Chapter 14
Agatha
The envelope is pale yellow. No return address.
No markings except my name and the school’s address, written in small, careful block letters.
Not my cam name. Not a title. Just Agatha.
That’s what makes my stomach twist. That, and the weight of it in my hand, too light for a letter, too firm for anything good.
I slide a thumb under the flap as I walk toward my classroom, trying to make it look casual. Like I’m checking mail, not unraveling.
Inside is a button. Warm cream, smooth with age, with two white lilies painted across the face. Three dark leaves curl beneath them, and my initials sit near the stems in tiny, perfect script. With it is a polaroid picture of a girl but it’s taken from the side and she’s unaware.
It’s me.
Fourteen years old. Ponytail, a conservative outfit, and my profile turned just enough to catch the side of my smile. I know that cardigan. I know that day. I don’t remember anyone taking this photo.
My fingers go numb.
Beneath the photo is a scrap of paper with nine words written in tiny, almost surgical handwriting:
You may not remember us. But we remember you.
I don’t have time to panic. The door flies open, and the noon-aid barrels in without knocking. Her sneakers squeak like an alarm.
“Sorry to interrupt, Miss,” she says, winded, holding the hands of two very guilty-looking kindergartners. “We’ve got a situation.”
Stevie’s face is blotchy red. Rowan won’t meet my eyes.
“They got into an argument over the monkey bars. Stevie pushed Rowan. Rowan punched her. We stopped at the nurse first. Rowan’s scraped up a bit from the mulch, but Stevie’s gonna have a real shiner.”
I shove the button and note into my desk drawer before she can see my hands shake.
“Thank you,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’ve got it from here.”
She gives me a relieved nod and backs out of the room fast, like she’s glad to drop the problem off and vanish.
Once she’s gone, I squat in front of the kids. They both look like they want the floor to swallow them whole.
“Okay,” I say gently. “Start from the beginning.”
Stevie huffs. “He said I cheated. I didn’t.”
“You skipped rungs,” Rowan mutters, eyes on his sneakers.
“It’s still the monkey bars!”
“It’s not if you skip!”
“Enough,” I say, holding up my hand. “Does hurting each other solve anything?”
They both shake their heads.
“Do either of you feel good about how this went?”
Another round of noes.
I lean closer. “Then what’s the right thing to do?”
They look at each other. Stevie crosses her arms. Rowan blinks fast, already close to tears. Then, surprisingly, he steps forward and mumbles, “I’m sorry I punched you.”
Stevie frowns. Then sighs. “Sorry I pushed you.”
They hug like it physically pains them.
“For the rest of recess,” I say, “you’re staying inside. Grab some crayons and pick a Bluey page. You’re going to color side by side like best friends who will never ever hurt each other again.”
They nod and shuffle off to the supply shelf.
I sit down at my desk, heart still pounding, not from the fight. From the drawer. From the envelope waiting quietly inside, like a bomb disguised as sentiment.
They know where I work.
They sent it here.
The door is locked. The lights are on. The kids are coloring in silence. I should feel safe.
I don’t.
I press my palms to my thighs and breathe slowly.
Do I take a leave of absence? Would that help?
What would I even say… my cam girl stalker might be lurking in the bushes?
He? They? I still don’t know. The note said us.
And the guy from the woods wasn't the guy from the barn. Either that was poetic or literal, and I honestly don’t know which terrifies me more.
But they haven’t hurt me.
Not in a way I didn’t like. Not in a way I didn’t crave again.
I close my eyes and try to quiet the storm in my head.
It would be nice, just once, to be asked.
To hear someone say: “Hey, can I put my dipstick in your oil tank?” Ridiculous.
But the thought makes me smile. Then the smile fades.
Because the flip side is…I like not being asked.
I like the danger. The taboo. The idea that someone wanted me enough to take me.
Fuck. I really need to go to therapy.
My parents and the church did a number on me. I grew up on guilt. Learned to take my shame like communion. Smile and swallow.
It is what it is.
I’m not hurting anyone but myself, so what’s the real harm?
Except now they’ve reached into this world. My classroom. My kids. That changes things.
But still, deep down, under the panic and the bile and the protective teacher instinct, there’s a darker truth pulsing under my skin.
I want to know what they’ll do next.
I’m home before the streetlights flicker on, but only just.
The house is quiet. No music or TV. Just me, the button, and the fading light bleeding in through the blinds. I didn’t even turn on a lamp.
I sit on the couch, cross-legged, clutching a half-eaten fluffernutter sandwich in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. My mouth is dry from all the peanut butter, but I keep eating anyway. The sweetness settles something sour in my stomach. My fingers are sticky with marshmallow fluff.
The button rests on my thigh. I keep turning it over in my palm, again and again, like it’ll eventually reveal more than what’s already written in that note. Like it’ll explain how the hell they got it.
But I already know.
I used to wear that cardigan every day. Navy blue.
