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.
Ellie and I went to Cascades after breakfast because the diary deep dive had been moved earlier than usual, and if we were going to voluntarily shove our brains into Younger Penny’s trauma archives before lunch, we needed supplies.
Not snacks.
Supplies.
There is a difference.
Teddy was leaving for Halifax in the afternoon with his mom and Squirt to visit his dad, then staying overnight.
And Ellie and I had the old birdwatching hide in Meridia Park waiting for us at sunset.
So our usual Saturday timing had been compressed into something more aggressive and less emotionally recommended.
Classic us.
Cascades had red, white, and blue cupcakes near the counter because apparently July 4 counts as a cupcake opportunity even when you are in Canada.
Tourists, probably.
Or capitalism.
Hard to say.
I bought a box of four anyway, because nothing says healthy emotional processing like American flag sprinkles on childhood trauma.
We also got sandwiches, because Teddy would absolutely use the phrase “blood sugar crash” if we tried to survive on frosting alone.
Rude but accurate.
Teddy arrived not long after we got back to my apartment, which still felt weird to say.
My apartment.
Like I had a lease, a life plan—and furniture that did not involve hidden diaries in vents.
He had the expression of someone who had decided emotional doom could be made more manageable through file structure.
Very Teddy.
We ate first because he pointed at the sandwiches and said, “Before the trauma archive,” in a tone that did not invite democracy.
Then we set up deep dive camp in the purple room for the first time.
Fourth diary.
Matrix open.
Cupcakes waiting like tiny frosted morale officers.
And the day already running out of safe hours.
The fourth diary did not waste time being gentle.
Rude.
We ran through several memory blasts first. Kid stuff. School. Ordinary diary things that should have felt ordinary except I kept looking for Holly in every corner, reflection, half-heard voice, and weird gap between sentences.
Nothing.
Just Younger Penny being Younger Penny.
Until she wrote about the bad room.
That was what she called it.
Not a nightmare.
Not a memory.
Not a medical thing.
The bad room from a dream.
Simple.
Child-level.
Horrifying.
Ellie’s hand squeezed mine as the memory blast hit.
Darkness came first.
Not normal darkness. Thick, airless, heavy darkness with a low mechanical hum buried inside it.
My arm hurt.
Not my arm exactly.
Her arm.
Younger Penny’s arm.
Cold skin. Taped pressure. Something pulling from inside the vein.
I was hanging.
Cables ran from my body upward into the dark.
Around me, shapes hung in rows.
People… kids.
Bodies suspended in the dark, unmoving, each connected to cables or tubes that disappeared above them. I could not see faces clearly. Only outlines. Hair. Limbs. Legs—a dangling hand.
One shape looked too much like Ellie.
Another might have been Logan.
Might have been.
Which was somehow worse than knowing.
My chest locked.
Ellie’s hand squeezed mine so hard our fingers hurt.
She was seeing it too.
The room shifted. Younger Penny tried to scream, but the sound did not come properly. Somewhere nearby, something clicked and pulsed.
Someone twitched.
Then we snapped back.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
Teddy’s voice came carefully.
“What did you see?”
Ellie pointed at the covered charcoal drawing on Bobby.
“That,” she said, voice shaky.
The hanging room.
The room from my earlier memory blast.
The room Ellie had drawn before either of us wanted to admit what it might mean.
And now Younger Penny had written it down.
Teddy added Ellie’s description to the Matrix while I checked the dates around the entry.
That made it worse.
The bad room dreams kept turning up after Clearwater observation weekends.
Not every time.
Often enough.
Pattern enough.
And there were more ripped pages too.
Always after Clearwater weekends.
Clean removals. Deliberate. Like someone had taken the sharpest parts out and left the edges behind to mock us.
After a cupcake break—because apparently sugar is now part of our investigative methodology—we decided the slow Saturday deep-dive schedule was no longer enough.
We needed to up our speed and stop treating Saturdays like a diary club.
More like a deadline with snacks.
Teddy wanted the fourth diary finished.
The Fifth too.
As soon as possible.
No more missed sessions.
“Expedite the trauma library,” I said.
Ellie looked at the ripped paper edges, then at me.
“Before the gaps get bigger than the memories.”
That landed.
Hard.
Teddy checked the time and cursed under his breath, which meant Halifax was officially becoming urgent.
He packed fast, tucking the remaining cupcake for Squirt into the side pocket of his backpack like classified cargo.
At the door, he made us promise to text when we left, when we got to the park, and the second the meeting was over.
“We’ll be careful,” I said.
“That’s not the same as promising.”
Ellie stepped beside me. “We promise.”
“No ominous wildlife after 9pm,” I added.
He did not smile.
Tough crowd.
Then he hugged me.
Quick. Hard.
The kind of hug that says do not make me regret not being there.
He hugged Ellie too, a little awkwardly but real.
Then he left for Halifax with Squirt’s cupcake and half the room’s oxygen.
After the door closed, Ellie and I stood there, listening to the apartment settle around us.
Fourth diary open on the desk.
Ripped pages taunting us.
Bad room back behind my eyes.
Crow meeting ahead.
So yeah.
Excellent Saturday afternoon.
Ellie and I left the apartment with the kind of careful calm that only happens when two people are absolutely not calm.
Phones charged.
Polaroid ready.
Teddy texted before we even reached the stairs.
Teddy: Update me. Immediately.
So that was soothing.
“Public park,” I said. “Sunset. Old birdwatching hide. Very wholesome.”
Ellie raised one eyebrow.
“Okay. Mildly murdery wholesome.”
That got the smallest smile out of her.
Meridia Park looked offensively pretty in the evening light. Families near the main paths. Joggers. Dog walkers. A kid on a scooter making deeply unsafe life choices.
Normal.
