A rotted wall, exposed to morning light. A bonfire burning down to embers. An empty dining room where a boy pressed his thumb into something soft and dead. A girl's feet touching cold water in the dark.
The weekend continued.
* * *
CEDAR RIDGE — The Jensen Kitchen
The dishwasher was running when Ira came downstairs.
Steam rose from the crack in the door, carrying that damp-heat smell—wet wood, something softening. For a half-second, he was back in the parsonage, staring at the dark stain spreading up from the baseboards. His stomach tightened before his mind caught up.
"Morning, honey." His mom was wiping down the counter, not looking at him. "You left your shoes on the steps."
"Oh—yeah. Sorry. I'll fix it."
His throat tightened. Reflex? Or maybe undue guilt.
He was already moving toward the stairs before she responded, his footsteps quieter than they used to be. When had he started walking like that? It was as if the house itself might notice him taking up too much space.
"It's fine, Ira. I just didn't want anyone to trip."
He stopped. Turned back. She was looking at him now, a dish towel in her hands, something uncertain in her expression.
"Right. Yeah. I'll move them."
She hadn't been upset. Her voice had been neutral. It was just information, just hey, shoes, steps. But something in him had jumped anyway. Something had braced for impact before there was anything to brace against.
Patterns. Carelessness. Shortcuts.
The words surfaced without permission. Miss Hagarty's voice, calm and surgical, naming the things that needed to be cut out.
He moved his shoes to the closet. Lined them up carefully. Then he came back to the kitchen and poured himself cereal, even though he wasn't hungry.
Rosie's phone was on the counter, screen still lit. A TikTok was playing on loop, someone's shaky footage of a bonfire. Orange light on laughing faces, the dark shimmer of water behind them. Lake Aurelia. The location tag glowed in the corner.
He looked away.
"You okay?" his mom asked. She was loading the dishwasher now, her back to him.
"Yeah. Just tired."
"You've been tired a lot lately."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even an observation that expected a response. Just words falling into the space between them, landing nowhere.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I have."
He ate his cereal standing at the counter, watching steam rise from the dishwasher, and swallowed something he didn't have words for.
* * *
LAKE AURELIA — The Dock
The lake was glass.
Miri sat at the end of the dock with her knees pulled up, watching the water hold perfectly still. Behind her, the house was quiet—everyone else still sleeping off last night's bonfire, last night's laughter, last night's easy belonging.
She'd woken early. She always did, in unfamiliar places. Her body never quite trusted new rooms to hold her through the night.
The sun was just cresting the treeline, turning the water gold at the edges. She breathed in. Out. Let the silence settle.
But one line kept surfacing, unbidden:
He sees things other people miss. But he doesn't see himself at all.
Ellie's voice. Ellie's worried face in the firelight, talking about a boy who wasn't there.
Miri didn't know why the description had lodged itself so deep. She'd met Ellie for maybe two hours. They'd talked about nothing and everything, the way strangers sometimes did when the setting was right, when the fire was warm and the night felt suspended outside of regular time.
But that line. That specific line.
She pulled out her phone. Opened the text thread with Ellie, just her own message from last night: it was really nice meeting you. Ellie had responded with a heart emoji and same!! let's actually hang out sometime.
Miri's thumb hovered over the keyboard. She could ask. hey, is your friend okay? Or: that thing you said about him. i keep thinking about it.
She didn't type anything.
Instead she looked back at the water. The surface was so still she could see herself in it. Dark hair, pale face, the outline of someone she was still learning to recognize.
The reflection rippled. A fish, maybe. Or just the morning settling into itself. The question she never asked out loud: why do I feel like I'm watching my own life from somewhere outside of it?
Inside the house, someone's alarm went off. Voices stirred. The day was starting whether she was ready or not.
Miri stood, brushed off her pajama pants, and went inside to make coffee for people she'd known her whole life and still sometimes felt like a stranger among.
* * *
CEDAR RIDGE — First Presbyterian Church
The lobby was bright and loud with Sunday morning energy.
Ira moved through it the way he always had—smiling, nodding, shaking hands with adults who remembered his name. Good to see you, Ira. How's the summer going? We're so proud of everything you're doing.
He had responses for all of it. Automatic. Polished.
"Ira! Hey, man."
He turned. Kyle from Ridgeline—two years older, helped run the young adults ministry, had been copied on some of the parsonage emails.