Cheap acrylic blend from the secondhand shop.
It was too big even back then; the sleeves always swallowed my wrists.
And the button literally has my initials carved into it.
I remember the day I got it clear as day—it was the only gift I got that year.
I cried, thinking it meant they’d forgotten about me, and Michael decided that made me ungrateful.
He locked me in my room with a Bible and no food until I could recite Psalm 51 without a single mistake, telling me I needed to scrub the selfishness from my soul before I could earn the right to wear it.
That cardigan was armor. A lie I wore on my back every day to keep the truth hidden underneath.
The last time I wore it, it was junior year. Sixteen years old. Just after Christmas break. I’d worn lip gloss to youth group, a tiny shimmer of pink I borrowed from a girl in choir. Harmless. I didn’t even reapply it after dinner. Barely a stain left on my mouth.
But Michael noticed.
He always noticed.
The second we walked in the front door, he told me to go upstairs and pray. No raised voice. No fury in his tone. That would’ve been too easy. No, it was quiet. Controlled. Scripted, like always. The real rage came later, in the form of righteousness.
I kneeled beside my bed for forty-five minutes while he paced behind me, reading from the Book of Proverbs.
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain…”
He made me recite the verse back. Then again. And again.
Then he asked me what I’d invited with that lip gloss.
I said nothing.
He asked again.
This time, I said, “Lust.”
Wrong answer.
He pulled me up by the elbow and dragged me into the bathroom.
Debra was already there, holding the glass jar of holy water we kept on the back of the toilet.
I think she thought she was helping. She always did.
She believed in cleansing. In salvation.
In discipline wrapped in the language of purity.
They didn’t hit me that night.
They scrubbed me.
Cold water. Bar soap. Steel wool.
I screamed once.
He told me silence was the only path to redemption.
When it was over, they wrapped me in a towel and made me pray again. I don’t remember the words I said. I just remember the way my arms stung when I reached for that cardigan the next morning, slipping it on over the raw patches that looked like burns but weren’t.
No one at school asked. Maybe they knew better. Or maybe I just smiled big enough and said “Good morning” loud enough to keep their questions quiet.
I should’ve thrown that cardigan away.
But I didn’t.
I buried it in the trunk at the foot of my childhood bed, under old school notebooks and pictures I left behind. That button came from there. Which means whoever left it… they’ve been in my parents’ house. They touched the things I buried. Not just the ones I broadcast.
I set the sandwich down, appetite gone.
The button is slick with sweat from my palm. I stare at it like it might start speaking. Maybe it already has. You remember us. Don’t lie.
I do remember. I just never wanted to. I spent years becoming someone else. Someone glossy. Someone powerful. Someone who doesn’t flinch when someone pays her attention.
And now they’re digging her back up.
I slide off the couch, still holding the button, and go to the kitchen. I don’t know why. Maybe I need the light. Maybe I just need to move. The tile chills my feet as I lean against the counter. The button’s still slick from my palm.
Someone opened that trunk.
Someone was in that house.
Not mine.
Theirs.
A sharp cold sweeps down my arms.
I haven’t been back in years. Not since the last screaming match.
Not since Debra said I looked possessed and Michael offered to have the pastor “talk” to me.
I left a lot behind that day: books, clothes, photos.
I didn’t care. I thought the farther I got from that place, the less of it would stick to me.
But they were there.
Inside that house.
Close enough to smell the stale potpourri in the hallway and the mildew in the basement. Close enough to touch the bed I grew up in. The one I used to curl up on while praying not to burn in Hell for wanting things I didn’t have names for yet.
That cardigan was sacred. Not because of what it meant, but because of what it covered. I wore it to hide bruises and belt marks. I wore it when I needed to feel invisible. When I needed to survive.
It was the only thing I never wanted to bring with me when I left. And now it’s followed me, anyway.
I grip the button tighter, feeling it dig into my skin. My jaw clenches, and my breath comes hard and hot through my nose. Not from panic.
From rage.
They went there. To them.
They think they can go poking through my past like it belongs to them. Like those memories are theirs to hold, to mock, to use as leverage. Like they’ve earned the right to touch what I buried.
They didn’t just watch. They trespassed. Not just into my space. Into my story.
The cardigan. The house. The girl I used to be.
And they think this is a game.
They think this makes them powerful.
I shove off the counter and start pacing, fingers curled tight around the button. My chest aches, not with fear but with the kind of fury that cracks ribs from the inside. They want to get inside my head? Fine. I’ll let them in. But they’re not going to like what they find.
You want a little doll to play with?
You better hope she doesn’t snap her strings.
I grab my notebook off the counter and flip to a clean page. The pen in my hand feels like a weapon. I don’t even know what I’m planning yet. All I know is they went too far.
They poked the fucking bear.
And now they’re going to find out just how dark I can get when I stop trying to survive... and start getting even.