The old birdwatching hide was at the back of the lake, where the path narrowed—and the nice public-park feeling started quietly backing away.
A black crow sat on the railing, glossy and still, watching us like it had arrived early and found our punctuality disappointing.
My stomach did the drop thing.
Ellie inhaled beside me.
The crow tilted its head.
Once.
Then twice.
Like it recognized us.
Like it had always recognized us.
I lifted the Polaroid.
The crow did not fly away.
Rude.
The camera clicked, spitting out the picture with a soft mechanical whirr that sounded way too loud in the quiet.
The crow watched.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then the air around the crow started to bend.
No lightning.
No dramatic swirl of black feathers.
No soundtrack.
Which, honestly, felt rude. If reality was going to break in front of me, the least it could do was commit to the production value.
Instead, the air folded.
The crow stayed on the railing, and its edges became wrong. Wings pulled inward. Shadows tucked into themselves. The glossy black shape stretched too long, then too tall, like someone had grabbed the idea of a bird and quietly rewritten it while we were watching.
My hand tightened around the Polaroid.
Ellie did not move.
I was standing there with my brain trying to evacuate through my ears, and Ellie was studying the impossible bird situation like panic could wait until after she gathered enough visual references.
Artist priorities.
The last of the crow-shape folded away.
A man stood on the other side of the railing.
For one second, my brain refused him.
Nope.
Try again.
He was not old-old. Not young. Somewhere in the middle, with dark skin, close-cropped hair, dark clothes, tired eyes, and the stillness of someone who had spent a long time learning how not to be seen.
He looked human.
Somehow, that made it worse.
“Penny Summers,” he said.
My stomach immediately filed a formal complaint.
Ellie stepped half a pace closer to me.
Not behind me.
Beside me.
Important distinction.
“You don’t get to say my name like we have an appointment at the dentist,” I said, because apparently my mouth had chosen survival through sarcasm.
One corner of his mouth moved.
“That’s fair.”
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
Not cold, but controlled—like every word had to pass through three locked doors before it reached us.
“Who are you?” Ellie asked.
“My name is Tobin Cross.”
Tobin Cross.
No headache.
No memory blast.
No phone glitch.
No warning siren except the normal kind, which had been screaming since sunset.
I kept the Polaroid raised anyway.
Then Ellie asked the question sitting between us.
“Are you ‘A Friend’?”
He looked toward the lake.
“Yes.”
There it was.
The RGN messages. “Soon.” The crow at the window. The birdwatching hide. Teddy being told not to come.
“A Friend” had a face.
A name.
And, apparently, a bird setting.
“You’ve been watching us,” I said.
He did not answer immediately.
Which was answer enough.
Ellie’s jaw tightened.
“You understand how creepy that is, right?”
“Yes.”
Again with the one-word honesty.
Infuriating.
Then he looked at the Polaroid.
“You were right to bring that.”
I almost lowered it out of pure instinct.
Did not.
“Thanks. I do like collecting evidence of impossible bird crimes.”
Another almost-smile.
Then his expression shifted.
More careful.
More tired.
“There’s another name,” he said. “One you may have seen already.”
My skin prickled.
Ellie went still beside me.
“Some people used to call me the Rogue Ghost.”
The park went brain-quiet.
RG.
The USB.
The strange video.
The name buried inside a system that should not have existed.
He did not say he sent Teddy the USB.
He said he arranged for it to reach him.
Not yes.
Not exactly.
Very adult.
Very slippery.
My trust level did a graceful dive off a cliff.
The Polaroid developed slowly in my hand.
Proof, maybe.
Or at least proof that reality had once again looked me directly in the face and said—let’s make this worse.
The Rogue Ghost looked toward the path, then back at us.
“I cannot stay long.”
“Convenient.”
Then he said he wanted us to know he was real.
And that the USB had not come from nowhere.
“Ruby?” Ellie asked.
Something changed in his face.
Small.
Painful.
“Yes. She was a dear friend.”
Small words.
Soft enough that they did not sound like information.
They sounded like a bruise.
I wanted to push harder.
I also very much did not.
Both feelings were rude.
So, obviously, the conversation got worse.
We left the park after the Rogue Ghost turned back into a crow.
I keep writing that like it is a sentence normal language can hold.
It cannot.
Before he changed, he told us he would contact us again soon.
That word again.
I officially hated it now.
Then he turned toward the trees.
There was also a thin metal tube involved, because apparently the impossible needed accessories.
He raised it toward his neck, something clicked—and the air folded the same way it had before.
Human into shadow.
Shadow into wings.
Wings into crow.
Very normal.
Deeply fine.
By the time Ellie and I got back to the apartment, my phone already felt too heavy in my hand.
Meeting over. Alive. Back at apartment.
We needed to update Teddy.
Then I locked the door and checked the windows, because apparently I had become a person with rituals.
Love that for me.
Ellie did not comment.
She just sat on the couch, too quiet, Polaroids in both hands.
Crow in one.
Man in the other.
Proof, maybe.
Or tiny squares of paper saying: yes, your life really is this weird.
I called Teddy on speaker.
He answered before the first ring finished.
“Tell me.”
So we did.
Badly.
Because there is no elegant way to say, “The crow turned into a man, introduced himself as Tobin Cross, admitted he was “A Friend,” said some people used to call him the Rogue Ghost, then turned back into a crow.”
Teddy went quiet at the name.
Quieter at RG.
Completely silent at Rogue Ghost.
The speaker crackled softly.
“Teddy?” I said.
“I’m here.”
I told him the Rogue Ghost had arranged for the USB to reach him.
Arranged.
His word.
Ellie told him about Ruby.
A dear friend.
That silence was different.
Teddy heard the bruise in it too.
Then came the apology.
Sorry for excluding you.
Because of your dad.
