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Sunday, May 31, 2026
Letter Shock
So.
I’m back.
Not in the useful way—obviously. Not in the dramatic movie way where someone opens their eyes, remembers everything, and instantly knows what to do while inspiring music happens.
More in the sitting-on-my-bed-at-the-Meridian-with-a-letter-shaking-in-my-hands way.
Very glamorous.
Gramps picked me up from Clearwater this evening, like usual. He did the warm-smile, quiet-drive, no-pressure thing, which somehow made it worse.
Because if he knew something, he didn’t say it.
And if he didn’t know something, I couldn’t ask.
I came upstairs—closed the door. Saw the envelopes on my desk.
For one horrible second, I did not know what they were.
Then I opened one.
Read it.
Followed the instructions.
Touched a diary.
And everything came back.
Not gently. Not neatly. It hit like someone had taken the last month and shoved it straight through my skull.
Classic.
Ellie.
Teddy.
Holly.
Jemma in blue light.
The Polaroid of Gramps, Dad, and the woman who should have been my aunt.
The triangle marks low on my back. Low on Ellie’s.
The black light inside the window seat.
Teddy’s torn diary page, waiting in his wallet to catch the reset hour by hour.
Ellie outside Clearwater with me, walking into the same storm on purpose.
I ended up on the floor with everything spread around me because apparently sitting like a normal person was too advanced for my nervous system.
Tiny victory dance: zero points.
Polaroids. Letters. Notes. Diaries. Mark photos. The Web. The Matrix.
Proof everywhere.
That should have helped.
It did not.
Classic.
Because proof is great when you need to prove something happened.
Less great when it sits there quietly screaming, This was real, and you are the only one here who remembers it right now.
Ellie was at home with reset memories, not ours.
Teddy was probably dealing with his dad and school and Chen Print, with no idea he had made me promise not to carry everything alone.
And me?
Not okay.
I had my memories back.
Which somehow felt exactly like losing everything again.
Classic. Not fine.
I wanted to call Ellie.
I wanted to call Teddy.
I wanted to run downstairs and ask Gramps what he remembered, what he knew, what he was still not allowed to say.
Instead, I sat there with the letter in my lap and made myself breathe like that was a skill I had recently failed a practical exam in.
And tomorrow, school can do whatever normal-person nonsense it wants.
I’m not pretending this is normal.
Not this time.
Monday, June 1, 2026
Storage Room Return
School after Clearwater should be illegal.
Not mildly discouraged.
Not “please see the office if you feel unwell.”
Illegal.
Walking into the hallway with everyone acting normal felt like stepping into a play where I was the only person who had read the script from before it got rewritten.
Lockers slammed. Someone complained about Math. Candy stood with her usual orbit, pretending the universe had personally hired her as quality control.
And Ellie was there.
Across the hall.
Red hair. Careful face. Bag over one shoulder.
For half a second, I forgot how to breathe—because I remembered her.
I remembered us.
She glanced at me once, then looked away.
There it was. The reset version of the world doing its horrible little shrug.
I went to my locker because apparently my body still understands school routines even when my soul is busy falling down stairs. I was trying to remember whether I had English homework or a personality crisis first period when a hand grabbed mine.
Ellie.
Before I could say anything, she pressed one finger to her lips.
Not scared exactly.
Focused.
She checked the hallway, waited until the Candy Gang got distracted by whatever drama was happening around the corner, then pulled me sideways through the nearest door.
The storage room.
Because of course.
The door clicked shut behind us. For one ridiculous second, all I could think was that the room still smelled like paper, old glue, and school cleaning spray.
Then Ellie turned around, stepped close, and kissed me.
Not careful.
Not confused.
Not reset-Ellie trying to work out why I looked like I might burst into flames beside therecycling bin.
Ellie.
My Ellie.
The one who knew.
That landed.
I froze for half a second because my brain had gone from disaster siren to fireworks display without asking permission.
Then I kissed her back.
Just enough.
Enough to know she was real.
Enough to know I had not invented the last month from trauma, panic, and too much time with magical stationery.
When she pulled back, she was breathing hard, and her eyes were bright in that way that meant she was holding a lot together by willpower—and probably a little spite.
“Hi,” she whispered.
Which was so Ellie and so completely ridiculous that I almost laughed and cried at the same time.
Very stable. Very mature. Ten out of ten coping.
I touched her hand like I needed proof she would not disappear if I blinked.
She squeezed back.
And that was the moment the floor came back.
Not all of it.
Not safely.
But enough.
I thought Clearwater had taken everyone from me—but it hadn’t taken her.
Dragon Drawing Trigger
For about five seconds, I just stared at Ellie.
Very helpful. Very detective.
In my defense, someone you thought had been reset out of your life kissing you in a storage room before first period does slightly mess with the brain’s ability to form useful sentences.
Ellie seemed to know this, because she let me have the five seconds.
Then she reached into her bag.
“I found something this morning,” she said.
Her voice was low, and she kept glancing toward the door like Candy might develop x-ray vision at any moment. Honestly, I would not put it past her. She already has the emotional range of a security camera.
Ellie pulled out a folded sheet of notebook paper.
I knew it before she opened it.
The dragon drawing.
Her dragon drawing.
The one I had written on.
She unfolded it carefully, like it might bite.
