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.
The correct breakfast before reading more of your traumatized younger self’s diary.
Personal growth.
Possibly.
Ellie called it “emotional support toast,” which felt ridiculous and legally accurate.
Cascades was busy in that quiet, organized way it gets when something extra is happening behind the scenes.
The owner’s name, Anne Harrison, drifted past from the counter, attached to birthday flowers and a delivery box.
Charlotte moved between tables with her tray and her bright red hair, saying good morning like she had never once encountered a town secret.
Normal.
I am learning to distrust normal.
Also trying not to interrogate every ordinary thing in town under a desk lamp.
Balance.
Apparently.
We didn’t talk about the impending diary deep dive much.
Not properly.
There would be enough time for that later.
Instead, we somehow ended up talking about parents.
Which made sense after what we found about Marilyn’s dad last night.
My dad was gone. Ellie’s mom was missing. Teddy’s dad was sick in a way nobody could spreadsheet into being less terrifying. Marilyn’s dad had been in prison, buried under a name the internet had almost learned to forget.
Different stories—same awful category.
The kind where a person’s life gets split into before and after, and everyone else expects them to keep showing up for breakfast.
Ellie squeezed my knee under the table.
Not dramatically.
Just once.
Enough.
We collected the traditional deep-dive cupcakes on our way out.
Chocolate with purple frosting.
“Lots of sugar,” Ellie said.
So yeah.
Supplies acquired.
Teddy messaged to ask if we wanted McDonald’s for lunch, which was either friendship, avoidance, or a medically necessary delay before emotional damage.
Possibly all three.
By the time he arrived with fries, milkshakes, and the expression of someone pretending he had not spent the whole drive worrying about his dad, the purple room was already waiting.
After lunch, Teddy had the Matrix notebook out before I had even sat down properly.
Some people respond to emotional devastation with bullet points.
Ellie sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched.
Unfairly effective.
We were getting close to the end of Younger Penny’s fourth diary.
Not done—close enough that the remaining pages felt thinner under my fingers.
Like the diary knew it was running out of places to hide things.
The entries were mostly normal.
Annoyingly normal.
School stuff. Cafeteria complaints. A substitute teacher who “smelled like chalk and disappointment,” which honestly felt like younger me doing important literary work.
There were classmates I barely recognized. Names that should have meant something but landed flat.
Then there were the teacher comments.
Distracted.
Argumentative.
Difficult.
One teacher apparently told Mom I was “struggling to stay present.”
Which would have sounded like normal school concern if I had not been sitting there years later with missing pages, memory blasts, and Clearwater weekends leaving fingerprints without answers.
Very reassuring.
Ten out of ten.
Would not recommend.
The worst part was how casual younger me sounded about losing time.
At school, she sounded like she was floating slightly outside the day.
Then a Clearwater weekend started, and the writing changed.
Ellie appeared.
Logan too.
Their names had weight.
Shape.
Color.
Those entries felt more real than the school ones.
Then school started again, and they were gone.
Not dead-gone.
Not moved-away-gone.
Just absent from her brain like they had never belonged there in the first place.
Which should have made the Clearwater entries feel suspicious.
It did.
But it also made them feel like anchors.
Because if Clearwater was where things were wrong, why did the people there feel like the only real part?
Teddy wrote that down.
Then we hit more ripped-out sections.
Several pages gone.
Clean edges.
Always after Clearwater weekends.
But no bad room dream this time.
No shadowy children.
No hanging shapes.
Nothing dramatic enough to point at and say, There. That is the monster.
Just absence.
I turned the diary slightly, running my thumb near the torn edges without properly touching them.
Too clean to be accidental.
Too careful.
Too familiar.
Ellie leaned back, jaw tight.
“Holly again,” she said.
Not a question.
None of us treated it like one anymore.
The ripped pages had started to feel like her fingerprints.
“But why?” Teddy asked. “What was she trying to hide?”
To protect younger me?
To protect herself?
Or to keep something terrible from finding its way back to us?
None of those options felt better.
The diary did not give us a new room, a new face, or a new impossible clue.
It gave us something worse.
A pattern pretending to be nothing.
We were wrapping up the deep dive when my phone buzzed.
Which was rude.
There should be a law against ominous notifications arriving while a person is already dealing with one unresolved childhood mystery.
The Rogue Ghost.
On the RGN app.
Of course.
The message was short, because apparently mysterious crow men are allergic to paragraphs.
Video. Two minutes.
The call came through before I had finished showing Ellie and Teddy.
No normal ringtone.
Just a black screen with a white circle pulsing in the middle, like my phone had decided to become dramatic for the arts.
I accepted.
The Rogue Ghost appeared on-screen.
Tobin Cross.
RG.
Whatever name he was letting us use this week.
No crow feathers.
No wings.
No transforming in front of innocent cupcakes.
Just a man in a hoodie, somewhere dim, looking like he had spent a long time deciding exactly how little truth counted as cooperation.
Teddy went straight for the USB flash drive.
RG gave us enough to make things worse.
Yes, the USB was meant for Teddy.
Yes, the person who built the original framework knew what she was doing.
When Teddy asked, “Ruby?” RG only said, “Ruby.”
One word.
Not explanation.
