Welcome to Penny’s Diary, a contemporary urban-fantasy serial. Read new diary entries every Thursday. Supporting readers can also access a weekly Writer’s Commentary, along with immersive audio and eBook editions, after each entry.
New to Penny’s story? Begin at the very first entry by clicking the button below and step into the moments where everything started to change.
I woke up with my face half-smushed into my pillow and the horrible full-body knowledge that I had slept like a medically supervised raccoon.
Clearwater does that.
Officially, it is observation after transfusion. Unofficially, it is waking up feeling like someone unplugged your brain, shook it gently, plugged it back in wrong, and then wrote “medically stable” on a clipboard.
My room was too bright. My mouth tasted like hospital water and old panic. My bag sat on my desk where I must have dumped it last night after Gramps collected me from Clearwater and delivered me back to the Meridian like emotionally unstable luggage.
I remembered getting out of the car.
Gramps saying something about sleep.
Then nothing.
Just bed.
Blank.
For ten seconds, I stared at the room, waiting for my brain to hand me the rest.
Then I saw the corner of paper under my bag.
Two letters.
Right there.
Recovery instructions. The system that was supposed to catch me after Clearwater.
And I had dumped a bag on top of them and gone to sleep.
Excellent work, Penny.
I opened the top letter with hands that were not exactly shaking.
Okay, fine.
They were shaking.
The letter told me to go to my “secret hiding place” and touch a page of the first book I found there.
So I did.
Behind the AC vent: the stash of green books.
When I touched one, the memory rush hit: Spellbound Harmony, the auditorium screen, Marilyn’s face, Ellie remembering, Teddy folding the blue box, Gramps giving me the apartment keys, Sapphire Bliss’s card, Bobby packed away, and “Soon” sitting in my head like a spider with opinions.
The letters worked.
But only after I found them.
They had not magically sat up and slapped me awake. They were paper. Brilliant, terrifying, fragile paper.
If I had slept later, or forgotten to look at my desk at all—
Nope.
On the desk, the second apartment keys caught the light beside my diary.
Tiny metal promise.
Tiny metal problem.
Cascades lunch was still hours away, which was good, because apparently I needed to rebuild myself before sandwiches.
I got to Cascades twelve minutes early.
Not because I was panicking.
Because I was professionally concerned.
Different category.
Also because if I sat in my room staring at the letters any longer, I was either going to read them until the words lost meaning or start writing emergency instructions on my arm like a deeply unstable treasure map.
I half expected Ellie to be there already. Hoped, more like.
But no. Apparently hope had other plans.
The lunch crowd had not reached full chaos yet. A few summer people were claiming window tables like they owned sunshine. The pastry case looked aggressively normal.
Rude of it.
I settled in our usual booth upstairs and tried not to stare out the window.
Failed.
Then Teddy walked in.
My whole body unclenched so fast it was embarrassing.
He had his backpack, damp hair, and the blue Halifax Memorial wristband sitting low on his right wrist. He smiled when he saw me.
Almost normal.
Too careful to be normal.
“Anchor worked,” he said, sliding into the booth.
Just like that.
My brain should have celebrated. Tiny parade. Confetti. Emotional marching band.
Instead, my stomach tightened.
Because Teddy looked relieved, yes, but also like he had rehearsed the sentence before walking in.
He pulled the folded TARDIS drawing from his backpack and set it on the table between us.
He’d taped it inside his laptop case.
Of course he had—even reset-brain Teddy apparently reaches for a computer before breakfast.
He remembered everything from before Clearwater as soon as he touched the page.
His first memory blast.
Welcome to the club.
Then noon came.
Then noon left.
No Ellie.
Five minutes late, I told myself her dad’s driver was probably delayed or having trouble parking.
Ten minutes late, Teddy stopped pretending not to check the stairs.
Fifteen minutes late, I called her.
She answered confused.
Not late-confused.
Reset-confused.
“Why are you calling me?”
My stomach dropped so hard it basically left the building.
She was at home. She had found the dragon drawing around seven that morning and wondered what it was.
Seven.
Before I found the letters.
Before the AC vent.
Before my own memories came back.
The dragon had been in her hands, and it had just been a drawing.
No meaning.
No rope.
Not enough.
“Ellie,” I said, trying very hard not to sound like I was falling apart in public, “go get it again.”
She asked what was going on.
I said, “Please.”
There was movement on the other end. A drawer opening. A soft rustle. Teddy sat completely still across from me.
Then Ellie gasped.
Not a startled little sound.
A whole-body, air-gone gasp.
For one horrible second, I thought I had broken something.
Then her voice came back.
Shaky.
Awake.
“I’m back, Penny.”
My eyes stung so fast I got mad at them.
And that was when the rule arrived.
The anchors did not work first.
Not for her.
Maybe not for anyone.
They only worked after I got my own memories back.
So apparently I was the first domino.
Lucky me.
Everyone else only fell back into place after that.
