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.
We went to Cascades for cupcakes because apparently that is what you do when the news has lied directly to your face.
Breakfast felt too ambitious.
Lunch felt too organized.
Cupcakes were honest.
Charlotte suggested salted caramel without asking why two teenagers looked ready to hold a congressional hearing over dessert.
Good instincts.
We also ordered matching frappes because why not.
The news report about Marilyn seemed to be the talk of the morning.
Hushed conversations.
Side glances.
Just enough truth to make the lie stand up straight.
Candy’s play sabotage had been deliberate—this was messier.
A bad angle.
A loud stranger.
A news voice.
A comment section warming up its pitchforks like community theater.
Maybe we could still get proof.
Something solid enough to matter.
Except proof used to feel like a goal.
Now it felt like holding broken glass and trying to decide who would bleed least.
Annoying.
Important.
Extremely bad for cupcakes.
After lunch, Teddy arrived for the official Saturday diary deep dive.
Which sounds organized.
It was actually three teenagers on the purple room floor with cupcakes, notebooks, sticky tabs, and my younger self’s fourth diary open like it had personally decided to ruin our weekend.
We started where we left off.
Ellie’s hand found mine before the first memory blast hit.
After that, we worked through them slowly.
Past my birthday.
Past the painful memories.
Past the anniversary of Dad and Sean’s passing.
Past Christmas.
All the way to the end.
Lost time.
Blank spaces.
Sentences that stopped too sharply.
Places where younger me clearly knew more than she managed to keep.
The ripped pages were still the worst part.
They sat there with jagged edges, clustered around the same kinds of moments.
After places.
Before names.
Around emotional spikes.
Near sentences where Younger Penny started getting close to something bigger than one memory.
Not answers—
Edges.
Ellie drew a little rectangle with torn paper teeth.
I stared at it.
“That is extremely accurate and personally offensive.”
Her mouth twitched.
I looked back at the diary.
Missing pages are not empty.
They are where the story bit back.
After Teddy left, Ellie and I declared pizza officially necessary.
The human body can only process so much mystery before it starts making bad decisions.
So we ordered takeout.
We ate on the couch with a movie that had no car chases, no secret societies, and no girls being publicly destroyed by a comment section.
Important criteria.
For twenty minutes, we actually watched—mostly.
Ellie leaned into my side under the blanket, and I let myself feel that instead of everything else.
Her shoulder.
Garlic crust.
Vanilla candle.
The warm, ordinary weight of the pizza box on the coffee table.
Clearwater was still coming.
We both knew it.
We had systems now.
Letters.
Polaroids.
Recovery anchors.
Rules written down like rules could make waking up wrong less terrifying.
They helped.
They did not stop the fear.
Then Ellie’s phone buzzed.
Both of us looked.
Neither of us moved.
It buzzed again.
Candy.
Of course.
She was spamming their group chat with fallout from last night’s news report about Marilyn, acting all concerned like she had not spent years treating concern as something that happened to other people.
Fake worry about her stepsister.
Very moving.
Extremely vomit-adjacent.
Ellie stared at the screen for one second.
Then she turned her phone face-down and slid it under a cushion.
I stared at her.
Very bold.
Very attractive.
Extremely dangerous leadership style.
I did not argue.
For a little while, the world waited.
Not solved.
Just delayed.
Tonight was still terrifying.
Clearwater was still coming.
But it was not getting the couch.
Or our personal time.
Ellie went to church this morning.
I went with her.
Not inside, obviously.
Let’s not get wild.
I waited on my usual bench in the park with iced coffee and the posture of someone absolutely not having a moral reckoning before noon.
Very convincing.
Probably.
While Ellie was inside, I failed at not checking my phone.
The Marilyn fallout was still everywhere.
Someone had shared the clip with a caption about “accountability” and “role models,” because apparently people can weaponize words like kitchen utensils.
The problem was Marilyn was not my friend.
She had been polished and distant and part of Candy’s orbit. She had stood in rooms where Ellie got smaller.
None of that went away because people were cruel to her now.
But she did not deserve to be hunted.
That was the word my brain kept landing on.
Hunted.
Like once the news made her public enough, everyone got permission to take a bite.
Across the street, a crow landed on the chapel railing.
Of course it did.
“Do not start,” I muttered.
The crow stayed silent, which was either respectful or deeply suspicious.
By the time Ellie came out, it was still there.
She saw it.
Then she saw me seeing it.
“Is that him?” she asked.
I was about to challenge the bird, which says a lot about where my life is emotionally, when it lifted off the railing and flew over the rooftops.
Probably just a crow.
Maybe.
Ellie sat beside me and told me the sermon had mentioned Marilyn without mentioning her. Forgiveness. Understanding. How easy it is to judge people when you only know one part of the story.
“Bold of her to invade sacred space,” I said.
That got half a smile.
Then Ellie looked toward the rooftops where the crow had vanished.
“I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
The chapel bell rang once behind us.
Not dramatic.
Not magical—
Just sound moving through Sunday morning.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”
After church, I took Ellie to the skate park.
Questionable life choice? Yes.
But the day needed wheels, sunlight, and a danger level I could identify before it hit us.
Ellie stood at the edge of the concrete with my skateboard between us, giving it the suspicious-leftovers look.
“You promise this is beginner level?”
“Beginner for emotionally brave people.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No, but it sounds better.”
She stepped onto the board, and I held out both hands like this was a trust exercise invented by concrete.
Tiny push.
Tiny panic.
Ellie grabbing my hands like the sidewalk had betrayed her.
“I moved.”
“Historic day.”
Her smile appeared properly then.
Small, but real.
We practiced tiny pushes and tiny panics until she made it halfway across the flat section, hopped off, and stumbled into me.
I caught her.
Heroically.
With only minor loss of dignity.
Teddy arrived for Doctor Who night with snacks and the expression of someone failing to pretend Monday was not already sitting on his shoulders.
Ellie announced we were starting withThe Edge of Destructionand thenThe Aztecs, holding theremote with national-archives seriousness.
Teddy froze halfway through opening the M&Ms.
“Bottle story and historical moral dilemma?”
Ellie nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Correct pathway.”
I looked between them.
“Oh no,” I said. “There are still two of you.”
For a while, the apartment became something close to normal.
Teddy commented on TARDIS weirdness. Ellie pointed out one excellent dramatic shadow. I pretended not to understand half the lore because making them explain it sounded less like panic.
The strange thing was how quickly Teddy softened.
His shoulders dropped.
His hand stopped checking his phone.
Not system-builder Teddy.
Just Teddy.
My Teddy.
Our Teddy.
The one who deserved snacks and black-and-white sci-fi and a couch that did not come with active surveillance from the Board of Bizarre.
