Hidden-Game
The ceiling stretched out above her—flat, colorless, and striped with shadows. Amelia lay motionless, eyes open. Her bedroom was silent, but her thoughts were not. She wasn’t sure if she’d slept. It felt like she’d been lying here for hours—one of those long, weightless nights
Hidden-Game
The next day, the world carried on as it always did. Lessons drifted past in a blur. The teacher’s voices sounded distant and muffled, as if they were trapped behind glass. Pens scraped. Chairs shifted. Nothing had changed, but somehow everything had. Amelia stood outside the school gates, her
Hidden-Game
Amelia didn’t move. Not a breath, not a blink. Her eyes fixed on the photo, the weight of it slamming into her chest. Her parents looked back at her. Faces she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Not since the night the police dragged her out of
Hidden-Game
Marv leaned back in the chair, exhaling through his teeth. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “The spare key still works.” Amelia hovered behind him, her weight rooted to the floor. The laptop’s screen was all black aside from a single white cursor, pulsing—awaiting a command. Marv’
Hidden-Game
Amelia broke the silence first. “What are your ideas, Marv?” He didn’t miss a beat. “We start simple—with EverLink. If Helpmann is a name, we’ll find it there. Then we’ll know we’re on the right track.” Marv leaned in, angling his mouth toward the laptop’
Hidden-Game
The air was thick with static, the charged hush before a lightning strike. Marv leaned over the table, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm into the wood. Across from him, Amelia stared down at the book—jaw tight, fists balled—as if the numbers might solve themselves if she held them
Hidden-Game
Silence had settled over the bedroom. Amelia sat cross-legged on the quilt, a notebook balanced on her knee. Marv sprawled beside her, one foot tapping the bedpost like a metronome. Textbooks lay open between them, pages twitching in the breeze from the cracked window as if trying to turn themselves.
Hidden-Game
Sycamore Lane stood still in the hush of early evening, the sky above deepening into soft bruises of twilight. The street was empty. Light spilled through curtained windows, bleeding gently into the dark. Autumn pressed in close, threading woodsmoke and damp moss through the cool air. The trees that lined
Hidden-Game
The bell pierced the soft murmur of Miss Nelson’s art studio, like a morning alarm through a dream. Amelia gathered her pencils and charcoals, eyes trailing after Marv as he peeled off toward the tech lab. His grin was loose and lazy, but blazed at full-beam. His sneakers barely
Hidden-Game
Amelia moved through the morning the way she always did. Brush teeth. Shower. Get dressed. Blow-dry. The noise of the hairdryer filled her head. She half-closed her eyes and let herself sink into it, the hollow roar chasing the last fragments of the dream away. Her hair hung loose at
Hidden-Game
This was where the dark lived. The only place in the house she never went. The closet in her parents’ room. She used to stand in the hallway and look at it. Thumb in her mouth. Waiting for the door to move. Certain something was waiting inside. Now she was