The River, Stilled

VP and BP Standings
Erin - 99 VP - 5100 BP - 2 Achievs
Liesa - 96 VP - 2900 BP - 3 Achievs
Sam - 95 VP - 6400 BP - 2 Achievs
Norah -94 VP - 1550 BP - 3 Achievs
Chloe - 94 VP - 4400 BP - 2 Achievs
Marissa - 91 VP - 4000 BP - 3 Achievs
Claire - 87 VP - 7600 BP - 2 Achievs
Emi - 86 VP - 5750 BP - 3 Achievs
Emily - 81 VP - 5600 BP - 3 Achievs (2 used)
Dawn - 75 VP - 5500 BP - 3 Achievs
Myra - 52 VP - 4000 BP - 2 Achievs
Riley - 42 VP - 6800 BP - 3 Achievs
Laura - 18 VP - 6950 BP - 1 Achiev

Andy woke to the rare, golden hush of the Suite, the kind of dawn light that made even the sterile corners of the room seem hopeful. For a moment, he didn’t move—just listened to the thud of Marissa’s heartbeat, felt her weight pinning his arm, her thigh tangled with his. Her hair still smelled like the concert, a mix of shampoo and stage sweat and something warmer underneath. He blinked against the light, cataloguing the angles of her body draped across him: the bare shoulder pressed to his chest, the long, muscled leg hooked over his, the slow, steady rise of her breath against his ribs.

She was still asleep, her face slack and unguarded in a way he’d never seen. Her lips twitched as if she were arguing with someone in a dream, but there was no tension in her jaw, just a languid heaviness that said for once she was at peace.

He lay there for a while, letting the night replay itself in memory: the laugh that had surprised her when she saw the prank in the living room, the way she’d cried at the piano, the gasp she’d made when he touched her, like no one had ever done it right before. The memory made him smile—then, embarrassingly, made his own body wake up, a slow throb building in his groin. It was a strange thing, wanting her even now, after last night, but there it was.

As if she could sense the shift, Marissa stirred, her fingers flexing on his chest. She opened one eye, regarded him with a slow-blooming smile, and said, “You’re staring.”

He kissed her shoulder, gentle. “You look different when you’re not in charge of the room.”

She huffed, not quite a laugh, and rolled so her back pressed against him. “Don’t get used to it.”

He traced a lazy circle on her hip, feeling the shift of muscle under her skin. “You said you’d regret being sentimental. Still true?”

She mulled that, then said, “Less than I thought. Maybe I needed it.” Her voice was softer than usual, with a thread of hoarseness that made it sound like morning itself.

He ran his hand down her side, then up again, memorizing the shape of her. “You should never have to hide needing help. Not from me. Not from anyone here.”

She made a little noncommittal noise, the kind therapists used to keep the conversation going, but then she turned to face him, propped on one elbow. “It’s hard to stop. You spend your whole life being the strong one, and the moment you let it go, it’s…” She searched for the word.

“Scary,” he offered.

“Intoxicating,” she corrected. “Terrifying, but good. I can’t tell if I like it or not.”

Andy brushed the hair from her forehead, thumb skimming the line of her brow. “You don’t have to choose.”

She leaned in, her lips almost brushing his. “I could get used to this,” she admitted. “But I meant what I said last night. If I’m being too much of the therapist, just call me on it. I’ll try to—” She broke off, frowning at her own earnestness, then started again. “I’ll try to just be me, unless you need the other thing.”

He grinned, loving the unpracticed way she said it. “For what it’s worth, I like both. But I think the pianist is a lot sexier.”

Marissa laughed, a full-bodied sound that made the bed shake. “You’re just saying that because you know it’ll get to me.”

He kissed her then, not with the urgency of the night before, but with the sleepy, slow warmth of a Sunday morning where neither person wanted to be the one to get up first. She kissed back, arms winding around his neck, then let her body melt against his.

She tasted like wine and sleep and something bitter, like a memory you’d fought with all night but didn’t want to let go. When he pulled away, she bit his shoulder, playful, then nestled into the curve of his arm, fitting perfectly there.

They lay together, letting the light creep across the room, neither in a hurry to break the spell. At some point, Andy’s stomach growled, loud enough that Marissa rolled her eyes.

They finally rose and found the kitchen transformed, the detritus of Laura’s prank still in evidence: the “sterile field” towels, the plushies, the fake prescription pads. Marissa paused to read one of the notes—“Patient must report for daily tongue inspection”—and snickered, shaking her head.

He poured coffee, she made toast, and they ate together at the breakfast bar, legs touching under the counter. Marissa buttered her toast with surgical precision; Andy inhaled his like he was back in college, barely stopping to taste it. They talked about nothing and everything—how Emily’s performance had shocked everyone, the way Chloe had dissolved into tears during the last chorus, the fact that Emi and Anna had been seen hugging in the hallway at midnight.

When it was time for Marissa to go, she stood, smoothed her dress, and let Andy kiss her one more time. She looked different—her posture looser, her smile easier, the lines around her eyes softer than they’d ever been. She left then, her heels clicking softly on the tile, her steps lighter than he’d ever seen them.

Andy watched the door swing closed, then looked down at the breakfast bar, at the mess of crumbs and the half-drained mugs. For a moment, he let himself feel the happiness, the fullness, the sense that maybe everything was going to be okay, just for today.

Then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and got ready for whatever the next hour would bring.

He got the message before his second cup of coffee. Mildred, resplendent in an apron that read “Cook or Be Cooked,” materialized by the Main Lobby just as Andy emerged from the elevator. She didn’t speak; she only placed a crisp, folded note in his hands and glided out, expressionless. The timing was deliberate. Mildred didn’t “just happen” into hallways.

The handwriting wasn’t Laura’s normal one. It was block print, neat and impersonal:

Please come to the river dock at the start of the Walk of Remembrance. Bring yourself. Don’t bring anyone else.
— L

He almost smiled at the “L,” but the chill in his gut told him this wasn’t a prank, or at least not one meant for laughter. Laura didn’t do neat and impersonal unless she was bracing.