He caught me looking.
“What?”
“Friendship face.”
“Deeply suspicious.”
Maybe that was what rituals were.
Not pretending danger was gone.
Just refusing to let it have the couch.
When the story ended, Teddy called Ellie’s selection “acceptable,” and she threw a cushion at him.
He caught it badly.
Obviously.
M&Ms went everywhere.
For thirty seconds, the most urgent problem in the apartment was candy under the coffee table.
We laughed.
And after the week we were walking into, laughing with both of them in the same room felt like something worth saving.
Steve looked smaller at Cascades.
Not physically.
He was still tall enough to make booth seating look personally offended by knees.
But he had the expression of someone trying to convince himself he had not agreed to walk into a trap.
The four of us sat upstairs with drinks nobody was drinking. Teddy had the Web notebook open between us.
He made Steve say out loud that he knew he could back out.
Now.
At dinner.
Any time.
Steve rubbed both hands over his face.
“I want to know what she’s doing.”
“That is not the same thing as owing us this,” Ellie said.
Quiet.
Firm.
Very Ellie.
Steve looked down at the notebook.
“I know,” he said. “But I’m already in it.”
I hated that.
Because it was true in the worst way.
Candy had already pulled him into something. We had seen enough to know that.
Not enough to stop it.
Classic.
Teddy went through the rules.
No confronting Candy.
No pushing if she seemed suspicious.
No trying to be brave because brave people in horror movies are basically volunteering for consequences.
I may have added that last one.
The plan stayed simple in the way bad ideas pretend to be simple.
Analog camera in Steve’s jacket pocket.
Receiver nearby.
Physical tape.
No phones.
No uploads.
Tomorrow, same time, same booth, we would debrief.
Assuming the universe could behave for once.
Bold request.
Then Ellie said the line that mattered.
“The goal is to protect you, Steve.”
Steve looked almost confused by that.
Like accepting care was somehow harder than accepting a secret camera in his jacket.
This was the ugly before.
The part mystery stories skip.
Because Steve was not bait.
Not evidence.
Not a route into Candy’s secrets with a varsity jacket and a nervous smile.
He was a scared person trying to help.
And somehow that made Monday feel worse, not better.
Teddy went to Steve’s after lunch to fit the camera.
Ellie and I waited at the apartment.
Badly.
At 5:42pm, my phone buzzed with a message.
Teddy: Fitted. Testing. Do not spiral.
Being told not to spiral is basically an engraved invitation.
At 6:11pm, he pulled up outside the Meridian in the Chen Print van, the back seat smelling faintly of paper, printer ink, and coffee.
The equipment sat in a bag between us.
Receiver.
Portable video recorder.
Blank tape.
Too many cables running to the van’s power outlet.
Everything looked ordinary enough to be disappointing. I had expected blinking lights and maybe a red button labeled TERRIBLE IDEA.
“The camera looks like a button,” Teddy said. “Audio is good. Video depends on angle.”
“So our best evidence may be Steve’s jacket admiring breadsticks.”
“Accurate.”
We parked near the Town Hall, close enough for the signal without looking like three tiny criminals with homework.
Steve’s truck drove past, and all three of us sank lower in our seats.
Very subtle.
Very professional.
From our deeply normal van-window surveillance position, we watched him escort Candy into Cucina d’Oro.
They looked like a nervous couple on a first date.
Which would have been cute.
If we knew absolutely nothing.
Then the screen flickered.
Static.
Carpet.
Steve’s hand.
A tilted glimpse of the restaurant doorway.
Teddy pressed record.
The tape clicked.
Small sound.
Huge feeling.
Monday officially stopped pretending it was only a plan.
For the first part of dinner, nothing happened.
Restaurant nothing.
Table.
Candle.
Candy’s water glass.
Occasional flashes of her face when she leaned close enough for the camera to remember its job.
She looked normal.
That was the horrible part.
Pretty.
Mildly annoyed.
Like this was just dinner and not a possible crime scene with complimentary water.
Steve tried.
Summer.
Party plans.
Vacation plans.
Even Marilyn after the news.
Candy only tilted her head and said Marilyn needed to be careful with attention.
Not enough.
Not proof.
Not the danger wearing lip gloss.
Static came and went.
So did my faith in the plan.
Candy was not failing the test.
She was making the test look stupid.
By the time the plates were cleared, Teddy’s jaw had become architecture.
“This isn’t working.”
Nobody argued.
Then Steve offered to drive Candy home.
She paused just long enough before saying yes.
No proof.
Just a normal date moving somewhere we had not planned.
Teddy started the van before Steve’s truck had pulled away.
Candy was in the passenger seat.
Steve was driving.
The tape was still recording.
The plan had not failed.
It had moved.
Which somehow felt worse.
Following Steve’s truck felt wrong immediately.
Not illegal wrong.
Probably.
Stomach-wrong.
Every turn away from the Town Hall took us farther from the plan and closer to something none of us had properly imagined.
Because imagining it would have made us stop.
The camera gave us pieces.
Dashboard.
Streetlights.
Steve’s hand on the wheel.
Candy’s hair when she turned toward him.
Static scraped through the sound, but the signal held.
When Steve turned into Seven Trees Farm, Teddy parked far enough back not to be obvious, close enough to keep the feed.
The farm was dark around the edges.
Too much land.
Too many trees.
A big house with lit windows, looking normal in the exact way normal had started to feel threatening.
Steve parked.
Candy invited him inside.
Steve hesitated.
Good.
That was my first thought.
He hesitated.
His hand brushed his jacket, like he remembered the camera was there.
Then Candy turned toward him.
Her face tilted into the porch light.
Her eyes sparkled.
Bright.
Not flashed.
Sparkled.
Not porch-light sparkled either.
For one second, the screen caught them too clearly—bright, wrong, impossible in a way my brain recognized before it knew what to do with it.
Ellie made a tiny sound beside me.
Teddy went completely still.
I forgot how to breathe.
Because there it was.
Not mood.
Not charm.
Not Candy being Candy—
Magic.
In her eyes.
On the tape.
Steve went still.
Completely still.
Candy smiled.
“Come inside, Steve.”
He did.
No argument.
No joke.
No Steve awkwardness.
Just movement, like the decision had been taken out of him and his body had been left to catch up.
“There,” Teddy whispered.
Proof.
Actual proof.
Nothing like the proof we had been looking for.
I should have felt relieved.
I did not.
I wish that had been the end of it.
It was not.
Inside the house, the camera gave us fragments.
Hallway light.
Stairs.
Candy’s shoulder.
Her voice soft and horribly normal.
Not asking.
Giving orders.
Steve answered once, but his voice sounded far away from him.
I wanted to open the van door.
Run up the driveway.
