ll cost you a dollar so I don’t tell your father that you spy on him?”
He eyed me furiously, his face suddenly flushing a dark red. “Fink.”
“Snake.”
Jamie looked from one of us to the other, the nickel in his fist.
“You’re just chicken,” Billy said.
Well, that was that. I knew the rules. I couldn’t back down now. I nodded at Jamie, and he put a nickel in the boy’s hand.
“Gotta get something first,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
He hopped off the table and I followed. He went to a half door in the side of the building, the old coal cellar. He paused on the top of the ramp going down. “What are you doing?”
“Following you.”
He turned his back to me, but I shifted and watched him lift one of the bricks that lined the ramp and take out a key. He fitted it into the padlock.
The way he pushed open the door let me know he wouldn’t stop me from coming in after him. That he wanted me to come in.
I’d been expecting just a coal cellar, made of stone and brick, filthy from years of the coal coming down the chute that was there before the slanted walk. Instead it was a workroom, with a lightbulb hanging overhead, a table, and photographs stacked on it with wavy edges. A doorway led toward the cellar, shrouded in darkness.
Billy straightened a pile of photographs while I looked at the top of the pile closest to me. It was of a house with dark windows that looked like eyes. Another was of a man sitting on a chair outside in the sun talking to another man, except all you could see was their bellies and their hands. Somehow you knew they were having an argument, and maybe that they hated each other, and I didn’t know why. I pushed that one aside and saw another, a view straight down some train tracks, the landscape blurred on the sides. Billy came over to stand next to me.
“This one is scary,” I said.
“When I go someplace on a train, I like to be in the first car,” he said. “I like to see what’s coming at me. And I like to be the first one there. Subways in New York are the best. You can stand right up against the window.”
“I haven’t been to New York,” I admitted.
I picked up one of a man shot through a restaurant window. He was holding a forkful of something, and he was looking off to the side. I could see this guy, how carefully he combed his hair, how his shirt was too tight but he thought he looked pretty swell. I laughed.
“I’ve never seen pictures like these,” I said. It seemed like a great and wonderful thing, to be able to look at the world through a camera lens. “You make everything look more real than it is, somehow.”
“I develop them myself.”
“With chemicals and stuff?” I tried to keep the admiration out of my voice.
“Yeah, this is my darkroom. My dad let me set it up here. I can only use it on weekends, though. Weekdays are for school.”
“That’s too bad.” I touched one of the photographs. “If I could do this, I’d want to do it all the time.”
We looked at each other, and I saw that I’d made him happy, only he was trying not to