"Hey, Kyle."
"Heard things didn't go as planned on Friday. The lumber thing?"
Ira felt his spine straighten, his jaw tighten for just a beat. His voice shifted into a register he barely noticed anymore. The one that smoothed edges, projected competence, made everything sound handled.
"Yeah, miscommunication with the supplier. We're regrouping next week. Everything's under control."
Everything is not under control.
"Cool, cool. Let me know if you need an extra set of hands."
"Will do. Thanks, man."
Kyle moved on. Ira exhaled.
The youth pastor caught him near the sanctuary doors. "Ira! Hey, can you do announcements this morning? Jake's out sick."
"Sure. No problem."
He did the announcements. He read the Scripture. He prayed the opening prayer with his eyes closed and his voice steady, hitting all the right notes of sincerity and warmth. The version of himself that adults praised. The version Miss Hagarty had cultivated for three years.
The kind of heart that could change a community.
Afterward, in the hallway, he passed two freshmen from the youth group.
"—so pumped. My cousin's got a boat, and we're going to the lake next weekend—"
"Lake Aurelia?"
"Yeah, the cove near the state park. It's gonna be sick."
Ira kept walking. He didn't slow down. He didn't let his face change.
But something in his chest echoed—a hollow sound, like a room that used to hold something and now didn't.
He found a corner near the water fountains and pulled out his phone. Ellie's message was still there, still unread in the way that mattered. He'd seen the preview. He knew what it said.
thinking of you. this doesn't feel the same without you here.
He stared at it for a long moment. Then he put his phone away and went to find his mom and Rosie so they could leave.
* * *
LAKE AURELIA — The Living Room
"Oh my God, look at us."
Priya was holding up her phone, showing everyone a photo that someone's mom had just sent to the group chat. Five years old, maybe six. A cluster of girls in matching Camp Aurelia t-shirts, gap-toothed and sunburned and grinning.
"I literally had no front teeth," Becca groaned.
"You were adorable. We were all adorable."
Miri leaned over to look. There she was in the back row, the only Asian face in the frame, her smile a little tighter than the others, her eyes looking somewhere just past the camera. Already watching from the edge of the group. Already half outside the picture.
She remembered that summer. She remembered the camp counselor who'd crouched down on the last day and said, brightly, "So where are your real parents? Are they coming to pick you up?"
She'd been seven. She hadn't known what to say. Her mom, Susan, her real mom, her only mom, had appeared a moment later, and the counselor's face had done something complicated before rearranging into a smile.
Miri had never told anyone about that moment. It felt too small to mention and too heavy to hold.
"Mir? You okay?"
She looked up. Priya was watching her.
"Yeah. Just... remembering."
"Good memories?"
"Mostly."
Priya bumped her shoulder. "Remember when Becca tried to catch a fish with her hands and fell in?"
Miri laughed, a real laugh, surprised out of her. "And she was convinced she'd touched a shark."
"It was a large fish!"
"It was a bass, Bec. A medium bass."
"It had teeth."
They were all laughing now, and Miri felt something loosen in her chest. This was real too, the inside jokes, the shared history, the way these girls had known her since before she knew herself. She belonged here. She did.
The others had moved on, scrolling through more photos. Someone found a shot from last night's bonfire. Ellie in the frame, arms flung wide, laughing at something off-camera.
Miri looked at the photo longer than she meant to. There was something about Ellie, the way she took up space, the way she seemed so comfortable in her own skin. So certain of where she came from and where she belonged.
Why does a girl I just met feel familiar?
She didn't have an answer. The question just sat there, strange and warm.
"Hey, I'm gonna grab a sweatshirt," she said, standing. "It's cold in here."
She walked toward the back bedroom, passing through the hallway where the ceiling dipped low. Above her, she noticed a water stain she hadn't seen before, brown at the edges, spreading in a shape like continents on a map no one had drawn yet. Something damp and old, seeping through.
She looked at it for a moment. Then she kept walking.
When she came back, Becca was pointing at someone's phone. "Delete that one of me. I look insane."
Miri scrolled through her own camera roll. Found a blurry shot of herself from last night, half-lit by the fire, caught mid-turn, her smile strange and crooked in a way she didn't recognize.
She deleted it.
* * *
CEDAR RIDGE — Ira's Bedroom
The house was quiet.
