I woke up with my head swimming, the remnants of last night's dream clinging to me like fog. Fragments of it pulsed behind my eyes—flashes of something familiar yet wrong, voices I should recognize but didn't. The details slipped through my fingers the harder I tried to grasp them, but the unease they left behind remained.
At school, Noah's presence felt heavier than usual. Not in a literal way, but in a way that made my skin prickle with awareness every time he was near. Lily's words—those stupid, offhanded words—lodged themselves into my brain like a splinter, impossible to ignore.
Noah likes you.
I wasn't sure how to act now. Before, he had just been Noah—familiar, constant, solid. The one person I could talk to without overthinking, without having to tiptoe around who I really was.
But now, every glance, every accidental brush of his hand against mine, felt like something else. Or maybe I was just seeing ghosts where there were none.
"Hey."
I nearly jumped when he spoke. I had been so lost in my own head I didn't notice him leaning against the locker beside me.
He frowned, his dark eyes scanning my face, searching for something—concern, confusion, maybe even fear. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
The irony of his words twisted something in my chest, a sharp, aching pull that I couldn't quite shake. I forced a laugh, but it sounded wrong even to my own ears. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired."
His gaze didn't waver. The way he was looking at me—it wasn't casual, wasn't just friendly concern.
It was careful. Like he was trying to read something between the lines of my expression, something I wasn't even sure I understood myself.
The weight of it, the weight of him, pressed into me, dredging up memories I wasn't sure were even mine anymore.
The late nights sneaking out, whispered conversations that felt like the whole world could be folded into the space between us. The laughter, the fights, the way we had been inseparable before—before everything fell apart. Before Chase had died. Before I became Chloe.
But Noah didn't know that. He didn't know that every time he spoke, every time he looked at me like that, it felt like a knife twisting between the ribs of a life I couldn't reclaim.
I may have been put into this body, literally pushed back into the past, and him looking at me in this way was the one thing that really made this all feel too real.
His lips parted like he was about to say something else, but then he hesitated. Instead, he only nodded. "Okay."
But his voice carried something unspoken, something questioning. I could hear it, even if he didn't say it aloud.
For the rest of the day, I couldn't stop feeling the distance. One that, I wondered, if he felt, too.
Later, I ran into Lily in the hallway. She was flipping through a small, battered notebook as she walked, her blonde hair cascading over one shoulder, looking like she just stepped out of a dream sequence in a teen drama. The kind where everything moves in slow motion for dramatic effect—except, of course, for the slightly frantic way she kept flicking through the pages, as if she couldn't decide whether she wanted to read it or throw it in a fire.
When she saw me, she snapped it shut with a speed that was almost comical, her expression turning defensive in a split second.
I half-expected her to clutch it to her chest and shout, "It's private!" like she'd just been caught with a secret stash of candy.
"Hey," she said, almost too casually, tucking the notebook into her bag like it was a loaf of bread she didn't want anyone to touch.
I stood there, feeling an instant surge of curiosity. "What's that?" I asked, and immediately cursed myself for sounding way too interested.
But honestly, how could I not be? A random notebook from when we were kids, hidden away for who knows how long, suddenly surfacing in the middle of the hallway?
Could this be the one key that connects Chloe and my true self?
"Really?" I managed, trying to sound normal but secretly bracing myself for whatever might come next. "What's in it?"
Lily nodded, but there was that quick flicker in her eyes—the kind of look that says, I know something, but I'm not telling. "Yeah. It's weird, though. Reading it now, there are things that don't make sense. Things I don't really remember happening."
I had to stop myself from leaning in too eagerly. "Like what?" I asked, and my voice came out a little more intense than I'd intended. My hands were twitching at my sides, like I was about to grab the notebook myself and rip it open.
She glanced away, chewing on her lip, clearly lost in thought—or stalling, it was hard to tell. "I don't know. Just… weird stuff. Stuff about that summer at the lake house."