The morning was warm, but he felt the bite of anticipation as he made his way through the lobby, then out the side entrance to the gardens. He passed through the maze of paths—past the benches still sticky with dew, past the blurring color of bougainvillea—and felt the world quiet around him. It was as if the island itself was holding its breath.

Or maybe he was.

He hit the edge of the forest, where the path snaked down toward the river. The air changed, got denser, almost electric. He could hear the river before he could see it, the water’s voice lower and slower than it had been after the storm at the end of last round, but still insistent.

The dock waited at the end of the path, hovering over the dark current. There were three people already there.

Chloe sat at the very edge, her legs dangling over the water. She wore a soft blue sweater and black leggings, the fabric strained at her chest by her breasts. Her hair was pulled back in a messy braid. One hand rested absently over her lower stomach, not consciously, just there, as if anchoring herself.

Next to her stood Myra, one hand wrapped tight around her magical cane, the other tucked into the pocket of her green dress. Her fox ears twitched in the breeze, catching every sound, but her face was set and still, her blind eyes fixed at the river’s far bank.

Riley was the third. She leaned against a stanchion at the head of the dock, her arms crossed, head down, one boot tapping a slow, syncopated rhythm against the planks. She wore a patched denim jacket over her usual black jeans, her red-black hair loose around her shoulders. She looked tired. If she saw Andy approach, she didn’t show it.

He stopped a few steps shy of the dock, taking in the tableau. He knew, instantly, what this was. Not a confrontation, not exactly. A reckoning.

He walked out, not bothering to make a show of confidence, and sat cross-legged on the dock, a polite distance from Chloe. She turned at the sound, then smiled at him—soft, grateful, nothing like the tears of last night. There was something careful in it. As if she were making sure this didn’t tip the wrong way.

Myra greeted him with a small tilt of the head. “Morning,” she said, her voice gentle.

Riley’s voice came from the shadow under her hair. “Thought you’d make us wait forever.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t want to miss the show.” He looked down at the river, its surface almost mirror-smooth, then back at the three women. “Where’s Laura?”

As if summoned, she arrived.

The realness of her presence, doubled, was always a shock—one Laura with her hair loose, the other in a precise ponytail, both dressed simply in identical white dresses. Her selves walked side by side, arms almost brushing but never touching, and when she reached the dock, she halted in perfect unison. She didn’t look at him first. She looked at the water.

“Sorry I’m late,” Laura said. Both voices. It didn’t echo; it harmonized.

Chloe stood, not quite meeting Laura’s gaze, and said, “We just got here.” Her voice was steady, but she shifted her weight as if resisting the urge to step closer—to comfort or to guard, it was hard to tell.

The wind tugged at their hair, at the paper-thin surface of the water. Andy watched the five of them—himself, Chloe, Myra, Riley, and Laura—and felt the weight of the symmetry settle over him. This might not be the real Willow Run, but it represented the place where it had all cracked. Of course this was where she wanted to mend it.

This was the only place such a thing could happen. The only place that could be both origin and ending, altar and grave. The only place you could set secrets afloat and not know how or when they'd finally sink. He thought of a girl who hurt, of feet slipping on wet planks, of a cold current that washed an entire world away.

No witnesses, no rules, just the people who’d carried the weight of the river since the day it took her. And the girl the river had given back.

For a long minute, nobody spoke. The only sound was the water moving below, less a current than an endless, low animal exhale. In the middle of the dock, Chloe sat with her knees hugged to her chest, body swaddled in a sweater the color of a glacier, hair a frazzled mess of tangles. Her thumb rubbed small, **** circles against her own wrist. Myra stood behind her, hands white-knuckle tight on her cane, fox ears slanted back in a posture halfway between alert and ashamed. Riley, as ever, was apart from the rest, perched on the stanchion at the dock’s head, jaw flexed, eyes locked on the horizon as if daring it to look back. And Laura, in her doubled body, stood at the dock’s farthest reach, the toes of her sneakers dangling over the edge, one body ramrod straight and the other loosely braced against the railing. The straight one looked like she was about to confess. The other looked like she was about to jump.

Andy sensed, in the angular arrangement of the group, that they were not a circle or even a line. They were a constellation, each anchoring a corner of the memory they’d come to exorcise. He immediately hated the thought. It sounded too tidy for what this was.

He almost laughed at himself, but then Laura took a breath—a deep, twin-lunged breath—and her two bodies shifted, heels scraping the wood, as if preparing to cast a net. It was the kind of breath you take before diving.

"I didn’t bring you here for a funeral," she said, her voice both doubled and distinct, like two instruments playing in unison but in different keys. "But I also can’t keep pretending nothing happened. I’m tired of being a ghost." The word hung there heavier than the others.

Her gaze moved across them: her right face met Chloe’s; her left regarded Riley. The strain showed in the tightness of her jaw before she let her eyes close for a moment, reset, and opened them again—this time pinning Myra with both sets at once. "We all lived in the shadow of this river. The footbridge. What happened. I don’t want to anymore." There was no bitterness in her tone, only the flat, weighty exhaustion of someone who had been carrying a coffin by herself for years. And maybe still was.

Andy’s eyes stung. He blinked it away and waited, not trusting himself to speak. The wind, which had died for a moment, returned with a gust that made the dock creak and the surface of the water shiver. The river didn’t care. It just kept moving.

It was Riley who answered first. She uncurled from her slouch, tucked her hands in the pockets of her jacket, and squared herself against the wind. "You know I hated him for years," she said, jerking a thumb at Andy. "I told myself it was because he let you die, but that was just a story. I was angry because I didn’t get to say goodbye. I lashed out because it was easier than admitting I never really knew what I felt about you." Her voice wobbled on that last word, and she swallowed it down hard.

She looked at Laura, jaw set, waiting for some visible crack in the twin faces before she continued. "I blamed everyone but myself. But I don’t want to do that anymore. You don’t have to love me, L. But I want my friend back. If you’ll have me."