Just a name with grief wrapped around it.
I asked about Gramps because apparently I enjoy emotional risk as a hobby now.
RG said he had known him “long enough to know how much he looks out for you.”
Which was not an answer.
Which, naturally, meant it was the kind of answer adults love.
Then I asked the dangerous question.
Why us?
Why now?
RG said, “I made a promise.”
Partly to Gramps.
And when I took a wild, awful stab and said Aunt Holly’s name, RG paused.
Worse than paused.
Then he said, “Indirectly, yes.”
Indirectly.
Yes.
Two words that did not answer anything and somehow made everything louder.
The call ended thirty seconds later.
No warning.
No final prophecy.
Just a black screen, a silent apartment, and one cupcake sitting untouched on the desk.
Answers, apparently, could have holes in them.
But we had learned something new.
The Rogue Ghost knew about Aunt Holly.
After RG’s extremely helpful contribution to the field of saying things without saying them, we needed air.
So we ended up on the boardwalk.
Not investigating.
Officially.
Unofficially, apparently my body had decided walking beside the ocean counted as emotional processing, which was rude because I had not approved that coping strategy in advance.
Teddy came with us for a while before his mom called and asked him to pick up Squirt from her friends.
Every time his phone buzzed now, his face did this tiny calculation.
Mom?
Dad?
Bad news?
Not bad news yet?
The kind of math nobody should have to do while standing near a fudge kiosk.
He left after making us promise to text if the sky opened, the ocean whispered secrets, or another crow tried to emotionally devastate us before dinner.
Very specific friendship rules.
Ellie and I kept walking.
For maybe five whole minutes, it almost worked.
The sun was out. The water looked aggressively sparkly. Tourists were doing tourist things. Someone had dropped fries, and a seagull was making choices that suggested it feared neither consequences nor indigestion.
Normal.
Almost.
The boardwalk had the nerve to keep existing like the fourth diary was not back at the apartment with torn pages, missing time, and Holly-shaped fingerprints all over it.
Like RG had not just confirmed he knew my aunt.
Indirectly.
Whatever that meant.
I hated indirectly.
It was a word that stood in a doorway and refused to let you see the room behind it.
Ellie’s hand brushed mine.
Not grabbing.
Just there.
She said I was doing the face.
Apparently the face where my brain tries to chase three mysteries down three different alleys at once.
Rude.
Accurate.
I looked out at the water and tried to let the wind do something useful.
It did not explain Holly.
Or Gramps.
Or why people who knew things kept handing us answers with the centers missing.
But it was cold enough against my face to remind me I had one.
So that was something.
We walked until the apartment stopped feeling like a sealed room waiting for us and started feeling like somewhere we could go back to without immediately being eaten alive by paper.
A small distinction.
Important, apparently.
Also important: Saturday was movie night.
Back at the apartment, Ellie lit the vanilla candle. We made grilled cheese, which had somehow become our current comfort food, and watched His Girl Friday. For a while, I let the old black-and-white shadows on the screen be ordinary shadows.
Normal did not feel easy.
But we claimed it anyway.
After that, we declared the rest of the night personal time.
No diaries.
No Bobby.
No RGN app.
Just us.
Sunday morning was glorious in a way that felt almost suspicious.
Blue sky.
Hot sidewalk.
The kind of sunshine that made Meridia Falls look like nothing terrible had ever happened here, which was rude of the weather, honestly.
I walked Ellie to church because that was our Sunday routine now.
She went inside.
I waited on my usual park bench trying not to look like a suspicious teenager loitering near organized religion.
Growth.
Possibly.
I tried not to think about the diaries.
Or Holly.
Or RG saying indirectly like that was a normal answer and not a word designed specifically to ruin my weekend.
Mostly, I watched sunlight move across the chapel and waited.
When Ellie came out, she looked lighter.
Not fixed—just lighter in that small post-church way, like she had set something heavy down for a few minutes.
She shaded her eyes with one hand and smiled at me.
“Dad and Felicia are going out,” she said.
I blinked. “Hello to you too.”
“Hi.” Her smile got wider. “It’s hot. The pool exists. We could go to my house.”
There are sentences that sound casual—but are absolutely not casual.
This was one of them.
“Swimming?” I asked.
“Swimming,” she said.
After we stopped back at the apartment for swimsuits, I ended up skating Ellie to her mini mansion on the South Bay Peninsula like a responsible person with excellent life choices and absolutely no fear of accidentally launching my girlfriend into a hedge.
Important clarification: we did not go fast.
At all.
Ellie got on behind me like the skateboard had personally offended her and immediately informed me this was not how people travel.
I told her it was exactly how very cool people travel.
She said it was how people fall.
Fair.
We made it about three feet before she laughed into my shoulder, which did not help my balance, my dignity, or my ability to remember how sidewalk worked.
After that, it got easier.
Not smooth.
Never smooth.
But easier.
Half skating, half walking, with her arms around my waist and both of us pretending this was a sensible transportation choice.
Very safe.
Very normal.
Deeply dangerous to my ability to function.
By the time we reached her house, my legs were fine, my dignity was questionable, and Ellie’s cheeks were pink from sun and laughing.
Worth it.
Her house looked even more ridiculous in the bright sunshine.