Which is a very unfair amount of responsibility to hand a girl before lunch.
Ellie said she was coming to Cascades. I managed “Okay,” because apparently emotional collapse has a very small vocabulary.
After she hung up, Teddy looked at me.
“The anchors are secondary,” he said.
I nodded.
The folded blue box sat between us.
For a few minutes, it had looked like proof that the system worked.
Now it looked like proof that the system had rules.
And we had only just found the first bad one.
Ellie arrived at Cascades seventeen minutes later, flustered, breathless, and very much herself.
My heart did the stupid flutter thing before my brain could remind it that we were in the middle of a continuity crisis.
Rude organ.
We brought her up to speed in the booth, quietly enough that the table of tourists by the window did not learn about memory anchors, reset gaps, or the emotional crimes of dragon drawings.
Teddy’s anchor had worked.
Ellie’s would have worked the same way.
If she hadn’t touched it before I got my own memories back.
Which was not the triumphant system test I had been hoping for, but apparently my standards are now: did everyone eventually remember reality?
So, progress.
After Cascades, we went back to the Meridian.
Because apparently lunch was not enough emotional damage for one day.
Also because the evidence was waiting.
I wanted to rebuild Bobby immediately. Full board. Strings. Notes. Weird little arrows that make us look like either detectives or people who should not be left alone with stationery.
But the second apartment existed now.
Keys on my desk. Purple room. Possible future headquarters for Operation: Please Stop Rewriting My Life.
So we did not rebuild Bobby yet.
Growth.
Instead, we pulled the packed cache out of the window seat and checked everything on my bedroom floor like three tiny disaster archivists.
Not fast.
Carefully.
Because after Clearwater, even paper starts to feel like it might be holding its breath.
The older stuff was still there too, but my brain went straight for the newest damage: “Soon,” the Serenity Grove notes, Logan Collins’s birthday, the glyph sketch, Sapphire Bliss’s card, Truthweaver, and Ellie’s charcoal drawing.
All survived.
Teddy also reinstalled the RGN app on our phones from Truthweaver, which felt like inviting a suspicious ghost back into the room because it once knew where the matches were.
The original “Soon” message had erased.
But it was still there in spirit.
Obviously, that did not make me feel better.
Audit result: evidence survived.
Mood: absolutely not comforted.
Ellie lifted one corner of the charcoal drawing.
Just enough to prove it existed.
Then covered it again.
Ellie and I looked at each other.
Same thought.
Had we been hanging from that thing over the weekend?
Then Teddy reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and unfolded the same sheet of notebook paper from the last reset-time test.
“I ran the reset test again,” he said.
My brain made a small unhappy noise.
While Ellie and I were at Clearwater, he had kept the paper with him and written on the back this time. Hour checks. Short notes. Tiny time stamps.
Very Teddy.
Very terrifying.
He smoothed the page on the floor between us.
“The same window,” he said. “Between one and two Sunday morning.”
Ellie looked at the paper like it might bite.
The reset had happened at the same time.
Again.
There is something horrible about a monster with a schedule.
Random is scary.
Scheduled is worse.
We packed everything back carefully. For one weird second, looking at the stack of things Clearwater had not managed to erase, I felt something almost like a win.
Small.
Fragile.
Paper-thin.
But real.
Then the word “Soon” stared up from the pile again.
And the win got teeth.
After the audit, the new rule sat there with us.
Letters first. My memories next. Ellie and Teddy’s after.
Horrible. Useful. Very on brand.
So we made another layer.
Backup of a backup of a backup.
Very normal teen afternoon.
I tore two pages from the back of my diary. Ellie drew another dragon, almost identical to the original. Teddy drew another blue box on his.
Then I copied the same recovery message onto both pages.
Backups for the window seat cache.
Because apparently my life now requires backup paperwork in multiple locations.
After that, we moved on to the altered memories Clearwater had tried to force onto us, with Teddy now officially part of the reset fun.
His contribution was mostly the occasional nod.
That was right.
That too.
Yes, unfortunately.
Nothing huge jumped out. Just little nudges. Tiny edits. The kind designed to make everything line up with Ellie and me being friends, but not girlfriends.
Subtle.
By which I mean creepy and rude.
The second apartment survived, which I already knew because the keys were still on my desk, catching the light every time I looked over.
Unfortunately for Marilyn, her big night was still ruined at the interval.
And Candy was still sitting in the middle of that thought like a poisoned cupcake.
No proof.
Obviously.
Just timing. The exact kind of social violence Candy seems to collect like limited-edition lip gloss.
I picked up the apartment keys before I could talk myself out of asking.
“Can you both help me move tomorrow?”
Ellie said yes immediately.
No hesitation.
Just yes.
Teddy could not. Chen Print still needed him, and his dad’s treatment schedule had turned “the money crisis is fixed” into “the actual life part is still smoldering.”
His words.
Annoyingly accurate.
I was disappointed.