His mom had gone to bed early. Rosie was in her room. When her door opened suddenly, Ira flinched from where he sat at his desk. Just a small thing. A tightening. She was just going to the bathroom. But his body had reacted before his brain caught up, bracing for something that wasn't coming.
Sunday night settling into the particular stillness that came before Monday. The silence felt thick, like it was waiting for him to fill it, but he didn't know how.
Ira moved over to his bed with his headphones on, not really listening to anything. His journal was open on his lap, pen in hand, but he hadn't written anything. The page was blank except for the date.
He scrolled through Instagram instead. Youth pastor accounts. Motivational quotes layered over mountain sunsets. A reel about "guarding your heart" that had twelve thousand likes.
His thumb slowed on something. He didn't stop scrolling. But he didn't scroll fast either.
Something in him... something he didn't have a name for, something he'd learned to classify as *rot* wanted to look longer.
He scrolled past. Kept going.
A few posts later: a video. Someone had tagged Ellie. He could see her in the thumbnail, just a flash of dark curly hair, her laugh caught mid-sound, the bonfire behind her.
He didn't tap it. He didn't need to hear her laugh to know what it sounded like. He just sat there, thumb hovering, feeling the distance between this screen and that fire, between who he was supposed to be and who he was when no one was watching.
He closed the app.
He tried and old trick of his to mute those moments that felt too heavy. Music loud, eyes closed, imagining himself on a stage somewhere, performing, being someone bigger than the version trapped in this room.
It didn't work.
The fantasy kept collapsing. Every time he tried to picture the crowd, he saw Miss Hagarty's face instead. That small, satisfied smile. The way she'd patted his shoulder like she was finishing something. Like she'd finally shaped him into what he was supposed to be. The shape was hers, not his.
Do you understand what I'm telling you?
He nodded in the dark. Alone in his room, no one watching, he nodded.
He always nodded.
The glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling had faded to almost nothing. He could barely see them anymore. But he knew they were there, holding their positions, waiting for someone to notice.
He turned off his lamp and got into bed. Not because he was tired. Because being awake felt like too much space to fill.
Smallness felt safer.
He pulled the covers up and let himself disappear.
* * *
LAKE AURELIA — The Shallows
The others had gone inside an hour ago.
Miri stood at the water's edge, her feet bare, the lake lapping cold against her ankles. The moon was high and bright, turning everything silver. The water, the dock, her own skin shimmering in the night.
She'd told Priya she just needed some air. That was true. But it was also true that she needed to be alone with something she couldn't name yet.
The stars were scattered thick across the sky. She tried to find the constellations her dad had taught her years ago, pointing them out from the backyard—but they all looked like strangers tonight.
She thought about her parents. Both sets.
Mom and Dad were probably asleep by now, back in Millbrook, in the house she'd grown up in. They'd texted earlier:
Dad: Having fun?
Mom: Drink water. We love you.
And somewhere else—somewhere she'd never been, couldn't picture, had no map for, there was a woman who had held her once and then let go. And what about the man who ... the thought tripped her up. Her mind scattered to the question behind all the questions.
Where do I come from?
The question surfaced like something rising from deep water.
Why wasn't I enough to keep?
She'd asked her mom once, years ago. Mom had held her for a long time before answering. I don't know why she made that choice, sweetheart. I don't know her story. But I know that her letting go is how we found you. And I'm so grateful we did.
It was a good answer. A loving answer. It didn't fill the hole.
Miri stepped deeper into the water. It rose to her knees, cold enough to make her gasp. The cold felt like clarity, like something stripping away the parts of her that performed belonging.
She thought about Ellie's words again. He sees things other people miss. But he doesn't see himself at all.
She wondered if there were people like that everywhere—people who spent so much time watching that they forgot they could be seen too. People carrying questions they didn't know how to ask yet.
...Why wasn't I enough to keep?
Some questions stayed with you because they needed time, not solutions. Time to deepen, to take shape, to become honest. Sometimes the asking was the first wound and the first mercy.
The water was cold. The stars were bright.
She took another step, and her reflection broke into pieces, scattering across the surface like something that had never been whole to begin with.
Behind her, the house glowed warm and yellow. The people inside were probably asleep by now. Tomorrow they'd pack up and drive home, and this weekend would become a memory. The bonfire, the new friend, the way the water felt against her skin at midnight.
She stood there a moment longer, letting the cold hold her.
Then she turned and walked back toward the light.