That was the moment everything froze for me. The lake house. My mind reeled, a thousand fragmented images flashing through my brain, but none of them connected, none of them made sense. That summer was a blur of heat, laughter, and... something darker. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. "Can I see it?"
Lily hesitated. Just for a second, but it was enough. I saw her fingers tighten around the strap of her bag, and I knew she was holding something back. Then she gave me a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Maybe later. It's kind of embarrassing, honestly."
I felt the tension spike. She was definitely lying—maybe not in a full-on way, but she was definitely withholding.
I could see it in the way she wouldn't quite meet my gaze, in the way she'd quickly shifted the weight of the conversation. I didn't like it, not one bit.
I was about to press her when she suddenly shifted gears, as if she'd just remembered she had somewhere to be. "Anyway," she said, in a tone that was way too casual for my liking, "you and Noah, huh?"
My brain froze for a second. "What?" I asked, as if I hadn't just heard her correctly.
Lily smirked, clearly enjoying my confusion. "The rumor, remember? The one about him liking you?"
My stomach did a somersault. "Y-yeah, I remember," I muttered, suddenly feeling like I was on trial. My heart hammered louder than I cared to admit. "It's just some silly rumor, right? Noah? That guy?" I kept talking, hoping the words would hide the nerves, rolling my eyes for good measure.
This was so weird. If I were still Chase, I'd be cracking up right now, probably on the floor, wiping tears from laughing too hard.
But now, after that moment with Noah this morning... the possibility of it all settled deep in my stomach, heavy and real.
Lily laughed, like I was the funniest person she'd met all day. "Wow, he really hasn't made a move yet, huh?"
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My mind was racing a hundred miles a minute.
What was I even supposed to say to that? That the idea of Noah liking me made my stomach twist in ways I couldn't even begin to understand? That the very possibility of it being true just made me more uncomfortable than being in an entirely different body?
And if I were still Chase. I could say something flippant, maybe joke about how Noah was a little shy or whatever. It would've been fine.
But I wasn't Chase anymore. I wasn't the same person who would've brushed it off with a smile.
So instead, I said, "That's crazy."
Lily didn't seem convinced by my response. She just raised an eyebrow, smirking again, like she knew I was hiding something.
Maybe she wasn't just talking about Noah. Maybe she was onto me, too, picking up on the way I couldn't meet her eyes, the way my breath caught in my chest every time her gaze lingered a little too long.
"Yeah," she said with that same knowing smirk, "maybe you'll figure it out."
And just like that, she turned and walked away, leaving me standing in the hallway, feeling like the punchline to a joke I hadn't even been in on.
She was gone in an instant, but her words lingered. I tried to breathe, tried to keep my cool, but everything felt suddenly more complicated than it should be.
The notebook, the lake house in the background of the photograph, Noah... everything was tangled up in my mind, and I couldn't unravel any of it. Not yet, anyway.
I stood there, leaning against the lockers, trying to make sense of it all. But the truth was, I wasn't sure I wanted to know what was in that notebook.
I wasn't sure I was ready to face whatever secrets Lily had buried there—or the ones that were still lingering, unspoken, between us.
Later that afternoon, I sat at my desk, the torn photograph still in my hands.
The edges were frayed, and the image faded, but I couldn't look away. It felt like something was slipping through my fingers—something important that I should remember but couldn't quite grasp.
I stared at the photo once more. There I was, smiling, standing next to Chase, Lily, Noah, and a group of kids I could only identify by the scrawled names in a child's handwriting. My handwriting.
The tear in the corner of the photo caught my eye again, right where I, as Chase, had been standing. That tear— jagged and raw—wasn't just a tear. It was a mark of something else. Something darker. Anger, maybe. Or even fear.
I glanced beyond those faces, my mind whirring like an old projector, trying desperately to find some sort of memory in that house.
The summer lake house. The backdrop was familiar: the sunlight filtering through the trees, the water glistening, the carefree laughter of long days spent swimming, and the kind of silence that only a place like that could hold.