But not at him.
That distinction matters.
Teddy is staying. Chen Print is staying. His dad has help. His mom has backup.
That is good.
It is also annoying that good news comes with logistics.
Ellie nudged my foot under the bed and said we could start tomorrow. Teddy could help with the chaos office later.
The chaos office, obviously, being the purple room with evidence, snacks, and a relocated bulletin board that makes us look deeply suspicious.
For a second, it almost felt normal.
Then I looked at the Web.
So many altered memories were written there now.
Normal does not usually require that many layers.
But we made them anyway.
Because we survived Clearwater.
And surviving, apparently, is not the same thing as being safe.
Moving into the second apartment should have felt exciting.
New space. New keys. New summer plan. Less Mom proximity. More Meridian proximity.
Excellent upgrade, theoretically.
Instead, I stood in my bedroom at home with a laundry basket full of clothes, a suitcase waiting on the floor, and Mom wearing her “you have to do your own laundry now” smile.
Unfair.
She was flying to Toronto later for the first part of her spa seminar thing—which meant she wanted as much moved across to the apartment as possible this morning before she had to leave for the airport in Halifax.
So it became a hustle.
Teddy and the print shop van would have been useful.
Instead, I had Mom’s car and her “two trips only” face.
We dumped everything in the Meridian lobby, where Mom and Gramps immediately started having an adult discussion about budgets, allowance, and keeping an eye on me.
Mom was not entirely thrilled about the apartment thing. She had assumed I would stay in my usual room in Gramps’s apartment.
But Gramps had already organized it.
Which is apparently how you win an argument without technically having one.
I said goodbye to Mom in the lobby. She said she would check in all the time, emphasized all, and reminded me that two months of living allowance was in my account for food.
Instructions: do not blow it all at once.
Tragic.
Just after she left, Ellie arrived with iced drinks from Cascades.
I nearly proposed.
Not officially.
Emotionally.
Gramps had already left the apartment door unlocked for us. He had also put a tray on the kitchen counter: sandwiches, grapes, cookies, and a note that said, Don’t try to move everything in one go.
No explanation.
No dramatic speech.
Just food and a warning against my worst instincts.
Classic Gramps.
Ellie and I started with ordinary things.
Clothes in drawers. Toothbrush in the bathroom. Hoodie on the back of the chair in my new bedroom.
The purple room stayed mostly empty.
Not empty-empty.
Waiting empty.
The kind of room someone could have used as a home office, according to Gramps.
Home office.
Sure.
Because nothing says casual admin like a room that makes my ribs ache for a person I never knew I had lost.
Holly.
I did not say her name out loud.
Ellie did not make me.
“We don’t have to decide today,” she said.
“Good, because my current design plan is panic with storage.”
“That’s a look.”
“Very summer.”
We left the purple room alone for now and moved the safer things first.
Mom texted just after lunch, because apparently even airport chaos cannot stop remote-control parenting.
Mom: Remember to check the house twice this week. Mail. Plants. Freezer. No parties.
No parties.
Amazing.
As if my main summer risk is spontaneous teenage fun and not medically scheduled memory crime.
I typed back:
Penny: Got it.
Then added:
Penny: Plants will probably survive.
Then deleted probably.
Growth.
Mom away. Me here. House checks. Mail. Plants. Rules.
I had keys. An apartment. An almost-office that felt like a ghost had filed paperwork in it.
And I still was not free.
Ellie handed me my iced drink.
“Tiny step?” she asked.
I looked around at the half-unpacked basket, the towel stack, the untouched purple room, and the keys sitting on the counter like they were trying very hard to be normal.
“Tiny step,” I said.
Then we sat on the kitchen floor and ate Gramps’s sandwiches off the tray because neither of us had found the plates yet.
Refuge, apparently, comes flat-packed.
And haunted.
Ellie and I went to the park to get a break from the apartment move.
Unboxing is more tiring than it should be. Especially when half the boxes feel like regular life and the other half feel like evidence wearing cardboard.
The town was doing that late-June thing where everything looks unfairly pretty. Green trees. Warm pavement. People carrying iced drinks. Someone walking a golden retriever that looked more emotionally stable than any adult I know.
Then we saw her.
Marilyn Moreau.
Sitting alone on a bench near the edge of the lake, sunglasses on, hair perfect, posture straight.
At first glance, she still looked like her Maple Crown poster.
At second glance, she looked like someone had printed the poster and folded it down the middle.
No camera-ready smile.
Just Marilyn with her phone in her hand, staring at the screen like it had personally betrayed her.
Ellie stopped walking.
Carefully.
I knew what she was thinking.
Friday night.
The auditorium.
The video.
It was still everywhere. Someone had posted a local update saying the Maple Crown head judge had been suspended pending investigation, police were reviewing digital evidence, and Maple Crown was assessing titleholder conduct.
(Translation: Marilyn might lose her crown even if the whole thing was a trap.)