For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hang on the edge of their joined gaze—the tension of a challenge, a dare, the risk of being refused. But Laura’s faces both broke into a smile, soft and tremulous. "You already have her, Rye," she said, holding out both right hands.

Riley hesitated, then took one. Andy watched as their fingers knotted together, neither giving nor yielding, but simply locking in place. A pact, not a handshake. Something old and newly made.

The rest of them watched in silence, even the birds above and the insects in the grass. Chloe, sitting nearest the water, began to wring her hands, twisting the end of her braid until it looked like it might snap. Her free hand drifted again, unconsciously, to her lower stomach before she caught herself and **** it back to her lap.

When she spoke, her voice was small but clear, a precise tremor in each syllable. "I used to think you were the strong one, Laura. I thought you could survive anything. I always felt… protected, with you around." She looked at the river, then back at Laura. "But now I see how much you carried. And I know I wasn’t weak—I was just a kid. I’m sorry," she said, the words tumbling out. "I should have said this back then, before everything happened. I just… I didn’t know how." She reached up to brush a tear from her cheek, then laughed, embarrassed at her own show of emotion.

Riley reached over and squeezed Chloe’s shoulder. "Hey," she said, voice rough. "Nobody knew how. That’s why we’re here, I think."

The sentence left a vacuum behind it, a pause that felt less like silence and more like the moment after pulling a splinter: the pain gone, but the wound still open. Not healed, just exposed. The river, sensing its cue, seemed to hush even further, water flattening under the dock in a rare truce with the wind.

Myra shifted her weight, the rubber tip of her cane knocking faintly against the planks. Her fox ears flicked forward, then back, as if searching for a signal. "I… guess it’s my turn," she said. She took a breath so deep it made her shoulders tremble. "I’ve lived with what I did for sixteen years. I didn’t know, but that’s what I did, and it never stopped mattering." She tightened her grip on the cane until her knuckles went bloodless, strange against the dark lacquer of her nails. "I twisted what happened between Andy and Chloe into something ugly, and I told Laura it was a betrayal. It wasn’t. I made it worse. I know that now." She turned to Chloe, her face open and raw. "I’m sorry. We were kids, but I destroyed something that day."

Chloe reached out, almost on instinct, and covered Myra’s hand with her own. Her touch was immediate, protective, as if she couldn’t bear to let Myra stand alone in it. "You were hurting, too, Myra," she said, voice gone coarse with tears. "We all were. You more than most of us, except for Laura."

Myra shook her head, but the set of her jaw said she wasn’t going to argue. She held herself rigidly still, refusing to let go of either her cane or Chloe’s hand. "Maybe. But I think I broke something in all of us, and I’ve been trying to atone for it since. Forgiven or not, I still have to live with this knowledge, and I had to say it out loud." When she finished, she looked down, as if expecting the boards beneath her to answer.

Andy watched the words hit Laura—both Lauras—like a ripple sweeping over a pond. For a second, her faces lost all expression, as if she were watching the whole thing from miles away, or maybe from under the river itself.

That was the moment she almost retreated. He could see it—the instinct to shrink, to take the blame back, to say it had always been her fault anyway. Or to accept that Myra should be guilty.

Then, slowly, both faces softened. She stepped forward, and reached out with both sets of hands.

"You were a child. We were all children. It happened, but I’m here again. I forgive you," she said. Both voices in perfect stereo, no echo, no uncertainty. "I mean it." There was no grandness in it, just the choice of a girl who at long last had decided not to let guilt and blame pile up on someone else.

Myra looked up—blind eyes wide and searching—and her lips moved in a silent thank you before she risked letting go of the cane and wrapping her arms around both Lauras at once. Laura didn’t flinch at the imbalance of it—one body braced harder to compensate for Myra’s weight—but she held fast.

The hug was awkward, Myra’s face pressed between two heads, her posture crooked by the stiffness of her shame, but the sound she made was so unguarded, so relieved, that Andy felt something inside himself unclench. Tears tracked down Myra’s face, pale rivers that glistened in the sun and carved lines through her careful makeup.

For a second, Andy remembered Myra upon seeing Laura’s prank three days earlier, the momentary hope that forgiveness could be real. But this was different. That had been possibility, but this was choice.

As Myra drew back, dabbing at her face with the sleeve of her dress, Laura turned to Andy. She still held Myra’s hand, but the weight of her attention was full on him. Both bodies turned at the same time. No hesitation, eyes so blue that he remembered the color of the sky the day Laura died. “Andy,” she said, “you never failed me. Not once. Even when you thought you did.”

He felt a tightness in his chest, the old guilt fighting for one last gasp. He looked at Laura—both Lauras—and when he spoke it was not to coax forgiveness, but to confess one last time, to pull his own fragment of the wound out into the sunlight. “I should have saved you,” he said.

He expected her to bat it away, to laugh or roll her eyes or offer him the usual script: that he did everything he could, that she was always destined for the river one way or another, that the future would always write itself over their bones. Instead, both of Laura’s faces softened—not into one of her usual grins, but something at once older and younger than either of them had ever been. Tired. And honest.

“You saved me every day I knew you,” Laura said, and this time both voices were exactly in phase, a single, resonant note. “Even now.”

Chloe, who had been hovering on the edge of the group-hug perimeter like a child locked out of gym class, slid over and squished herself between Myra and Laura. She wedged herself in carefully, protective of her balance, but once she was there she didn’t leave space.

“I don’t want to live in that story anymore,” she said, her words muffled by the sudden tangle of arms and hair and Laura’s unyielding embrace. “I want a new story,” she said fiercely. She burrowed in closer, as if mere proximity might rewrite her memory from the inside out. Her tears, which had started quietly and then gained momentum, were now soaking into Myra's dress, leaving a cold patch that somehow felt lighter than the hot weight of the past.

On the far end of the dock, Riley maintained her distance, arms folded and back resting against the stanchion. She was too proud for the group hug, Andy knew, too Riley for that kind of display. But the set of her jaw was different—unclenched, lips slightly parted, the color returning to her face as if she’d finally quit holding her breath. She tried to glare at Andy, but couldn’t quite muster it. When she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically gentle, though she still slid sarcasm between the syllables as if afraid anyone would see her unguarded.