The longer I stared at it, the more the details slipped away, like trying to hold onto water with my bare hands. I shook my head, the house feeling as unfamiliar as anything did when I first woke up in this body.
There was a hole where my memories should be—an empty space that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to fill. It just stayed… vacant.
Chase and I–the real Chloe–had been there together, I knew that. We had been inseparable back then.
Then, how come I could remember none of it? I still held onto my memories of Chase. Not once did I ever meet a girl named Chloe as a child. I've never seen this lake house before. Back then, Lily was just the quiet girl I secretly stared at in art class.
Then…were those all false memories, or did something erase this reality?
What about Lily and Noah? They were there too, weren't they? They should've been, at least.
So why did it feel like that whole summer was slowly slipping into the cracks of time, like it had never happened at all?
I shook my head, frustrated, and dropped the photo onto my desk. This didn't make sense. If it was all just a strange coincidence, I could've let it go. But there was something nagging at me, something that felt wrong.
I grabbed my phone, swiping it open, and typed in the search bar, the words practically jumping out of me. Lake house summer vacation 2011.
I expected a flood of memories to come rushing back—old photos, tagged posts, some sign that this summer had truly existed, had mattered.
I scrolled through what felt like an eternity of fruitless searching: a few blurry photos of barbecues, a couple of half-forgotten friends, but nothing—nothing—about that summer.
I tapped on a couple of old Facebook profiles, skimmed through Instagram posts. Still nothing. No one had posted a thing about the lake house that year.
No group shots, no silly moments captured on camera, no inside jokes hidden in the captions. Not even a digital version of that torn photograph.
It was like the entire summer had been wiped clean from the internet, as if it had never happened.
I closed the apps, my fingers trembling. I tried to reason with myself: Maybe everyone just let it slip. Maybe the other photographs were accidentally deleted or something.
But that felt wrong, too. It was as if we hadn't existed in that time, in that place.
I leaned back in my chair, the weight of the silence pressing in. My heart pounded, and I could feel the pit in my stomach deepen.
What if there was something about that summer—about all of us—that we were supposed to forget? What if we weren't meant to remember it?
I rubbed my eyes, trying to push away the growing anxiety. No. There had to be an explanation. There had to be a way to piece this together.
But as I stared at the empty screen of my phone, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was staring into the abyss of something that had been deliberately erased. Something that shouldn't have been.
The door creaked open gently, and I glanced up to see my mom standing in the doorway, a soft smile on her face. "Hey, sweetheart," she said, stepping into the room. "How was your day?"
I shrugged, still distracted by the photo on my desk. "It was fine, just… a long day."
She nodded, her eyes scanning the room briefly before landing on the photograph I'd been staring at.
"I see you've been looking at that again." There was a touch of warmth in her voice, but something behind her words made me hesitate.
I didn't answer right away, not sure why it felt so much heavier now that she'd noticed. My fingers drummed absently on the desk. "Yeah, just… remembering." I kept my tone light, trying to push back the questions that had been swirling around in my head all day.
She smiled softly and took a step closer, her eyes lingering on the torn edges of the photo. "That lake house summer… seems like it was so long ago. We were all so happy back then, weren't we?"
I nodded slowly, trying to keep the conversation casual, but the question that had been itching at me finally slipped out before I could stop it. "Do you remember a boy named Chase?"
Her expression faltered for just a moment—so quick that I almost missed it—but it was enough to make my heart skip.
She blinked and looked down, taking a breath before glancing back up at me. "Chase?" she repeated, her tone a little quieter now. "Yes, I remember him."
The way she said it… it was almost like she was treading carefully around the name, as if she hadn't expected it to come up. She nodded, but her smile didn't reach her eyes. "He was a friend of yours back then."
I watched her closely, but she avoided my gaze, her fingers adjusting the sleeve of her shirt as if the conversation were suddenly making her uncomfortable. The air between us had shifted, and I felt like she was holding something back, something she wasn't saying.