Mini mansion.
Maximum intimidation.
But nobody was home, which made the place feel softer.
Less adult schedule.
More stolen summer.
We changed, left our things in the shade, and got into the pool.
The water was cold enough to make me make a noise I refuse to record accurately for historical reasons.
Ellie laughed.
Then I splashed her.
Then she splashed me back with alarming precision, because apparently artists understand water physics when motivated by revenge.
For a while, there was no diary chaos.
Just water, sunlight, and Ellie’s arms around my shoulders near the shallow end.
I kissed her there, because honestly, I am only human and she had pool water in her hair and sunshine on her face and the entire universe had briefly stopped screaming.
She kissed me back.
Soft at first—then less soft.
The kind of kiss that made the pool, the house, and the whole stupid world narrow down to her hands at the back of my neck.
Personal note: kissing your girlfriend in her pool while no one is home feels like a scene from an old movie I would pretend to mock and secretly watch twice.
Eventually we had to get out of the pool because humans require food and staying in the water forever would probably have become difficult to explain to society.
We made sandwiches in Ellie’s kitchen, which was approximately the size of my entire apartment if my apartment had better countertops and fewer mysteries taped to boards.
I was halfway through assembling a sandwich with too much mustard when Ellie got quiet.
Not bad quiet.
Nervous quiet.
I looked up. “What?”
She wiped her hands on a towel. “I had another reason for wanting to come home.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No.” She paused. “Probably not.”
“Deeply reassuring.”
She disappeared into the hallway and came back carrying a backpack.
For a second, I just stared.
Dark charcoal, almost black, with purple highlights along the zippers and seams. Not bright purple. Not childish. More like the color hiding inside a storm cloud if storm clouds had taste.
It looked like me—which was unfair.
Ellie held it out. “It arrived yesterday.”
“For you?”
My throat did something stupid.
“You got me a backpack?”
“Not just any backpack.” She set it on the counter. “One with a secret compartment.”
That changed the room.
She showed me the hidden zipper tucked into the inside lining. I would not have noticed it if she had not pointed it out.
Flat.
Roomy.
Large enough for my diary.
The one I kept carrying around like it was ordinary paper and not possibly the most dangerous thing I owned.
Ellie watched my face and said she worried about it.
Not the backpack.
My diary.
The kitchen went quiet around us.
The pool outside still sparkled.
The sandwiches sat unfinished on the counter.
I looked at the hidden compartment again, and suddenly the gift was not just a gift.
It was Ellie seeing the thing I kept trying to pretend was manageable.
She said it was not magic.
It would not solve everything.
But it might help.
Which was such an Ellie thing to say that my throat immediately became useless.
I tried to point out that I had not gotten her anything.
She looked at me like I had said something deeply incorrect.
“You gave me keys to your apartment,” she said.
I told her that was not the same.
Then she stepped closer, touched my chest just above my heart, and said, “You gave me these keys too.”
Oh.
Rude.
Illegal.
Emotionally unfair.
I stared at her because apparently words had left the building.
Ellie’s smile turned small and shy and brave all at once.
So I did the only reasonable thing.
I kissed her.
Again.
In the kitchen this time, with pool water still drying in our hair, sandwiches half-made behind us, and a new backpack on the counter holding a secret place for the part of me I was most afraid to lose.
Maybe safe was not a real thing anymore.
But Ellie kept finding ways to make the danger smaller.
And that counted.
Sunday night had rules now.
Apparently.
Saturday movies were mine.
Sunday Doctor Who was Ellie’s.
Teddy had declared himself emotionally wronged by missing the first one and therefore legally entitled to attend the next. I did not ask which court handled fandom injury claims. It felt safer not to know.
He arrived with snacks, sodas, and the expression of someone prepared to supervise my education.
We had invited Squirt too, but she wanted to wait until we got to her favorite Doctor.
The Tenth.
Apparently this was a whole thing.
Before we started, Teddy asked if Ellie had a watch schedule.
She handed him her notebook.
Of course she did.
He scanned it, nodded seriously, and announced that it was a Daleks night.
I covered my face with both hands.
There were two of them now.
Teddy called it “foundational,” then made the mistake of saying “narrative architecture” like that was a normal phrase a person says on purpose.
I looked at Ellie.
She smiled into her drink.
No remorse.
None.
When the episode started, the room changed in that nice way rooms sometimes do when everyone agrees to look at the same screen and not solve anything for a while.
Ellie tucked her feet under the blanket and grabbed my hand.
Teddy sat in the armchair with popcorn balanced on his knee, trying and failing not to comment every three minutes.
I complained every time he did.
Obviously.
That was my role.
But the truth was, I liked it.
Not just the show, though I was starting to understand why a weird old police box could make Ellie’s face soften like someone had turned a light on behind her eyes.
I liked the three of us there.
In my apartment.
With snacks.
With the door locked and the evidence hidden and the world, for once, waiting outside instead of climbing through the walls.
Monday apparently decided to start normal.
Bold choice.
Teddy was at Chen Print all day, because toner, paper stock, and family obligations do not pause just because your life has become a mystery board with snacks.
So Ellie and I went for a walk in the park.
Not investigating.
Not deep-diving.