Do something loud enough to break whatever had happened on that porch.
But the house was too far.
Candy was too close.
And none of us knew what would happen if we rushed in with proof that sounded insane unless you had watched his eyes go empty.
Then upstairs happened in pieces.
Door.
Room.
Pinkish light.
Chair.
Candy pulled Steve’s jacket off and tossed it aside.
The screen flipped, blurred, hit something, and settled at an angle.
Bedspread.
Chair leg.
Carpet.
The camera had fallen under a chair.
The tape kept recording.
The sound did not stop.
I am not writing down what we heard.
I am not giving it more room than it already took.
It was enough to know Steve was not okay.
Enough to know Candy had taken away his choice before she ever touched him.
Enough to make Ellie turn away and Teddy cover his ears.
Later, Steve’s boots appeared near the edge of the frame.
He picked up the jacket.
Not the camera.
Then he was gone.
We saw truck lights through the window. Steve drove past the end of the drive without looking toward us.
Without slowing.
Without seeing us at all.
Teddy called him immediately.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
On the tiny screen, Candy’s bedroom floor remained tilted and horribly ordinary.
The camera had stayed behind.
The tape was still recording.
Then a door downstairs.
Footsteps.
A man’s voice, low and calm.
“Did you get what we needed?”
“Yes,” Candy said. “Sergeant Dillon won’t be a problem now.”
Ellie whispered, “It’s Candy’s dad.”
The man’s voice softened.
Not kindly.
Proudly.
“That’s my good girl.”
I felt sick.
Not scared-sick.
Understanding-sick.
Candy had not just hurt Steve.
She had used him.
And someone had taught her that was something to be praised for.
The camera’s power ran out then.
Teddy stopped the tape.
The van felt too small.
Too hot.
Too full of everything we had learned and failed to stop.
The camera was still in Candy’s room.
The tape was in our hands.
And there was no version of tonight where three teenagers marched back up that driveway and asked Candy Steele for our secret analog evidence.
Ellie lowered her hands from her face.
Her fingers were shaking.
“We got proof,” she said.
Her voice broke on proof.
I looked at the blank screen.
The tape did not feel like rescue.
It felt like arriving too late with a receipt.
Ellie’s phone rang at 10:18am.
Candy Steele.
Not a name anyone wants before lunch.
Or after lunch.
Or ever, ideally.
We were in the purple room with Teddy, staring at the Seven Trees tape like it might eventually apologize.
It did not.
The camera was still in Candy’s bedroom.
Under a chair.
Assuming Candy had not found it.
Assuming Candy had not already worked out exactly what had happened.
So when Ellie’s phone lit up with Candy’s name, every assumption in the room snapped.
“She found the camera,” Teddy said.
Not a question.
My stomach went cold.
Because if Candy had found it, this was not a call—it was a trap with ringtone options.
Ellie answered before fear could freeze her thumb.
“Hi, Candy.”
Her voice was perfect.
Soft.
Normal.
A tiny miracle from a girl who had every reason to sound terrified.
Candy’s bright voice came through.
Girls’ afternoon.
Halifax shopping.
Party planning.
Everyone meeting at Candy’s first.
Of course Candy’s house had become the launch point for social doom.
I watched Ellie listen.
Panic first.
Then calculation.
Then decision.
“I can come,” she said.
I shook my head immediately.
No.
Absolutely not.
Very clear body language.
Rude of Ellie to ignore it.
She ended the call.
“It’s the only chance.”
“The only chance to walk directly into Candy’s house, where the secret camera we left behind may or may not already have been discovered?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Love that for our life.”
Teddy dragged both hands through his hair and listed the two terrible options.
If Candy had found the camera, Ellie was being invited there to see what she knew.
If Candy had not found it, she could find it any minute.
Ellie knew both.
That was the worst part.
She did know.
Her face was pale, but steady.
Scared and steady, which somehow made me want to hold her and lock every door in Meridia Falls at the same time.
“You do not have to do this,” I said.
Ellie looked at me.
“I know.”
Then, quieter, “I’m choosing it.”
That did not make me feel better.
It made me proud.
Which was worse.
We made the plan small because small was the only version that did not make me want to physically attach myself to her bag.
Go to Candy’s.
Act normal.
Search only if there was a clean chance.
Stay near the others.
Keep her phone on.
Text one word if anything felt wrong.
We did not say what happened after that.
None of us had an answer that was not useless, illegal, or both.
Candy had called because she thought Ellie still belonged close enough to be useful.
Maybe she did.
But for once, Ellie was the one using the invitation.
And I hated that bravery could look so much like walking toward the thing that scared us.
Steve was six minutes late.
Long enough for Teddy to check his phone four times and for me to remember Ellie was already on her way to Candy’s house.
Very balanced.
Very healthy.
Absolutely how summer is supposed to work.
When Steve finally came upstairs, he looked like he had not slept and had slept too much.
Somehow both.
His jacket sleeve was pulled down over one hand. He stopped when he saw us, like his body remembered the meeting before the rest of him wanted to.
“Hey,” he said.
Smallest hey ever recorded.
Charlotte brought him coffee without making a thing of it.
Steve did not touch it.
He sat across from us and put his phone face-down on the table.
“Steve,” Teddy said carefully, “are you okay?”
Steve laughed once.
Not a laugh.
A broken air sound that had failed to become one.
“No.”
Good answer.
Terrible answer.
Then he turned the phone over.
“There’s a video.”
Unknown sender.
No profile picture.
No history.
Just a video thumbnail and one line:
Keep your dad away from town Saturday night.
My stomach went cold.
Steve tapped the video.
Only for one second.
Long enough.
Too long.
Him.
Candy.
Her room.
Enough.
Steve shut it off like the screen had burned him.
“I don’t remember that,” he said.
His voice cracked on remember.
“I remember dinner. Driving her home. The porch. Then I was in my truck near the edge of town and my phone was off.”
Teddy leaned forward. “Nothing after the porch?”
Steve shook his head.
“The message says if my dad is anywhere near town Saturday night, the full video goes to the press. And to him.”
Sergeant Dillon.
His dad.
The name sat behind the words like another person at the table.
Then Steve looked at Teddy.
“What did our camera get?”
There it was.
The question we had known was coming and still had not prepared for.
Teddy glanced at me.
Only once.
“The signal started breaking up on the way to the farm,” he said. “Once you got there, it was just static. I think we were too far out of range.”
Not technically true.
Not even creatively true.
Steve looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded.
Because telling him the tape had kept recording would not give him back the missing time. It would only expose him to magic, force him to hear what Candy had taken from him—and make him listen to her dad congratulating her afterward.
“We didn’t get anything useful from Seven Trees,” I said.
Useful was doing a lot of criminal work in that sentence.