“Well, get over here, dumbass.” The command, though softened, carried the same old authority, the same Riley-ness, that Andy remembered from a thousand arguments.

He snorted, but there was no sting in it. He walked over, pulling Riley in, feeling for once like the sum of his years instead of the sum of his failures. Riley resisted exactly long enough to maintain dignity, then she rolled her eyes and allowed herself to be folded into the mass, one foot still braced behind her like a runner ready for a quick getaway. Andy wrapped his arms around the huddle, making sure to catch both of Laura’s torsos and tangle his fingers in Chloe’s hair, and even reached with his spare hand to tap Myra’s ears, a gesture that was half challenge and half invitation. The moment her skin touched his, she tensed, then—after a beat—relaxed, her breath trembling but sure.

For a moment they all clung together, six grown bodies and five broken adolescent hearts, a living knot on the battered old dock. It was ugly, imperfect, and thoroughly undignified—as all real forgiveness is. Andy pressed his face into the tangle and said, because he had to, “We lost too much to the river. No more.”

He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one, at least not in words. But the silence that followed was so complete, so full, that it felt like a reply from the world itself. The group held on, letting the sun creep higher and the light gild their skin and the water below. The wind fell away, and for once the river stayed flat, as if honoring an unspoken pact.

They stayed like that until their arms ached, until the warmth of bodies crowded out the chill of memory, until the past seemed like something that could be set down and left to float away. Not gone, perhaps, but no longer clawing at any of them. When at last they let go, it was slow and uncertain, each person **** to be the first to break the spell.

Chloe was sniffling openly, but she managed a lopsided smile that made Andy remember her as a kid, chasing after Laura with grass stains on her knees. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweater and laughed, a sharp little hiccup, as if surprised by the sound of it. “Does this mean we’re friends again?” she asked, voice thick.

Laura, both faces, beamed back at her. The smile came a little too easily, like she needed it to. “I think so,” she said.

Riley disengaged with a grunt, peeled herself off the huddle, but didn’t retreat to the farthest edge this time. Instead, she hovered nearby, hands shoved deep in her pockets. Her gaze flicked from Laura to Andy to Chloe and back, as if she was recalibrating her internal map of their constellations. Then she grinned—quick, sharp, and gone in a blink—and kicked a loose pebble into the river. “Somebody had to say it,” she muttered, but the pride in her voice was unmistakable.

Myra, cane clutched tight to her chest, stood a little straighter than before. Her eyes were wet, the pale green-brown gone nearly white in the morning glare, but her face was composed, each feature folded into its proper place. She didn’t say anything at first, just let the moment settle on her shoulders like a shawl she had been waiting years to wear. Then she nodded at Laura, just once, and said, “I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that.”

She turned as if to leave, but then stopped, her back still to the others. “Thank you, Laura. Really.” There was a finality to it—not an ending, but a closing of the circle that had been left open all those years.

Andy stood at the edge of the dock, watching the others drift apart and re-form in new orbits around him. He looked at Laura—both of her—and saw the exhaustion in her eyes. Relief, and something held tight behind it.

He stepped close, put a hand on one of her shoulders, and let himself lean into her. She leaned back, both of her, one head resting on each side of his chest like bookends. He felt her exhale, and it was so deep, so final, that he thought for a moment she might disappear entirely.

“I’m ready,” she whispered, both voices perfectly fused. The words were quieter than before. Not triumphant. Not certain. “I think I can do the rest now.”

He didn’t reply, only held her there, feeling the weight of the moment slide off both of them. The past, which had haunted every word and every silence of his life, didn’t go away. It simply… shifted. It stopped shouting.

They lingered on the dock, watching the sun dance on the water. Laura didn’t look at the river the way she had when she arrived. She didn’t look at it like it owned her. The river below, for a moment, was utterly still, and then almost imperceptibly, began to move again.

The walk back from the river was quiet, but not uncomfortable. Andy kept an easy pace, letting Laura set the distance—sometimes beside him, sometimes a step ahead, but never behind. He noticed she avoided walking between him and the path’s edge, as if she didn’t trust herself not to drift.

She seemed lighter, as if the wind had taken some of her weight and left her only the bones of it. Not lighter like joy, perhaps, but like something had been set down. He watched the way the sunlight caught in her hair—both sets of it—and wondered how long it would be before the rest of the world let her be a person, not a legend, or a cautionary tale.

They wandered without speaking for a while, cutting through the Inner Gardens and along the shaded colonnade. Andy watched Laura's twin profiles against the dappled light, an idea forming. "Laura," he said finally, "I've been thinking about your... situation. The commissary might have upgrades that could help. Have you checked the terminal yet?"

Both her faces turned to him, surprised. "No," she admitted, her voices overlapping slightly. "I've been too afraid of what it might do. What if it makes things worse?"

What if it makes me worse, she might as well have said.

Andy nodded, understanding. "We could look together," he offered. "No pressure. Just to see what's there."

They passed through the lobby, the glass doors glinting like a challenge. Laura hesitated at the threshold, both bodies half-turned as if she might change her mind. But Andy touched her hand—just once, light and certain—and she followed.

He led her to the Commissary, a chrome-and-glass alcove off the main hall. Andy gestured for Laura to approach.

"I don't know if anyone showed you this," he said. "Arabella set up this system for, uh, ‘managing’ transformations. Sometimes you can tweak them. Or at least make them less terrible."

Laura’s faces aligned, both curious and wary. "Is this where you go for a new curse?" she asked, half a smile on her lips.

He grinned. "Sometimes. But also for solutions."

They stood at the terminal, side by side. The screen flickered to life, its surface annoyingly sticky to the touch, and scrolled through an endless list of options. Andy navigated to the "Current Transformations" tab, then found Laura’s.