There was the dragon, all curling lines and sharp little details, and my message above it.
E, I really wish this could bring you back to me. P
My handwriting.
My wish.
Ellie touched the edge of the paper with her thumb.
“I didn’t know why I had it,” she said. “I picked it up properly this morning, and…”
She stopped.
I knew that stop.
That really landed.
“Memory blast?” I asked.
Ellie nodded. “Hard.”
She didn’t have to explain the rest. I could see it in her face.
She remembered the real version.
She remembered the version Clearwater had tried to leave behind.
Both sets of memories stacked wrong inside her, like two photos printed on top of each other.
Which is exactly as fun as it sounds.
Reset-Ellie had woken up with the drawing in her bag and no real idea why she had kept it. Then curiosity, because apparently neither of us has a healthy relationship with suspicious paper, made her touch it properly.
And then she came back.
Because of the drawing.
Or the paper.
Or my handwriting.
Or maybe because I had remembered first and somehow pulled her closer to the surface.
Which was not an answer.
But it was enough to make the back of my neck prickle.
The reset did not just have cracks.
It had handles.
Maybe not safe ones. Maybe not predictable ones.
But handles.
I looked at the dragon again.
At Ellie’s careful lines.
At my words.
For once, the impossible thing had not just taken something from us.
It had given something back.
Lunch Guilt and Planning
By lunch, my brain had stopped doing fireworks long enough to remember the other person missing from the disaster circle.
Teddy.
He’d texted earlier.
Teddy: At Halifax Memorial with Mom. Dad’s specialist appointment today. Might be offline a bit. Kelly’s at her friends’ again this week.
My stomach did the dropped-elevator thing.
Because Teddy should have been with us. Making charts. Asking too many useful questions. Naming the black light “Glow Stick of Doom” or something equally perfect.
Instead, he was in Halifax with his mom while his dad saw a specialist.
I sent the safest thing I could manage.
Me: Thinking of you. Tell your dad we’re all rooting for him.
Then one to Squirt.
Me: Hope you’re okay. Here if you need me.
Then I stared at the screen for too long.
Ellie noticed. Because Ellie notices everything. Thanks to Candy’s Steve Dillon plan surviving the reset, she sat with me at lunch without raising flags.
“We should bring Teddy back,” I said.
Except even saying it made me feel awful. “Bring him back” meant dumping Clearwater, memory resets, triangle marks, Holly, Jemma, and whatever else survived into his lap while his dad was dealing with real-life cancer.
Great timing, universe—ten out of ten.
Ellie was quiet a second, then said, “Tomorrow.”
I hated how relieved I felt.
Not because I wanted to leave Teddy out. I promised him I wouldn’t. He made me promise. And I meant it.
But today, he was where he needed to be.
Me and Ellie were still trying to work out if we were fully back, partly back, or just two stressed girls holding a dragon drawing like it was a legal document.
So we made a plan.
After school, we would meet up at the Meridian. Record the false memories before they faded, and then do the thing I had been avoiding since the second I remembered it.
The black light.
The message was clear.
Check after Clearwater—not before—not after a snack and three-week mental health retreat.
After Clearwater.
I looked at Ellie across the table.
She looked back.
Neither of us said the obvious thing.
If the black light showed something, we would have to know.
And if it didn’t?
I wasn’t sure that would feel any better.
Memory Recovery Prep
We had planned to go to the Meridian after school, to put everything back in place and use the black light. But not straight away.
So we went to Meridia Park first.
Partly to clear our heads.
Partly because walking from “memory restored by dragon drawing” to “let’s examine our possibly experimented-on bodies with a black light” felt like the kind of life choice adults warn you about.
We walked without saying much. Just paths, trees, late-spring air, and the normal-world sounds that always feel suspicious after Clearwater: gravel crunching under bikes, someone calling a dog, kids arguing over scooters like that mattered.
Rude of them to have functional lives.
We got ice cream from Cascades—sugar improves supernatural horror processing. Ellie had strawberry. I went chocolate chip. Very important investigative detail.
Then we sat on a bench and did the thing we’d both been avoiding: comparing reset memories.
Not all of them—recording every wrong thing would have us still sitting there next Tuesday with melted ice cream and emotional damage.
What mattered:
Teddy’s dad still sick.
Chen Print still under pressure around the yearbooks.
I remembered helping, but in the reset version, Ellie had stayed mostly outside the ordinary parts.
Candy was still circling Steve Dillon. That part survived the reset, which was unpleasant but useful—it let Ellie spend time with me without drawing attention.
The school social shape was mostly intact. Candy in orbit, Marilyn getting attention, Ellie keeping a careful distance. Everything quietly consistent, which should have been reassuring. It was not.
By the time we got to the Meridian, my head felt too full and too empty at the same time. Classic Clearwater. Five stars for emotional vandalism.
Gramps was polishing doors in the lobby—construction-free, thankfully. He looked up, saw us, and smiled like we’d only been gone ten minutes.
“Back already?” he said. Normal words. Too normal.
His eyes flicked to Ellie, then to me. “Everything still where it should be?”
I froze. Ellie froze.
Gramps went back to polishing the doors, like he hadn’t just said the kind of sentence that could mean nothing… or everything.
Upstairs, we added all the altered memories to the Web. Not neatly. Not beautifully. Just names, arrows, quick notes before everything got slippery and started fading away.