Steve looked relieved.
Only for a second.
Then his eyes dropped back to the video Candy had sent him, and the relief disappeared beneath everything else.
I thought about Candy’s sparkling eyes.
Steve going still.
The adult voice on the tape.
Sergeant Dillon won’t be a problem now.
The pieces fit.
I wished they didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Teddy said.
Steve looked at him.
“We should have stopped it.”
“No.”
Steve startled himself with how sharp it came out.
Then he looked down at the phone again.
“No,” he repeated, quieter. “I said yes. I wanted to help.”
“That doesn’t make what happened okay,” I said.
Steve looked at me then.
Less embarrassed than scared.
“I know.”
Nothing useful came after that.
Nothing that fixed the memory gap.
Nothing that erased the video.
Nothing that made consent reappear because Candy had dressed the trap like a date.
When Steve asked what he was supposed to do about Saturday, Teddy and I exchanged one look.
Not enough time.
Too much danger.
No Ellie in the booth to steady the room.
“We figure that out,” Teddy said.
Honest.
Awful.
Better than a lie.
Steve turned his phone face-down again and left his hand over it, like he was afraid the video might crawl out.
Candy did not just get leverage.
She taught Steve to be afraid of his own missing time.
Ellie texted me at 2:36pm.
Ellie: At Candy’s.
Perfectly normal.
Which meant absolutely nothing, because perfectly normal is how danger introduces itself now.
By then, I was back at the apartment.
Teddy had gone with Steve to figure out Saturday, and I had split off so someone would be where Ellie expected me when she came back.
Also, pacing alone in the purple room felt slightly less socially alarming than doing it in public.
Only slightly.
The Seven Trees tape sat on the desk.
Bobby watched from the wall.
The camera was still in Candy’s bedroom.
Assuming Candy had not found it.
Assuming Candy did not look at Ellie with those sparkling eyes.
That was the part my brain kept circling.
Candy’s eyes on the porch.
Thatmagic.
Steve going still.
The video he could not remember.
Was that how she got leverage?
Not by waiting for mistakes.
By making them.
Some kind of magical hypnotism.
Mind trick.
Sparkly nightmare eye thing.
Technical term pending.
Had she ever done it to Ellie?
That thought made the room tilt.
Because Ellie had been in Candy’s orbit for years.
Sleepovers.
Parties.
Bedrooms.
A thousand moments where Candy could have looked at her and smiled.
Then another message came through.
Ellie: Going upstairs.
My heart tried to leave through my ribs.
No more dots.
No more texts.
So I waited.
Badly.
When Ellie finally got back, she shut the apartment door behind her and leaned against it.
That was when I knew.
She told me what happened in the careful, exact way people use when they are holding something sharp.
According to Ellie, Candy’s house had been bright and perfect in the way expensive houses are allowed to be when nobody has told them they are horrifying.
Candy had worn a white sundress and acted like Monday had been nothing except a successful date with a boy she could now show off.
Kaelyn and Sally had talked about Halifax clothing stores, photo colors, and the Three Falls party now officially set for August 8.
Teen girl logistics.
Normal words.
Awful room.
Then Candy decided they should choose earrings from her bedroom.
Because, I swear, the universe does not just open doors.
It decorates them.
Ellie said the bedroom looked different in daylight.
Not better.
Clearer.
The chair.
The bedspread.
The carpet.
Everything from the tilted camera feed suddenly real around her.
She wanted to look at the floor immediately.
She did not.
That was the brave part.
Candy asked which earrings looked more “Halifax but effortless.”
Ellie chose the smaller pair.
Then Sally knocked a lip gloss off the dresser.
Tiny chaos.
Enough.
Ellie bent to pick it up.
Her hand moved under the chair like she was only helping with lip gloss.
Her fingers found the camera.
Still there.
Cold.
Small.
Impossible.
She slipped it into her bag beside her sketchbook.
Candy did not notice.
Or did not show it.
Ellie reached into her bag and placed the camera on the desk.
Carefully.
Like it might still be listening.
Getting it back did not get Steve back.
It did not erase the video.
It did not explain Candy’s magic.
It only meant the worst little piece of equipment in Meridia Falls was no longer lying under Candy Steele’s chair.
Which was not nothing.
But nowhere near enough.
Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and finally let herself shake.
I sat beside her.
The camera was on the desk.
Steve was still trapped under whatever Candy had done.
And Ellie had walked into that room anyway.
Not because she was evidence.
Because she was brave.
The local morning news found Marilyn before I finished my toast.
This feels like something toast should be allowed to sue over.
The segment shifted from weather to local interest, and suddenly Marilyn was on-screen again.
Not current Marilyn.
Anniversary Marilyn.
One year younger, smiling under stage lights with a silver crown and sash.
Maple Crown Teen of Canada.
ONE YEAR SINCE LOCAL TEEN’S NATIONAL TITLE WIN.
Lovely—if you had no context.
The anchor had that careful cheer adults use when pretending a story is inspirational while waiting for it to become scandal-shaped.
Last year’s clips showed Marilyn waving, accepting flowers, standing beside Maple Crown officials with perfect posture.
Then came now.
The Halifax mall clip.
Headlines about titleholder conduct.
Blurred comments.
And, because public humiliation apparently enjoys a multimedia package, pieces from the Spellbound Harmony interval video had started circulating too.
Only the worst pieces, obviously.
Public humiliation with graphic design.
And lighting cues.
Ellie set her fork down.
“She was fifteen.”
That landed harder than expected.
In the crown photos, Marilyn looked untouchable.
But fifteen was still fifteen.
Even with a sash.
Even when everyone clapped.
The anchor said Maple Crown was moving to strip Marilyn of her title following “recent developments.”
Recent developments.
Lovely clean adult phrase.
The kind that lets people take a teenager apart while sounding like paperwork.
Then came a brief update about the suspended head judge.
Still suspended.
Still under investigation.
Still “pursuing legal options.”
Fantastic.
Everyone involved in Marilyn’s life had a statement now.
Except Marilyn.
A commentator said titleholders were expected to model “poise under pressure.”
So if people tried to destroy you publicly, you were still expected to do it with good posture.
I still did not like Marilyn cleanly.
But watching the crown turn against her made something twist in me.
The anniversary was not a celebration anymore.
It was proof of who Marilyn had been told to become.
And now everyone was using it to decide how hard she should fall.
Candy posted a selfie of her and Steve from their date night.
Not announced.
Not explained.
Just posted.
Which somehow made it worse.
The photo showed them outside Cucina d’Oro. Candy’s head tilted toward his shoulder.
Pretty.
Bright.
Perfectly casual.
Steve was smiling.
Technically.
His mouth had the right shape.
His eyes did not.