"Why do you ask?" she added after a beat, her voice soft, but with an undercurrent of something I couldn't quite place.
I hesitated. "I just… I don't know. It's like there's something about him that feels important, but I can't remember why. Did he—"
"Well, honey," Mom suddenly interjected. She smiled again, this time a little more strained, like she was trying to smooth things over.
"It was a long time ago. Maybe some things are better left as they are." Her voice had a subtle finality to it, like she was gently steering me away from something I shouldn't dig into.
I frowned slightly, but before I could say anything else, she turned to leave, her smile still in place. "I'll let you be," she said, her voice light. "You get some rest, okay?"
I nodded, still caught in the moment, the weight of her words hanging in the air. She paused at the door, giving me one last smile—one that seemed a little too quick, a little too practiced. And with that, she left, the door clicking shut behind her.
I sat back in my chair, running my fingers through my hair, trying to shake off the unease that had settled over me after my conversation with my mom. The photograph was still there, mocking me with its mysteries, but I couldn't seem to focus on it anymore.
It was getting late, and the dim light from my desk lamp cast long shadows across the room. I let out a sigh, telling myself I should go to bed. But as I turned to pull the curtains closed, I heard it—a faint tap, tap, like something small had struck the window.
I froze, heart jumping. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't a bird. The tap came again, this time louder, sharper.
I walked cautiously toward the window, every step echoing in the quiet room. As I pulled back the curtains, I saw it—something wedged between the glass and the frame. A small, folded piece of paper. It looked so out of place, like it had been there for years, just waiting to be discovered.
My pulse quickened as I reached for it, my fingers trembling slightly as I pulled it from its hiding place. The paper was crinkled, old, as if it had lived through something far longer than the few months I had been in this room. It almost seemed like it belonged to another time.
I unfolded it carefully, trying not to rip it, the faded ink blurred by age. Inside, the words were scrawled in uneven handwriting, rushed as if the person had written it in a hurry:
"Don't forget. No matter what happens."
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
The handwriting… it was so familiar. My fingers shook as I traced the loops of the letters. It was Chase's handwriting. My handwriting.
The way the "C" curved, the "s" trailing off in that jagged way, the tightness of the letters squeezed together—it was unmistakable. I couldn't breathe for a moment, as if the weight of this discovery pressed the air out of my lungs.
How was this possible? My heart pounded in my chest as I turned the note over, hoping for something more, anything that would explain it. But there was nothing. Just the faint smudge of ink that seemed to fade further with every second I stared at it.
I looked back out the window, as if expecting some kind of answer to fall from the sky. But nothing happened. Only the quiet of the night.
I held the note in my hands for what felt like hours, unable to tear my eyes away from it.
As I sat there, everything felt off. There was something important here. Something I wasn't meant to forget.
And somehow, I knew that it had everything to do with that summer at the lake house. The summer I couldn't quite remember. The summer everyone else seemed to have forgotten.
But why was I telling myself not to forget? What was it about that summer that was worth keeping hidden?
What about what the figure said? Wasn't I brought back to fix my mistakes, to undo something I had messed up?
I stared at the note, then at the photograph sitting on my desk. If that was the real reason I was sent back, then why wasn't I put back in Chase's body? If he really wanted me to fix things, that would have been the logical choice.
But then again... if that was the case, could I have done something as Chase with this Chloe? Was that why I was in her body now? To fix something from her life that I couldn't have done as him?
The thought spun in my mind like a tangled thread. It felt like there was something I was missing, something just out of reach, and it gnawed at me like a whisper I couldn't quite catch.
I folded the note carefully and tucked it into my drawer, away from prying eyes. My heart was still racing, but I didn't know where to go from here.
I had more questions than answers, and each one felt like it was leading me further down a path I wasn't ready to walk.
But there was no turning back now. Whatever secrets that note held, whatever was waiting to be uncovered about that summer—it was out there. And I wasn't going to stop until I found the truth.