Excellent—punish the girl who got destroyed in public.
Very modern. Very leadership. Very please throw the nearest tiara into the sea.
Social media was full of people guessing. People acting like they knew things. People using words like “underage,” “inappropriate,” “sponsor concern,” and “role model” like they were not basically piling rocks on someone already pinned down.
Ellie’s mouth tightened.
“She didn’t do what they think,” she said.
No.
She did not.
We both knew where the timing pointed. The public screen. The phone drop. Candy sitting in the middle of the whole thing like a poisoned cupcake.
But knowing is not proving.
Which is the worst kind of useless.
Marilyn looked up then.
She saw us.
For one second, her face did something honest.
Not friendly.
Not grateful.
Just cracked.
Then it shut again.
Pageant face. Polished. Remote.
Ellie took half a step forward, and Marilyn stood before she reached the bench.
“I’m fine,” Marilyn said.
Nobody had asked.
That made it worse.
Ellie stopped.
I could feel the old school map trying to redraw itself around us. Marilyn: Candy’s stepsister. Maple Crown perfect girl. Lead Role Marilyn. Girl everyone clapped for.
Now she was sitting alone in a park with sunglasses hiding her eyes and her reputation bleeding through everyone’s phones.
Ellie quietly offered help.
Marilyn’s hand tightened around her phone.
“I said I’m fine.”
Sharp.
Automatic.
A door closing before anyone could see inside.
Then she walked away, not fast, because Marilyn Moreau does not run from benches in public.
She exits.
Even wounded.
Even alone.
I still did not trust her.
That feels important to admit.
Sympathy is not the same as trust.
But for the first time, I wondered if maybe Marilyn had been surviving Candy too.
Just in better shoes.
Ellie stood by the window in my new bedroom, arms folded, watching me with that careful, practical look that means she is scared but refusing to let fear drive.
I hated what we were about to do.
Which obviously meant we did it.
Black light.
Skin check.
Very normal Tuesday activity.
I checked Ellie first.
The UV marks were still there.
And the lower back triangle points.
Not normal. Physical. Persistent.
Fantastic sentence.
Very relaxing.
Then it was my turn.
I kept my shirt clutched in front of me and tried very hard to be casual about the fact that my girlfriend was helping inspect my body for post-medical-supernatural crime-scene leftovers.
Top five normal summer activities.
Ellie handled the black light.
Wrist first.
Then chest and back.
Same result every time.
My lower back.
Three points.
Triangle.
Still not fading.
Ellie pulled my shirt down gently, then stepped around in front of me so I could look at her face instead of the wall.
“Still the same,” she said
Three words.
Not a fix.
Not even close.
But they landed.
We did not bother with Polaroids this time because the marks matched what we had already photographed.
Then we both realized the mistake at exactly the same second.
We should have checked before Clearwater.
Just to see whether the UV marks had faded completely first.
Excellent work, us.
We would check next time—make it part of our Clearwater prep.
Then I looked at Ellie and asked the question before I could overthink it.
“Can you stay tonight?”
Her face softened in that quiet Ellie way that makes my ribs behave badly.
“Yeah,” she said. “I can stay.”
Good.
Because I had keys, an apartment, and a body that kept turning into evidence.
I did not want to be brave by myself.
Canada Day arrived like Meridia Falls had not spent the last four days doing emotional crimes.
Flags everywhere.
Red and white bunting across storefronts. Tiny maple leaves taped in windows. Families heading toward the waterfront with folding chairs, coolers, toddlers, and the dangerous confidence of people who believe fireworks are a fun idea near tired children.
The town looked bright.
Which felt rude.
Not because Canada Day should not exist. I enjoy a good sparkly cupcake situation as much as the next traumatized diary goblin.
But there is something deeply unfair about walking through town after Clearwater with my body still feeling like evidence, my brain held together with letters, and everyone else acting like the world is solid.
We went to Cascades for breakfast, where the window display had been attacked by maple-leaf decorations and what looked like every red sprinkle in Nova Scotia.
Ellie had her phone in one hand.
Not scrolling exactly.
Watching.
That was worse.
“Marilyn?” I asked.
She nodded.
I already knew from her face.
“People keep saying she should have known better,” she said.
“She was the one exposed.”
“I know.”
The way she said it made my stomach twist.
Because Ellie knows what it feels like when people pick the easiest story and call it truth.
We got drinks and croissants to go and took them to the park because Cascades was packed with patriotic cheer.
Teddy joined us shortly after, apparently summoned by croissants.
He looked better than Monday.
Not fine.
Better.
There is a difference.
“Marilyn’s trending locally,” he said, which is a sentence that should be illegal.
“Trending,” I repeated.
“Not huge,” he said quickly. “But Meridia Falls huge.”
Small-town trending.
Excellent.
The worst of both worlds. Enough people to ruin your life. Not enough people to get bored quickly.
Candy’s name was nowhere.
Of course it wasn’t.