There it was: "Have a Spare," in bold red font, the text beneath it a knot of jargon and whimsy:

• Have a Spare: Andy lost Laura once. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again. Laura is permanently split into two identical selves, although they share a single consciousness. She can control them separately, but the effort it takes is proportional to how different the actions of each body will be (effort is reduced during sex). If she doesn't exert effort, the two bodies will constantly move in sync, copying or mirroring each other. Laura's bodies can't be more than 10 feet away from each other.

"That’s me," Laura said, soft. She squinted at the screen, reading the text. "‘Effort is reduced during sex.’ Of course it is."

Andy scrolled down. "There’s more. Sometimes they offer upgrades or add-ons. It’s like an app store, but for body horror."

She took it in, head cocked as she scrolled, both bodies leaning forward in uncanny synchrony. “This is… kind of horrifying,” she said, voice doubled.

Andy grinned. “You get used to it. The selection is mostly safe, but read the fine print.”

Laura scrolled through a handful of options, her expressions running the gamut from delight to disgust. “The Closest Hug,” she read, raising an eyebrow. “That’s a thing?”

“Apparently.” Andy pointed out the entry. “Only lasts a few hours, and there’s a, uh, catch.”

• The Closest Hug (Upgrade): Laura can, if she so chooses, merge back into a single physical form. She can remain like this for several hours, but pressure mounts the longer she is a singleton, and once she is split again, she cannot rejoin for as many hours as she was a singleton. Laura's physical sensitivity is increased when she is in singleton form.

She read the details, then snorted. “Of course. It’s always more sex.” But she didn’t scroll past it. The smile on her face was small but genuine. She continued reading.

Laura’s eyes widened, one pair first, then the other. "So I can be one person again? Even just for a while?"

"That’s what it says. You’d have control—decide when, how long, all of it. If it’s too much, you just… let go. Revert."

Laura didn’t answer immediately. She looked at their reflections in the dark screen instead. Two versions of herself staring back. “Is this weird for you?” she asked, both bodies tilting their heads in unison. “Being with me like this?”

He shook his head, then said, “No, actually. It’s kind of amazing. I mean, it’s you, right? Just more of you.”

Her smile was shy, twin blushes rising on both faces, telling him he had given the right answer. “I think I want to try it,” she said, “if only so I remember what it felt like, before.”

Andy stepped aside, giving her space to make the purchase. She reached out, her hands shaking only a little, and pressed the "Purchase" button. The transaction beeped, a little too cheerful, and a confirmation screen popped up.

Laura 6950 BP - 1000 BP = 5950 BP

Laura looked down at herself—at both of herself—and laughed, a dry, brittle sound. "That’s it? I thought there’d be, I don’t know, fireworks. Or a warning. Or at least a better font."

Andy snorted. "Maybe it kicks in later."

“Maybe,” she said. She flexed her fingers, experimentally, as if waiting for something to change. Nothing did. But she didn’t look disappointed. “Thank you,” she said.

He shrugged, suddenly shy. "Anytime."

They left the Commissary, the hush of the main hall swallowing their steps. Andy glanced at Laura, searching for signs of regret or second thoughts. He didn’t find them. What he saw instead was a girl, tired but lighter, bracing for something. She was still carrying something he couldn’t quite reach, but she walked just a little more deliberately now.

They wandered the gardens for a while, neither talking much, both wrapped in the warmth of the morning. There was a spot Andy liked: a semicircle of stone benches under a flowering canopy, vines spilling down in fat ropes, the petals dusting the air with yellow. He steered Laura there, motioning for her to sit. She did, perching lightly on the edge, both bodies mirroring the motion. One heel tapped once against the stone before going still. She looked at her hands, fingers laced, a small tremor in them.

He sat beside her, close enough that their knees brushed. "You okay?" he asked, voice low.

Laura stared ahead, her eyes on the droop of the wisteria. "I’m fine," she said, then shook her heads. "No, I’m not."

He waited. He’d learned, with her, to let the silence work. She’d fill it when she was ready.

"I need to ask you something," she said, and turned to face him, both pairs of eyes clear and unblinking. "Do you think I’m poison?"

The question hit like a slap. He blinked. "What?"

"I don’t mean, like, literally toxic. But do you think I hurt your life more than I ever helped it? Was it worth it—missing me for sixteen years? Mourning? Being sad for so long?"

He tried to catch up, tried to find the right answer. "No," he said. Too fast.

Laura’s mouth twitched. “That’s not an answer. I know what I did to you, Andy," she said. "Not just the day I died. I mean all of it. You spent your whole childhood taking care of me. You fought my battles, kept my secrets, tried to keep me safe from my dad when I needed it. You made me your whole world. And then I vanished, and all that effort meant nothing. Worse than nothing. It didn’t just disappear, it… turned into damage, into this wound you never stopped bleeding from."

She bit her lip, hard enough he saw it whiten. "When Emi told me the pain was just proof of how much I mattered to you, it felt good. For a second. But it’s not enough. Because I hurt your parents, too. Your Mom. You said your Dad was a wreck. Not just because they lost me. They lost a piece of you."

Andy’s jaw clenched. He didn’t interrupt this time.

He’d never said it out loud, but he’d had the same thought, more than once, late at night, in the long years in which he had thought he would never be happy again. What if letting Laura into his life had been a mistake? What if loving her—so hard, so all-consuming—had doomed them both?

But that time was long past now. Andy found his voice. “Laura, I—God, no. That’s not—”

“I know you lost years,” Laura said, both voices now, doubled and insistent. “Years you’ll never get back. I know I didn’t get to see all the things you did, or the person you became, but I also know I’ll never make up for what it cost you. Or what it cost your parents. Or anyone.” Her hands twisted together, pulling at the fabric of her dresses. “Sometimes I think the only thing I know how to do is hurt people. Even when I don’t mean to, I walk into a room and something breaks,” she added, almost to herself. “Or someone does.”

He looked at her, and saw the fear underneath all her bravado. She wasn’t just worried about herself. She was worried about everyone else, too.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "You were never poison," he said. "You were my whole world, yes. And losing you… yeah, it hurt. It still does, sometimes. But not because you broke anything. Because you made everything matter. And my parents… neither of them ever blamed you for anything. Not for a single second."