Another silence.
Sharper this time.
“He knew enough about your dad to use him as a reason,” I said.
“Great,” Teddy said. “A fortune teller too.”
Ellie made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh if the room had been kinder.
Then I said the part that had been sitting under my ribs since the park.
“He said he wanted us safe.”
Teddy paused for a moment before he spoke.
“Do we believe him?”
Ellie looked at me.
I looked at the Polaroid.
“I think he meant it,” I said. “But I do not think that makes him safe.”
“No,” Teddy said. “It doesn’t.”
That helped.
A little.
Not because it fixed anything.
Because Teddy was still Teddy.
Still there.
Still thinking with us, even from Halifax, even with his dad in a hospital and Squirt probably eating the cupcake somewhere in the background.
Then Ellie said, “He seemed bound by something.”
I turned toward her.
She was staring at the Polaroid, thumb resting against the white border.
“He kept stopping himself,” she said. “Not like he was enjoying control. More like there were lines he could not cross.”
Teddy was quieter after that.
Less joke.
More system.
He thought the Rogue Ghost might be holding back because he had to.
Or because he wanted to control the timing.
Annoyingly, both options fit.
“Gramps has lines too,” I said.
Teddy’s voice sharpened. “And the Rogue Ghost knows that?”
“Seems like it.”
I tried to remember the wording. The exact shape of it.
“Something like… Walter wants him to help us. Keep us safe.”
“Oh, brilliant.”
“Right?”
“Fantastic. Very soothing.”
Ellie looked between the phone and me.
“Different constraints,” she said softly. “Not the same rules. But both of them have rules.”
Rules.
Constraints.
Adults and their invisible chains.
Gramps withholding things with warm eyes and cinnamon buns.
The Rogue Ghost withholding things with crow wings and apologies.
Different.
But maybe not separate.
I hated that thought enough to want snacks.
After the call ended, the apartment felt too quiet.
Ellie set the Polaroids on the coffee table between us.
Crow.
Man.
Proof.
Warning.
Maybe rescue.
I looked at the Post-it note I had just written.
TOBIN CROSS = RG / ROGUE GHOST. USB CAME THROUGH HIM. RUBY = DEAR FRIEND. GRAMPS KNOWS HIM. SOON.
Then, underneath:
FRIEND DOES NOT MEAN SAFE.
I underlined that one.
Not because I wanted it to be true.
Because it already was.
After one more Rogue Ghost debrief over breakfast with Teddy on speaker, Ellie went to church.
Healthy coping.
Suspicious, but healthy.
I waited outside in the park like usual.
When Ellie came out, she looked tired but steadier.
I did not ask how it went.
She did not ask if I had spent the whole time checking for crows.
Balance.
We walked to Cascades after, because apparently the correct follow-up to supernatural surveillance, best-friend emotional damage, and church is iced drinks and pastry.
Honestly, not the worst system.
Cascades was full of people talking about Canada being knocked out of the World Cup like this was the worst thing July had done so far.
Adorable.
That was when the new server appeared behind the counter.
“Hi,” she said brightly.
I blinked.
Ellie blinked.
The girl had red hair.
Not Ellie red. Not impossible-to-ignore Ellie red.
This was softer. Coppery. Pulled into a loose ponytail, with a few curls escaping around her face.
“I’m Charlotte, by the way,” she said. “Charlotte Slayter. First day, so if I bring you the wrong drinks, please pretend it’s part of the charm.”
Ellie smiled properly then, which made something in my chest loosen.
“I’m Ellie.”
“Penny.”
Charlotte nodded like she was filing the names away in the normal server way.
Important distinction.
She recommended a lemon tart, had Strong Pastry Opinions about syrup levels, and noticed Ellie’s sketchbook without pouncing on it.
“Are you an artist?” Charlotte asked.
Ellie’s hand went to the edge of her bag.
A tiny guarded movement.
“Kind of.”
“She is,” I said. “A brilliant one.”
Ellie glanced at me, embarrassed but not annoyed.
Charlotte smiled like she understood not to push. “Cool. I’m terrible at drawing. My stick figures look emotionally distressed.”
“Relatable.”
She laughed and went to put in our order.
Normal.
Probably.
Maybe I was just ruined now.
After Cascades, Ellie said she probably needed a few more things for the apartment.
Very practical.
Very reasonable.
Very mature.
Naturally, this somehow turned into a trip to the Halifax mall.
In our defense, she did need more clothes there. T-shirts. Pajamas. Socks. A dress that did not have to travel back and forth like it was living a double life.
Domestic logistics.
Extremely dangerous.
The mall was loud, bright, air-conditioned, and full of people buying things like reality had not recently become bird-shaped.
For almost an hour, it worked.
Almost.
Ellie found two soft vest tops, sleep shorts, regular shorts, shoes, and a summer dress she claimed was “practical,” even though she kept tugging at the hem like it wasn’t quite long enough.
Apparently, this was only phase one of Operation Ellie Actually Lives Here Now.
I bought hair clips because living with someone who owns art supplies means needing backup methods of keeping charcoal out of your face.
We shared fries from the food court.
Normal couple behavior.
Technically.
Then I saw Candy.
Because of course I did.
She was near the escalators with Kaelyn, both of them carrying shopping bags and looking like the mall had been built specifically to flatter them.
My whole body went nope.
Ellie saw my face before she saw Candy.
“What?”
I tilted my head.
She looked.
Immediate strategic retreat.
“Store,” I said.
“Store,” she agreed.
We ducked into the nearest one, which turned out to be full of scented candles, bath bombs, and tiny inspirational signs that said things like BREATHE and CHOOSE JOY.
Excellent hiding place.
Very subtle.
Ellie picked up a candle and pretended to read the label.
“Are we hiding?”