Just walking.
For maybe ten whole minutes, it worked.
Then Candy appeared near the lake with Kaelyn.
Of course she did.
Candy smiled like we had all agreed to pretend nothing was strange.
“Ellie,” she called. “Can I borrow you for a second?”
Borrow—that was a word people used for pens, sugar, and girls they thought still belonged partly to them.
Ellie’s hand brushed mine once.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
Not to Candy.
To me.
Then Candy guided her a few steps away, just far enough that I could not hear properly without making it obvious.
Which left me with Kaelyn.
Fantastic.
Across the lake bridge, Candy leaned closer to Ellie.
I only caught pieces when the breeze shifted.
Steve.
Before Three Falls.
Important.
Then Candy touched Ellie’s arm.
Not hard.
Not enough for anyone walking past to think anything of it.
Ellie looked down at Candy’s hand until Candy removed it.
Good.
Kaelyn said something about the party coming up fast.
Sure.
Decorations.
Music.
Veiled threats about dating schedules.
Classic event planning.
Candy said something else, too low for me to hear, and Ellie’s jaw tightened.
Then Candy smiled.
Bright.
Sharp.
A minute later, Ellie came back to me first.
That mattered.
“Think about it,” Candy said. “Sooner is better.”
Ellie did not answer.
Candy’s smile widened. “The party really is coming up fast.”
Then she and Kaelyn walked away, leaving perfume, sunshine, and the distinct impression that the park had failed its normal-life audition.
I waited until they were gone.
“What was that?”
“She wants a date with Steve now,” Ellie said.
I blinked. “That escalated fast.”
“She dressed it up as needing things to look settled before the Three Falls party.”
“Settled.”
“That was the word.”
“Gross.”
“Very.”
“She didn’t threaten you exactly?”
Ellie’s mouth pressed into a line.
“No,” she said. “Not exactly.”
I hated not exactly.
It was starting to become one of the most dangerous categories in my life.
After surviving the Candy collision, we decided sugar was medically necessary, so it became a frappe mission to Cascades.
Plates clinked.
Someone laughed near the counter.
Charlotte refilled coffee at a nearby table, because apparently cafés are legally required to continue functioning even when your brain has started building a case file against a girl in pink.
We were about to order when Marilyn walked past the front window.
Not in—past.
Fast enough to look like she had somewhere to be, slow enough that I could see she had seen us.
Her sunglasses were on. Her hair was perfect. Her clothes were perfect.
Her face was the kind of blank that took effort.
Two girls near the front noticed her.
One whispered.
The other looked over her shoulder.
I thought about the bridge.
About Marilyn saying we heard nothing.
About Michael Moreau’s name sitting in our heads like a lit match.
Armed robbery.
Prison.
Buried record.
A father she did not want turned into public property.
Then I thought about Steve Dillon.
Candy’s world had edges.
Sharp ones.
She needed Steve inside her orbit for something.
Marilyn was inside it another way, walking like every whisper was something she had to survive without letting it touch her skin.
I did not trust Marilyn—important distinction.
She had spent too long standing close to Candy’s cruelty for sympathy to magically erase the shape of her choices.
But seeing someone bleed does not mean you suddenly trust them with a knife.
It does mean you stop pretending there is no blood.
Tuesday started with Ellie standing in the bedroom wearing black.
Not cute black.
Not accidental black.
Formal black.
The kind of black that meant adults would be present, flowers would have ribbons, and everyone would speak in careful voices.
Candy had summoned her to a memorial gathering for her mom.
Summoned was Ellie’s word.
Mine had more curse words in it.
“It’s the anniversary of her passing,” Ellie said, smoothing one hand down the front of her dress. “I can’t not go.”
I hated that she was right.
I hated even more that Candy probably knew she was right.
Because that was the thing about Candy.
She never just invited people.
She arranged them.
Apparently Candy’s dad was not making a whole day of it.
Candy was.
Which was understandable in the worst possible way.
She had lost her mother.
Her dad had gained a new wife.
Even I could see why that would leave a mark.
Still.
Understanding why someone was bleeding did not make it fun when they tried to use the blood as ink.
Ellie’s dad had sent his driver, who was waiting outside to take her there.
Too formal.
Too arranged.
Too Candy.
I walked Ellie downstairs, kissed her goodbye where nobody could see, and watched her leave looking beautiful and trapped.
Very healthy start to the day.
Teddy came over after lunch while Ellie was still gone, carrying the expression of a boy with secrets and the concealment skills of a golden retriever with stolen toast.
Behind him came Gramps.
Which immediately made the secret more suspicious.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Teddy said.
Gramps smiled. “Now, that is technically untrue.”
Gramps lifted a cardboard box onto the kitchen table.
Chen Print was stamped on the side.
Because of course it was.
Gramps apologized for the secrecy in a way that suggested he was not sorry at all.
Then he opened the box and pulled out a flyer.
Glossy paper.
Classy art deco design.
Gold lines.
Strong lettering.
GRAND OPENING: THE MERIDIAN CINEMA RESTAURANT
For a second, I forgot to be annoyed.
There it was.
The opening date.
August 23.
Lights.
Food.
Old movie magic.