Laura’s eyes filled, both sets at once. She blinked fast, looked away, but didn’t let go of his hand.

Laura blinked, surprised. “But I—”

“No.” Andy shook his head, forceful. “You’re only looking at the day you died, and what it did. What about all the days you lived?” His voice softened. “You were the tree I grew around. Remember that fort we built in fifth grade? How you made me climb higher than I thought I could? Or when you convinced me to audition for the school play? I was terrified, but you sat in the back row and gave me thumbs up the whole time.” He let out a shaky breath. “You built me, Laura. Piece by piece. And you can’t erase thirteen years of building me up with one day of tragedy. That is not fair to either of us.”

He touched her chins, guiding her gazes back to his. “You were the reason I made it out of that town. You were the reason I ever tried anything that scared me. You made me want to be better, just so I’d have something worth bringing to you. If anyone was poison, it was the people who couldn’t see how lucky they were to have you, even for a little while.”

Both of Laura’s faces crumpled, a mirror-image of disbelief and something like hope.

Andy pressed her hands to his chest. "You want to know what my parents would say if they could see you now?" he continued. "God, Laura, if they knew you were alive, if they saw you now… they’d be so fucking happy, Laura, you don’t even know. My mom would probably try to adopt you, all over again. My dad would tell you that you saved my life. Because you did. And even when you were gone, you were always the reason I kept going. You didn’t break me," he added quietly, “You guided me.”

Laura’s right hand fluttered to her cheek, as if brushing away a tear. “I want to believe you,” she whispered. “But it’s hard,” she added, “it feels too easy.”

He drew her in, both bodies at once, and wrapped his arms around her. “Then don’t believe me all at once,” he said. “Just… don’t decide you’re poison before you have proof.”

She started to say something, but her voice caught. "You promise,” she said slowly, “that you’re not just saying that because you love me?”

He didn’t hesitate. "I promise. Losing you hurt me. It cost me, and I won’t pretend it didn’t. But I’d still choose you. I’d swear it on anything you want."

She managed a smile, the kind that started weak and then caught fire, spreading to both faces at once. It faltered just as quickly. "You’re relentless," she said.

He grinned. "I learned from the best."

They held each other for a long time, the world narrowing to the warmth of skin and the quiet hush of breath. Andy felt Laura’s shuddering resolve soften in his arms, not disappear but loosen. He felt her bodies align as one, and knew that whatever this was, however messy or strange, it was real. What he still didn’t know was whether she believed him yet.

They had barely stepped out of the gardens—feet crunching over the mulch, heads bent close in quiet conversation—when the world tilted sideways.

It started as a flicker at the edge of vision, a glimmer that coalesced into a rippling seam in the air, like someone had peeled a line of reality back to see what was underneath. The air around it wavered like heat rising from summer asphalt, distorting the trees and sky beyond. Andy saw it first, and stopped short, his hand instinctively finding one Laura's wrist. Laura followed his gaze, both faces mirroring surprise, then caution. The seam widened, colors blooming outward in impossible gradients—electric blues that no sky had ever worn, purples deeper than bruises, golds that seemed to hum with their own inner light—until it resolved into a perfect, elliptical doorway of white-gold light. The edges pulsed slightly, like a heartbeat, sending small waves of warmth against their faces.

The pulse was slow, patient, like it was waiting.

For a moment, neither of them moved. The garden behind them suddenly seemed unnaturally quiet, as if all ambient sound had been sucked toward the glowing portal. Andy's first instinct was to shield Laura, to step between her and whatever this was—

—but she was already stepping forward.

Her curiosity had always been a match for his caution. The light played across her features, casting double shadows behind her dual bodies, making her eyes gleam with reflected radiance.

"You see that, right?" she asked, voices hushed but steady. Her right hands reached out, stopping just short of touching the light.

He nodded, heart pounding against his ribs like it wanted escape. "Yeah. That's not standard issue around here." His mouth felt dry. Whatever this was, it wasn't a Challenge, or Arabella’s magic. This was something else entirely.

She grinned, nervous but game, a familiar expression that had preceded so many childhood adventures. "Should we poke it?" Her left body leaned forward slightly, while her right remained more hesitant. The split wasn’t dramatic — just a hair’s difference — but he noticed. She was excited. And afraid.

He wanted to say no. Every rational part of his brain screamed caution. But beneath that was something older, something that remembered the thrill of discovery they'd shared as children. The way Laura had always pushed him past his comfort zone, toward experiences that changed him. He wanted to know even more than he wanted to be safe. "On three?"

They clasped hands, her skin hot in his, fingers interlacing with practiced familiarity. Her pulse raced against his palm as they counted off together, voices synchronizing on each number. At three, they stepped forward as one, bodies braced for whatever waited on the other side.

A wall of cold hit them, sharp and absolute, like the shock of plunging into a winter lake. The light gave way to gray sky, the faint howl of winter winds, and the hush of snowfall on old blacktop.

The other side was a garden. Not the Hotel’s lush, baroque mess of flowers, but something neater, simpler—a line of crabapple trees, a circle of benches, the dark bones of perennial beds asleep for winter. The sky was the color of old cotton, clouds marbled over it in thick, heavy bands, and everything else was white, utterly white: snow piled on every surface, soft and perfect except where small birds had dashed lines through it. The air was dry, his lungs drank it like old medicine. His feet crunched on snow, and for a dizzy second, he was sixteen again, coming home from band rehearsal, letting the dead cold burn the sorrow out of his chest.

It was not a memory. It was real. And Andy knew exactly where it was.

“It’s Warrenville,” he breathed. His hand found Laura’s, the left one, which trembled against his palm. He squeezed. “It’s home.”

Laura followed, and for a second, the portal shimmered around both her bodies, then popped, leaving the world eerily silent.

The silence was thicker here, but not magical. Just small-town winter, early during the day, when no one was around after a snowfall like this.

She stood beside him, wearing flats in the snow—her two selves in simple white dresses, the cloth already frosting over at the hem. He wasn’t cold, though, thanks to the stamina from his Gifts, and she didn’t seem to mind, either. She only looked around, stunned, disoriented, as if she couldn’t believe this place could still exist.