Digital Chaos
After the altered memories, we put Bobby back together. Once he looked vaguely like a conspiracy board again, we moved on to the other stuff. Optimistic, obviously.
The reset already messes with memories, letters, relationships, and emotional stability, so technology was not going to sit there politely.
Rude.
So I checked the email I sent to Sapphire Bliss. Or tried to.
Nothing. No sent message. No draft. No reply. No bounce. Just a neat little absence where my not-normal email should have been.
I searched her name. I searched the subject line. Every half-panicked phrase I could remember. Still nothing.
Ellie sat beside me, knees tucked up, glaring at the screen like it might shame it into honesty. It was… nice, having her here. Helping me sort the mess, seeing what survived and what didn’t. Something quietly ours.
“It’s gone,” I said. Obvious. Sometimes obvious things need stating before they become official disasters.
So I wrote the email again. Not exactly the same—no copy to work from—but close enough. Careful enough. Weird enough that if Sapphire Bliss is real, she’d know I wasn’t emailing about harmless stuff.
I hit send.
Then we checked our phones.
The RGN app was gone. Not logged out. Not hiding. Just… gone.
For a second, neither of us said anything. Because the RGN app isn’t just an app. It’s a system. Our secure line. The place the “friend” message came through. The place that told us to check our skin after Clearwater.
Supposed to stay ours.
Apparently, Clearwater had other ideas.
We got the Truthweaver laptop from the window seat and followed what Teddy had done before as best we could. Not gracefully. Some muttering. Some wrong folders. Ellie asked if “terminal” was supposed to sound like a death threat.
Fair question.
Eventually, the RGN icon appeared on our phones again.
Tiny.
Ordinary-looking.
Way too innocent for something already breached by a mysterious friend with excellent creepy timing.
Glowing Discovery
We left the black light until last.
Not because it was least important.
Because it was worst.
Quietly waiting while we did everything else first. Healthy avoidance behavior.
Eventually, it was still there. Inside the window seat. Waiting.
Ellie pulled it out—like it might hiss at her.
I grabbed the Polaroid camera and the photos we’d taken before Clearwater: three tiny pink pinpricks low on my back, then hers. Proof something had already been there.
Blind fully closed. Main light off. Room dim. Blue-gray shadows stretching. Too much breathing.
“I’ll go first,” I said, because bravery and stupidity apparently share custody of my mouth. Ellie just nodded.
I adjusted my clothes enough for her to check my skin, which should have been awkward in a normal way.
Except nothing about standing in my room while my girlfriend checked me for secret post-Clearwater marks gets to be filed under normal.
Yeah.
Girlfriend.
Apparently we’re there now.
Not exactly how I imagined writing that down for the first time, but honestly, when has my life respected timing?
Ellie started with my lower back.
The three little pinpricks were still there, faint but real.
She moved the light slowly up my back.
Then Ellie stopped breathing.
Which is a terrible sound, actually. Someone not breathing.
“What?” I asked.
Under the UV light, there was a glowing blue triangle between my shoulder blades. Blue-white. Like a tattoo. A pattern. Like something had been waiting under my skin for permission to show itself.
“Like a glyph,” she said quietly.
Glyph. Fancy word. Creepy enough for a Monday night.
Then she checked my front.
Another one on my chest.
And one on both wrists.
By the time she finished, my skin did not feel like skin anymore. It felt like a map someone else had drawn and forgotten to ask me about.
Ellie took Polaroids with shaking hands. The flash was too bright every time.
Then it was her turn.
She adjusted her clothes enough for me to check the same places and stood there with her arms slightly out, chin up, trying to look steady.
I held the black light.
I was standing close enough to see the tiny freckles on her shoulder and the nervous rise and fall of her breathing.
For one stupid second, my stomach fluttered.
Then the black light caught the first triangle on her skin.
And the flutter turned into ice.
Back. Chest. Wrists.
Same places. Same glowing triangle shapes. Same horrible proof.
I took Polaroids because my hands needed a job. They slid out blank at first, then slowly became evidence.
Ellie wrapped her arms around herself when we were done.
I turned the black light off.
Normal again. Offensive. Marks still there.
Then Ellie grabbed her sketchbook and pencils.
“Before I forget the placement,” she said.
Of course. Artist brain. Terrified, shaking, still making a visual record because apparently one of us has useful instincts.
She sketched two simple body outlines. Not detailed. Not creepy. Just enough. Back. Chest. Wrists. Lower back pinpricks.
Then she added the glyphs.
Same places on both of us.
Same horrible symmetry.
When she finished, she pinned it to Bobby.
I kept staring at my wrists. At the places Clearwater always had a reason to touch us: blood pressure, IVs, transfusions, observations. White coats pretending not to notice.
“What if it isn’t ESD?” Ellie said quietly.
I looked at her.
Neither of us said the rest.
What if we don’t have ESD?
What if Clearwater has been using it as an excuse?
What if the thing they call treatment is something else?
The black light sat on the bed between us. Small. Plastic. Stupid-looking.
And somehow one of the scariest things I have ever owned.
Personal Recovery
After the black light, neither of us moved for a while.
It felt like our bodies had been converted into secret glow-in-the-dark paperwork.
The Polaroids were spread across my bed.
