Isla Verma
Mira Patel wasn’t expecting to find anything interesting in a house that smelled like mothballs and mildew. Her grandfather’s old bungalow in Elmsworth was the kind of place that felt stuck between timelines—one foot in 1973, the other refusing to acknowledge anything after dial-up internet. Still, here she was, sleeves rolled up, armed with cardboard boxes, and guilt-tripped by her father into helping him “sort things out.”
“Start with the attic,” he’d said, handing her a flashlight like they were preparing for a cave dive instead of old furniture and dead spiders.
The attic door groaned like something out of a horror movie. She had to wedge a chair under it to keep it from falling shut behind her. Dust filled her throat with every step, the kind of dust that hadn’t moved in years. A weak bulb dangled from the ceiling, flickering slightly—because of course it did.
Mira swept the light around—trunks, yellowing newspapers, half-crushed boxes of forgotten family photos. She crouched by a stack of books that looked like they hadn’t been touched since her dad had hair. And then she saw it.
A sliver.
Just behind an old rocking chair was a board in the wall that didn’t quite line up with the others. Her heart did a weird flutter thing—not fear exactly, more like the thrill of finding something hidden. She pushed the chair aside and tugged at the loose panel. It resisted for a second, then gave way with a reluctant crack.
Inside, wrapped in faded cloth, was a small leather-bound journal.
She wiped off the dust. No name. Just the initials “K.B.” etched in the corner in shaky gold ink. The leather was soft, nearly falling apart, but the pages inside were still legible—cramped handwriting in blue ink, looping letters that slanted left.
June 14, 2005. Fireflies out again tonight. I think it’s starting. I told him not to trust her…
Mira sat back on her heels, pulse quickening. She glanced around as if someone might scold her for reading it, then carefully flipped through more pages. The entries were scattered, panicked. Something about a “firefly pact,” something about a party at the lake, something about someone watching them.
She tucked the journal into her jacket pocket and climbed down, heart thudding like she’d stolen something.
Downstairs, her dad was sitting on the porch, sipping sweet tea and texting her aunt in New Jersey.
“Find anything haunted?” he joked, not looking up.
“Just dead spiders,” Mira said, too quickly. She kept the journal out of sight.
That night, back at the small guesthouse they were staying in, Mira waited until her father went to bed. She pulled the journal from her bag, turned on her desk lamp, and began reading again. The entries became stranger the deeper she went. There were names—Kayla, Jesse, Blake, something about a bonfire. Something about someone disappearing.
Then, one page stopped her cold:
August 3. If I don’t make it past tonight, tell them it was never an accident. Tell them—
The sentence trailed off, no period. Just a smear of ink like the pen had dropped mid-thought. Mira stared at it, skin prickling. It wasn’t just a journal anymore. It was a warning. Or maybe a confession.
She picked up her phone, thumb hovering over her messages. She needed someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t laugh.
Leo Chen.
They weren’t close-close. He sat behind her in AP Lit and always smelled like cinnamon gum. But he’d once given a presentation about the town’s history that had been way too enthusiastic, even for Elmsworth. If anyone knew about some girl from 2005 who disappeared mysteriously, it would be him.
She hesitated, then typed:
hey leo. random question. do you know anything about a girl named K.B. who went missing in 2005?
Three dots appeared almost instantly.
woah. how do you know about that??
it’s kind of a thing around here. unofficial town legend.
Mira’s heart did that weird flutter again.
i found her journal.
in my grandpa’s attic.
There was a pause. Then:
okay that’s insane. do NOT read it alone. can we meet tomorrow?
Mira couldn’t sleep.
She kept replaying that last unfinished sentence over and over. Tell them it was never an accident. Who was she talking about? What happened that night?
The room felt too quiet. The lake outside was calm, the moonlight carving silver lines across the surface. Fireflies blinked outside her window like soft, silent code.
Something in her gut whispered that this summer was not going to be the quiet goodbye to childhood she thought it would be.
It was going to be something else entirely.
Something that began with a pact… and ended with a truth.
Mira met Leo at the public library the next morning, just after it opened. It was the only place in Elmsworth where air conditioning worked like it had something to prove. Leo was already at a table in the corner, laptop open, hair slightly damp like he’d sprinted there. He looked up when she approached and gave a nod that was half-awkward, half-impressed.
“You really brought it,” he said as she slid the journal across the table. He flipped through the pages with careful fingers, like the thing might crumble to dust if he breathed too hard.
“Where exactly did you find this again?”
“In my grandpa’s attic. Behind a wall panel. It was hidden.”
Leo whistled. “Okay, that fits. So, K.B.—she’s probably Kayla Benton. Disappeared the summer before senior year. Everyone thought she ran away. No body, no crime, no big investigation. Just—poof. Gone. But every couple years someone starts whispering about her again.”
“And what’s this… firefly pact thing?” Mira asked, leaning in.
Leo tapped the journal. “I’ve heard the name before, but no one ever explains it. Like it was a secret club or something. She mentions Jesse and Blake in here, right?”
Mira nodded.
Leo pulled up a folder on his screen. “Here—2005 yearbook scans. I’ve been working on an Elmsworth history archive for fun.”
Mira gave him a look.
He shrugged. “Don’t judge. Some people collect stamps. I collect small-town trauma.”
On the screen were black-and-white portraits of high school students. Leo zoomed in on a photo: Kayla Benton – Yearbook Editor, Swim Team Captain. A wide smile, loose hair. Sharp eyes.
“She doesn’t look like someone who’d run away,” Mira said softly.
“Or if she did,” Leo added, “she didn’t leave alone.”