“Where are we?” she asked, puzzled. “This can’t be real.”

Andy was already moving, sneakers sinking into the snow. A wooden fence with peeling green paint. The burnt-out shell of the Johnsons’ old garage, the one that had caught fire during the fireworks debacle in 2017. And just beyond that, the street sign he knew by heart: Twin Yews Road.

“Laura,” he said, voice thick, “this is our block. This is where your house used to be.”

Laura’s left hands flew to her mouths. The right clutched at Andy’s sleeve, squeezing until he felt the bones grind together. She stared at the ground, then at the empty lot in front of them. At first he thought she was going to cry, but instead she laughed—short, breathless, as if the air was too thin for emotion.

“It’s gone,” she said, both voices, stunned. “You really knocked it down.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

But the lot was not empty. Not really. The space where her house had stood was now a garden—long and narrow, lined with young trees whose branches curled upward in delicate prayer. The beds were mulched and orderly, packed with the dark skeletons of last summer’s flowers. And at the far end, just before the fence line, a single stone pedestal rose from the snow, its top set with a bronze plaque that gleamed even in the flat winter light. A few bouquets of flowers, half-covered in snow and wilting in the cold, had recently been left around the stone pedestal, neither abandoned nor forgotten, but laid in homage.

He led Laura to it. At the plaque, she stopped and stared, her eyes flicking over the engraved words:

IN MEMORY OF
LAURA ASHFORD
1995-2008
“She made the world brighter.”

There was a small, black-and-white photo embedded in the metal—a candid Andy had personally selected, lifted from an old yearbook. Laura at thirteen, grinning, hair wild, one eyebrow cocked as if she was about to take on the world. Andy felt the air go out of his lungs. He looked at Laura, at both of her, and saw that her faces were blank with shock. Stripped clean.

He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I had them make the plaque,” he said, softly. “I mean, it was a pain to negotiate with the HOA, but I—when I had your old place bulldozed, I didn’t want it to just be… nothing. I didn’t want anyone to ever build over it again. I thought, maybe, if people could come here and see something beautiful—”

He stopped, swallowing hard.

Laura’s right hand traced the engraved letters. Her fingers shook. Her left hand didn’t move at all. It just hovered, suspended, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to touch it.

“I told myself it was for you,” he continued, voice unsteady. “But really, it was for me. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being erased. Or worse—being remembered only as a tragedy, like some cautionary tale people tell their kids.”

She looked at him, both faces lined with tears, though she still hadn’t made a sound. “You did this?”

He nodded. “My parents helped,” he added quietly. “It wasn’t just me.”

Laura dropped to her knees in the snow, both bodies at once, and pressed her palms to the earth at the base of the stone. For a long minute, she just sat like that, breathing the cold, her hair lifting in the wind.

“I thought I was poison,” she said, her left voice barely audible. “I thought this town would use my name as a warning.” Her voice was raw. “I thought I would only ever be the girl who drowned.”

Andy knelt beside her, snow soaking through his jeans. “You were never poison. You were everything good about this place. People don’t leave flowers here because they feel guilty,” he added, “They do because they loved you.”

Her eyes fell on something metallic, glinting from under the frozen mulch under the small overhang of the pedestal, where no snow had fallen. Her hands dug into the frozen mulch, and she scraped at the soil until she uncovered something under a half-buried stone—a small time capsule, the kind they used to hide behind her old house. She froze. He watched her fingers trace the edge of it, watched recognition dawn slowly across both faces. She pried it loose, brushing away the dirt. It was a metal box from some kind of Danish cookies, smaller than a shoebox, sealed with weatherproof resin. Andy wondered if she recognized the box: it had been the box containing her last time capsule, the one he had found after her ****.

For a second, Andy thought she might clutch it and refuse to look. Instead, both of her bodies steadied, and she cracked it open.

Inside was the treasure he had buried for her.

A folded, laminated program from her eighth-grade choir concert. A polaroid of the three of them—Andy, Emi and Laura—at the river in the summer, Laura in the middle, dripping wet and triumphant. The first printed copy of the original Aural prototype pitch deck, the date stamped in the corner. And a short, handwritten note.

Laura unfolded the pitch deck first, the paper worn at the edges, but protected. On the inside cover, in blue ink, Andy’s handwriting slanted across the margins. Seed round approved, it read, if this works, maybe some kid gets home. I’m going to make something that helps people. You would have laughed at the logo, but I think you’d be proud of this. I wish you could see it.

Her breath hitched. Her right hands flattened over the page, her left tightened around the capsule lid.

“You wrote this,” she said, not looking at him.

Andy swallowed. “The night we got seed funding,” he said, “I went back to my apartment and wrote that before I let myself feel anything.”

She stared at the words again. Her voice came quieter. “You really let me mean something. You really…” she couldn’t continue. She unfolded the handwritten note. This was recent, written by Andy when he had buried the time capsule, around one year before The HH.

I didn’t get to keep you.
But I get to keep who you were to me.
That part will never belong to the river.

Laura’s fingers tightened around the page. It wasn’t a vow, a prayer, it wasn’t even hopeful. It was just love, quiet and stubborn. Just that. Andy’s longing and pain, distilled into a promise to never let her fade.

“You didn’t make me into something holy,” she said softly, not looking at him. “You just… kept me alive, even after I was gone.”

Andy felt a surge of something so fierce it bordered on pain. He wrapped his arms around both of her, pulling her in so close he could smell the winter on her skin. “I kept you,” he agreed, “because you were always mine.”

This time, she leaned into him immediately. The world shrank to the two of them, kneeling in the snow, the memory of what they’d lost no longer sharp enough to cut.

For a while, neither of them moved. The wind hummed in the trees, and a crow shouted from the top of a streetlight, the sound so sharp it felt like a blessing. Laura rocked gently, holding the capsule, her bodies swaying in perfect time.

After a while, she stood, brushing off the snow. Steadier. She looked at Andy, eyes clear now. “Thank you,” she said.