Me. Ellie. Wrists. Backs. Chests. Glowing blue-white triangles appearing where nothing should have been.
I hated them.
I hated how neat they looked.
Like someone had deliberately measured everything.
Ellie sat beside me with one of my hoodies around her shoulders.
She looked small in it, which was rude, because Ellie is not small.
Sharp lines. Red hair. Stubborn silence. The quiet that makes people underestimate her.
She looked cold.
I moved closer.
Not because I had a plan.
Because she was there.
Because she had come back.
Because I had spent last night thinking Clearwater had taken her from me again.
And now she was on my bed in my hoodie, looking at impossible Polaroids and breathing beside me.
That felt like a miracle.
A terrifying, badly lit, medically suspicious miracle.
She leaned into me first. Just slightly. Enough that I knew she was asking without asking.
I put my arm around her.
We didn’t talk much.
Only a few usable sentences exist after discovering hidden glowing triangles on your girlfriend. Most of them are terrible.
Her hand found mine.
Mine held on.
And for once, I didn’t try to make the fear smaller with a joke.
I didn’t know how.
The fear was too big, too close, too under our skin.
Ellie was close too.
That mattered.
Eventually, the Polaroids were tucked in the diary.
The black light went back inside the window seat.
The room looked almost normal again, which was deeply insulting.
And then we made a choice.
No drama. No speeches. No heroic movie music.
Just us.
Tired. Scared. Still here.
Personal time.
That’s all I’m writing.
Not because it didn’t matter.
Because it did.
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Promise Debt
Teddy was back at school today.
Which should have made me feel better.
It did not.
Seeing him walk into the cafeteria with his backpack over one shoulder and that tired Teddy face made everything worse in a very specific way.
The kind of worse where your best friend exists in front of you and you know you are about to hand him a letter that will ruin his day.
Possibly his week.
Possibly his ability to enjoy pasta ever again, depending on how dramatic we’re being.
He looked exhausted. Not just regular school-exhausted.
That’s normal.
This was deeper. Halifax yesterday. Specialist appointment. His dad. His mom trying to keep everything upright. Kelly probably sensing more than anyone wanted her to.
And me, sitting there with his recovery letter tucked in my backpack like a loaded emotional grenade.
Very healthy lunch vibes.
I almost didn’t do it. Not because I wanted to leave him out. I didn’t. I don’t.
But there was one awful second where I thought maybe I could wait another day. Let him breathe. Let him deal with his real-life nightmare before I handed him our supernatural one again.
Then I remembered his face before Clearwater. Remembered him telling me not to decide for him. Remembered that promise.
No heroic nonsense.
No protecting him by making choices he never agreed to.
No “I’ll carry this alone because I love you,” which sounds noble until you realize it is just betrayal wearing a cape.
Rude cape, honestly.
He gave me a tired half-smile.
“Okay?”
No. Obviously.
But that felt like the wrong answer for both of us.
I pulled the envelope from my backpack and pushed it toward him.
His smile faded.
“Teddy,” I said quietly, “I need you to read this after school. Not here. Then come to the Meridian tonight, when you can.”
He looked at the envelope, then at me. I could see the moment he understood this was not a normal Penny thing. Which is impressive, considering normal Penny things already include suspicious stationery, secret apps, and emergency Polaroids.
His fingers rested on the edge of the envelope, but he didn’t open it. Then he tucked the letter carefully into his backpack.
“I’ll come after dinner,” he said.
I nodded like that did not make my chest hurt.
Then we sat there for a minute, both pretending lunch was just lunch.
It wasn’t.
It was me keeping a promise.
And hating that promises can still hurt people.
Birthday Grief
After lunch, I found Ellie near the lockers.
I’d missed her in the cafeteria as she had to spend the break with Candy.
Rude.
Technically, we were heading to French.
Emotionally, I was heading toward whatever place you go when you’ve just handed your best friend a memory-recovery grenade.
Ellie was putting books into her bag when I reached her. She looked up and gave me a small smile that almost made everything inside me unclench.
Almost.
Then I noticed it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
That was it for a second.
Very deep. Very romantic. Award-winning communication from two girls sharing secret UV body marks.
Then Ellie glanced down at her bag.
“I’m going out after school with Dad and Felicia.”
Something in her voice made me stop trying to be funny.
“It’s Mom’s birthday,” she said.
Oh.
There are moments when the world goes quiet without actually being quiet. Lockers. Shoes. Complaints about Gym. Hallway soundtrack surviving the day.
But Ellie looked like she had stepped slightly outside all of it.
“Dinner. Dad talks too much. Felicia pretends she hates it. Then she cries in the car.”
Softly. Almost annoyed at herself for saying it.
I wanted to say the right thing.
Naturally, my brain offered nothing but several terrible options and one deeply unhelpful mental image of me patting her shoulder like a confused camp counselor.
So I went with honest.
“I can come. If you want.”
Ellie looked at me.
Really looked.
For half a second, I thought she might say yes.
“I’d love that,” she said.
Then she made a face. Not funny. Careful.
“But it would probably be weird.”
I nodded.
Yeah. Probably.
Not bad weird. Too much, too soon, family-grief-dinner weird. The kind no one needs layered on top of already missing someone.
So instead of pushing, I hugged her.