“No,” I said. “We are browsing defensively.”
Candy and Kaelyn passed the entrance without looking in.
Probably.
I watched through a gap between two shelves of aggressively cheerful bath salts until they disappeared into the crowd.
My heart was beating too fast.
Which was stupid.
Candy had not seen us. Candy had not done anything. Candy was allowed to exist in malls.
Legally, unfortunately.
But seeing her anywhere felt like spotting a lit match near curtains.
Ellie set the candle down.
“It was supposed to be normal,” she said.
“Bold plan.”
She gave me a look.
“I know.”
We stayed in the candle shop for another five minutes because leaving too quickly would have made us look suspicious to absolutely no one except me.
Then we bought one small vanilla candle because guilt shopping is apparently real.
By the time we got back to the Meridian, the apartment felt less like a bunker and more like a place we had chosen to return to.
Ellie tried on all her new clothes in the bedroom, one outfit after another, like this was a totally normal thing and not my heart being personally attacked by domestic happiness.
I did not make a big emotional thing of it.
Although my heart certainly did.
We made grilled cheese, ate it at the kitchen counter, added the vanilla candle to the kitchen shelf like responsible adults with exactly one decorative object, and then reached the serious evening question.
Movie.
Usually I picked.
Not because Ellie could not. More because my brain has an emergency catalog of old films ready at all times, and Ellie lets me deploy it like a coping mechanism with opening credits.
But the apartment had her clothes in it now.
Her toothbrush.
Her sketchbook.
So I handed her the remote.
“You choose.”
Ellie looked at the screen.
Then at me.
Then back at the screen.
Absolute panic.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Anything.”
“That is too much power.”
“You deserve power.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Dangerous beginning.”
She scrolled for a while. Too long. Past comedies. Past musicals. Past one extremely dramatic-looking thriller involving a lighthouse and probably poor decisions.
I nudged her knee with mine.
“We can watch Doctor Who, if you want.”
Ellie went still.
Not scared still.
Not Candy still.
Fan still.
I had made a mistake.
Her eyes lit up like I had just handed her a key to a secret room.
“Which Doctor?” she asked.
I blinked.
Right.
Multiple Doctors.
Obviously.
Very normal television behavior.
I suggested the latest stuff.
Ellie gently informed me that since everything was on a bit of a hiatus, this was actually the perfect time to bring me up to speed properly.
“Properly sounds dangerous.”
Her smile widened.
“It means from the beginning.”
“That sounds worse.”
“I’m going to make you a proper fangirl.”
“I regret being supportive.”
Which was how we ended up making a round trip to Ellie’s house.
An hour later, thanks to Gramps and his apparently endless patience with teenage side quests, we came back with a canvas bag full of DVDs, Blu-rays, snacks, and the expression of someone who had accepted a sacred responsibility.
Also, apparently, a plan.
Not a casual plan.
A full important-episodes, teach-me-the-lore-before-the-show-comes-back plan.
“I thought we were watching an episode,” I said.
“We are.”
I looked at the bag.
“Ellie.”
She held up the case like evidence in a trial.
“‘An Unearthly Child.’ 1963. First episode. First Doctor. First TARDIS.”
“You have been waiting for this.”
“I have been preparing emotionally for this.”
“That is worse.”
She smiled properly.
The kind that made the whole room feel less watched.
So apparently Sunday nights were Doctor Who nights now.
Saturday movies were mine.
This was hers.
Fair, technically.
Dangerous, obviously.
But fair.
Teddy returned from Halifax early with the expression of someone who had slept badly, eaten gas-station snacks, and been personally insulted by medical parking fees.
So obviously Ellie and I met him for breakfast at Cascades in the usual booth.
With pancakes.
Extra syrup.
Apology-shaped.
Charlotte, the new server from yesterday, brought them up to our booth and introduced herself to Teddy with first-day brightness that had somehow survived into day two.
Teddy managed a polite hello, which was impressive considering he looked like sleep had personally abandoned him.
Then he looked at the plate.
Then at us.
“What did you do?”
“Rude,” I said.
“Accurate,” Ellie said quietly.
I waited until he had taken one bite before telling him the truly serious news.
“We started Doctor Who night.”
Teddy stopped chewing.
Ellie made a tiny guilty sound beside me.
“You what?”
“It was spontaneous,” I said.
“That is not a defense.”
“You were in Halifax.”
“Still not a defense.”
Then Ellie admitted we had started with the first story.
His face changed.
Not angry.
Worse.
Wounded fan betrayal.
This was sacred chronology.
“I didn’t know there were rules,” I said.
Teddy looked at me. “There are always rules.”
“Very normal television behavior,” I muttered.
Ellie tried not to smile and failed.
Then Teddy sighed, the dramatic kind, which meant he had not fully forgiven us but was willing to enjoy the moral high ground.
“Fine,” he said. “Next Sunday, I’m there.”
Something about the way he said it made Ellie’s smile soften.
“Good,” she said.
Teddy took another bite of his pancakes with the dignity of someone accepting betrayal compensation.
I should have felt offended.
Mostly, I was relieved.
Teddy missing Doctor Who felt wrong.
Like seeing a Dalek decide to take up yoga.
After breakfast, Teddy went home to sleep for approximately six hundred years.
Or, according to him, “maybe an hour.”
Same thing.
Ellie and I left Cascades and cut back through Main Street, still carrying the emotional weight of pancake-based Doctor Who betrayal, when Monday apparently decided to remind me that scary did not always mean supernatural.
Marilyn Moreau was standing outside Lavish Couture Boutique like someone had posed her there for a photo shoot called Girl Pretending Not to Fall Apart.
She looked polished.
Which was how I knew she was not okay.
People who are okay do not stand that still.
The first week after the Spellbound Harmony disaster had been whispers.