Ellie sat beside me on the couch, knees pulled up, one hand tight around her phone.
Candy’s caption said:
Best shopping break. Some people are full of surprises.
No names.
No explanation.
Just Steve turned into a prop with excellent lighting.
The comments started immediately.
Cute! Wait are you two a thing now? Steve Dillon?
One person wrote:
Did not see that coming.
I wanted to reply:
Neither did he.
I did not.
Personal growth or legal survival.
Hard to tell.
Ellie took my phone before I could keep scrolling myself into a felony.
“She wants it to look normal,” she said.
My stomach turned.
Because yes.
Candy had not only trapped Steve.
She was decorating the trap afterward.
Publicly—
With hearts.
“We did this,” I said.
“No,” Ellie’s answer came immediately. “We asked. He chose. Candy did this.”
I knew that.
Mostly.
Knowing does not always reach the places guilt lives.
Candy added the photo to her story with a tiny pink heart sticker near Steve’s shoulder.
I hated the heart sticker most of all.
Stupid, considering everything.
But it was so cheerful.
So normal.
Like the world was supposed to see boyfriend instead of a boy with missing time and a phone full of threat.
Steve looked wrong.
Not enough for anyone else to notice.
A little too still.
Smile a little too late.
Eyes waiting for instructions.
Everyone else saw cute.
Steve was in town.
Steve was visible.
Steve was smiling.
None of that meant he was safe.
It meant Candy had learned how to make a cage look like a relationship.
Ellie and I took cupcakes to the park because apparently frosting had become our emergency response system.
We picked a spot around the back of the lake.
For approximately eight minutes, the day behaved.
We did not talk about Steve, Candy, the video, Sergeant Dillon, or Marilyn.
We talked about whether the apartment plants were judging us.
Important subject.
Very real concern.
Then Ellie went quiet.
Marilyn was walking along the path alone, in denim shorts, a white blouse, sunglasses, and hair tied back in a way that looked less styled and more survived.
She saw us.
I thought she would keep walking.
Instead, she stopped near the blanket.
“Hi,” she said.
Tiny.
Extremely weird.
Ellie said “hi” back because Ellie is better at being a person under pressure.
Marilyn’s eyes flicked to the cupcake box.
Cascades, obviously.
Silence arrived wearing invisible shoes.
I looked at the cupcakes.
Then Marilyn.
Then Ellie.
Ellie gave the smallest nod.
“Do you want one?” I asked.
Marilyn stared like I had offered her a suspicious artifact instead of buttercream.
“I’m fine.”
Fine.
The most exhausted word in English.
“They’re not commitment cupcakes,” I said. “You can accept one without emotionally joining our team.”
Marilyn blinked.
Then she took a vanilla cupcake.
For the first time in maybe ever, she looked almost her age.
Not titleholder age.
Not girl-with-a-statement-pending age.
Just sixteen and tired.
“People are ridiculous,” she said.
Not thank you.
Not sorry.
Still honest.
“Yeah,” I said. “Top three human traits.”
Her mouth almost moved.
Not a smile.
Maybe the ghost of one.
Then she left with the cupcake in one hand and her sunglasses back in place.
Not friendship.
Not forgiveness.
Not trust.
But the first time Marilyn Moreau had taken something from us that was not proof, suspicion, or disaster.
One tiny truce.
With frosting.
We met Teddy at Cascades for pre-Clearwater pie.
Some people meditate.
Some people eat pie and list all the ways reality might betray them before the weekend.
Healthy coping varies.
Teddy was already upstairs, staring at an untouched slice of apple pie.
Bad sign.
Charlotte brought hot chocolates and cherry pie, then left us alone with the kind of server instincts that deserved an award.
For a minute, nobody said anything.
Too many subjects.
Reality rearranging itself again like a bored stage crew with no respect for emotional stability.
“She took a cupcake,” I said eventually.
Teddy looked up. “Marilyn?”
“No, the park squirrel. Yes, Marilyn.”
Ellie’s mouth twitched.
“She was alone,” Ellie said. “And tired.”
“Tired doesn’t mean safe,” Teddy said, then softened. “I know you know.”
He wanted adults.
Not in the useless tell-a-teacher way.
In the desperate reasonable way where someone looks at tapes, missing memories, blackmail, magic eyes, and thinks, surely someone older should carry this.
“Steve doesn’t want his dad seeing the video,” I said. “And if Sergeant Dillon is the target, telling him wrong could make it worse.”
Teddy pushed his fork into the pie crust but did not eat it.
Then Ellie said the terrible little hope out loud.
“What if Clearwater wipes it?”
The leverage.
The video.
The post.
The way Steve was trapped.
Maybe the reset would erase Candy’s leverage.
Maybe Steve would wake up with one less chain around him.
Maybe reality would betray us—in a useful direction for once.
I hated how much I wanted that.
“Maybe,” Teddy said carefully. “But we can’t count on the universe fixing what Candy did.”
Rude.
Correct.
Terrible combo.
“And if it wipes the wrong thing?” I said.
Ellie looked down at her hot chocolate.
“Then we have to remember enough to notice.”
Which was exactly the problem.
Clearwater did not just take memories.
It moved the floor under them.
And this would be the first reset with Ellie staying in the apartment.
Very relaxing.
Extremely spa-like.
“And Marilyn?” Teddy asked.
“She doesn’t trust us enough to let us protect her,” Ellie said.
“She doesn’t have to trust us for us to notice danger.”
Annoying habit, being right.
Marilyn was still not our friend.
But I had seen her holding a vanilla cupcake like kindness came with terms and conditions.
I had seen Steve at Cascades.
I had seen Candy turn a cage into a caption.
Apparently seeing things makes ignoring them inconvenient.
Teddy finally took a bite of pie.
Tiny victory.
Possibly cinnamon-based.
“Clearwater prep still happens tonight,” he said. “First reset with you in the new apartment is not something we improvise.”
“Yes, sir, Captain Anxiety.”
“I accept the title.”
Outside, Meridia Falls pretended Thursday evening was harmless.
I almost believed it.
Which should have been my first warning.
We were halfway back to the Meridian when Ellie stopped walking.
Quiet stops are worse because they mean she has noticed something before the rest of the universe has caught up.
Marilyn was near the boardwalk railing.
Alone.
Again.
Phone held too tight.
Sunglasses pushed up.
Face pale beneath careful makeup.
Not crying.
Obviously.
Marilyn Moreau would probably file paperwork before crying in public.
But upset?
Yes.
Teddy exhaled. “We shouldn’t corner her.”
Fair.
Marilyn was not a stray cat or a loose thread on Bobby.
“I’ll say hi,” Ellie said.
Of course she did.
We crossed slowly.
Not like a rescue squad.