Not long. Not dramatic. The kind that could pass as friend-comfort if anyone looked too closely.
Her arms came around me.
She held on a little tighter than she should have at school.
Which meant something.
Then she let go before the hallway could turn us into a headline.
“I’ll come over to the Meridian after,” she said. “To help with Teddy.”
“Please do.”
She nodded, adjusted her bag, and we walked toward French like she was fine.
She was not fine.
Neither was I.
But for once, the thing hurting her had nothing to do with Clearwater, marks, letters, ghosts, or erased memories.
It was just loss. Ordinary, awful loss.
And somehow that made it feel even more unfair.
Emotional Reunion
Teddy came to the Meridian after dinner.
He looked like he’d spent the day being slowly folded in half by life.
Which, considering yesterday was his dad’s specialist appointment and today I’d handed him a memory-recovery grenade disguised as a letter, felt… about right.
He didn’t make a joke when he came upstairs.
That was how I knew it was bad.
Usually Teddy finds a joke in almost anything. Weird letters. Creepy apps. Suspicious magical stationery. My life being one long deleted scene from a paranormal detective show.
Tonight? Nothing. He just sat at the desk, took the video camera, and watched.
I stayed quiet.
Hardest thing I’ve done in months. Top five, at least.
He read the letter again. Slowly. Then again.
His face changed in pieces, like someone was turning lights on in rooms he’d forgotten existed.
By the time he looked up: Teddy was back.
Not fine.
Back.
Not totally.
But enough.
“Okay,” he said.
Then Ellie arrived.
Eyes a little red. Pretending normal. Mostly succeeding.
We brought Teddy up to speed.
Not every detail. Just the pieces that mattered:
· Ellie’s dragon drawing triggered her memory blast
· Sapphire Bliss email vanished then resent
· RGN app disappeared, reinstalled from Truthweaver
· Black-light marks on both of us
· Ellie sketched the placement before we forgot anything useful
The UV Polaroids did some explaining.
Then Ellie handed him the sketch.
The glyphs marked in the same places on both of us.
Evidence, but in Ellie language.
Teddy went still.
I hated that.
He looked at the photos. Then the drawing.
Mouth tightened. No ridiculous nickname for the situation.
No Glow Goblin Protocol.
No Triangle Nightmare Deluxe.
Just silence.
Ellie sat beside me, shoulders touching mine.
Teddy noticed.
Didn’t comment. Just nodded once.
Like a part of him was relieved the reset hadn’t taken her too.
Same, honestly.
When we explained the dragon drawing, he leaned forward.
“So it was a trigger,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. “A weird paper-dragon-emotional-attachment trigger.”
“Technical term,” Ellie added.
Teddy almost smiled. Almost.
Then he said we should make one for him before the next Clearwater reset.
Something specific. Something he made, touched, named, or coded. Not just a letter. A proper Teddy anchor on notebook paper.
Which sounded reassuring until I remembered why we needed one.
Still, it helped.
A little.
Still, the “friend” hadn’t followed up.
No message, no nudge, nothing.
We’d already checked the black light—classic. Makes you wonder who decided we could be left hanging.
Or maybe this was something else erased by Clearwater.
But.
Teddy was back.
Ellie was back.
Exactly like she was.
Her.
And I was back.
Three points.
Not safe.
But connected.
Reset Window
Ellie remembered.
“Teddy,” she said suddenly. “Your wallet.”
He blinked.
Then his eyes widened.
“The page.”
All three of us went still.
Before Clearwater, Teddy had hidden a torn diary page in his wallet.
Promised to note the time every hour.
If the reset hit him… or reality… or everything around him, the gap might tell us when.
Assuming the page survived.
Assuming he remembered enough before it hit.
Assuming Clearwater hadn’t reached into wallets already.
Because apparently we have to consider that a sentence.
Teddy pulled out his wallet.
For once, nobody joked about how many old receipts he keeps.
Personal growth.
He slid the folded diary page out from behind his student ID.
Opened it carefully on the desk.
The paper was still there.
My stomach tightened.
Across the top, in Teddy’s neat-but-fast writing, were the times, the end of the list read:
· Saturday night
· 10pm
· 11pm
· Midnight
· 1am
Then nothing. No 2am.
No messy half-written note.
No dramatic “oh no, the universe is deleting me,” which would have been rude but useful.
Just blank diary paper after 1am.
Teddy stared at it like the page had personally offended him.
“So it happened between one and two,” he said.
Quiet. But his brain was already working.
Finding the edge of the impossible. Measuring it with a ruler.
“Or at two,” Ellie said.
“If that’s when he would’ve written next.”
We all looked at the blank space.
I hated it.
I loved it.
Confusing.
But for the first time, we had a number.
Not a theory. Not “sometime after Clearwater.” Not “before I woke up wrong.”
A window.
One hour.
Between 1am and 2am on Sunday morning is when it happened.
Something big enough to wipe apps, alter memories, loosen people from who they had been.
And somehow leave Teddy’s torn diary page sitting in his wallet.
A tiny paper witness.
“2am,” Teddy said.
“Working time?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Until we can prove otherwise.”
We wrote it on Bobby.
RESET WINDOW: 1–2AM SUNDAY, CLEARWATER WEEKEND WORKING RESET TIME: 2AM
Too simple.
Two lines.