They left the library at noon, the heat slamming into them like a wall. Elmsworth in July was the kind of hot that made you sweat through your bones. Mira shielded her eyes from the glare and looked toward the lake.
“I want to see where it happened,” she said.
Leo hesitated. “You mean where she disappeared?”
She nodded.
He kicked a stone on the sidewalk. “It’s kind of local myth territory. The bonfire spot’s at the south side of the lake. No one really goes there anymore.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
The south lake trail was half-overgrown, the path narrowing until it was just wild grass brushing their ankles. Mira wiped sweat from her forehead and tried not to think about ticks.
Eventually, they broke through the brush and stepped into a clearing—quiet, wide, and surrounded by trees that curved inward like ribs. The lake stretched out beyond, the water still and green. A few logs lay near a blackened circle of stones, remnants of an old firepit.
“This is it,” Leo said quietly. “Last anyone saw her, she was here. Bonfire party. Around twenty kids. Jesse and Blake were with her that night.”
Mira crouched near the fire circle. Something about the place made her chest tighten. It felt… held. Like the trees remembered.
She pulled the journal from her bag and opened to a marked page.
July 28. He keeps looking at me like I’m someone else. Ava says I should stop coming here, but this is the only place that feels like mine. When the fireflies blink, it’s like they know what we promised. The pact holds if we all keep quiet. But Jesse’s breaking. I can tell. And if he talks—
She looked up at Leo. “There’s an Ava in here.”
He frowned. “That name’s new. No Ava shows up in the old records.”
“Maybe it was a nickname. Or someone from out of town?”
Leo pulled out his phone and started typing.
Mira stood and walked toward the edge of the lake. She stepped onto a small dock that jutted out over the water. It creaked under her sneakers.
Then she froze.
There, etched faintly into the wood, just above where the water lapped, were initials:
K.B. + J.L. + B.S.
Kayla. Jesse. Blake.
The same names from the journal. A triangle.
“Leo,” she called, “come look at this.”
He jogged over and crouched. “Whoa.”
Mira traced the carving with her finger.
“What if the pact was between the three of them?” she whispered. “And Kayla found out one of them was lying. Or worse.”
Leo looked uneasy. “This is getting real.”
“Yeah,” Mira said. “It is.”
That night, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. The firepit. The initials. The unfinished sentence.
The journal was still open on her desk when her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
i heard you’re reading kayla’s journal. stop.
She stared at the screen, heart hammering.
Another message came through.
some things should stay buried.
Mira’s hands went cold. She texted Leo immediately.
someone just warned me to stop. blocked number.
Leo’s reply was instant:
someone’s watching you??
She hesitated. Then typed:
i’m not backing off.
Then, before she could lose her nerve, she texted one more person.
hey. i need your help. meet me tomorrow. it’s about kayla.
She hit send.
To Ava Torres.
Mira hadn’t spoken more than five words to Ava Torres since school let out. And before that, it was mostly just side-eyes in the hallway. Ava was the girl who wore combat boots in ninety-degree heat and read Sylvia Plath during lunch. She transferred mid-semester from New York, landed in Elmsworth like she couldn’t wait to leave again.
But when Mira showed up at the local skatepark the next morning—journal in her backpack, nerves coiled like wires—Ava was already waiting. She sat on the edge of the graffitied bowl, legs dangling, a cigarette she didn’t light tucked behind her ear like punctuation.
“You look exactly like someone about to ask a dangerous question,” Ava said as Mira approached.
“I got a message last night,” Mira said, skipping the pleasantries. “Anonymous. Telling me to stop reading Kayla’s journal.”
Ava didn’t blink. “And you figured I’d be into that kind of thing?”
“I figured you’d know something.”
Ava smirked. “Smart.”
They walked to the lakeside trail in silence for a while, the trees casting sharp shadows across the dirt. Mira clutched the journal to her chest.
“She wrote about someone named Ava,” she said finally. “Said Ava warned her to stop coming here.”
Ava stopped walking. “Kayla Benton?”
Mira nodded.
Ava turned slowly to her. “My mom’s name is Ava.”
The words landed like a dropped brick.
“She went to high school here. Senior year, she dropped out. Never explained why. We moved to New York after. But I always thought there was something weird about the stories she told. Like they didn’t match the kind of girl she wanted me to believe she used to be.”
Mira stared. “You think your mom knew Kayla?”
Ava pulled the cigarette from behind her ear and finally lit it, exhaling away from Mira. “I don’t just think. I know.”
Back at Mira’s place, the three of them—Mira, Ava, and Leo—sat around her porch table. The journal was open between them. They were speaking low, like they were conspiring. Which, to be fair, they were.
“I did more digging,” Leo said, tapping his laptop. “Jesse Latham disappeared a year after Kayla. No official record. Just a transfer out of town. His family sold their house. Moved to Ohio. Quietly.”
“And Blake?” Mira asked.
Leo grimaced. “Still here. Runs the auto shop off Route 9. Married. Has a kid.”
“That’s… unsettling,” Ava said, taking a sip from Mira’s leftover iced coffee like it was hers. “So we’ve got a missing girl, a vanishing boy, and one surviving pact member living like nothing happened.”
Mira flipped to a new page in the journal.
July 31. Blake says we have to forget. Jesse’s panicking. He saw something in the woods. Something that looked like her. But it wasn’t her. Not anymore.
She looked up. “What if Kayla didn’t just disappear? What if something happened out here that night—something bad—and Blake and Jesse made a deal to keep it quiet?”
“And Ava tried to stop her from getting caught in it,” Ava said softly. “My mom.”