Just three teenagers approaching another teenager in public, which somehow felt more dangerous than half the magical nonsense.
Marilyn’s face closed when she saw us.
“Are you following me now?”
Sharp Marilyn.
Safer Marilyn.
“No,” I said. “We’re just heading back from Cascades.”
Her eyes flicked to the Meridian.
“Obviously.”
Then her phone buzzed.
She looked down, jaw tight, and turned the screen off.
People had been sending her things.
Posts.
Clips.
Messages.
Articles pretending not to be articles about her.
Every time someone looked at her now, she could not tell if they were recognizing her or judging her.
Watching her admit even that much felt like seeing someone lift one brick out of a wall and instantly regret the daylight.
Teddy asked if she had someone with her.
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Didn’t say you did. I implied being alone right now seems like a bad strategy.”
For one second, I thought she would snap properly.
Instead, she looked away.
“I just needed air.”
Ellie’s hand brushed mine.
Stay.
So we stayed.
Not hovering.
Not rescuing.
Just there.
The boardwalk kept moving around us: laughing kids, passing bikes, a car engine somewhere behind the street noise.
Then Marilyn’s phone buzzed again.
She flinched.
Only a little.
Enough.
I looked toward the road.
Nothing obvious.
Somewhere above us, a bird gave a rough little squawk.
Maybe a crow.
Maybe nothing.
Still, something under my skin went cold.
“What?” Marilyn asked.
“Nothing.”
True.
And not.
She straightened. “I’m fine.”
No one challenged it.
Marilyn did not leave.
And somehow, that felt like the loudest thing she had said all day.
The car came from Main Street behind us.
I heard it before I understood.
Engine.
Too fast.
Too close.
Wrong.
At first, my brain tried to make it ordinary. A bad driver. Someone showing off near the boardwalk because some people reach adulthood with the emotional intelligence of a wet sock.
Then Marilyn turned.
Her face changed.
Not confused.
Recognizing.
Afraid.
The car jumped the curb.
People shouted.
Marilyn froze by the railing like her body had forgotten how to move.
Ellie lunged first.
Of course she did.
Ellie sees danger and her body decides before fear gets a vote.
She grabbed Marilyn’s arm.
I grabbed hers.
Teddy grabbed my hoodie.
The car was there—not coming. There.
Headlights.
Metal.
Wind.
The grille filling up the whole world.
And then—
Petals.
I know how that sounds.
Trust me.
There was a car about to hit us, and my brain noticed petals.
Small pale shapes hanging between us and the headlights.
Not falling.
Not moving.
Suspended, like someone had pressed pause on the world and forgotten to explain why.
The screaming stopped.
The engine stopped.
The water stopped.
Everything stopped.
Except me.
Except us.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
The car sat inches away. A gull hung over the boardwalk, wings spread. Drops of water shimmered like glass beads. A dropped ice cream cone floated sideways in mid-collapse.
Marilyn made a tiny terrified sound.
And then the Rogue Ghost.
He moved through the stillness.
That was the part my brain hated most.
Not the frozen car.
Him.
Moving.
Dark hoodie.
Face half hidden in shadow.
One hand extended like he was bracing himself against a world that had forgotten how to move.
There was no crow.
Only him.
“Move,” he said, muffled, like through thick glass.
Teddy reacted first, probably because Teddy’s panic has excellent organizational skills.
He pulled me.
I pulled Ellie.
Ellie pulled Marilyn.
For one frozen second, Marilyn resisted like her body had not received the message that dying was not required.
Then she moved.
We crashed sideways toward the benches.
The petals around us shivered.
RG’s face twisted like it hurt.
Then the frozen second broke.
Sound came back all at once.
Engine.
Screams.
Water.
Tires.
The car roared past where we had been standing and smashed through the boardwalk barrier.
Wood exploded.
Metal shrieked.
The front of the car tipped and crashed into the waterfront below.
Splash.
Then another sound, deeper and final enough to make every bone in my body understand how close we had come.
For one second, nobody moved.
Then the world remembered itself badly.
People ran.
Someone shouted to call 911.
A child cried.
A man yelled for everyone to get back.
Ellie was on the ground beside me, breathing too fast but breathing. Teddy crouched near my other side, still gripping my hoodie like he might never let go.
Marilyn sat on the boards, white-faced, staring at the broken barrier.
Then she turned slowly.
To me.
To Ellie.
To Teddy.
Then to RG.
He stood several feet away, half in shadow near the edge of the crowd.
Marilyn saw him.
She saw us seeing him.
She saw petals still drifting down around the broken boards, with no flowers nearby and nowhere obvious for them to have come from.
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Sirens started.
Police.
Ambulance.
Fire.
News would come too.
Of course news would come.
The world loves arriving after impact with cameras and confident summaries.
Marilyn whispered, “What was that?”
No one answered.
Because what could we say?
A car tried to kill you. Time stopped. A crow man moved through frozen air. Welcome to Thursday.
RG looked at me once.
Not a message.
Not an explanation.
A check.
Are you alive?
I nodded.
Then people reached us, and questions started.
Marilyn kept staring where RG had been, even after he was gone.
And I knew.
Marilyn had seen too much.
Not enough to understand.
Enough to never go back to not knowing.
The first person who reached us was a woman in a yellow summer dress saying, “Don’t move,” even though none of us seemed especially capable of becoming athletic.
Ellie still had my hand.
Teddy was scanning faces, phones, angles, like the boardwalk had become a problem he could solve if he found the pattern.
Marilyn sat against the railing, staring at RG.
Not the broken barrier.
Not the shouting people.
RG.
He had stepped back into the blur of people gathering, too still and too wrong for ordinary panic.
His eyes met mine once.
Relief moved across his face.
Not victory.
More like hearing a bridge hold after stepping onto it in the dark.
Then he looked toward Marilyn.
She flinched.
Tiny.
But I saw it.
So did he.
He disappeared into the moving crowd before anyone official could ask questions with forms attached.
Marilyn turned to me.
“What was that?”
No one answered.
Because it was the right question, and the truth was standing too close, covered in petals, with sirens approaching.
Ellie offered tissues for Marilyn’s scraped palm.
Marilyn almost refused.
Then took them.
Not friendship.
Not trust exactly.
Shock had filed paperwork ahead of pride.
Police arrived, then ambulance, then fire.
A local news van appeared embarrassingly fast.
An RCMP officer came over.
“Were you four involved?”
Four.
Penny.
Ellie.
Teddy.
Marilyn.
Not RG.
Already missing from the official count.
“The car came at her,” I said.
The officer looked at Marilyn.
For one second, I thought she would say everything.
Petals.
Stillness.
RG.
Instead, she swallowed.
“It came at me.”
