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would be. Sgt. Byrd talked me through the whole process, making me do everything myself, saying that’s the only way I’d learn it. When I finally pulled out the long strip of negatives from the processing tank, I felt like some kind of genius. I hung the negatives to dry, trying not to peek at what they might reveal.
    To print a negative, you have to load it into anenlarger, which is the machine that shines light through the negative and exposes the image on a piece of light-sensitive paper. When you’re ready to do that, you turn off the room’s overhead light and turn on the safe light, open up the enlarger lens, and turn the enlarger light on, which projects the image onto the paper. From there, it’s a lot of adjusting until you have the image just the way you want it. Turn off the enlarger, put in a sheet of photographic paper, turn on the enlarger for six seconds. Then it’s time to slip the paper into the developer for a minute or so, and then into the stop bath for ten seconds, and then you put it into the fix. Finally you wash the paper off and hang it up to dry.
    My hands shook trying to load the first negative into the enlarger. I didn’t know what to expect, couldn’t quite imagine what picture would emerge, but I knew it would be something amazing.
    Instead, it was a picture of a hut.
    â€œActually,” Sgt. Byrd informed me, “it’s called a hootch. And it’s a good picture. Your brother knows what he’s doing with a camera.”
    Maybe. If what he was trying to do was borepeople to death. From a roll of thirty-six negatives, I counted eleven huts, nine assorted groupings of GIs—most of them sitting around with their shirts off and drinking beer—six pictures of the same dog—a white terrier with a black spot around its left eye—and eight pictures of bushes and trees. There was even a close-up of a blooming flower. A flower. I shook my head in disgust.
    Now, sitting on Cindy’s bed, I opened the manila envelope I’d put TJ’s pictures in once they’d dried. “Here’s a picture of some soldiers that are probably friends of TJ’s. I think some of them are sort of cute, don’t you?”
    I held up the picture for Cindy to see. I was trying to act excited about it, but the fact is, the whole roll of film had been a disappointment to me. Huts and tents and soldiers waving beer cans in the general direction of the camera. Nothing worth noting, in my opinion, especially when there was a war being fought in the vicinity. If I was excited about anything, it was that I’d learned to develop and print film. I wanted to show somebody what I’d done, even if the end result wasn’t all that fascinating.
    â€œCome watch me ride my bike,” Cindy said, hopping off of her bed.
    â€œDon’t you want to see the rest of TJ’s photographs? He’s in Vietnam, just like Mark.”
    Cindy crossed her arms over her chest. “I know TJ’s in Vietnam. I’m not stupid. I’m not retarded like you think. I’m just special and I have a medical condition.”
    â€œI know you’re not retarded,” I said. “It’s just we both have brothers in Vietnam, and it’s this thing we have in common.”
    Cindy looked at me for several seconds. Then she nodded and sat back down next to me on the bed. “I like having things in common.”
    I showed her the rest of the pictures. The last one I pulled out of the envelope was a moon shot. “I want that one,” Cindy told me, tugging the picture out of my hands. “I could put it on my wall, and then I could look at the moon any time I wanted.”
    â€œOkay.” I could go back to the rec center in the morning and print another copy if I felt like it. “Are there any others you want?”
    â€œNo, just the moon.”
    It was one of TJ’s better moons, I thought. It had a band of light around it and it