Leo stared at the words like they might rearrange themselves into an answer.
“This is bigger than we thought,” he said.
They decided to confront Blake.
It wasn’t a decision they made lightly. Mira’s hands shook as she typed the directions into her phone. The auto shop sat at the far edge of Elmsworth, near the marshy roads that nobody drove unless they had to. Blake’s Garage was a single-story brick building with a fading blue awning and a rusted sign. Two cars sat out front, hoods open like they were yawning.
Blake Sutton was in his early 40s, heavyset, with dark eyes that tracked everything. When they walked in, he glanced up from beneath a truck’s hood and wiped his hands on a rag.
“You kids lost?”
“No,” Mira said. “We’re here about Kayla Benton.”
Everything about him froze.
A second passed.
Then another.
Then he said, “Don’t know that name.”
“We found her journal,” Leo said, voice steady. “We know about the firefly pact. The bonfire. The dock.”
Blake looked like he’d swallowed glass. His hands curled the rag into a knot.
“She’s dead,” he said finally. “That’s all that matters.”
“She never said she was dying,” Ava said coldly. “She said she was scared.”
Blake’s eyes moved to her, squinted. “You’re Ava Torres’s kid.”
“Yeah.”
He looked away. “Then you should ask your mom what really happened. She’s the one who called it in. She started the fire.”
Mira blinked. “What fire?”
Blake tossed the rag on the counter. “I’m done talking.”
“You were part of something,” Leo pushed. “You, Jesse, Kayla. The pact meant something, didn’t it?”
“I said I’m done.”
He turned, walked away, and slammed the garage door behind him.
Back in the car, silence stretched between them.
“A fire,” Mira said quietly. “He said your mom started a fire.”
Ava looked out the window. “I’ll ask her tonight. She won’t want to talk, but… I’ll try.”
Leo pulled out his phone. “I want to go back to the dock. Maybe there’s more.”
“No,” Mira said suddenly. “We all go.”
“Why?” Ava asked.
Mira looked at the journal in her lap. “Because I think someone’s still watching. And if Blake knows we’re digging, someone else does too. We need to stay ahead.”
Ava nodded once. “Then tomorrow night. After dark.”
Leo looked uneasy. “You sure?”
Mira stared out the window toward the trees.
“I’m not sure of anything,” she said. “Except that Kayla’s not done talking yet.”
They met at twilight, just before the sky tipped into darkness. The town of Elmsworth had already settled into its nightly hush—porch lights flicked on, frogs began croaking from hidden ditches, and the occasional hum of a distant boat motor echoed across the lake.
Mira stood at the trailhead, her backpack slung over one shoulder, the journal zipped inside. Leo arrived first, in his usual hoodie despite the heat, carrying a flashlight and a weirdly serious expression. Ava came last, dressed in black like always, but tonight she wore a red thread bracelet on her wrist.
“What’s that for?” Mira asked, nodding at it.
“Protection,” Ava said. “In case this gets… weird.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “Define weird?”
Ava smirked. “We’re following the footsteps of a possibly murdered girl whose journal showed up in an attic after two decades. I think we passed weird five pages ago.”
They stepped onto the trail, the old path leading them through tall grass and trees that leaned like they were eavesdropping. The flashlight beam danced over broken branches and spider webs. Mira tried not to imagine Kayla walking this same path twenty years ago, feeling just as watched.
When they reached the clearing, everything was still. The lake shimmered like black glass. The fire pit was cold. Fireflies blinked lazily near the treetops, as if waiting.
Mira walked toward the dock.
It creaked beneath their weight as they sat together near the end, knees pulled close, silence stretching between them like fishing line.
Leo broke it. “So. What now?”
Mira pulled out the journal. She hadn’t opened it all day. Her hands felt unsteady.
She flipped to the last few entries—August 3, the night Kayla vanished.
He came back last night. Said he heard her voice near the dock. But I was home. I swear I was home. Jesse swears he saw me in the water. Standing there. Smiling. Blake says we made it up. That we need to burn the letters. Burn the proof. But it’s real. It’s all real. The pact broke the night the fireflies disappeared. I think the lake remembers.
She closed the book.
“I think we’re looking in the wrong place,” she whispered. “We’re reading her like she was afraid of people. But what if it wasn’t people?”
Leo stared. “You mean… like a ghost?”
“I don’t know. I just know something pulled her out here. And something scared Jesse so much, he ran.”
Ava stood up. “Then maybe it’s time we ask the lake.”
“What?” Leo said.
Ava walked to the edge of the dock. She looked down at the water, then reached into her bag and pulled out a crumpled, half-burned piece of paper.
“My mom had this in a locked drawer. I took it.”
She handed it to Mira. The paper was charred at the edges. Scrawled across it in familiar handwriting were the words:
“I saw her again. But it wasn’t her. If you find this, don’t trust the light.”
Leo stepped back. “Nope. Nope. That’s too much horror movie energy.”
But Mira was frozen.
Because she recognized the handwriting.
It was Kayla’s.
They built a small fire in the pit using twigs, dried leaves, and Leo’s lighter. The flames caught quickly, casting flickering shadows on their faces.
Mira tossed the burned letter into the fire. It crumpled instantly, curling into ash.
Then she opened the journal to its last page.
“I want to read it aloud,” she said. “Just once. So she’s heard.”
Ava and Leo nodded.
Mira’s voice shook as she began.
If I don’t make it past tonight, tell them it was never an accident. Tell them—
A crack echoed from the woods.
They all froze.
Then another crack—closer this time, like someone stepping on dry leaves.
Leo switched on the flashlight and swept it toward the trees.