He smiled. “For what?”

“For bringing me home,” she said. “For making sure I was never really gone.”

He swallowed, trying to play it cool, but the lump in his throat made it hard. “You did that for yourself, Laura. I just… I just wanted the world to know it. I didn’t want you to shrink into a story about a river.”

She smiled—radiant in both faces. It trembled at the edges, but it held. Then she took his hand and led him to the old crabapple tree at the garden’s edge.

“You used to climb this,” Andy said, touching the bark.

“And you used to fall out of it,” Laura replied, both voices in stereo, grinning. For the first time in days, her grins reached her eyes, and lingered.

They leaned against the tree, shoulder to shoulder, watching the clouds churn overhead.

For a long time, they just stood there, letting the silence fill in all the places where memory had rotted away. The crabapple branches creaked in the wind, the sky bruised purple and gray, and Andy was back in every year at once: six, ten, thirteen, always finding excuses to walk this block, always hoping Laura would be waiting on the curb, ready with some new dare or idea or impossible kindness. It was as if the universe had collapsed all those years into a single hour, and neither of them wanted to break it by moving.

Eventually, Laura set the time capsule at the base of the tree, both her bodies kneeling together. She pressed her hands into the earth, then dusted the dirt from her palms and stood. Her faces were wet, but her eyes were clear, steadier.

Andy let the hush linger, but the truth was he had been thinking about the house next door since the second they’d stepped through the portal. His parents’ place: the old brick ranch with the fake shutters, the paint stubbornly holding out against time and weather. The porch light was on, a warm, yellow glow that made the snow in the yard look almost blue by comparison.

He could see shapes moving behind the living room curtains—his mother, maybe, tidying or fussing over a plant, his dad reading with the overhead lamp on even though it killed his eyes. Andy felt a jolt of something that was almost panic. He hadn’t been here in years, not in any real way, not since the funeral or maybe before. Every visit had always felt like stepping into a story he had been **** to abandon. The last time he’d come by, it had been for a holiday, the tension so thick that every conversation felt like walking on a frozen lake. But now, standing in the snow with Laura at his side—two bodies, one soul—he felt the need, sharp and undeniable.

He wanted to bring her home.

He didn’t know if it was selfish or brave or just one more way to try and fix a past that would always be broken, but Andy wanted them to see her. He wanted them to know that not everything lost was gone forever.

He turned to Laura, tried to find the words.

“Come with me?” he said, voice hoarse. “I… I want you to see something. It matters.”

She hesitated, both bodies stiffening. “Andy—” both voices said at once, the sound like a warning. She looked at the house, at the lights, at the dark line of footprints that led from the drive to the front door.

“You don’t have to,” Andy said quickly. “I won’t drag you into something you’re not ready for.” He swallowed. “It’s just—my parents. They always loved you. I think they’d want to know, if they could. Even if it’s just for a second.”

Laura’s left hands balled into a fist, nails digging into the flesh of her palms. The right hands hovered at her sides, unsure what to do. “I can’t,” she said, softly. “I can’t walk in there and be a ghost again. It hurt them enough the first time.”

Andy shook his head, fierce. “No. You wouldn’t be a ghost. You’d be—fuck, I don’t even know. A miracle, maybe. Or just the best kind of trouble.” He smiled, tried to make her laugh, but Laura’s faces didn’t move.

He closed the gap, took both her hands—one from each body, the weight of her doubled and real. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll go in first, if you want. But I want you to see them again. One more time.”

Laura’s faces turned inward, thinking it over. The right one bit her lip, the left one stared at the snow. At last, she nodded, a small motion in both bodies.

“Okay,” she said, “but if your mom tries to feed me, I’m running for the hills.”

Andy laughed, almost relieved. “She’s not that bad.”

Laura arched an eyebrow, both of them. “She made me eat six helpings of turkey at that one Thanksgiving.”

“You never used to eat enough,” Andy protested, but Laura shook her head.

“You know, I used to dream about this house,” she said, voices blending. “Sometimes I’d be standing outside, but I couldn’t get to the door. I don’t think I ever made it in, in my dreams.”

Andy squeezed her hands, not knowing how to answer.

Together, they crossed the old boundary line, shoes sinking into the crusted snow. The wind died down, and the world felt suddenly intimate—like a story told under blankets, the rest of reality held at bay by a single porch light.

At the steps, Laura faltered, both bodies hanging back. “Are you sure?” she asked.

He was. Or at least, he needed to try.

He climbed the three steps, felt the familiar sag of the second one, and wiped his hands on his jeans. Laura followed, slow and careful, both bodies moving together. He could feel her breath, could see her shoulders tighten as they reached the doormat.

Andy paused with his hand raised, not knocking yet. He thought about all the times he’d come home from high school, shoes soaked, heart empty, always hoping for a sign that things would get better. He thought about the dinners where nobody talked about the river, where his mother’s voice got sharp and thin, where his dad drank coffee and read the paper and waited for the storm to pass. He thought about how much it had meant, just to have Laura’s name spoken aloud, even when it hurt.

He looked at her—looked at both of her, really—and realized he owed her one last truth before they went in.

“After you died,” he said, “I found out that my parents had tried to get Social Services involved in your situation. That they’d offered to foster you, if it ever came to that.”

Laura’s faces went blank, stunned. The right one staggered back half a step, as if she’d been struck.

“They did?” she said, left and right together.

He nodded. “They filed the paperwork. They just—” He shrugged, helpless. “It was too late.”

The wind started up again, rattling the porch rail. Laura stood in it, her bodies trembling.

“I never knew,” she said, both voices thin as glass.

“Me neither,” Andy said, “not until I asked. I thought they were just being… parents. But it was real. They would have done it. They wanted you, even then.”

Laura pressed her hands to her faces, both of them, and when she lowered them her eyes were shining with something like pride, something like ruin.

“You sure about this?” she asked, one last time.

Andy nodded. “Yeah. I want them to see you. I want them to see that the river didn’t win.”

Laura smiled, small but defiant, her eyes glimmering. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Andy closed his fist and knocked.