Then the questions started.
Names.
Contact information.
Where we had been standing.
What direction the car came from.
Whether we saw the driver.
Very normal questions.
Terrible questions.
Because the real answers sounded insane.
Marilyn watched all of us like she had found a locked door and we were on the other side holding keys we refused to admit existed.
Every time a question came too close to the impossible, Teddy went careful, Ellie went quiet, and I went sarcastic.
Marilyn saw it.
She did not trust us.
Good.
But she followed our lead anyway.
Not because she believed us.
Because she had seen enough to know the truth would sound impossible out loud.
So we gave statements.
A car came at Marilyn.
We pulled her away.
The car went through the barrier.
That was the version with room on the form.
The officer said they had what they needed for now and would be in touch if there were more questions.
Which sounded normal.
Almost reasonable.
Deeply suspicious behavior from Thursday.
Across the boardwalk, Marilyn looked at me again.
You know.
I know you know.
And I knew whatever official version got written tonight, Marilyn Moreau had seen enough to become part of the wrong one.
By Friday morning, the car had become a crash.
Not an attack.
Not a car aiming for Marilyn while the rest of us got pulled into its path.
Not petals in the air and RG moving through a world that had forgotten how to move back.
A crash.
Very clean.
Very sayable.
Ellie and I made toast in the apartment because toast felt calm.
Toast did not ask follow-up questions.
Toast did not call after seeing the local news.
Toast did not say, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” in three different parental voices.
Last night had been parent chaos.
Mom.
Gramps.
Mom again.
Ellie’s dad, with the controlled voice that means fear has put on a sensible jacket.
By morning, everyone knew the official basics.
Crash.
Boardwalk.
Not seriously hurt.
Police spoke to us.
No hospital.
Yes, terrifying.
No, please do not come over immediately.
That last one had not been universally accepted.
So we sat on the couch with plates balanced on our knees while the local news played on the TV.
A reporter with serious eyebrows.
Then the headline banner appeared at the bottom of the screen.
BOARDWALK CRASH UNDER INVESTIGATION
Ellie’s knee pressed against mine.
Then the reporter identified the driver.
The suspended Maple Crown head judge.
The angry one.
The one “pursuing legal options.”
He had been pulled from the water alive and taken to Meridia Medical Centre in serious condition.
Serious condition.
Not dead.
Not fine.
Still enough of a person for the world to ask why.
Police were investigating whether the incident had been intentional, with witnesses saying the vehicle mounted the curb before crashing through the barrier.
Intentional.
Lovely cautious word.
The kind adults use when everyone knows what something looks like but nobody wants to say revenge before breakfast.
Then came the part that made my toast become decorative.
Several witnesses reported hearing the driver shout Marilyn Moreau’s name moments before impact.
I had not heard that part.
Marilyn’s name.
Not brake failure.
Not accident weather.
Her name.
The report still called it a crash.
Of course it did.
Ellie set her toast down.
“She must be terrified.”
I looked at the Polaroid of the broken boardwalk beside my plate.
I kept seeing the version the news did not have.
Marilyn white with shock.
Petals hanging in the air.
RG gone before anyone official could count him.
The world had chosen its smaller story by breakfast.
Marilyn had almost died yesterday.
We had almost died with her.
And somehow the official version already had fewer flowers.
We were supposed to do Clearwater prep last night.
Obviously.
Because nothing says calm, responsible planning like sorting memory anchors after a car tries to kill someone on the boardwalk and time briefly files for divorce.
So we did not.
Which meant Teddy came over before lunch.
Rushed Clearwater prep.
Excellent phrase.
Very comforting.
Absolutely not cursed.
He arrived with his backpack and the expression of someone whose body was in Meridia Falls but whose brain was already halfway to Halifax.
“We’re heading straight there after this,” he said. “Dad has a treatment appointment this afternoon.”
Ellie’s face softened. “Treatment?”
He nodded once.
That word sat in the room differently from everything else.
Just real life, very unfairly refusing to wait its turn.
So we got to work.
The purple room looked like a disaster pretending to be an office.
Diaries.
Polaroids.
Tape labels.
Letters.
Longstone Hall still sat on Bobby, waiting its turn.
Evidence everywhere.
All of it had to be protected before Clearwater got its hands on us.
“Window seat first,” Teddy said.
He lifted off the top panel, and for one second the three of us just stared at the storage space like it was supposed to feel official.
Only the typewriter sat inside.
It did not feel official.
It felt new.
Wrong-new.
We had done this before in my room in Gramps’s apartment.
This was different—
First reset after the move.
First time asking a new room to remember us.
No pressure, furniture.
We updated what needed updating.
Letters.
Videos.
Raw backups for the backups.
Because apparently “just in case” is now a lifestyle.
We had already split the diaries between the AC vent in my old room and the one in this room. Bobby came down too, not all the way, just back to looking like a normal bulletin board instead of a wall that had personally declared war on reality.
Everything important went into the window seat.
The note hidden in my old bedroom window seat would stay as backup, but this was the new main cache now.
Apparently adulthood is when you have multiple trauma filing locations.
Very glamorous.
Then Teddy put the Truthweaver laptop inside.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like a parent leaving their kid at school for the first time and trying not to cry near the coat pegs.
The laptop had become Teddy’s brain outside his brain.
The sort of thing reality would absolutely try to eat if given cutlery.
So into the window seat it went.
Beside the Seven Trees tape.
Physical proof.
Actual proof.
The kind we had said we needed.
Part of me hoped Clearwater would erase Candy’s leverage over Steve.
The cage she had dressed up with hearts.
Maybe Steve would wake up with one less chain around him.
Then I looked at the tape.
If reality could wipe one thing, it could wipe the other.
Hope, apparently, also comes with terms and conditions.
And Marilyn had seen too much.
Not enough to understand.
Enough to know the crash story was missing pieces.
If Clearwater shifted things, would she forget RG?
Our faces after?
I did not know whether I wanted that.
Which was deeply inconvenient, morally.
I tucked the tape into the window seat.
Proof did not feel like rescue.
But losing it would not feel like mercy either.
So we kept going.
Because apparently emotional crisis does not excuse you from admin.
I lifted out the typewriter, tore a few sheets of notebook paper from my diary, and typed a new recovery letter for the apartment.
Same as the others.
Teddy made an envelope from the pages I had ripped out, just like we had done right back at the start.
Which felt wrong.
Like that first letter belonged to another version of me who had no idea how many versions of us would eventually be required.
Now there would be one letter for my old bedroom.
One for the bedside table in my new bedroom.
One to mail—to Apartment B this time, with the address changed.
Backup for the backup for the backup.
I stamped the new letter with the eye stamp and folded it into the envelope.
One more small spell of ink and hope.