Nothing.
But the air had shifted. Gone heavy. Tense.
“I think someone’s out there,” Ava whispered.
“Let’s go,” Mira said. “Now.”
They grabbed their bags and doused the fire, smoke hissing into the night. Mira kept the journal clutched in her hand as they hurried down the trail.
Halfway back to the road, Leo suddenly stopped. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
A soft buzzing sound, faint at first, then louder.
Fireflies.
Everywhere.
Blinking in unison. Not random, not scattered—synchronized.
Mira stared at the lights forming strange patterns around them. Spirals. Loops.
And then, ahead on the path, they parted.
Revealing a figure.
A girl.
Standing barefoot in the middle of the trail, long hair hanging wet over her shoulders.
Wearing a white dress soaked at the hem.
Mira’s breath caught.
“Kayla?” she whispered.
The girl didn’t move.
Leo stepped in front of her, protective. “That’s not possible.”
Ava reached into her bag for something. “Back up. Slowly.”
The girl lifted her hand.
Her fingers were smudged with ink.
Mira recognized the gesture.
It was the same as the journal’s final smudge—the pen dropping mid-sentence.
The girl opened her mouth.
But no sound came.
Then, in a blink, she was gone.
The fireflies scattered, light exploding into chaos.
Mira dropped to her knees.
A single page had appeared at her feet.
She picked it up.
Kayla’s handwriting again:
“One of them is lying. One of them never left. Don’t trust the one who hides behind silence.”
They didn’t speak until they reached Mira’s driveway. Her porch light spilled yellow across the gravel. It felt like the only safe thing left in the universe.
Leo rubbed his face. “What the hell just happened?”
Ava looked pale. Shaken. “I think… she’s trapped.”
Mira clutched the page. “And she wants us to find out who lied.”
Ava looked at her. “Then there’s one place we haven’t gone yet.”
Mira nodded.
“Your mom,” she said. “She was there. She started the fire.”
Ava’s jaw tightened. “She’s going to tell us everything. Tomorrow.”
Ava Torres never knocked when she entered her own house, but that night, she hesitated on the porch. Mira and Leo stood behind her like backup—quiet, waiting. The warm yellow glow of the living room lights spilled out through the windows, but the house inside felt still, too still.
“She’s in there,” Ava said, voice low. “Reading, probably. She always reads when she doesn’t want to remember.”
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Mira said gently.
Ava gave her a glance, then pushed the door open.
Her mother looked up from a dog-eared novel on the couch. Her hair, streaked with silver, was pulled into a tight bun, and her reading glasses rested low on her nose. She blinked when she saw them.
“Ava? What’s—?”
“We need to talk about Kayla Benton,” Ava said flatly. “Now.”
The air dropped ten degrees.
Mrs. Torres slowly put down her book. Her face didn’t change, but her knuckles whitened against the armrest.
“That name is a ghost,” she said.
“I know,” Ava said. “And she just showed up at the lake.”
Mrs. Torres didn’t react, but Mira saw her throat move—one hard swallow.
“You’re seeing things.”
“She left us a message,” Leo said. “Said one of them never left. One of them is lying. Said not to trust the one who hides behind silence.”
Mrs. Torres looked at them, then at Ava.
“You found the journal, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
A long pause.
Then, almost reluctantly, her mother nodded.
“I warned her,” she said quietly. “I told her to stay away from Blake and Jesse. I knew something was wrong between them. I knew Kayla was in too deep.”
“You were her friend?” Mira asked.
“We were more than friends,” she said, almost ashamed. “We were… curious about each other. About everything. She used to write things—letters, poems. Always hiding things between the lines.”
Leo sat down slowly. “What happened that night?”
Mrs. Torres looked at the floor. “There was a fight. At the bonfire. Blake was drunk. Jesse was panicking. Kayla threatened to go to the police. She said she had proof. I told her to burn it. Not because I wanted to protect them—but because I knew they’d silence her before letting her talk.”
She took off her glasses.
“She didn’t listen. That night, Jesse said he saw her out on the dock. Said she wasn’t… human. He swore she walked into the lake smiling and never came out.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Ava said.
“I don’t know what to believe. The next morning, Blake came to me. Said it was an accident. Said we had to protect the town, protect ourselves. I didn’t trust him. So I set the fire.”
“The fire?” Mira asked.
Mrs. Torres nodded. “At the dock. I thought if I destroyed the place, no one else would follow. No one would find what Kayla left behind. But I was too late.”
She looked at Mira. “I think she hid something. Something Jesse and Blake didn’t want anyone to see.”
“And Blake’s still here,” Mira murmured. “Still lying.”
Mrs. Torres looked at her daughter. “She’s angry. Kayla. You saw her. She’s not done. And she won’t be until someone tells the truth.”
The next day, they returned to the lake.
The dock was quiet again. No fireflies, no flickers in the woods. Just sun glinting off water and the smell of moss.
Mira carried the journal in one hand and a crowbar in the other.
“Wait, you’re doing what now?” Leo asked, following close.
“She said Blake tried to burn the letters. Tried to hide something,” Mira said. “But I don’t think she trusted any of them. I think she left it somewhere they wouldn’t look.”
She walked straight to the old bench at the edge of the dock—the one with the initials carved into the side.
And began to pry.
It didn’t take long. The nails gave way with a creak, and the bottom panel lifted up, revealing a hollow space inside. Nestled in a tin box, wrapped in plastic, were a stack of folded letters and one Polaroid photo.
Mira held it up.
It showed Blake and Jesse arguing. And Kayla in the background—black eye, torn sleeve, and a date stamp from the week she vanished.
