Even when she knows he isn't dead, even when she knows he's but a brief bike ride away, it still feels sacrilegious.

Elsie stands just before Kit's bedroom door: four-paneled, cracking white paint, a blue and white polka dot C for Christopher hanging from a nail at the top. It's a hazy Sunday morning, earlier than early, the hall encased in the faintest gold-orange sheen of sunrise. Her parents will be up in about half an hour. If she wants to avoid any explanations—and she does—she'll need to be out of here by then.

Still. There's something she has to check.

It's not like this will change anything. She's seen Kit with her own eyes, talked to him—as if she needs any more evidence that this tiny thread of hope she'd been clutching all these years wasn't so pointless after all. She's just being thorough. That's what it is. Just checking off all the boxes.

She stops one more second to listen for any noise that may suggest either of her parents have roused, and when there's nothing but silence, she cracks the door and steps inside.

It's like walking backwards through time. Nothing about the room has changed since Kit last inhabited it. Not the walls, painted a dark blue, the corners behind his bookshelves and his dressers sprawling with handmade, vibrant mandalas; not the stack of juvenile chapter books on his desk, one of them left half open as if he'd be back to it in just a second; not his multicolored lego tower, tall enough that it nearly brushes the dormant ceiling fan.

The backs of Elsie's eyes burn, but she fights the tears back, reminding herself that not everything is truly lost. As soon as they find Maeve, she'll tell them how. She'll tell them how to fix this mess. She has to.

Wary of her waning time, Elsie sets to work. The camera she's looking for would've been brought to Kit's room after the memorial, likely by one of her parents. Where would they have put it?

She checks the desk, careful not to move anything, as if each unfinished water bottle and wrinkled sheet of paper is a precious artifact she can't afford to disturb. She throws open the desk drawers, checks under the bed, combs the bookshelves. When she finally finds it, sitting neatly atop the window sill, she wonders how she even missed it.

It's dated, of course. An old video camera from 2006 or earlier, with a crack in the monitor and a missing lens cap. Elsie drops to a seat right there on the dusty wood floors, crossing her legs, and mutters a quiet prayer that the busted thing will still work. She powers it on—the screen sputters, goes dark for a moment, and starts up.

Thank God.

Kit was recording that night. She's sure of it. Whatever unpleasant, traumatic haze that entire incident is in the back of her mind now, she remembers that with distinct clarity—remembers him setting up the tripod, then turning to her with a jubilant thumbs up. "Let's do this," he said. It was the last time, she realizes, she ever heard him speak.

The most recent footage is from eight years before.

It's unquenchable curiosity; it's the hope that she's forgetting something that could solve all their problems; it's the memory of Kit's voice, clear, honeyed, likely a bit higher than it would be now. All of these things and more drive Elsie to hit play.

In blurry night vision, Elsie watches her ten-year-old self finish drawing a circle of salt in the middle of the old house's living room floor, struggling a bit under the bag's weight. She drops it to the ground with a thud, and Kit grabs her arm, yanking her back.

The sound is muffled, staticky, but she can hear herself calling out something, asking if the ghost was there. The static cuts out, abruptly, into silence. Then a bright flash of white roars up before the lens, the static rising again in a thunderous crescendo. Her heart pounding, Elsie lowers the volume, and brings the camera closer to her face. The screen is still white—she can't see a thing. Impatient, she fast forwards, and keeps fast forwarding, until the screen goes dark again.

Frowning, she squints, trying to make out the living room—and nearly jumps back when a lurid, ghastly face appears in the frame, and with a low thwack, knocks the camera from its stand.

The video ends.

Slowly, with shaking hands, Elsie lowers the camera to the floor.

Maybe she's learned nothing at all, nothing that will help her undo what was done. Yet, even if it was barely a glimpse, she has seen the face of the dead man who took her brother's future away. She has seen the face of the dead man who she is going to ruin.

Elsie sneaks a box of cheese crackers from the kitchen and rides up to the cliff, the sky just beginning to settle into its usual, clear blue hue when she reaches the house. She dawdles a bit in the front yard, combing her hair back behind her ear, thinking how picturesque the house would be if it wasn't her brother's prison. The exterior paint peels off in yellow-white sheets, a sheaf of green vines working cracks into the bricks. Undoubtedly, it's old. Yet it's old in the way a beautiful but forgotten song is old, worn by the crackle and buzz of a record player, yet the melody no less charming.

She wishes, badly, she had met this house on different circumstances.

When she calls Kit's name, she's surprised to see him appear at the head of the stairs, clothed, oddly enough, in a loose, grayish tank top she could have sworn she saw Joey wear to school once. Kit mouths her name, a bright smile on his face.

Elsie rattles the box of cheese crackers at him. "Thought you might like these," she says, and frowns. "What are you doing up there, anyway?"

The smile inches wider. It's a smile Elsie wasn't sure she'd ever see again, and a strange, pessimistic part of her wants to drop everything and photograph it, to hold onto this moment with everything she has in case she loses him again.

Kit motions for her to follow him, then disappears around the corner. Elsie sighs, raising an eyebrow, but nevertheless climbs the stairs after him.