Candy did not need to be named to be present. She was in the timing. The silence. The way Sally had already posted a Canada Day selfie with Candy like the whole town had not just watched Candy’s stepsister get destroyed.
A red-and-white balloon drifted past us.
Some kid laughed nearby.
The town kept celebrating.
Marilyn kept falling.
And the worst part was that everyone could see the fall now.
They just kept calling it justice.
We found Marilyn near the lake.
Not accidentally.
Not exactly on purpose either.
More like Ellie kept looking toward the quieter edge of the park, and I followed because I am apparently very brave when my girlfriend silently decides we are doing emotionally complicated things.
Marilyn was standing by the bridge, away from the families and picnic blankets.
Sunglasses on. Hair perfect. Outfit perfect. Posture perfect.
Everything else was not.
She was holding a Cascades coffee cup she clearly was not drinking.
Ellie decided to ask if she was okay.
I decided to support this by internally listing every reason it was a terrible idea and walking with her anyway.
Marilyn saw us coming and her whole face shut like a stage curtain.
“If you’re here because of the posts, don’t bother. I’ve seen them.”
Straight to defensive.
Efficient.
Ellie did not crowd her. She just said she was sorry.
Marilyn looked away first.
Just for a second.
But I saw it.
The pageant face slipped.
Underneath was a girl who had spent years learning how to stand under lights while people judged her smile, her dress, her posture, and whether she was inspiring in the correct amount.
And now the same world had decided she was disposable.
“Everyone’s sorry,” Marilyn said.
Her voice was sharp enough to cut paper.
Ellie said she meant it.
That made Marilyn look at her again.
Not warmly.
Not gratefully.
Just like Ellie had said something she did not know where to put.
Teddy stayed back by the path, pretending to read his phone while absolutely monitoring the entire interaction like an emotional security camera.
Then Marilyn said the line that made me understand her more than I wanted to.
“I’m not a charity project.”
Ellie’s voice stayed quiet.
“You’re not.”
Then Marilyn’s phone buzzed.
Her face changed before she even unlocked it.
Not much.
Enough.
Her jaw tightened.
There it was.
Too much.
Too fast.
“Forget it,” Marilyn said.
She pushed away from the bridge and stepped around us.
Ellie did not try to stop her.
Good.
But after three steps, Marilyn paused.
She did not turn around fully.
“Thanks,” she said.
Barely.
Like the word had been dragged out against its will.
Then she kept walking.
We were back at the apartment when Teddy found it.
Ellie was with me in the purple room, sitting beside a half-unpacked box of Bobby notes, when Teddy shouted from the living room.
He came rushing in with Truthweaver and set the laptop on the floor between us.
“I think I found that UK facility,” he said. “Longstone Hall.”
The name made the room tighten.
Not magically.
Probably.
Just enough that I noticed.
He opened the video first.
BoundaryBreakerUK.
Urban explorer YouTube channel. Dramatic thumbnail. Crumbling old building. Title with too many capital letters and the words ABANDONED INSTITUTE, ARSON, and DO NOT ENTER.
Subtle.
I wanted to make a joke about trespassing being less illegal if you whisper-narrate it.
Then the building appeared.
Long gray stone front. Blackened windows. One side collapsed inward like something had eaten through it from the inside.
My headache sparked.
Small.
Fast.
There and gone.
Not a memory blast.
More like my brain flinched before I did.
Ellie noticed. Of course she did.
I shook my head once before she could ask.
Keep going.
The video moved through a cracked hallway. Peeling paint. Water damage. Warning signs. A room with old metal bedframes stacked against one wall.
Then Teddy showed us the news archive page.
LONGSTONE HALL FIRE — SEPTEMBER 26, 2015.
Same date.
The same observation weekend from Younger Penny’s diary.
The location history lined up with an old private medical facility. It closed after the fire. No one was charged.
Of course no one was charged.
Apparently abandoned mystery facilities do not come with convenient solved-crime paperwork.
Then the video reached a room.
Cracked white tiled floor.
Rusted metal rail along one wall.
My fingers went cold.
Not a full memory.
Not even a flash.
Just cold hand sanitizer.
A hallway too white.
Someone saying my name too gently.
Then it was gone.
Ellie reached for Younger Penny’s second diary and found the entry from that Clearwater weekend.
We had to know.
Ellie’s hand found mine.
So I touched the page.
Boom.
Smoke.
Alarms screaming overhead.
People shouting evacuation.
The air tasted like panic and fire.
And in the middle of it—
That room.
White tiled floor.
Metal rail.
Same as the video.
We both came out of the memory blast gasping.
Confirmation.
The building from Younger Penny’s diary was real.
The room was real.
Longstone Hall.
September 26, 2015.
Arson.
Old medical facility.
No one charged.
We printed the pages and took Polaroids from the video.
A building from Younger Penny’s diary was not just a memory anymore.
It was a place.
And places can be found.
Ellie had stayed over last night without me even asking her.