One hour.
A whole rewritten world hiding inside it.
For Sale Fear
For about thirty seconds, Teddy looked almost like himself again.
Not okay.
Not magically repaired by diary paper, friendship, and trauma homework.
But closer.
He had Truthweaver open on my desk, and the RGN app installed on his phone way faster than we did. The blue glow from the screen sharpened his tired face. More awake. More Teddy.
“This thing is ridiculous,” he said, fingers moving over the keys. “I could probably hack a bank with this.”
“Please don’t,” Ellie said.
“Obviously not a real bank,” he added. “A small bank. Practice bank.”
There he was.
My best friend.
Making jokes about felony-adjacent computer crimes in my bedroom while a supernatural reset time sat on Bobby behind him.
Normal-ish.
Then the joke faded.
Not all at once. It drained out of him, like his face forgot how to hold it.
“Dad’s appointment yesterday wasn’t good,” he said.
The room changed.
Not loudly. Nothing dramatic. No thunder. No flickering lights. No mysterious blue glow.
Just Teddy’s voice going quiet.
He told us the treatment was more complicated than hoped. More appointments. More travel. More money than his family could pretend was manageable. Insurance might cover pieces, but pieces weren’t enough.
And Chen Print.
That was the part that made his voice crack.
They might have to sell it.
Not because they wanted to.
Not because business was bad.
Because treatment, and travel, and time away were crushing everything they had built.
“And if we sell…”
He didn’t need to finish.
Back to the UK.
Maybe.
Possibly.
One of those awful adult words that means nothing is decided, but everything is already falling.
I looked at him. For one stupid second, my brain tried to reject it.
No.
Teddy belongs here.
Beside Bobby. At Chen Print. Making terrible jokes. Arguing with reality using arrows and sticky notes.
He cannot just leave.
Except he can.
That is the horrible thing.
Clearwater can take people with memory wipes and glowing marks.
Ordinary life can take them with hospital bills.
Different method.
Same missing space.
Ellie was quiet beside me, her hand pressed flat against the bedspread like she was stopping herself from reaching for him too fast.
I wanted to say something useful—I had nothing.
So I said the only true thing I had.
“I don’t want you to go.”
Teddy looked down.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Me neither.”
And that was somehow worse than if he had tried to joke.
Because tonight, for the first time, I realized Clearwater was not the only thing that could rewrite my life by taking someone I loved out of it.
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Frantic Rehearsal
Drama class has officially entered the part of the production where everyone is supposed to know what they’re doing.
Bold choice.
Miss Rivers called it “off-book week,” which sounds professional until you realize it mostly means people standing onstage with panic in their eyes, trying to remember if their next line is about ancient magic, betrayal, or going left instead of right.
Honestly, relatable.
Spellbound Harmony is starting to look like an actual show now. Scenes are running longer. Miss Rivers is stopping everyone less for basics and more for timing, entrances, projection cues, and why someone left the sacred-looking wooden bowl on the wrong side of the stage.
That someone was not me.
For the record.
I have a prop table now. A real one. With labels. Scene numbers. Backup tape. A pencil I guard with more intensity than some people guard family heirlooms.
There are lists. Several lists.
Because actors cannot be trusted—evidence-based, not an insult.
One person picked up the wrong ribbon. Another forgot the fake silver charm. Someone else asked me where the “witchy-looking book” was while standing directly beside it.
I’m not saying I understand why stage managers sometimes look haunted.
I’m just saying I get it now.
Ellie was on the visual side of the chaos, mostly standing near the projection screen tests with her arms folded, looking personally offended by mismatched greens. The forest backdrop looked too flat under the lights. The gate effect was “too video-game menu,” according to Ellie.
One shadow cue made Marilyn look like she had antlers.
That part was funny.
Not useful.
But funny.
Marilyn, annoyingly, was good.
Really good.
She knew her lines, hit her marks, and somehow made the lead-role thing look effortless while everyone else wrestled their scripts into submission. Miss Rivers praised her twice, and a couple of people clapped after one of her bigger moments, even though it was rehearsal and technically illegal.
I went back to my prop table and moved the fake charm into the correct tray.
Because apparently my job is making sure enchanted objects stay where they belong.
If only that worked on people.
Eyes on Marilyn
By lunch, I was sitting with Teddy and Ellie, picking at fries and trying not to spill my drink, when the noise near Candy’s table shifted.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just that tiny cafeteria ripple that happens when someone becomes the center of attention and everyone nearby pretends they are not looking.
Marilyn.
She was standing a few tables over with a couple of her Drama co-stars holding one of the yearbook preview sheets from Chen Print. The actual yearbooks were due soon, but apparently some sample pages had started making the rounds, because of course they had.
I already knew that photo was dangerous. We had seen it while helping Teddy. Marilyn looked annoyingly perfect in it.
Real-perfect.
The kind where the lighting worked, her smile looked easy, and even her hair seemed to understand its assignment. Someone made a comment about how good she looked as the lead in Spellbound Harmony, and another person said the pageant people were going to love it.
Marilyn laughed it off, but she looked pleased.
Not smug.
Just happy.
Which made what happened next feel worse.
Candy was watching.
Not glaring. Not rolling her eyes. Not doing anything obvious enough for someone else to call out.
She smiled.
That was the problem.
