"That is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect." - Lone Wolf by Jodie Picoult

(~*~*~*~)

Everyone smiles for the camera.

Everyone wants that resulting picture to show them smiling, because a photograph of a smiling person represents a happy memory. After all, smiling people are happy people.

Except when they're not.

There's a picture hanging by a stairway in that place they call "Grace's house," a little crooked, with its colors starting to fade. It's small, maybe five by four inches, and it shows a young girl and an even younger boy smiling for the camera, the sun shining brightly behind them.

I hate it.

They're smiling, but the smiles are so strained that anyone who bothered to look at the picture for more than a few seconds would think that some awful event had just occurred, that some devastating catastrophe had just ruined their lives forever.

Which is exactly what had happened.

Amy's face is red, splotchy, and although her eyes shine, it's from tears, not happiness. It's kind of funny how someone who loves to read so much can be such an open book. As for me, I'm clinging to my father's ghost, and trying to fill the new empty space inside of me with the laughter and jokes that would became my new dad.

I couldn't do it. Couldn't replace him. But I could try, and I could convince myself that that was enough to get through my life.

But it's still not enough to completely hide the part of me that misses my dad so bad that it hurts. All the jokes in the world can't fill the dark hole inside that kid in the photograph.

His parents are gone, and he doesn't know why. He went to bed as usual last night, after being tucked in by his mom like on every other night, expecting to wake up the next day to share yet another normal day with his family. Why would he expect anything else, when a happy life with his parents is all he knows?

Why would he expect anything else?

Because normalcy, routine, unconditional and everlasting love, and all of those things that can make you feel like you'll be comfortable and safe for more than a single fleeting moment are illusory. Something will ruin it. A fire, a disease, a revelation that your family, your life, is not what you thought it was. Anything that you think will never change is a lie, because it can and it will change and leave you shocked, broken.

A photograph that shows a smiling brother and sister must show happy children, and that photograph must be absolute, lasting proof that those children were once happy.

And we once were, before everything changed.

But that photograph isn't proof that we were happy; smiles can be faked, laughter forced, and love pretended. And when everything really is perfect, it doesn't last. Nothing good ever does. It dies.

When that picture burns, it's like it never even existed. The past can't be changed or relived; you have to deal with the problems that you have right now.

But if you can't be happy, at least you can try to keep your world from falling apart, piece by piece, person by person.

A/N: Yes, it should be "so badly," not "so bad," but as much as Dan has grown throughout the books, he's still a thirteen-year-old boy, and English isn't his specialty. He's going to make grammatical mistakes.