Leo read one of the letters out loud.
If anything happens to me, it was them. They said it was love. But it was control. And I won’t let them write the ending.
Mira’s hands shook as she looked at the photo again. “This is the proof.”
Ava took a deep breath. “It’s time people saw it.”
That evening, Mira uploaded the photo to the town forum anonymously. Leo scanned the letters and posted them on every local board. Ava spray-painted the initials from the dock on Blake’s garage wall—in red, where everyone could see.
By nightfall, the whole town was buzzing.
And Blake?
He disappeared.
Gone by sunrise.
His family claimed vacation.
But Mira knew.
He had run.
Again.
That night, Mira sat on the dock alone. The fireflies returned slowly, blinking around her feet like tiny lanterns.
She opened the journal to the first page, the one where Kayla wrote about the firefly pact.
Then she whispered aloud.
“I kept my promise.”
The wind stirred. Soft. Warm.
And for a moment, she thought she saw a figure at the edge of the trees.
Not haunting.
Not vengeful.
Just watching.
Then it faded.
The fireflies blinked once, twice, and scattered.
And the lake went still again.
By Monday morning, the town of Elmsworth was drowning in gossip. The kind that didn’t need facts to flourish—just the right amount of silence between words.
Someone had spray-painted the letters K.B. + J.L. + B.S. on the post office door. Someone else had printed out copies of Kayla’s letters and left them in every church pew. And everyone suddenly had a memory they hadn’t mentioned in twenty years.
At the grocery store, Mira heard a woman whisper, “I always knew there was something off about Blake’s eyes.”
At the diner, a man said, “Jesse was never the same after that summer.”
And at school—though classes hadn’t started yet—there were rumors that someone from the school board was requesting to rename the old boathouse: Benton Memorial Landing.
But despite all this, no one said Kayla’s name out loud.
Not in public.
It was as if the town wanted to confess without the guilt. Mourn without the mess. A collective flinch dressed as tribute.
At Mira’s house, her dad noticed something was off. She was quieter. Distracted. He brought it up over dinner, where they sat with two bowls of dal and a half-burnt naan between them.
“Is this about your grandfather’s attic?” he asked. “You’ve been… different since we got here.”
Mira looked down at her food. “Do you think people can still exist in a place even after they’re gone?”
Her dad raised an eyebrow. “You mean… ghosts?”
“No,” she said. “I mean… imprints. Like if someone felt something too big—love or fear or grief—it just stays. Like a shadow.”
Her dad thought about it.
“I think places carry memory,” he said slowly. “Like scars. You might heal, but the shape of the wound stays.”
Mira nodded. “The lake remembers. And so do I.”
That night, she sat on her bed rereading Kayla’s final entries. Ava had started sleeping over—half because her house was tense, half because she didn’t want Mira alone.
“Do you think it’s over?” Ava asked, brushing her hair out of her face.
“I don’t know,” Mira said. “We told the truth. We gave her back her voice.”
“But something still feels…” Ava trailed off, frowning.
“Unfinished,” Mira said.
Ava nodded. “Yeah.”
They fell asleep with the journal between them, as if Kayla herself might write one last line while they dreamed.
Two days later, Leo called.
“There’s someone you should meet.”
He didn’t say who.
He just told them to meet him behind the community center—an old building with a faded mural of Elmsworth’s founding painted in pastel blues.
They arrived to find Leo standing with a woman in her late thirties, wearing oversized sunglasses and a hoodie despite the August heat. Her hands trembled slightly when she waved.
“This is Lily Latham,” Leo said. “Jesse’s younger sister.”
Mira’s heart stopped.
“I read the letters,” Lily said. “All of them. And I knew… I knew someone would come eventually.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a box wrapped in twine. “Jesse gave this to me before he left. Said if anyone ever came asking about Kayla, I should give it to them.”
Mira hesitated, then took the box.
Inside were old cassette tapes. Dozens of them.
Some labeled Kayla. Others just The Pact.
One had only two words: Not Her.
Mira looked up. “Do you have a tape player?”
Leo grinned. “I was born ready.”
Back at his place, they gathered around Leo’s ancient stereo. Dust danced in the sunlight as the first tape clicked into place.
At first: static.
Then a voice—faint, breathless.
Jesse.
“She came to me again. Not Kayla. Not anymore. She stood at the edge of the lake, same dress, same eyes… but wrong. Like something wearing her skin. And she whispered the pact. Word for word. Said if we broke it, we’d pay.”
Static again.
Then:
“Blake doesn’t believe. Says it was a trick. But I saw her. I saw what she became. Kayla’s not resting. She’s waiting.”
The tape clicked to a stop.
No one spoke.
The room felt colder than it had five minutes ago.
Over the next few days, they listened to every tape.
Some were just fragments—Jesse crying, whispering, rambling about guilt. Others described dreams where Kayla walked through water backward, whispering in a language no one understood.
One tape ended with a long silence.
Then, in a voice that didn’t sound like Jesse’s:
“Three made a pact. Two lied. One drowned. But none of them escaped.”
The tapes made one thing clear: Jesse had lost his mind before he left Elmsworth.
Or something had taken it from him.
A week after they found the tapes, Mira stood again on the dock, alone.
The fireflies blinked gently in the shadows.
She had a single letter in her hand—one Kayla had never sent. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t scared.
It was… human.
Dear whoever reads this,
If you find this, then maybe it means I didn’t disappear the way they said. Maybe it means I existed. That I laughed and swam and cried and trusted too easily. I don’t know what they’ll say about me. But I want you to know—I was here. I loved. I tried. I mattered.