And underneath that, in smaller gold letters:
SPECIAL GUEST: CHARISMA CAVANAGH ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE
Public relations risk with excellent cheekbones.
Apparently Gramps had actually asked her.
Apparently this was partly my fault because I had suggested it once as a joke and then, stupidly, again as an actual idea.
Gramps called that “an excellent source of ideas,” which is a dangerous thing to tell a teenager with my impulse control.
The flyers were real.
Opening night was real.
It was proof that the Meridian was still becoming something. That Gramps was still building a future on purpose while everything else kept trying to rip the floor out from under us.
“I like it,” I said, which came out smaller than I meant.
Gramps’ face softened.
“Good.”
Then he tapped the edge of the flyer.
“Paper has its advantages.”
Teddy looked at him.
I looked at him.
Gramps looked entirely innocent, which was always when he was least innocent.
“Does it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Paper remembers things machines can forget. Creases. Ink. Fingerprints. History pressed into the fibers.”
Subtle.
Very subtle.
Practically invisible, if you were not living inside diary chaos with Polaroids that refused to stop mattering.
“I simply mean,” he said, putting most of the flyers back, “that some things deserve to exist where hands can find them.”
He left one flyer on the table.
Sure.
Definitely just about restaurant flyers.
The Steve problem had not gone anywhere.
Apparently no day could remain about one crisis when three were available.
Candy wanting an actual date with him was bigger than asking him to help.
Riskier.
Especially with the Three Falls party coming up fast.
If Steve agreed, we needed proof Candy could not smile her way around.
Not phones.
Definitely not phones.
We both looked at the restaurant flyer.
Paper.
Ink.
Proof you could hold.
“Analog?” I said.
Teddy nodded.
Something small.
Hidden.
No cloud.
No automatic backup.
No helpful little digital ghost waiting to betray us.
That sounded exactly like our lives now.
Digital things could disappear.
Change.
Lie politely in twelve different file formats.
But analog left marks.
Evidence that might survive when everything else tried to rewrite itself.
We were not trying to spy on Steve.
We were trying to give him a chance to get Candy to say something useful.
Something real.
Reverse leverage.
I did not love that phrase.
I loved even less that we needed it.
Ellie came back late in the afternoon.
Still in black.
Still beautiful.
Wrong kind of quiet.
Teddy made one careful joke about looking underdressed for the emotional weather, and Ellie smiled because she loved him enough to try.
But it did not reach her eyes.
Not even close.
Teddy left before dinner because Chen Print still existed and apparently families expected people to go home sometimes.
Rude.
The apartment felt different once the door closed behind him.
Quieter.
Not peaceful.
Just quieter.
Ellie stood near the kitchen counter with her arms folded, staring at nothing.
I waited for about six seconds.
Personal growth.
Then I said, “What happened?”
She closed her eyes.
“Candy cornered me after the memorial.”
Of course she did.
“What did she want?”
Ellie swallowed. “She knows.”
The room went very still.
“Knows what?”
“About us.”
My stomach dropped.
“She said she’s not blind.” Ellie’s voice went careful in a way I hated. “She said she knows what’s going on with me and my… freak girlfriend.”
Her face twisted. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That’s what she said.”
Oh.
There were versions of myself that would have made a joke.
This was not one of them.
Ellie’s arms tightened around herself.
“She said she doesn’t care, as long as I deliver on the Steve date.”
“Deliver.”
“And keep you…” Ellie stopped. Her jaw tightened.“Under control.”
The words landed wrong.
Not because Ellie said them.
Because Candy had.
I wanted to throw something.
Preferably Candy.
Possibly into the sun.
Ellie kept going like if she stopped, she might not start again.
Candy had turned us into leverage.
The mayor’s daughter.
Her girlfriend.
What people might say.
What people might think.
What Candy could make ugly if Ellie did not deliver Steve.
The apartment tilted slightly.
Not really.
But enough.
Ellie said Candy already had enough leverage.
Now she had this too.
I crossed the room and took her hands.
“They don’t get to make us ugly.”
Ellie looked at me then.
Really looked.
Candy could make things scary.
She could make things complicated.
She could make me want to staple her perfect hair to a bulletin board.
A tiny, broken laugh escaped Ellie.
Good.
“But they don’t get to make us ugly.”
Her face crumpled.
Not all at once.
Just enough.
I pulled her into me, and she came willingly, folding against me like she had been holding herself up all day by pure spite and expensive black fabric.
I held her while she shook.
Not loudly.
Ellie was quiet even when she broke.
I hated that too.
The world did not stop because Candy had found a new knife.
But with Ellie’s face pressed against my shoulder and my arms around her, one thing became very clear.
The Steve date was not just a plan anymore.
It was Candy putting a leash around every secret she could reach.
And I was done letting her pull.
Teddy arrived after lunch with a cardboard box, overnight delivery stickers still clinging to one side, and the expression of someone who had spent money responsibly and hated every second of it.
“This is not exciting,” he said before I could ask.
Inside was a small analog spy camera, a receiver unit, a portable video recorder, a battered pouch, a couple of blank tapes, too many cables, and a printed instruction booklet that looked like it had been designed by someone who believed joy was illegal.
I stared at it.
“That is somehow less spy-movie than I hoped.”