It felt normal.
It felt right.
So right that over breakfast, while we were sitting on the apartment kitchen floor eating toast because plates were still in a box labeled probably kitchen?, I suggested she stay here for the summer too.
Not officially move in—obviously.
Except also, emotionally, yes.
Ellie said yes before I even finished.
Which was unfair to my heart, honestly.
I checked with Gramps. Ellie checked with her dad.
Both said yes.
So for one perfect breakfast, the world felt like it had accidentally handed me something good and forgotten to attach teeth.
Perfect apartment.
Perfect morning.
Perfect girl.
Then Candy texted.
Of course she did.
She did not appear in a cloud of perfume and consequences. She pinged Ellie’s phone at 10:42am, right when I was starting to believe toast on the floor counted as domestic bliss.
Ellie looked at the screen, and her face did that thing where it changed without moving.
Tiny freeze.
Tiny wall.
My toast immediately tasted like cardboard.
“Candy?” I asked.
Ellie nodded and turned the phone so I could see.
Three Falls party planning.
This afternoon.
Final details.
Bring ideas.
Don’t be weird.
Okay, the last part was not written, but it was absolutely there in spirit.
Because apparently we cannot just let a waterfall be a waterfall in this town.
I told her she did not have to go.
Which was true.
Also not true.
That is the problem with Candy. She builds traps that look like choices, then acts shocked when everyone bleeds.
If Ellie refused, Candy would want to know why.
Ellie did not say Marilyn.
She did not have to.
Friday night had shown us what Candy’s leverage could do when she wanted someone punished in public.
So she typed the safest version of yes.
Ellie: I can help with setup.
A careful sentence trying not to look scared.
Then she locked her phone and set it facedown on the floor.
I said I would work on the purple room while she was gone. Teddy was coming after lunch, so he could help with the chaos office of doom.
Normal life, bravely ignoring the fact that my girlfriend had just agreed to orbit Candy again.
Not join.
Not surrender.
Orbit.
Close enough to be watched.
I reached for her hand.
“First dinner tonight of living together,” I said.
Ellie smiled.
“Something to look forward to.”
And it was.
But Candy would find out about Ellie staying here.
No hiding that.
So the official story would be simple: Ellie was keeping me company while Mom was away.
Which was technically true.
My favorite kind of lie.
Teddy arrived soon after Ellie left for Candy’s place.
I brought him up to speed on the new living arrangement and the Candy message.
He tried to downplay the Candy thing.
Didn’t work.
So we built the diary chaos office instead.
Official name pending.
Probably.
Maybe.
Honestly, it already had a strong brand.
We debated moving the bed, but it wasn’t hurting anything. Also, any room designed for emotional chaos should probably include the option of a crisis nap.
The purple walls still had that waiting feeling.
The AC vent was in almost the exact same place as the one in my old bedroom, which meant my brain immediately made the connection.
Secret hiding place.
Green diaries.
Letter.
Memory blast.
Rude of architecture to have themes.
Teddy saw me looking at the vent.
Of course he did.
His eyes softened for half a second.
Then we started with the window seat.
If it had worked in my old room, it could work here.
I lined the inside with loose notebook paper, like I was making a nest for evidence instead of a very strange craft project.
The idea was not magic.
At least, not magic we understood.
It was a pattern.
Diary paper mattered. Letters mattered. Physical paper remembered better than screens.
So maybe another cache lined with notebook pages was ridiculous.
Maybe it was brilliant.
Maybe both.
We decided to leave a notebook page inside the old window seat too, with one simple note:
Relocated to the purple room.
Just in case.
Another backup.
Because apparently my life now requires forwarding addresses for evidence.
Then came the diaries.
We split them between the AC vent in my old bedroom and the one in the purple room.
The old vent had protected them once, or hidden them, or trapped them, or all three. Taking all of them away from the original hiding place felt wrong.
But after the next Clearwater visit, I would be coming back to my new bedroom.
New room. New return point. New variable.
So we covered both bases.
My life is basically a nesting doll of panic systems.
We took Polaroids before moving anything else.
One of the lined window seat.
One of the vent.
I almost laughed at that one, because imagine explaining to a normal person why you need photographic proof of a vent.
Then I remembered normal people probably do not have childhood diaries written in impossible bookstore notebooks and decided not to judge myself.
After that, we moved the bulletin board from my old bedroom into the purple room and rebuilt Bobby.
Not fully.
Not beautifully.
But enough.
Teddy stood back and looked at it.
“Bobby has leveled up,” he said.
“Bobby needs therapy.”
“Bobby needs wall space.”
Unfortunately, every word of that was true.
By the time we finished, the room felt better.
Not safe exactly.
Safe is a big word.
But usable.
A place with boxes, paper, light, a vent, a window-seat cache, and a board full of things that should not be connected but absolutely were.
Almost ordinary.
That was the problem.
It felt like we had made the purple room ours.