Mira folded the letter.
And gently, she placed it in a glass bottle.
She tossed it into the lake, where it floated under the moonlight.
A firefly landed on her wrist.
And this time, she didn’t flinch.
By the second week of August, the energy around Elmsworth had shifted. It was subtle, like a door had been left slightly ajar somewhere in the woods and the wind had changed.
Kayla’s story had leaked beyond town borders. A local blog picked it up. Then a true crime podcast host reached out to Mira through a throwaway email, asking for an interview. She didn’t respond.
This wasn’t about headlines.
It was still personal.
Still unfinished.
They were at Leo’s house when the fourth name surfaced.
It was Ava who noticed it—tucked into a letter Kayla had written but never mailed.
August 1st:
I told T. it wasn’t safe anymore. But she just smiled. Said no one would believe a girl like me over a boy like him. I think she knew what Blake was capable of. She always knew.
Ava pointed at the letter, eyes narrowing. “Who the hell is T.?”
Leo frowned. “She never mentioned anyone else in the pact. We only had Kayla, Jesse, and Blake.”
“Maybe T. wasn’t in the pact,” Mira said slowly. “Maybe she was the reason for it.”
Ava stood abruptly. “I’m going to ask my mom.”
She left before anyone could stop her.
Two hours later, Ava called.
Her voice was tight. Shaken.
“You need to come over. Now.”
When Mira and Leo arrived at the Torres house, Ava’s mother was sitting on the porch with a shoebox on her lap. Her hands trembled as she opened it.
Inside were Polaroids—some curled from age. In one, four teenagers sat around a bonfire: Kayla, Blake, Jesse, and a girl with long curls and a dimpled smile.
“That’s her,” Mrs. Torres said. “Tessa Morrow. She was Kayla’s best friend. Also the mayor’s niece.”
Leo blinked. “The same mayor still in office?”
Mrs. Torres nodded.
“Why didn’t Kayla mention her more?” Mira asked.
“She did. In code,” Ava said, holding up another letter. “T. was afraid. Afraid of being dragged into Kayla’s mess. And the mayor made sure the story disappeared.”
Mrs. Torres sighed. “After Kayla vanished, Tessa left town. Her family sent her away. Boarding school. We never heard from her again.”
“But what if she’s still part of this?” Mira asked. “What if she’s the one who stayed quiet while the others lied?”
Leo shook his head. “We need to find her.”
It didn’t take long.
The internet, Leo’s best friend, revealed a trail.
Tessa Morrow was now Tessa Grange, living in Connecticut. Married. Two kids. Real estate agent. Still smiling in every photo—but there was something behind the smile. Something Mira now recognized.
A history that didn’t fade.
They emailed her.
Polite. Brief.
We know about Kayla. We think you do too. We’re not trying to expose anyone. We just want the truth.
The reply came three days later.
Come alone. I’ll tell you what I know. But I won’t write it.
Mira took the bus.
Ava offered to come, but Mira said no.
“I think she needs to see someone who won’t accuse her,” Mira said. “Just listen.”
The ride was long—eight hours through countryside and cities that blurred into a hum of thoughts. She kept the journal in her lap the whole time.
When she stepped off the bus, Tessa was already there. Sunglasses. Tight braid. A scarf wrapped around her neck like armor.
They didn’t speak until they reached the edge of a park nearby. Tessa sat on a bench, staring ahead.
“I saw her die,” she said without preamble.
Mira’s breath hitched.
“She didn’t drown. Not really. She was pushed.”
“By who?”
“Blake,” Tessa said. “But it wasn’t just him. Jesse was supposed to stop him. He froze. I screamed. But it was too late.”
She paused.
“Kayla hit her head on the dock. Went under. Never came up.”
Mira felt the world tilt.
“But you never told.”
Tessa looked at her.
“I was fifteen. My uncle—the mayor—made it very clear. If I spoke, my life would be over. He said the town needed peace more than justice.”
Mira wanted to scream. Instead, she whispered, “And Kayla?”
“She started showing up in dreams. In mirrors. For all of us. I saw her reflection move when mine didn’t. Heard her voice in bathwater. Jesse cracked first. Blake drank himself stupid. I moved away. Pretended I could outrun it.”
She looked down at Mira’s hands.
“You still have the journal.”
Mira nodded. “She never gave up on the truth.”
Tessa looked at her, a trace of tears in her eyes.
“I’m ready to tell my story. Publicly. If it will help her rest.”
Mira smiled, even as her chest ached.
“She’s been waiting for that for a long time.”
Back in Elmsworth, Mira called Ava and Leo to meet at the lake.
It was nearly dusk when they arrived.
This time, Mira brought flowers.
They stood at the dock—where the pact was carved, where the truth had been buried—and dropped the flowers into the water.
“This is for Kayla,” Mira said.
“And for every girl who was told to stay quiet,” Ava added.
“For everyone who was told the story ended when the page was torn out,” Leo finished.
The fireflies returned again, blinking softly.
Then Mira turned, pulled out a marker, and wrote beneath the initials carved in wood:
+ T.M.
Ava nodded. “Now the pact is complete.”
Mira wasn’t sure what would happen next.
Maybe Kayla would finally rest.
Maybe Elmsworth would finally remember.
But she knew this:
The lake would never lie again.
And neither would they.
The mayor of Elmsworth gave a statement three days later.
It was polished, rehearsed, and smelled faintly of fear.
“We were unaware of the full details surrounding the tragic disappearance of Kayla Benton twenty years ago. With new testimony brought forward, we pledge to re-open the town’s investigation and honor her memory with transparency and respect.”