This was different—whispers had become permission.
As Ellie and I walked past, people looked too long, laughed too sharply, and angled their phones like they were checking messages.
They were not checking messages.
Marilyn did not react.
That made it worse.
Ellie went quiet beside me.
Not scared quiet.
Angry quiet.
“That’s not just gossip,” she said.
“No.”
Gossip is people talking when they think you cannot hear.
This was people making sure she could.
Later that afternoon, we saw Marilyn again coming out of Cascades, still straight-shouldered, still holding an iced drink she did not seem to be drinking.
Her whole body said leave me alone.
Naturally, people did not.
Two girls from school hovered near the café entrance with their phones angled low.
Not Candy’s immediate orbit.
Candy-adjacent.
In the way mold is wall-adjacent.
One of them said something about titleholders being role models.
The other made a fake tiny gasp and turned Marilyn’s humiliation into a joke.
Not loudly.
That was what made it worse.
Marilyn did not move.
The hand around her cup tightened.
Ellie stopped beside me.
I knew that stop.
A tiny warning bell went off in my head.
Do not get involved.
Another, louder part of my brain said: too late, emotionally.
Ellie stepped forward before I did.
“Maybe don’t,” she said.
Two words.
Not shouted.
Not dramatic.
Just steady.
The girls turned.
“We weren’t talking to you.”
“No,” Ellie said. “You were talking at her.”
Direct hit.
I moved up beside Ellie, because if my girlfriend was going to enter the social minefield, I was at least going to stand close enough to be exploded with her.
“Also,” I added, “the pretending-you’re-not-recording thing is extremely obvious. Like, amateur-hour obvious.”
The girl’s hand twitched.
Gotcha.
Her friend rolled her eyes, but she did lower the phone.
Small victory.
Deeply unsatisfying.
Marilyn turned toward us then.
Slowly.
If looks could kill, Ellie and I would have been found in chalk outlines beside the patio chairs.
“I don’t need help,” Marilyn said.
Her voice was icy enough to refrigerate seafood.
The girls drifted off, whispering louder now because apparently shame had only relocated, not died.
Marilyn said we had made it worse.
Probably fair.
Annoying, but fair.
Ellie’s expression softened, but not into pity.
“They were being cruel.”
Marilyn gave a short laugh.
No humor in it.
“Welcome to my life.”
Candy Steele did not look guilty.
Guilty would have been easier.
Guilty has edges. Guilty sweats. Guilty checks who is watching.
She was outside Cascades with Sally and Kaelyn when me, Ellie, and Teddy cut through Main Street after lunch.
Sally was talking when we got close.
“I just feel bad for her,” she said, in the exact loud tone people use when they want witnesses.
Kaelyn made a sympathetic face. “It must be so hard. With everyone seeing that video.”
Candy sighed.
A perfect sigh.
Oscar-quality.
“I know,” she said. “We’re all trying to support Marilyn right now. I just can’t imagine how awful it must be when private behavior becomes public.”
There it was.
Private behavior.
Not sabotage.
Not setup.
Not what happened to Marilyn.
What Marilyn had apparently done.
Candy did not look at us when she said it.
That was how I knew she knew we had heard.
Everyone had heard.
Ellie stopped walking.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Teddy noticed immediately, because Teddy notices emotional braking distance.
I touched Ellie’s wrist lightly.
Not to stop her exactly.
More to ask: are we doing this?
Her fingers twitched once.
No.
Not here.
Good.
Probably.
Candy finally turned her head.
“Oh,” she said, like we had appeared by accident and not because she had pitched that sentence directly into our walking path. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Ellie said.
Polite.
Flat.
A dangerous combination.
Candy’s gaze slid from Ellie to me, then to Teddy.
Then she asked about his dad.
Soft voice.
Thoughtful face.
Perfectly placed knife.
Teddy went still beside me.
Not because asking about his dad was automatically cruel.
It sounded normal.
Even kind.
Except Candy did not do random tenderness.
She did placement.
Timing.
Pressure.
“He’s doing okay,” Teddy said. “Thanks.”
His voice was calm enough to make me nervous.
Candy tilted her head. “That’s good. I heard things were looking better for your family.”
There were no claws in the sentence.
That made it worse.
Teddy gave her a small, unreadable smile.
We kept walking.
Barely.
When we reached the corner, Teddy said, “That was deliberate.”
Ellie hugged her sketchbook tighter against her side. “She made Marilyn’s video sound like Marilyn’s fault.”
“And my dad sound like local gossip,” Teddy said.
His jaw tightened.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that I wanted to go back and throw Candy’s iced drink into a bush.
Personal growth: I did not.
“She never touches anything directly,” I said.
Teddy nodded once.
“That’s her pattern.”
Candy was not standing in the middle of anything holding a smoking glitter gun.
She was just always close enough that the damage bent around her.
And somehow, every time, her hands stayed clean.
Teddy was helping his mom at the print shop today, so Ellie and I offered to look after Kelly.
This was either a kind and helpful friendship gesture or proof that my survival instincts are broken, because Kelly Chen contains more energy than most weather systems.
Possibly both.
She arrived with a backpack, her mini notebook, two hair clips shaped like stars, and the determined expression of someone who had already decided the apartment belonged to her now.
She signed “hi” at me, then immediately pointed at the hallway.
She signed, “Are we playing Paddy’s Looking?” before her shoes were even fully off.
Of course we were.
Paddy’s Looking is one of those games kids love because, on the surface, it is just hide-and-seek.
One person is It.
Everyone else hides.
The seeker counts.
If you’re found, you’re caught.
Normal.
Except normal-looking things in Meridia Falls are usually where the worst stuff hides.
And now we knew Paddy was not just a creepy playground name.
Patrick Collins.
Convicted child killer.