It was the wrong smile.
Too still. Too polished. Like she had taken whatever she was feeling, folded it neatly, and put it somewhere no one else was allowed to see.
Kaelyn said something beside her. Sally laughed. The table kept moving like normal.
Candy didn’t.
Her eyes stayed on Marilyn for just one second too long.
Then she looked away and picked up her drink like nothing in the universe had interested her less.
Which, for Candy, means the exact opposite.
Thursday, June 4, 2026
Airport Tomorrow
Teddy told us after school. Not as a dramatic announcement. More like a briefing from the Department of Everything Being Awful.
We were outside Chen Print. The “for sale” sign tucked by the window felt like a quiet punch. Teddy noticed me staring. He made a face like he wanted to peel it off, but knew he couldn’t.
“Mom’s flying tomorrow,” he said.
“To China.”
My brain opened five tabs and none of them loaded.
His mom was taking Kelly with her. To ask Teddy’s grandfather for help. Her dad. The one Teddy had never met. The rich one. The one who’d disowned his mom years ago.
Wait. What?
I blinked. My stomach did that weird lurchy thing, like when I’d first found out about his dad’s cancer and couldn’t breathe fast enough to catch up.
Teddy said it flatly. With his mom and Squirt away, he would mostly stay here, running back and forth to Halifax. School. Print shop. Hospital. Repeat until his soul filed a formal complaint. I may be paraphrasing.
“Chen Print is still listed,” he said.
Just in case.
I hate that phrase. It sounds calm, but it’s secretly a trapdoor.
Ellie nudged my hand, quiet. Her eyes were already doing their “fix it before anyone asks” thing.
“What about a GoFundMe?” she whispered.
Teddy didn’t laugh. Not a joke, not even a grim one.
“Maybe,” he said.
Not yes. Not no. Just maybe. A tiny, wobbly maybe under a massive problem.
I grabbed onto it anyway. Memory resets. Secret apps. Glowing marks. Letters that survive reality edits.
Money is its own kind of monster. Less dramatic than Clearwater. More paperwork. Still terrifying.
Classic.
I looked inside the shop: yearbooks stacked, counters messy, presses humming. Teddy’s second bloodstream. I pictured it gone.
The sign changed. Shelves emptied.
Teddy somewhere else, texting across time zones like that could ever be the same.
No. Absolutely not.
Clearwater wasn’t allowed to take people. Cancer wasn’t allowed to take people. Money wasn’t allowed to take people either.
I didn’t control any of it. Still, rude of them not to check first.
Ellie’s hand nudged mine. Not a fix. Just a tiny anchor.
Teddy looked like he could disappear into the sidewalk.
So I said it. “We’ll help.”
I didn’t know how. But I said it anyway.
Sometimes “we’ll help” isn’t a solution. Sometimes it’s just the rope you throw before you know if it will reach.
Friday, June 5, 2026
Airport Check-In
I texted Teddy before school.
Technically, I waited until I was already at my locker, which I’m counting as restraint because I had wanted to text him approximately every seven minutes since I woke up.
Growth.
Maybe.
Me: How are you doing?
He didn’t answer right away, which was fair, because his morning was slightly bigger than mine.
Mine involved French first period and trying not to think about hidden glowing wrist triangles while conjugating verbs.
His involved the airport.
The reply came halfway through homeroom.
Teddy: At Halifax airport. Mum and Squirt are heading through security soon.
I put my phone under the desk.
Obviously.
So yeah. Not ideal.
Me: How’s Squirt? Teddy: Annoyed she can’t take three stuffed animals and a giant bag of sour sweets on the plane.
That sounded like Squirt.
Which helped.
Then he sent another message.
Teddy: Mom’s pretending she isn’t nervous. Going badly.
I could picture that too. May Chen holding everything together with airport coffee, lists, and pure force of will. Squirt probably clocking every emotion in the room even if the adults thought they were hiding it.
Teddy pretending to be fine because someone had to stand there and be useful.
Classic Teddy.
Figures.
Me: And how are you?
The typing dots appeared.
Stopped.
Appeared again.
Stopped.
Then:
Teddy: Fine.
Liar.
A very exhausted liar.
I did not call him that, because apparently I have learned one social skill.
Me: No, you’re not. But you don’t have to be fine with me.
He took longer to reply.
Teddy: I know.
That was it.
Two words.
Somehow worse than a paragraph.
I wanted to be there. Not in a dramatic airport-running-through-crowds way. Just there enough to stand beside him while his mom and sister disappeared through security toward a country, a grandfather, and a giant maybe.
Instead, I was in homeroom, pretending my phone was not the only important thing in the building.
Teddy sent one last message before the bell.
Teddy: Flight boarding soon. Talk later. Me: Text when you can.
He sent a thumbs-up.
Which is not an emotion, no matter how hard boys try to use it as one.
I put my phone away.
The school day kept going.
Because apparently that is what days do, even when people you love are standing in airports trying not to fall apart.
Come Alone
By the time I got home, the day had already spent its weird allowance.
Teddy’s mom and Squirt flying to China. Chen Print might be sold. My skin still felt haunted, even though the UV marks were invisible without the black light.
Great. Evening off… sure.
Not ideal.
I had barely shut the door when something slid through the mail slot. Not dropped. Slid. Like whoever pushed it waited until I was inside. Very normal. Love that for my blood pressure.