And like maybe, somehow, it had been waiting for that.
Ellie came back from Candy’s place with grocery bags, a tired face, and enough pasta to feed either two girlfriends or one emotionally distressed Italian family.
So obviously, we made spaghetti bolognese.
First dinner in the new apartment.
Technically, first dinner living together.
Not officially.
Emotionally.
Very officially.
I chopped onions badly. Ellie handled the sauce because she respects food and apparently does not believe “burnt but enthusiastic” counts as a cooking style. The apartment smelled like garlic, tomatoes, and something almost normal.
Which was suspicious.
Over dinner, Ellie gave me the Candy Gang highlights.
Three Falls party.
Probably the second weekend in August.
Great, even Clearwater can’t save us from that.
Lower pool. Music. Snacks. Photos. Outfits.
Candy acting like she was organizing a lifestyle magazine spread instead of an outdoor gathering beside a waterfall with unresolved glowing-tree-crack energy.
Then Ellie’s voice changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“She asked about Steve Dillon again.”
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.
“Results?”
Ellie nodded. “She said she wanted results before the party.”
Of course she did.
Because apparently Candy cannot enjoy nature unless someone’s emotional destruction is scheduled first.
Ellie said it lightly, but her hand tightened around her glass. Candy had not said Marilyn. She had not needed to. Friday night had already shown us what “results” could look like when Candy decided someone was useful until they were disposable.
We were still sitting at the kitchen table when something tapped the window.
Once.
Sharp.
Then again.
Just a sound that very much should not have been part of our first dinner.
A crow sat on the window ledge outside.
Black feathers.
Tilted head.
Too-still body.
Brandon the crow.
Or probably just a different crow.
But still watching.
Us.
“Nope,” I whispered.
The crow tapped the glass with its beak.
Tiny sound.
Tiny nightmare.
Ellie came up beside me, still holding her napkin like that was somehow going to help against a suspicious bird.
She did not say it was just a bird.
Good girlfriend behavior.
Excellent supernatural-crime-scene etiquette.
I grabbed the Polaroid, but naturally the crow flew off before I could take a photo.
For a second, neither of us moved.
First dinner.
New apartment.
Crow at the window.
Romance, apparently, comes with surveillance.
Then my phone pinged.
The RGN app.
Saturday. Sunset. 7pm. Meridia Park. Old birdwatching hide. Back of the lake. Just you and Ellie. A Friend.
Ellie read it over my shoulder.
Her napkin was still in her hand.
“Just us,” she said.
I nodded.
Not Teddy.
That was the part that made my stomach go colder.
Teddy was part of the system now. Part of the evidence. Part of the panic admin. Leaving him out felt intentional.
Or like a trap.
Or both, because apparently mystery messages are overachievers.
I checked the app again.
No explanation.
No helpful little button that said Click here to understand why your life is like this.
Just the message.
I wrote it on a Post-it note and pinned it to Bobby in the purple room, because that is what we do now when something creepy finds us during dinner.
Then we reheated the sauce because we were still hungry for our first official meal living together.
Very romantic.
Very haunted.
Later, we locked all the windows.
Then checked them again because romance is nice, but survival has excellent follow-through.
We curled up under the blanket in my new bedroom—our new bedroom—still fully dressed, still too awake, Ellie’s hand tucked into mine like an anchor that had actually worked.
For a while, neither of us talked about Candy.
Or Steve Dillon.
Or the crow.
Or Saturday.
We just listened to the Meridian settle around us and pretended that a locked window meant the world knew how to stay outside.
It did not.
But Ellie was there.
And that had to count for something.
Friday morning started with Ellie’s dad’s driver taking us to the South Bay Peninsula to collect some of her things.
Because apparently when your girlfriend sort-of-officially moves in for the summer, you need more than one overnight bag and the emotional power of spaghetti.
Ellie’s house still looked like it belonged in a magazine about people who own throw pillows nobody is allowed to touch.
Big windows.
Perfect lawn.
Pool glittering in the sun like it had never once worried about memory resets, medical surveillance, or crows with boundary issues.
I stood in the driveway with my backpack over one shoulder and said, “You’re giving up all this to move in with me for the summer?”
Ellie looked at the house, then at me.
“It was fifty-fifty between you and the pool,” she said. “You just scraped it.”
Rude.
Romantic.
Extremely Ellie.
I swear, she says things like that and expects my internal organs to behave normally.
We packed clothes first. Not everything. Just enough to make the summer feel real. T-shirts, jeans, summer dresses, pajamas, sketchbook hoodies, the soft cardigan she wears when she is trying to pretend she is fine but has absolutely betrayed herself with sleeves.
Then bathroom things.
She threatened to bring one of her Doctor Who posters.
I pretended I didn’t hear her.
Her room did not look abandoned when we left.
That mattered.
It looked like she was coming back.
Which she was.
Probably.
Great, now I had made packing emotionally complicated. Very on brand.