He said it all in front of a podium decorated with sunflowers.
But Mira only heard two words: too late.
Tessa’s confession had hit the town like a dropped match in a dry field. For years, Elmsworth had hidden behind old myths and thicker silences. Now, stories were spilling like rain from a punctured roof.
One woman claimed her sister had seen Kayla walking barefoot by the lake three years after she vanished. A retired cop admitted that files from the 2005 case were missing. And the librarian found Kayla’s missing swim team trophy buried in the back of a box marked “discards.”
It was as if the town had remembered her all at once.
Too loud to ignore.
Too real to suppress.
Meanwhile, Mira, Ava, and Leo stayed busy.
They built a small digital archive called The Firefly Pact, uploading everything—scanned journal pages, Tessa’s recorded statement, Jesse’s tapes, and their own interviews with locals who finally wanted to speak.
Kayla’s voice became more than memory.
She became a story no one could edit anymore.
Still, the question lingered: why now?
Why had Kayla chosen this summer to reappear?
To return to the lake?
To Mira?
One afternoon, Mira sat alone at the dock, barefoot, her toes skimming the water. She opened the journal again, even though she knew it by heart.
But this time, she noticed something different.
A faint indent at the back of the cover—barely visible.
She slipped her fingernail beneath it and pried it open.
Inside, tucked between the binding, was a torn scrap of map.
A hand-drawn path.
A circle marked with a shaky X, far into the woods behind the lake.
Her pulse kicked up.
She called Ava and Leo.
They met at the trail just before sunset.
“This map wasn’t in the journal before,” Mira told them, holding it out.
“Or maybe it was only meant to be found when we were ready,” Leo said.
“Creepy,” Ava muttered. “But okay.”
They followed the route past the dock, beyond the old bonfire pit, into deeper woods where the trees stood closer and the air smelled of moss and silence. The trail was faint, but Mira trusted the drawing.
After twenty minutes, they reached a small clearing.
At the center was a collapsed shed, its wood silvered with age.
Mira pushed the door open.
Inside, the dust swirled like breath.
Boxes. Broken frames. A rusted tin trunk.
They opened it together.
Inside: more letters. Photos. One camcorder.
And a journal.
Not Kayla’s.
Tessa’s.
Back at Mira’s house, they took turns reading the entries.
Tessa had written everything after Kayla died. Every hallucination. Every dream. Every moment of guilt.
“She visits at 3:17 a.m. Always that time. She stands at the foot of the bed, hair wet, dress white. Sometimes she whispers: ‘You let them forget me.’”
The camcorder was even harder to watch.
It showed Jesse and Blake laughing near the lake, drinking from bottles, while Kayla sat just off-frame—quiet, expression unreadable.
Then a final frame: the camera slipping. A scream.
Static.
Ava wiped her eyes. “We’ve heard her. Seen her. But now—now we know she was screaming long before she vanished.”
Leo nodded. “And no one listened.”
Mira closed the journal.
“We are.”
They returned the next night.
Just Mira.
Alone.
Because some things are meant to be done quietly.
She brought Kayla’s journal, Tessa’s tapes, and a single matchbox.
At the dock, she dug a shallow hole beneath the initials. Set the contents inside.
One by one, she lit them.
The smoke curled upward, gray against a starless sky.
And then—
A gust of wind.
A shimmer of air.
And Kayla Benton stood across from her.
Not wet.
Not broken.
Not a ghost.
But herself.
The girl from the photographs.
Mira didn’t speak.
She just nodded.
Kayla smiled.
Not a haunting one.
A grateful one.
Then she turned, walked toward the lake.
And disappeared into light.
Not water.
Light.
The fireflies blinked in perfect unison.
And Mira whispered, “You mattered.”
Mira didn’t tell Ava or Leo about seeing Kayla at the dock.
Not right away.
Some things were too sacred to translate into words.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them. It was that the moment had been too clean—too still. Like a candle that had burned all the way down without ever flickering. Putting it into language would make it ordinary. And Kayla had never been ordinary.
Instead, Mira poured herself into finishing the archive. She worked long nights, uploading Tessa’s full audio testimony, Jesse’s tapes now digitally restored, scanned images of Kayla’s handwritten pages. They added timelines, annotated entries, even a space where people could leave anonymous memories of her.
They called it:
The Pact Rewritten.
And slowly, people came.
Some offered old school photos, blurry group shots where Kayla stood smiling, half-shadowed.
Others sent messages like:
“She helped me when I was being bullied. I never thanked her.”
“I saw the bruises. I said nothing. I’m sorry.”
“I still dream of her.”
The story was no longer hidden.
But that didn’t mean it was finished.
One afternoon, as a late August thunderstorm rolled in, Mira received an email that made her fingers go cold.
Subject: URGENT
From: anonymous@maskmail.io
Body:
You think the truth is enough?
The pact doesn’t end because you want it to.
You burned what shouldn’t have been burned.
Now she won’t be alone.
Below that, a single photo attachment.
Of Mira.
Standing at the dock.
Taken from behind a tree.
She called Leo first.
Then Ava.
Then the police.
But they shrugged it off. “Could be a prank. You’ve been getting attention. People act weird.”
Mira knew better.
This wasn’t a stranger.
It was someone who still believed the pact should’ve stayed buried.
And she had a terrible feeling she knew who.
They visited Blake’s house, but it was still empty. The real estate sign out front now had a bold red “SOLD” across it, but no one had moved in.
Leo checked recent records—no trace of Blake Sutton in Ohio, where his family claimed he’d gone.