The envelope lay by my shoes. Plain white. No stamp, no address. Just my name across the front: Penny Summers.Not Mom. Me.
I froze. Expected it to hiss, explode, or unfold into a tiny paper demon. It did none of those things. Rude.
Classic.
The paper felt normal. Which in my experience means nothing.
One folded note inside. No decoration. No extra explanation. No creepy symbol. Just this:
Penny,
Meet me at Meridia Park.
At the bandstand.
Saturday morning.
7am.
Come alone.
Sapphire Bliss
I read it twice. Then once more. My brain hoped the words would shrink. They did not. Sapphire Bliss.
The email that vanished after Clearwater. The name I had sent into the void again. And now—physical. Analog. Reality having a harder time pretending it never happened.
I quickly stepped outside. She was gone.
Then I called Ellie. Not texted. Called. Because “come alone” is exactly the kind of phrase that makes me want to do the opposite.
Second ring. She answered. Calm. “Alone. No way.”
Honestly, comforting.
“I know.”
“Meridian?”
Not a good plan. Not a complete plan. But a plan with Ellie in it automatically beat whatever Sapphire Bliss thought “alone” meant.
Mom and Gramps
Mom dropped me at the Meridian on her way to work.
Which sounds normal.
It was not normal.
Mostly because I had a note from Sapphire Bliss tucked inside my diary, a Saturday morning park meeting sitting in my future like a trap with nice handwriting, and Ellie already waiting for me at the Meridian.
Mom noticed that part immediately.
Of course she did.
Ellie was in the lobby with Gramps when we walked in, holding a mug like she had been there for years instead of ten minutes.
Gramps was saying something that made her smile, and for one brief second, the Meridian looked like a normal place where normal people had normal conversations and no one had hidden glowing triangles on their skin.
Adorable fantasy.
Very unrealistic.
Mom paused beside me.
She looked… pleased.
Which was somehow worse because I did not have a prepared emotional file for that.
“Ellie,” Mom said, using her spa-voice. Warm, polished, slightly terrifying. “Nice to see you.”
Ellie smiled back carefully. “You too, Mrs. Summers.”
Mom’s eyes flicked from Ellie to me, then back to Gramps.
And there it was.
The tiny calculation.
Not Candy-level calculation. Mom-level calculation. Cleaner. Quieter. Dressed better.
Then she said, “Walter, do you have a minute?”
Gramps looked up.
For the smallest moment, his face changed.
Not enough for Mom to notice, probably.
Enough for me.
“Of course,” he said.
Mom adjusted the strap of her bag. “Could we go to Cascades? I’d rather not talk here.”
Fantastic.
Absolutely fantastic.
Because nothing says “relaxing Friday evening” like your mother asking your grandfather for a private conversation in a second location.
Gramps glanced at me before he answered.
Just one look.
Soft. Careful. Annoyingly unreadable.
“We won’t be long, Penny,” Mom said.
Which did not make me feel better, because adults only say that before doing things that feel extremely long to the person left waiting.
Then it was just me and Ellie in the Meridian, standing in the sudden quiet.
I should have been relieved.
I was not.
Ellie looked at me.
“You okay?”
I stared at the door.
“Nope.”
Because Mom and Gramps talking privately could mean school. Or Clearwater. Or me. Or something I had not even thought to be scared of yet.
Love when the fear menu expands.
I tightened my grip on my diary.
The Sapphire Bliss note was inside it.
Gramps was gone.
Mom had taken him with her.
And for once, the Meridian felt less like a safe place and more like a room waiting to see what happened next.
Park Plan
After Mom and Gramps left, Ellie and I went upstairs.
The Sapphire Bliss note lay on my bed between us. Tiny. Annoying. I’d read it so many times the words felt carved into the inside of my skull.
Ellie read it again anyway, because apparently we both enjoy letting paper threaten us.
“She says alone,” I said.
Ellie looked up.
“No.”
“Technically,” I said, because I am brave and stupid, “she says come alone. Doesn’t say no one can be nearby.”
Ellie stared. The kind of stare that said she loved me, probably, but also considered me a danger to myself and several postal codes. Fair.
“I’m not letting you walk into Meridia Park at 7am by yourself because a mystery person with a dramatic name slid a note under your door,” she said.
Very unreasonable. Figures. Except for the part where she was completely right.
We made the least terrible plan. I’d go to the bandstand like the note said. Alone enough to count, if Sapphire Bliss was watching. Ellie would follow, far enough back to stay hidden, close enough that if I screamed, ran, vanished, got grabbed by a tree, or otherwise executed a classic Penny crisis maneuver, she could intervene.
That landed.
Curiosity: 1. Common sense: 0.
But “Ellie is nearby” already ranked higher than “Penny enters possible trap solo while everyone else sleeps.”
We agreed she’d stay over at the Meridian tonight—and for the full weekend. Practical. Safety measure.
I’m not complaining.
Early start.
Easier logistics.
Also, after this week, I did not want her anywhere else. Not tactical. Just true.
We sat there for a second.
Saturday morning.
7am.
Meridia Park.
Sapphire Bliss.
Trap or truth.
Either way—I was going.
And Ellie was coming with me. Just not where Sapphire Bliss could see.
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