A name Meridia Falls had somehow sanded down into a game kids still played without knowing why.
Squirt did not know any of that.
To her, it was still one of her favorite games. A schoolyard classic. Something she played seriously, and with absolutely no respect for the emotional safety of older teenagers.
So we played.
The apartment felt strange with Squirt in it.
Not bad strange.
Just different.
She saw the couch, the kitchen table, the movie posters, the purple room door, the old mug full of Ellie’s pencils.
She did not see a recovery bunker.
She did not see the kitchen window as the place where a crow had watched us before becoming a man in a park.
She just saw somewhere new to hide.
That made my chest hurt a little.
Inconveniently.
I was Paddy first, because apparently Squirt believes in setting the difficulty level to chaos.
I counted in the hallway while Ellie and Squirt hid, signing the numbers with exaggerated seriousness because Squirt kept checking my hands like I might cheat.
Then Squirt vanished.
Not dramatically.
Not magically.
Just regular-child vanished—which is honestly almost as alarming.
I found her three minutes later in the purple room.
Behind the chair.
Right beside Bobby.
My soul briefly left my body.
We had covered Bobby before Squirt arrived.
But not enough.
The blanket had slipped down one corner, showing string, notes, face-down Polaroids, and enough suspicious paper to make any reasonable person ask questions.
Squirt peeked out from behind the chair, delighted with herself.
Ellie appeared in the doorway.
Then froze.
I froze harder.
Squirt looked at Bobby.
Then at us.
Then back at Bobby.
She signed, “That is a lot of homework.”
I forgot how breathing worked.
Ellie, somehow, did not.
“It is,” Ellie said, signing homework as she spoke. “Penny makes homework dramatic.”
Squirt nodded very seriously, like this explained everything.
Rude.
Accurate.
Powerful Squirt logic.
After that, Ellie and I exchanged one of those looks.
The kind couples probably use for normal things, like realizing they forgot to buy milk.
Except ours meant: we cannot leave the evidence board of reality crimes visible while babysitting a small child.
Healthy relationship milestone.
So while Squirt chose the next hiding spot, I fixed the blanket over Bobby properly. Ellie moved the Polaroids into the drawer and turned the notebook pile inward so nothing could accidentally become part of Squirt’s afternoon.
We had done this before.
Back in my old room, when Squirt came over and the chaos had to become invisible fast.
Apparently the apartment needed the same rule.
If Kelly is coming over, Bobby gets covered.
No exceptions.
After Teddy collected a very tired Squirt, Ellie and I attempted a normal apartment night.
Normal, in this case, meant laundry, grilled cheese, two bowls of tomato soup, one minor disagreement about art supplies, and me discovering that Ellie owns more pencils than any non-criminal person should.
Seriously.
So many pencils.
We set up at the kitchen table first, which lasted approximately seven minutes before I pointed out that food and charcoal dust probably should not share a workspace unless we were aiming for soup with texture.
The purple room had already become Bobby territory, so Ellie did not want to take over too much of it.
I told her it was a diary chaos office now and therefore had no moral high ground left to defend.
She said Bobby was different.
I said Bobby was a bulletin board with delusions of grandeur.
She said Bobby was also covered in photos, notes, string, and several phrases that would be difficult to explain to a normal adult.
Annoyingly, she had a point.
Especially after Squirt had nearly found him during Paddy’s Looking.
So we stood in the purple room and looked at Bobby.
Bobby looked back.
Judgmentally.
“We can’t keep covering it every time someone comes over,” Ellie said.
“We need a cover story.”
“For the evidence board?”
“For the project board.”
I blinked.
Then I remembered.
Media Studies.
The summer project.
The one where me, Ellie and Teddy were supposed to work together on a website.
A totally normal school assignment.
A completely legitimate reason to have a board full of photos, location notes, timelines, printouts, and obsessive-looking arrows.
Possibly the first useful thing school had ever done for me.
“That could work,” I said slowly.
Ellie was already thinking with her art face on.
“Bobby gets a disguise.”
“Bobby gets a purpose.”
“Same thing.”
We made a new label for the top corner.
SUMMER MEDIA STUDIES PROJECT. NAME PENDING!
Underneath that, Ellie wrote:
MERIDIA FALLS: MEMORY, MYTH, AND LOCAL STORIES.
I stared at it.
“That is disturbingly good.”
“It sounds like school,” she said.
“It sounds like school trying to be deep.”
“Exactly.”
I remembered the date before anyone said it.
I knew it was coming.
July 9.
Dad’s birthday.
There should be a special kind of weather for birthdays that belong to people who are gone. Not dramatic movie rain. Not thunder. Not sad violin clouds.
Just something honest.
It still hit me while I was brushing my teeth, which felt wrong. Important grief should not arrive while you have toothpaste foam in your mouth and one sock on.
But there it was.
July 9.
My dad, Nicholas Summers, would have been forty-two today.
Knowing the number helped.
Also made it hurt more.
Both things can be true, apparently. Deeply inconvenient emotional design.
Ellie did not say anything when I came out of the shower. She was sitting on the bed with her sketchbook closed on her lap, hair still messy from sleep, watching me in that quiet way she has.
“You know?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Walter told me last night.”
Downstairs, he had left a small paper bag on the counter by the private stairs.
No note.
Just a cinnamon bun, Dad’s favorite kind, and one of the old Meridian ticket stubs tucked under the edge of the bag.
The stub was faded gold, from the Meridian’s tenth-anniversary week screening of Back to the Future on July 9, 1995.
Dad’s eleventh birthday.
Old enough to have opinions.
Young enough to write them like a verdict.
On the back, in messy pen, he had written:
Best time-travel logic? Questionable. Best popcorn? Obviously.
I laughed.
Then immediately tried not to cry.
Very rude combination.