But one news article from three months ago popped up in a local forum.
A man found dead in a motel outside Tulsa, name unconfirmed, ID missing.
The article showed a blurry photo of the man being zipped into a body bag.
Leo enlarged the image.
And they knew.
Blake Sutton was dead.
But someone else had taken up his role.
Someone still watching.
They narrowed it down to one possibility.
Jesse.
He hadn’t died. He hadn’t disappeared. He had erased himself.
Leo found clues in the metadata of the old cassette tapes—modified years after they were supposedly recorded. Some of the files were edited, restructured. Someone had tried to make Jesse look more broken than he was.
“Why fake madness?” Ava asked.
“To keep the story from being investigated,” Mira said. “To make it feel hopeless. Unreliable.”
“But now that the truth is out—he’s scared,” Leo added. “And angry.”
“He’s still keeping the pact,” Mira whispered.
Ava leaned back. “No. He’s trying to make a new one. One where he’s not the villain.”
They went back to the dock.
Together.
Not to confront him—he wasn’t there.
But to leave something behind.
Mira took out a new notebook.
Blank pages. Clean cover.
She handed it to Ava, who wrote the first sentence:
“She was never what they said she was.”
Leo added the second:
“We never signed their version of the pact.”
And Mira wrote the third:
“This is our story now.”
They left the notebook in a sealed jar, buried beneath the same initials that had started it all.
K.B. + J.L. + B.S. + T.M.
But now, below it, they carved their own:
M.P. + L.C. + A.T.
Mira. Leo. Ava.
The ones who broke the curse by refusing to be quiet.
The fireflies blinked above them, flickering in slow rhythm.
This time, Mira felt no chill. No whisper. No watchful eyes.
Just presence.
And peace.
That night, she dreamed of Kayla one last time.
But it wasn’t the lake.
It was a house full of windows.
Kayla stood at the center, sunlight on her face, laughing. No wet dress. No broken voice. Just herself.
She handed Mira a photograph.
Not of her—but of Mira, Ava, and Leo standing at the dock.
You finished the story, Kayla said.
Mira looked at her. “Not finished. Just… passed on.”
Kayla smiled.
“I can live with that.”
Then she walked into the sunlight and faded.
The school year began with cooler air and an unfamiliar energy.
Elmsworth High, usually immune to change, had its first student-led memorial on the second day of classes. No teachers organized it. No speeches were approved. And yet, the entire senior class gathered in the gymnasium—quiet, unified.
On a table at the front sat three things:
- A framed photo of Kayla Benton, pulled from an old yearbook.
- A white candle burning beside it.
- And a handwritten sign that read:
“We remember what they forgot.”
Nobody explained it.
Nobody needed to.
In the weeks that followed, more students began sharing their own stories—about what they’d seen, what they’d kept buried, who they were told to be silent about. A boy came out. A girl revealed she’d been followed home from practice every night and never reported it. Someone spray-painted YOU MATTER EVEN WHEN THEY SAY YOU DON’T on the back of the music building.
No one painted over it.
Not this time.
Mira kept Kayla’s final photo above her desk.
The one where she stood at the edge of the lake, eyes calm, wind catching her hair. She looked more alive in that picture than in any story the town had ever told.
Mira stared at it often.
But she didn’t cry anymore.
She wrote instead.
Sometimes pages. Sometimes a sentence.
All of it part of a book she hadn’t yet named.
Maybe she never would.
Maybe some stories didn’t need titles.
One evening, Leo stopped by with something wrapped in velvet cloth.
“It’s from the library archives,” he said. “Found it in a mislabeled box.”
Inside was a firefly jar.
The same one Kayla had described in her journal—rusted lid, soft scratches on the glass.
But it wasn’t empty.
Inside was a note.
Faded, but still legible:
“If I disappear, know this: I didn’t lose. I didn’t drown. I lit the path.”
Mira looked up at him.
“She was never just a victim.”
Leo nodded. “She was a signal.”
Ava dropped by later that night with pizza and three milkshakes and news that she’d hacked into the town server and replaced the Elmsworth homepage banner with the line:
“Truth floats.”
Mira didn’t ask how.
She just grinned and handed her a slice.
The three of them sat on the porch under a moon that felt less haunted now.
“So what now?” Leo asked.
“We keep going,” Ava said. “Write. Archive. Speak. Find more stories. Help more people tell them.”
Mira added, “And we stay lit. Like she did.”
Leo nodded.
“No more silence.”
They clinked their milkshake cups like they were making a toast.
They didn’t need to say what for.
On the last page of Kayla’s journal—the one Mira had never dared to write on—she finally took her pen and added a single line.
The firefly pact still lives. But it belongs to us now.
And in that moment, she felt it—
The air shift.
A wind move through the trees.
Not cold. Not watching.
Just… acknowledging.
Like the lake was listening.
And agreeing.
That night, Mira walked down to the dock alone.
She sat at the edge, legs crossed, heart steady.
The water was dark and glass-smooth, but she wasn’t afraid
She didn’t need Kayla to appear again.
She didn’t need answers.
She just needed to say one last thing.
“I won’t forget you,” she whispered. “Even when the town moves on again. Even when the story fades from clicks and whispers. I’ll remember.”
The fireflies blinked once.
Twice.
Then all at once—surrounding her in soft gold light, not in chaos, not in fear.
But in peace.
The pact had never been about secrecy.
Not really.
It had always been about belief.
About holding on when no one else did.
About trusting that light would come back, no matter how long the dark stayed.
And now it had.
The pact lived on.
In pages.
In voices.
In truth.
And in fireflies that would never again blink alone.
END