Ellie held her dragon drawing against her chest.
Her original recovery anchor.
The one that had already proved it could pull her back when the world tried to smooth her away.
“We should take it back to my house,” she said.
I hated that she was right.
If Clearwater decided she had not stayed here, if the apartment forgot her, if reality tried to put her back where it thought she belonged, her strongest anchor needed to be waiting in her own room.
We still had the second dragon drawing, along with Teddy’s duplicate police box drawing. I tucked those into the back of my current diary, ready if needed.
Then Teddy stood in the middle of the purple room, hands on his backpack straps.
For a second, none of us said anything.
This was the goodbye before the reset.
Not dramatic.
Not final.
But different.
Because Sunday morning, between 1am and 2am, reality would shift.
Teddy might remember everything.
Or not.
Ellie might wake up here.
Or not.
I might open the window seat and find everything still waiting for us.
Or I might need the backups to drag them back.
Teddy’s phone buzzed.
It was time to go.
Before Teddy left, we made one more plan.
Steve.
Of course.
Saturday night was still sitting there like a lit fuse.
Candy—or Isaac Steele, or both of them—wanted Sergeant Dillon away from town, and Steve still had no idea what to do.
“I’ll keep working it from Halifax,” Teddy said.
Which sounded impossible.
Also exactly like Teddy.
Then he hugged Ellie carefully.
Then me hard and fast.
He cleared his throat. “See you on the other side.”
“Cascades,” Ellie said. “Monday. Noon.”
Teddy nodded.
Because apparently we were now the kind of people who scheduled lunch around reality damage.
We told him to pass our love to his dad.
Then he was gone.
The purple room went quiet around us.
The window seat held everything we needed to remember.
I hoped that would be enough.
Which, historically, has not been my safest hobby.
We waited until the apartment was quiet before getting the black light from the window seat.
Private check.
Very glamorous.
Very much not how normal people spend Friday before lunch.
Ellie stood with her back to me first, top lifted just enough. I made one quick pass with the light.
No glow.
No triangles.
No hidden glyphs waiting under her skin.
Just the three tiny needle marks on her lower back.
Then she checked mine.
Same.
The glowing triangles were gone.
The puncture marks were not.
Which felt like a very Clearwater kind of compromise.
After we mailed the backup letter, checked my old room, and watered the plants so Mom would not return from her summer seminar to botanical evidence of neglect, Ellie and I headed back toward the Meridian.
Which meant the RGN app chose that moment to buzz.
Of course it did.
Old birdwatching hide. Park. Now.
No signature.
Naturally.
Because apparently normal people text, and mysterious crow-adjacent men summon you to scenic locations with excellent tree coverage.
Ellie read it over my shoulder.
“RG?”
“Unless birdwatchers have started issuing summons.”
So we went.
RG was waiting near the birdwatching hide, hood down, elbows on his knees, looking like someone who had been awake for longer than medically or emotionally recommended.
No crow entrance.
Somehow weirder.
Ellie’s hand tightened around mine.
He asked if we were hurt.
“No,” I said. “Unless dignity counts.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Rude.”
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Ellie watched him carefully and pointed out that disappearing before police arrived did not make him look less suspicious.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
At least he knew.
He reached into his jacket.
Ellie shifted closer to me.
RG noticed and moved slower.
Good.
He pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Cream-colored, thick, faint blue lines.
London Antiquarian notebook paper.
Same as my diaries.
“A way to reach me,” he said.
“We have the app.”
“The app has limits. This does too.”
My hand stopped halfway toward it.
He nodded, like hesitation was correct.
“It is not a rescue guarantee. Not a shortcut. Not permission to take bigger risks because you think I’ll appear.”
“What is it?”
“If you have no other option, write help on it. Write it. Mean it. Keep it with you.”
“And then?”
“I’ll find you if I can.”
If I can.
Not comfort.
A warning with a handle.
“That part matters,” Ellie said softly.
RG’s eyes softened. “Yes.”
Ellie glanced toward the path.
“Yesterday,” she said. “The car. The petals. Was that magic?”
RG’s face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“Yes.”
He would not call it stopping time.
Useful.
Extremely not useful.
“It was a construct,” he said. “New. Untested. Made by a friend.”
“A friend,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“Does your friend know their time-freezing thing almost gave me a heart attack?”
“I was glad it worked.”
That was not an answer.
It was the closest thing to one we were getting.
I wanted to ask why he could show up yesterday but not every time things went wrong.
I didn’t.
After yesterday, I believed him when he said limits existed.
Not trusted.
Believed.
Annoyingly different.
I took the paper.
It felt warmer than paper should.
RG stepped back.
Always leaving before questions could grow teeth.
“Marilyn saw you,” I said.
“I know.”
“What do we do?”
“Be careful what you deny. People believe lies differently when they already know something happened.”
Naturally ominous.
Then he walked away through the trees.
No crow explosion.
No dramatic vanishing act.
Just a man in a hoodie disappearing into a normal park after giving me paper that might matter only if everything else failed.
The apartment felt different when we got back.
Not bad different.
Not haunted different.
Although that category remains open.
Just aware.
Like the walls noticed we had brought something new inside.
Maybe the help paper, now tucked in the back of my diary like it belonged.
Maybe the fact that time had stopped yesterday and I had not.
Maybe only my brain, which has become an unreliable narrator with excellent attendance.
Ellie closed the door and leaned against it one second too long.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Banned phrase.”
“I am physically present and emotionally complicated.”
“Accepted.”
Tonight was Clearwater.
First reset cycle since Ellie had been staying here.
First time the apartment had to hold both of us through whatever happened between one and two Sunday morning.
No pressure, walls.
Do better than reality.
I pressed my palm to the purple room cupboard door.
“What are you doing?” Ellie asked.
“Making the apartment feel included.”
“That is not how buildings work.”
“Neither is half our life.”
She placed her hand beside mine.
The apartment did not glow.
Honestly, rude.
But the wood was solid.
Ellie was solid.
We moved through the apartment touching things into place instead of making a list.
Lists felt like asking the universe to check our work and deduct points.
For a while, we stood looking at everything we were asking the apartment to hold.
The parts of us that might survive if Sunday morning tried to take something.
The diary was waiting.
The help paper was hidden.
Clearwater was coming.
Ellie’s dad’s driver was arriving soon to take us back to her house under the guise of picking up clothes for the observation weekend.
Official reason.
The real reason was the dragon drawing.
Her original recovery anchor needed to be somewhere she would find it if reality erased her from this apartment.
Which was a horrible sentence.
Accurate, though.
All I had to do was stamp this last entry, hide the diary behind the AC vent, and hope everything survived the reset.
If the apartment can remember anything, let it remember both of us.
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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