“It’s not supposed to be spy-movie,” Teddy said. “It’s supposed to be boring.”
“Boring is a bold aesthetic choice for secret evidence.”
“Boring survives.”
That shut me up for almost three seconds.
A personal record.
Teddy explained the setup in the least exciting way possible, which was apparently the point.
The camera did not record by itself.
It sent a short-range analog signal to the receiver.
The receiver fed the recorder.
The recorder put everything onto tape.
No Wi-Fi.
No app.
No cloud.
No phone.
No helpful little digital ghost waiting to betray us.
“Just a normal ghost,” I said.
“Basically.”
Then he pushed one of the blank tapes into my hand.
If it worked, the footage lived there.
On the tape.
Physical proof.
Harder to alter without leaving signs.
Also easier to lose, damage, steal, or have someone panic and destroy.
Very comforting object.
I looked at the tiny camera.
It suddenly seemed less like an object and more like a responsibility with a lens.
Rude.
There was another problem.
Range.
Of course there was.
The receiver had to stay close enough to catch the signal, but far enough away not to get caught.
Too many walls, bad angle, interference, someone standing in exactly the wrong place—static.
Excellent.
Love a plan where every direction contains a trapdoor.
I looked at the camera again.
Tiny.
Boring.
Dangerous.
“If it’s too close?” Ellie asked.
“Candy notices,” Teddy said. “And then we’ve created a whole new disaster.”
Ellie’s face tightened. “If this works, it cannot be something people pass around.”
“No,” Teddy said immediately. “No uploads. No group chats. No proving Candy wrong by making Steve a spectacle.”
My stomach tightened.
Because I had imagined proof.
I had imagined the satisfaction of it.
Candy’s polished face finally cracking as we showed her what we had.
Her fear of everyone seeing.
But Teddy was right.
Ellie was right.
If Steve did this, he was helping us.
Not volunteering to become evidence.
The tape could protect him.
Or ruin him.
Apparently even boring things had teeth.
The problem with impossible plans is that sometimes they stop being impossible and become inconveniently specific.
This is much worse.
We met Steve at Cascades in our upstairs booth, which was our official headquarters for bad ideas with syrup nearby.
Teddy brought the camera.
Ellie brought her calm face.
I brought emotional instability.
Teamwork.
Steve slid into the booth looking like he had already decided to say yes and was annoyed at himself for it.
Teddy opened with the important part.
Steve could say no.
Not fake-no.
Not polite-no.
Actual no.
Then Ellie told him Candy wanted a date, like now.
Steve’s jaw tightened like he had already guessed.
Teddy showed him the camera and explained the rule before anyone could make it sound cleaner than it was.
Analog only.
But only if Steve chose to help.
Only if he understood what he was agreeing to.
“You would not be the evidence,” Teddy said. “Candy would be.”
Steve stared at the camera for a long moment.
Then he said, “Candy makes people look like they chose it.”
The booth went quieter.
He told us about Evan Marlow after senior prom.
Candy’s date.
A boy who thought it meant something.
Not forever.
Not dramatic.
Just something.
Then he asked where they stood, and by Monday everyone had heard he was clingy, creepy, embarrassing.
Candy never said it directly.
She did not have to.
By the end of the week, Evan was treated like he should apologize for liking her.
That was Candy.
Clean hands.
Dirty room.
Steve said she had used him, then made him look pathetic for noticing.
Ellie went very still.
Steve said yes after that.
Not quickly.
Not casually.
Only after Ellie made him sit with the risk properly and Teddy explained all the ways the plan could go wrong.
Not like a heist.
Not like a movie.
Like a responsible person explaining every trapdoor before asking someone to step near one.
The receiver had to stay close. Too far away meant static. Bad angle meant useless footage. Candy noticing meant disaster.
“No phones,” Teddy said again. “No uploads. No group chats. No showing people for revenge.”
Steve’s face hardened. “I don’t want revenge.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” he said. “I want some revenge. But not like that.”
“Healthy distinction,” I said.
“The point,” Teddy added, ignoring me with professional skill, “is to get Candy to say something clear enough that she can’t smile her way around it.”
I called it reverse leverage.
Everyone looked at me.
What?
It was accurate.
Ellie said it sounded like a terrible spy movie, which made Teddy’s eyes light up in a way that immediately ruined my life.
By the time I had said no twice, he had written Operation Saturday Window at the top of the notebook.
Naturally.
Steve asked if this was normal.
Ellie said, “Unfortunately.”
Saturday, if Candy agreed.
Cucina d’Oro.
Public enough that Steve would not be alone with her.
Close enough that we could park near the Town Hall with the receiver in the print shop van.
“Close enough if we get the angle right,” Teddy said.
Of course.
Love a plan where every direction contains a trapdoor.
“Then Steve calls her tomorrow,” Teddy said. “Keeps it casual.”
“Like it’s your idea,” Ellie said. “Candy will want that.”
Nobody disagreed.
Ellie looked down at the table. “I’ll let her know to expect the call.”
I hated how small her voice got on that.
Like even telling Candy she was getting what she wanted still felt like handing her something sharp.
Then Ellie looked at Steve. “You can still say no.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
This time, he did not answer quickly.
