For three days, Jenna did not leave her bedroom. She sat curled in the corner beside the radiator, watching the light move across the carpet.
Dory sat on the edge of the mattress, bringing her toast she didn't eat and tea that went cold.
On the fourth afternoon, Jenna looked out through the bedroom window down toward the road.
Walking along the gravel verge, heading toward the abandoned quarry behind the property, was a girl.
She wore a blue canvas jacket. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her gait—that slight, athletic roll of the right shoulder—was unmistakable.
It was her.
Jenna stood up, shoved her feet into her unlaced sneakers, and slipped out of the room before Dory could look up from her phone.
She ran down the stairs, burst through the kitchen door, and sprinted into the cold afternoon air.
The girl was fifty yards ahead, slipping through a gap in the chain-link fence that surrounded the old municipal pump station.
"Wait!" Jenna screamed, her lungs burning.
She squeezed through the torn wire, scratching her cheek on the rusted steel, and plunged into the concrete interior of the abandoned building.
The room was vast, damp, and lit by gray shafts of light falling through broken clerestory windows.
Jenna stopped dead.
The concrete walls were covered in photographs.
Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
They were taped to the peeling paint, pinned to the brickwork, glued to the iron pipes.
Images of Jenna sleeping in her bed. Images of Jenna walking to school. Images of Jenna crying on the floor of the gray room. Images of Jenna talking to Dory on the bleachers.
And on the far wall, printed on oversized archival paper, was a photograph dated October 18, 2005.
It showed Elias Vale standing on the Victorian porch, holding hands with a seventeen-year-old girl who smiled at the lens with Jenna's exact, unblemished face.
Jenna reached out with trembling fingers, her hand moving toward the paper.
"You keep looking for me," a voice spoke from the shadows behind the rusted turbine.
Jenna spun around.
The girl stepped forward into the gray light.
She was physical, solid, breathing. Her face was an exact mirror of Jenna's.
"Who are you?" Jenna wept, falling to her knees. "Please… who are you?"
The girl smiled—a soft, infinitely gentle smile.
"You," she said. "You're the memory that wouldn't die."
The concrete floor seemed to dissolve.
The thousands of photographs fluttered in an impossible wind, tearing from the walls like white leaves. The room spun into blinding darkness.
When Jenna opened her eyes, she was lying flat on the cold linoleum of her own bedroom floor.
Dory was kneeling beside her, her face drenched in tears, holding her phone in front of Jenna's eyes.
"You fainted," Dory said, her voice shaking uncontrollably.
Jenna looked around. Her desk was in place. Her bed was unmade. There were no photographs on the walls.
"I was at the pump station," Jenna gasped, clawing at Dory's sleeve. "The photos were on the walls! She was there!"
Dory pressed the play button on her phone screen.
"I followed you, Jenna," Dory whispered, her voice breaking. "I recorded everything."
Jenna watched the screen.
The video showed Jenna walking through the ruined pump station. The concrete walls were completely bare, covered only in graffiti and water stains.
The video showed Jenna reaching out to touch empty air.
It showed Jenna turning toward an empty corner, screaming, sobbing, and arguing with the shadows:
"Who are you? Please… who are you?"
There was no one there.
Jenna watched herself fall to her knees on the filthy concrete, her arms wrapped around her ribs, crying out to an empty, silent room.
Dory lowered the phone, her hands trembling so hard she nearly dropped it.
"Jenna…" Dory whispered, tears dripping from her chin. "There was nobody there."