At the end of the dim hallway, Kit waits for her, looking creepily like a silent apparition out of one of Elsie's favorite Stephen King film adaptations. Then he taps his foot impatiently, his eyes widening as he waves her forward again, and Elsie nearly laughs.

"What?" she says, as Kit leads her through the rotting wood door. "What...is it..."

There is a moment in which Elsie has to remind herself to breathe, has to remind herself that she has not, in fact, traveled to some wildly alternate universe where imagination bleeds into reality, and does so often. The mandalas painted discreetly in the corners of Kit's bedroom are nothing like the whirlwind of color around her now, abstract and concrete, warm and cold, euphoric and dismal. It's like looking at the inside of her brother's mind, which, granted, she always knew was a beautiful place. Just not this beautiful.

"You...did this?" she says. She tips her head back, finding the ceiling only partially finished: the back of a girl's head, black hair tumbling down her shoulders, painted in one corner—a brown-skinned boy with a head of tight curls at the other. The middle is a blank slate of white.

Elsie turns to Kit. He's kneeling in the center of the floor—amongst a well-stained tarp and a circle of dripping paint tins—his composition book laid flat beneath him. There was some wall paint left behind, he tells her. And then you brought me even more paint. So I figured there was no better way to pass the time.

Elsie gestures to the ceiling, an eyebrow raised.

Still working on that, Kit writes.

"That's me," she says after a moment, pointing at the dark-haired girl to the far left, "and that's...Neo?" Her finger drifts towards the boy on the far right.

Kit nods his head. Something flickers across his face then, a quiet admiration, that Elsie simply cannot ignore.

Slowly, she settles herself on the floor, sitting back on her heels and pressing out the lines in her skirt. "I can tell he means a lot to you," Elsie says. Kit's eyes dart away. "You mean a lot to him, too. I mean, I don't think he would be so convinced on getting your voice back if that wasn't the case."

Kit still says nothing, tapping his pen against the paint tin instead: tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

"I told him about this weird witchy lady I met at your memorial?" Elsie says, interlacing her fingers. "And I mean, the likely thing to do in that situation would be to write me off, right? Like: No, that's insane, Elsie, you were sick with grief so you were probably seeing things. But we're going to see her tomorrow. Neo, Joey, and me."

Tap-tap-tap again, before he picks up his pen: That's great. Let me know what you find out.

"Kit." Elsie can't fight back a chuckle, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "You're an awful liar."

Her brother's face turns a positively vivid shade of pink, his handwriting a frantic scribble as he writes: I didn't say anything!

"You don't have to. I'm your sister, Kit. Besides, I'm not stupid," Elsie says, and sits forward now, suddenly exuberant. "So, tell me! How long have you liked him? Does he like you back? Have you told—"

Sharply, Kit holds an index finger to her lips. Do we have to talk about this? he writes, his mouth pressing into an exaggerated pout. It's awkward.

"What?" Elsie sputters. "Why?"

Because I don't know anything.

"About what?"

Like... Kit stops, chewing on the tip of his pen for a moment. How to date people, or anything. I've been in this house all this time, after all. It's not like I've ever liked anyone before. He stops again, gasping. Oh my God. What if I don't like him at all? What if I'm faking it or

Elsie lays a hand over the page, shaking her head at him. Kit looks up, utterly dumbfounded. "If you have to ask if you're faking it," she tells him, "then you're probably not faking it, buddy."

Kit lets out a small sigh of relief.

"I don't blame you, either. Neo's got some admirable things about him. And he's quite cute, with that dimple and everything? If he was into girls or whatever, I might date him."

Kit's relief vanishes from his face, and now he glares at her.

Elsie coughs. "I was kidding. Jesus. He's all yours."

I didn't even know it was like that until a week ago, maybe? Kit tells her. At first he was just this random guy who kept showing up here, and I just liked the company. He dropped something here and I found it for him, that's how it started. But once he found out about the curse and now that he's been going crazy trying to get rid of it...I don't know.

Kit hesitates, tapping the pen against his teeth. He got me to go outside once, but the curse wouldn't let me get too far. I nearly fell off the cliffside, but he saved me, and I just remember wishing so hard that night that he'd never have to go home.

Elsie's heart warms in her chest. This was all she ever wanted. For Kit to live, for him to feel and experience and love, just like everyone else. And even in spite of everything, it's happening right in front of her. It feels just like magic.

When you see Neo tomorrow, Kit adds quickly, don't you dare tell him I said this.

"Aw," Elsie says, giving him her best attempt at puppy dog eyes. "Why not? I think he'd like to hear it."

Because it's cheesy, Elsie. So just don't. Please?

Just to make him tick, Elsie waits a moment before she nods. Then she extends her pinky, holding it out in his direction. He blinks, confused, before he links his pinky with hers.

"Pinky promise," she says. "My lips are sealed."

Good, Kit writes, and suddenly his expression is thoughtful, a careful knit to his brow that speaks so delicately of everything he's lost, and everything he's trying so hard to get back.

Besides, he tells Elsie. There are some things I'd like to tell him only when he can hear me say it.