Good.
Finally, he said, “I’m saying yes.”
The booth settled around those words.
Not relief—more like the moment before weather breaks.
Steve left first, hood up even though it was not raining.
Ellie watched him go.
Teddy put the camera back in his backpack.
I watched the pie getting cold between us.
Proof used to sound clean.
Sharp.
Useful.
But now proof had a person attached.
Steve.
And maybe everyone Candy had ever arranged into a shape and then blamed for holding it.
Candy could stand there with clean hands.
That was the trick.
Make people look like they chose the thing you forced them into.
And I still did not know how to prove someone had been pushed without hurting them again.
The day started with Ellie calling Candy.
Not because she wanted to.
Because apparently even terrible plans required scheduling.
I sat on the edge of the bed pretending not to listen, which was difficult because my entire nervous system had become a nosy raccoon.
Ellie told Candy that Steve would call today to ask her out.
Then she went quiet.
Too calm.
By the time she ended the call, her jaw had gone tight.
Candy had said Ellie did good.
Not in a nice way.
Obviously.
Because Candy could make praise sound like a leash.
After that, Halifax started sounding even better.
Different place.
Different air.
Apartment supplies.
Completely normal.
Very practical.
No suspicious emotional motives anywhere.
The apartment still needed drawer organizers, a better laundry basket, and a lamp that did not make the living room look like it was being interrogated by one tired bulb.
Also, Ellie wanted a few things that were hers-hers.
Not borrowed.
Not half-moved-in.
Hers.
Which meant Halifax mall was a reasonable destination.
Teddy came too because his mom needed him to pick up something from the print supplier nearby, and apparently once the universe noticed we had a reason to go to Halifax, it decided to stack errands and call that subtle.
“Just to be clear,” Teddy said from the back seat, “we’re not going clothes shopping.”
Ellie gave me an oh yes we are smile.
Teddy made a small sound as the reality dawned on him.
Unfortunately for us, Teddy had the supplier pickup first, which gave him the perfect excuse to abandon us at the mall.
“You two do all your shopping,” he said. “I’ll be back for lunch.”
Rude.
But fair.
The mall was busy in that summer way where everyone looked slightly too warm, slightly too loud, and deeply committed to walking in groups across the exact space you needed.
Ellie looked at the list.
Then at me.
“Clothes time first.”
I stared after Teddy’s escape route.
“I should have gone with him,” I said.
Ellie smiled.
“No chance.”
Rude.
Accurate.
Teddy came back just before lunch with a guilty expression and the kind of hunger that suggested Chen Print errands were secretly an endurance sport.
We got Subway because sometimes the universe offers you bread, cheese, and a line where nobody asks emotional questions.
After that, Teddy declared himself available for safer homeware shopping.
Safer.
As if laundry baskets had not already become part of my defensive strategy.
We were in a home store comparing hangers, which is apparently a thing adults do voluntarily, when Ellie stopped.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Marilyn was outside the window.
Not alone.
A woman stood beside her, older, polished, and tense in a way that made her look like she had a phone call waiting inside her jaw.
Definitely not her mom.
No mom energy.
One hand near Marilyn’s elbow. One hand holding a garment bag.
Like both of them were problems she had been assigned to manage.
Marilyn’s sunglasses were on even though she was inside the mall.
Her hair was perfect.
Her clothes were perfect.
Her face was the kind of blank that took effort.
The woman said something low.
Marilyn nodded once.
Then the woman disappeared into a boutique, leaving Marilyn alone in the walkway.
That was when the couple slowed.
The man recognized her from his phone first.
The Maple Crown girl.
Too loud.
Too pleased with himself.
Marilyn heard.
Of course she did.
Her chin lifted one centimeter.
Armor.
He said something about the judge.
Something about rumors.
Not enough for us to hear clearly.
Enough for his wife.
Her face changed.
Not at him.
At Marilyn.
Which was unfair in the specific way adults can be unfair when they would rather blame a girl than question the man standing beside them.
Marilyn tried to move past.
The woman stepped into her path and said, “Stay away from my husband.”
Too loud.
Too public.
Too wrong.
Marilyn froze.
Then she said, flat and controlled and sixteen, “I don’t know your husband.”
But the damage had already landed.
People slowed.
Looked.
Pretended not to.
Ellie moved first.
Not toward Marilyn.
Toward the nearest store employee.
Smart.
Annoyingly smart.
I moved toward Marilyn because apparently my survival instincts are decorative.
I said, “Hey,” loudly enough to make it everyone’s problem.
Not a plan.
More of a sound with legs.
The woman told me it did not concern me.
I told her she could stop making it everyone’s business.
Marilyn cut me a look sharp enough to slice ribbon.
“I had it handled,” she said.
Her voice did not shake.
Her hands did.
Then Ellie came back with a store employee and a security guard who looked like he had reached his lifetime limit of mall nonsense several years ago.
Calmly, dangerously, Ellie said Marilyn had asked to be left alone.
The guard moved the couple along.
The polished woman from the boutique reappeared, phone in hand, panic trying very hard to look like authority.
Marilyn smoothed the front of her top once and walked back to her.
Not quickly.
Never quickly.
For a second, I thought she might say thank you.
She did not.