Ellie stood beside me while I held the ticket stub like it might dissolve if I breathed wrong.
“Do you want to talk about him?” she asked.
I looked at the words again.
Questionable. Obviously.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
Not disappointed.
Not pushing.
Just okay.
That was the part that almost broke me.
I put the ticket stub carefully into my diary, because apparently my diary has become a museum for evidence, grief, survival strategies, and emotionally aggressive cinema opinions.
Ellie handed me a mug of coffee.
And somehow I stayed standing.
After breakfast, Gramps said, “Boots.”
That was all.
No emotional speech.
No careful grief talk.
Just boots.
Which, in Gramps language, meant fresh air had been prescribed and resistance was probably useless.
“Are we being kidnapped?” I asked.
“Picnic,” he said.
“Kidnapping with sandwiches.”
“Exactly.”
So that was how Ellie and I ended up at the Veiled Isle Historic Gardens with Gramps, a picnic basket, two blankets, and the kind of quiet that made Meridia Falls feel farther away than it actually was.
We started at the Garden of Remembrance.
Gramps did not ask if I wanted to go there. He just walked slowly enough that I could have chosen not to follow.
I followed.
The garden was still and bright, all low flowers, stone paths, and names that stayed where people put them.
Grandma Hope’s name.
Dad’s.
Sean’s.
All there.
Not the same kind of there.
Different kinds of gone.
Different kinds of remembering.
But the place still held them somehow.
Maybe because Gramps did.
Maybe because I did.
Maybe because gardens are rude like that and make feelings grow whether you asked them to or not.
After the picnic and a slice of Dad’s favorite pecan pie, I took Ellie to my favorite maze.
Not the biggest one.
Not the one tourists photograph first.
Mine and Sean’s.
Ellie had been to Veiled Isle before, mostly for school trips and one public family picnic she described as “aggressively photogenic,” but she had never done my maze properly.
So obviously I had to correct that.
I took her through without missing a turn.
The wooden tower waited in the center.
It is not really a tower-tower.
Just high enough to see the maze spread out below.
When I was younger, it felt enormous.
Today it looked smaller.
Still mine, though.
That mattered.
From the top, the maze stopped looking random.
The dead ends became patterns.
Things that made no sense from inside suddenly made sense from above.
Very subtle, universe.
Deeply unnecessary metaphor.
We took Polaroids.
Then I showed Ellie the shorter route back out.
That was when we noticed an old door in the maze hedge.
I could not remember it from before.
Granted, I had not walked that route in a long time.
It was white and weathered, half-hidden behind leaves near the inner curve of the maze, set into an old stone arch like it had always been there and was hoping nobody would ask questions.
Ellie saw it first.
“There’s a door.”
I stopped.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for my brain to file it under weird.
White door kid flickered through my head.
Logan Collins.
Not helpful, brain.
Not today.
There was no sign on the door.
No staff-only label.
Just six panels and a carved wooden doorknob with the kind of careful detail I knew too well.
Gramps detail.
A few symbols were carved into the wood.
I tried it.
Locked.
The door did not rattle or creak or give even a little.
Very smug for a door.
“Maintenance?” Ellie said.
“Probably,” I said.
Probably.
Wonderful word.
Very trustworthy.
“Maybe some doors are just doors, Penny,” Ellie said quietly.
Maybe.
So we left it locked behind us.
I tucked the Polaroids into my backpack.
Dad’s birthday still sat inside my chest.
But lighter now.
Not gone.
Just carried differently.
Friday morning started with responsible behavior.
Suspicious, I know.
After breakfast, Ellie and I walked over to my house to check everything was still standing and make sure Mom’s basil had not given up on life in my absence.
The house felt strange without Mom in it.
Not empty exactly.
Just paused.
Like it was waiting for everyone to come back and pretend things were normal again.
I watered the kitchen-window plants, including the dramatic one Mom keeps insisting is “just sensitive,” even though I’m pretty sure it has chosen emotional manipulation as a lifestyle.
Ellie checked the mail.
I checked the fridge.
Then I called Mom.
Official update: plants alive, house fine, no signs of burglary, basil still rude.
She sounded relieved in that Mom way where she tries not to sound too relieved, which only makes it more obvious.
Excellent daughter behavior.
After we locked up, Ellie and I headed back toward Main Street because the apartment needed groceries.
Milk.
Bread.
Actual food that was not grilled-cheese-adjacent.
Probably M&Ms for the snack drawer.
For the apartment.
Obviously.
Not for me as a person.
That was when we saw Marilyn heading into the park.
At first, it was just her.
Sunglasses on. Bag over one shoulder. Phone pressed to her ear. Walking fast enough to look purposeful and not fast enough to look like she was escaping something.
Very Marilyn.
Then I saw the boys behind her.
Two of them.
Both from school.
Not Candy’s immediate orbit, but close enough to smell like trouble.
They were following at that awful distance people use when they want to pretend they are not following someone.
One of them had his phone out.
Because apparently the town had developed a condition where everyone’s hand just broke out in recording.
Ellie saw it too.
Her mouth tightened.
“Are they filming her?”
“Looks like it.”
Marilyn crossed onto the bridge over the lake and stopped near the middle, turning slightly away from the path like she wanted privacy.
The boys slowed.
Not enough.
His phone stayed up.
Ellie and I kept walking.
Not following.
Obviously.
Just moving in the same direction with purpose and moral concern.
Completely different.
We were still too far away to hear Marilyn’s call properly. Just the shape of it. Her voice low. Tight. One hand gripping the railing.
Whatever she was saying, she did not sound polished now.
She sounded scared.
The boy with the phone leaned closer.
Marilyn turned.
Saw him.
Saw the phone.
For one second, all the polish dropped out of her face.
Real panic.
Not pageant-girl embarrassment.