The driver helped load the bags into the car and did not comment on the fact that Ellie and I were carrying the mood of two people moving in together and also possibly walking into a trap on Saturday.
Excellent professional discretion.
Back at the Meridian, we carried her things upstairs and put them where mine had only just started pretending to belong.
Her clothes in the bedroom.
Her toothbrush beside mine.
Her hair clips in the bathroom drawer.
A second life settling into the apartment in small, ordinary pieces.
Mom called while Ellie was putting the rest of her bathroom things away.
I gave her the official update: alive, fed, plants not dead yet, no parties.
I did not mention that my girlfriend’s toothbrush in the bathroom had caused a small emotional event.
Growth through omission.
For about five minutes, I let myself enjoy that.
Then I crossed to the purple room and pulled up the blind.
That was when I saw the Post-it note on Bobby.
The park meeting.
The part where someone or something had invited us to a creepy park meeting and specifically left Teddy out.
Domestic bliss—interrupted by surveillance.
Classic.
Ellie stood beside me, arms folded, looking at the board.
“We should tell Teddy,” she said.
“Yes.”
I messaged him while Ellie unpacked some more clothes.
Penny: Can you meet us at Cascades this afternoon? RGN update. Weird one.
He replied two minutes later.
Teddy: Obviously. What kind of weird?
I looked at the Post-it again.
The words “Just you and Ellie” sat there like they had teeth.
I typed back:
Penny: The kind we need ice cream for.
We met Teddy at Cascades as planned.
Technically, I said we needed ice cream.
Which was true.
Also, I needed to tell my best friend that a mysterious app message had invited me and my girlfriend to a park meeting and specifically left him out.
So, ice cream.
Crisis dairy.
Very important.
Teddy was already there when Ellie and I arrived.
He looked at both of us.
Then at my face.
Then at Ellie’s.
Then back to me.
“Okay,” he said. “What kind of weird?”
I showed him the message on my phone.
Teddy read it once.
Then again.
His face did not change much.
“Just you and Ellie,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He nodded slowly.
Not hurt.
So obviously, probably hurt.
Teddy said it could be a trap.
Excellent. Fresh thought. Hadn’t occurred to me.
Then he offered to follow at a distance.
Safety shadow, apparently.
Creepy phrase.
Ellie compared it to what she did with Sapphire Bliss, and Teddy immediately tried to say he could do it “better,” then corrected himself so fast he nearly pulled a muscle.
Better hidden.
Not better morally.
Obviously.
That got a smile out of Ellie, which felt like a tiny win in a week mostly made of evidence, body marks, and birds with boundary issues.
We got our ice creams and took them down to the boardwalk because Cascades was full of people pretending summer was simple.
Outside, the air smelled like lake water, waffle cones, and sunscreen. Boats knocked softly against the dock. Someone’s little kid was losing a battle with a melting vanilla scoop.
Normal life, aggressively committed to its brand.
Teddy walked on my other side, quiet for longer than usual.
Then he remembered that Saturday evening he was supposed to be in Halifax with his mom and Squirt, visiting his dad.
“I can miss it,” he said.
I looked at him.
“No.”
He tried again, because of course he did.
His dad would understand.
That was not the point.
Teddy had missed enough.
So had all of them.
“We are not dragging you away from your dad because some app with commitment issues sent me a birdwatching invite.”
He gave me the exact look people give when they absolutely do not believe you but are trying to respect the shape of your sentence.
Ellie said we would be careful.
Teddy said careful was not a plan.
No.
But it was more than we usually had.
He did not laugh.
Fair.
We kept walking.
For a while, we talked through practical things. Phone charged. Polaroid in my backpack. Public park. Sunset, not midnight. No going inside anything. No following anyone anywhere.
No touching suspicious objects unless absolutely necessary.
Teddy said absolutely necessary should mean “never.”
I said that was adorable optimism.
Then Ellie mentioned Marilyn.
Not because it connected directly.
Because everything connects now, apparently.
No one had seen her since Tuesday.
Not online. No new posts. No Candy-adjacent sightings.
Candy-adjacent sightings.
Horrible phrase.
I looked out across the water.
“I hope Marilyn is okay,” I said.
It felt strange to mean it.
Teddy nodded.
Ellie’s hand brushed mine.
The boardwalk stretched ahead of us, bright with summer people and flags still hanging from Canada Day, like the town had decided red and white decorations could cover anything if you left them up long enough.
They could not.
By the time we circled back toward the Meridian, Saturday had turned into a problem with two locations.
Meridia Park, where “A Friend” wanted me and Ellie at sunset.
Halifax, where Teddy was supposed to be with his family.
No explanation.
No backup.
Just a birdwatching hide at the back of the lake, a message that knew exactly who to ask for—and a best friend it somehow knew to leave out.
If you’d like to talk about this diary entry, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the chat.
Stay tuned, stay enchanted, and stay connected!
Warmest Regards,
DB
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