Obviously.
Then the boutique door closed mostly behind her.
By the time everything settled, the couple was gone, Marilyn was hidden inside the store, and the mall had started pretending nothing had happened.
That might have been the worst part.
How fast public cruelty dissolved once the show ended.
Halifax was supposed to be farther away.
Different place.
Different air.
Different people.
But public damage travels.
It leaves Meridia Falls in someone’s mouth and arrives wearing a stranger’s wedding ring.
After that, nobody felt much like shopping.
The morning started with Teddy calling before breakfast.
Which was rude.
Not because I was asleep.
Because apparently dread now had office hours.
Ellie was still curled beside me when I answered and put him on speaker.
“Please tell me nobody is dead, missing, cursed, or emotionally complicated before coffee,” I said.
Teddy paused. “Define emotionally complicated.”
Ellie opened one eye.
“Oh no,” she said.
“Steve called Candy,” Teddy said.
The room went still.
“And?” Ellie asked.
“She played hard to get.”
Of course she did.
“Saturday was impossible,” Teddy said. “Sunday was apparently also impossible.”
I made a face. “Busy girl.”
“Very tragic schedule,” Teddy added. “But Monday night works.”
Which meant Saturday night was ours again.
Technically.
It did not feel like a win.
I swear, plans only look organized right before they bite.
My stomach tightened, even though that was technically the point.
“Monday,” Ellie said.
“Cucina d’Oro,” Teddy said. “Seven.”
“Candy agreed to Italian?” I asked.
“Fancy enough to be seen,” Teddy said. “Public enough to feel safe. Date-like enough to feel like she won.”
Of course.
Candy would like that.
Main Street windows.
A table people might notice.
A date she could turn into proof that everything was exactly how she wanted it.
“And Steve?” Ellie asked.
“Still saying yes,” Teddy said. “I reminded him he can back out.”
“Does he know that?” Ellie asked.
“I said it twice.”
Nobody spoke for a second.
Monday had a time now.
A restaurant.
A table.
A plan.
Not tomorrow.
Not safely distant either.
Just waiting at the start of next week like something already walking toward us.
After Teddy’s call and the official arrival of Monday-shaped dread, Ellie and I went back to my house to check on things.
Plants watered.
Mail collected.
No signs of break-in.
No cryptic messages taped to the fridge.
Honestly, rude of the universe to make that feel like a win.
By the time we got back to the apartment, the sky had started turning gold around the edges, and we decided pasta counted as dinner because boiling water was about the highest level of domestic ambition either of us had left.
The TV was on low in the living room.
Background noise.
Normal noise.
Then I heard Marilyn’s name.
I stepped out of the kitchen.
Marilyn’s face was on the screen.
The pasta water boiled over behind us.
Ellie turned off the burner before we hurried into the living room.
The local news banner underneath her photo said:
SPELLBOUND DISHARMONY: MAPLE CROWN TEEN TITLEHOLDER TO BE STRIPPED OF CROWN
Turning the school play into a headline.
Mrs. Rivers will love that.
For a second, the apartment forgot how to breathe.
The report said Marilyn was expected to lose her crown because of “serious concerns” connected to the Maple Crown judging investigation.
The head judge had been suspended.
Then arrested.
The charge was not being made public yet.
Police had interviewed Marilyn earlier that afternoon.
That was the part that made my hands go cold.
Not gossip anymore.
Not comments.
Police.
Then the report showed the Halifax mall footage.
Yesterday.
The boutique.
The couple.
Marilyn in sunglasses, standing there like if she held herself still enough, nobody could hurt her.
Except the clip did hurt her.
It showed Marilyn’s lifted chin.
The woman upset.
The man embarrassed.
Me half in frame, arm raised, mouth open.
No context.
No beginning.
No part where the woman stepped into Marilyn’s path and said, stay away from my husband.
Just pieces.
Pieces could lie if someone arranged them carefully enough.
The woman had given an interview too, all neat hair and trembling voice, saying Marilyn had flirted with her husband and people should know “what kind of girl she is.”
Ellie made a small, sharp sound.
Because we knew.
We had been there.
That was not what happened.
The reporter said the footage had “added fuel” to online speculation about Marilyn’s conduct during and after the Maple Crown finals.
Added fuel.
As if Marilyn were not the thing being burned.
The report kept using careful words.
No confirmed wrongdoing by Marilyn.
No public details.
No further comment from Maple Crown.
No further comment from the police.
But the picture they used was Marilyn in her crown.
Smiling.
Perfect.
Already being turned into the before photo in her own downfall story.
Ellie looked at me like she needed me to say it was not real.
The kitchen still smelled like pasta sauce.
The TV kept talking.
Marilyn’s crown flashed again on-screen, bright and sharp and already gone.
Then the reporter said police were asking anyone with information about events surrounding last year’s Maple Crown Teen of Canada finals to come forward.
Last year.
The finals.
The judge.
Marilyn.
The mall.
The whispers.
The bridge.
You heard nothing.
My stomach dropped so hard it felt physical.
Because now people would start giving information.
Real things.
Wrong things.
Useful things.
Cruel things.
Everything.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Marilyn was being turned into a suspect while the world decided what shape her guilt should be.
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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