Not social humiliation.
Fear.
Then the mask slammed back into place.
“Were you recording that?”
The words cracked through the air.
Not loud enough for the whole bridge.
Loud enough for us.
The boy smirked like boys with phones apparently do when nobody has taught them consequences.
Marilyn lowered her phone from her ear, but she did not hang up.
That was the part I noticed.
Whatever was happening, she did not want to disconnect.
Then the boy said something about her crying to Daddy.
Marilyn went still.
Not pageant-still.
Not polished-still.
Fear-still.
Then her face changed.
Sharp.
Cold.
“Do not post anything about my dad.”
My dad.
There it was.
One word too many.
The boy heard it too.
Marilyn knew he had.
Her face closed completely.
“Delete it,” she said.
The boys did not.
Obviously.
Ellie moved before I did.
Not much.
Just one step.
Enough.
I moved with her.
Marilyn saw us coming and immediately looked furious, which was honestly impressive considering she was also clearly two seconds away from combusting.
The boys drifted away.
Slowly.
Like cowards with timing.
Marilyn watched them go, then turned on us before I could say anything.
“Don’t.”
One word.
Sharp enough to cut.
I lifted both hands slightly. “Wasn’t planning to.”
“You heard nothing.”
“That is not how ears work.”
Ellie gave me a look.
Right.
Not helpful.
Marilyn stepped closer. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but her voice had dropped low enough to make the warning feel real.
“You heard nothing,” she said again.
This time, it was not pride.
It was begging dressed as an order.
By the time Ellie and I got back to the apartment, the groceries felt like props from someone else’s normal life.
We put everything away in the kitchen, but neither of us moved with any real purpose.
The Marilyn thing had followed us home.
Her face on the bridge.
The boys filming.
The way she had said dad like the word itself needed protecting.
Ellie leaned against the counter, arms folded.
“She was scared,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Not embarrassed.”
“No.”
“That was fear.”
I closed the cupboard a little too hard.
The apartment went quiet after that.
Not empty quiet.
Thinking quiet.
“She said not to post anything about her dad,” I said.
Ellie nodded slowly. “Like they’d caught something they could use.”
She did not know much about him.
His name was Michael Moreau.
Candy used to throw it at Marilyn sometimes.
Little comments.
Nothing direct.
Just enough to make Marilyn go quiet.
Her parents divorced years ago.
He moved out of town.
Then her mom married Isaac Steele.
Right.
Because apparently this town had decided every family tree should also be a trap.
So we searched for Michael Moreau on my phone.
No results.
Then my stomach dropped for an entirely different reason.
Sapphire Bliss.
The warning.
Personal devices.
Search histories.
Things that noticed when you noticed them.
“This probably has nothing to do with any of that,” Ellie said.
“No.”
We stared at each other.
“Still,” she said.
So we got the Truthweaver laptop.
Which sounded like a reasonable sentence now.
Great.
Love that for us.
Teddy was out delivering print orders, because apparently Chen Print had chosen today to require movement, logistics, and excellent timing.
I called him anyway.
He answered on the third ring, slightly breathless.
“Is anyone bleeding?”
“No.”
“Is anything on fire?”
“No.”
“Did a crow contact you?”
“Not currently.”
He paused.
“Still no soon, then.”
“Apparently soon is taking its time.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
I looked at Ellie.
Ellie looked at the laptop.
I put Teddy on speaker and set the phone between us.
“We need to search Michael Moreau.”
Another pause.
Different this time.
“Marilyn’s dad?”
I told him what Marilyn had said on the bridge.
Do not post anything about my dad.
That got us out of joke territory fast.
Teddy asked if it could wait until he got back.
No.
Obviously not.
He did not like that.
Then I told him we had already tried a regular search on my phone and stopped when nothing came back.
He exhaled, and I could hear street noise behind him. A car passing. Paper rustling. The faint creak of what was probably his delivery bag.
“Open the Truthweaver laptop,” he said.
Ellie pulled the laptop closer.
“I’m listening.”
“Don’t just click things.”
“I am offended you assume I would.”
“You absolutely would.”
Accurate.
Rude, but accurate.
Teddy talked us through it step by step.
Not the normal browser.
Not the obvious search box.
The plain little shortcut Teddy had put on the desktop exactly for times like this.
Ruby’s search algorithm.
One spiral icon with the general vibe of something that would judge you for using the wrong punctuation.
Very hacker.
Very unfriendly.
Ellie typed while Teddy spoke.
MICHAEL MOREAU
Then:
MERIDIA FALLS
The laptop hummed.
One result appeared.
Then another.
Then five more.
Not in a list exactly. More like the system had scraped buried fragments from places that did not want to be found.
A court notice.
A tiny newspaper archive.
A sentencing record.
A prison intake reference.
Ellie stopped typing.
I stopped breathing properly.
Teddy’s voice came through the speaker.
“What?”
I read the headline first.
Then the line underneath.
Then the name.
Michael Moreau.
Convicted of armed robbery.
Sentenced to prison.
For a second, nobody said anything.
The apartment felt too still around us.
Not safe-still.
Waiting-still.
Ellie whispered, “That’s why Marilyn panicked.”
Maybe.
But I was staring at the screen.
At the way regular search had shown us nothing.
At the way Ruby’s system had found it immediately.
At the way Michael Moreau had not just been absent.
He had been buried.
Hidden.
That was the part that would not settle.
People go to prison.
Records exist.
Stories spread.
Towns gossip.
Meridia Falls practically runs on gossip.
So why had Michael Moreau disappeared from the surface like Logan Collins?
And why did that make me think of Dad and Sean?
Of Ellie’s mom?
Of every name in this town that seemed simple until we looked too closely?
Why had Marilyn looked less ashamed than terrified?
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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