Page 2 of Soul to Possess

I passed Mrs. Erwin’s flower shop and didn’t look in. Not because I wasn’t curious—because I was. I always slowed down just a little when I smelled soil and stems and something blooming. But I’d made the mistake of going in once last year. I’d asked how much a single daffodil cost, and the clerk said, “You don’t want just one, do you?” with this kind of laugh that made me feel like my loneliness had teeth.

Now I just passed by. Two blocks later, I paused at the corner where the old school stood abandoned. Red bricks chipped raw. The rusted fence still half-standing. I used to come here at night and sit on the swing set behind the cafeteria, just to hear the creak of chains and pretend I was someone still small enough to be carried.

I hadn’t told anyone that. Ever. I crossed the street without looking both ways. Maybe part of me hoped something would force the moment—make the decision for me. But no cars came. Nothing ever does, in this town. At the post office, I stood in front of the mailbox with my fingers clenched around the envelope.

It would be so easy not to. Easy to take it home, slide it into a drawer. Pretend I’d mailed it. Lie to myself. Again. But I didn’t. I fed the letter into the dark metal mouth and heard the thunk as it landed. And that sound was louder than it should’ve been.

I stayed there a second longer than I should’ve, staring at the mailbox like it could give me something back. It didn’t. Just swallowed the letter whole, like it had a thousand others.

When I finally turned to leave, Maddie’s car was already idling at the curb. Her little rust-pocked Honda looked like it was held together by bumper stickers and spite. She leaned out the window, hair pulled up in a messy knot, sunglasses too big for her face.

“Tell me that was what I think it was,” she said.

I slid into the passenger seat, still trying to catch up to her energy. “Define what you think it was.” She gave me a look. “A letter. To a stranger. From an ad you found in an actualnewspaper, like it’s 1997. You’re not subtle, G.”

“I didn’t say I was trying to be.” I tugged the seatbelt, clicking it into place. “And it wasn’tjustan ad.” Maddie snorted. “It’s never just an ad. It’s a cry for help printed in ink. So. Spill.”

She’d been like this since we were seventeen—part sarcasm, part lifeline. The kind of person who could talk you out of drinking bleach and into dyeing your hair blue instead. She found me when I didn’t know I needed finding—sophomore year, bathroom stall, eyeliner smudged, trying to disappear.

And she didn’t let me.

“You gonna judge me?” I asked quietly.

She turned the radio down. “Never for wanting something real. Just maybe for mailing your return address to a potential axe murderer.”

I smiled. It felt cracked. “I used yours.”

She paused. Then: “Good. I always wanted to be a part of your true crime documentary.”

We didn’t say anything for a moment. Just the sound of the heater groaning and some indie band singing about ghosts and regrets. Then Maddie reached over and laced her fingers through mine, like she always did when she sensed I was sinking.

“You’re not crazy, Gennie. You’re just brave in ways most people never have to be.” I looked out the window. The sky hadn’t changed. But something in me had. A tiny shift. Like a seed under soil, cracking open.

She drove toward the diner without asking if I was hungry. Maddie always knew when I needed to be somewhere with noise and light and coffee that tasted like burnt earth. We pulled into the same cracked parking lot we always did, the yellow lines long since faded to ghosts.

Inside, the booths were half full—truckers, old couples, a girl in scrubs scrolling her phone with one hand, toast in the other. We slid into the corner booth. Maddie always took the outside so I could sit with my back to the wall.

She used to say it was a “trauma-informed seating plan.” I didn’t correct her.

“You gonna tell me what he said that got under your skin?” she asked after the waitress poured our coffee.

I blinked at the cup. “It wasn’t what he said. It was what he didn’t.”

Maddie tilted her head.

I stirred cream into my coffee even though I never drank it that way. “He didn’t use clichés. Didn’t ask for nudes or list his requirements like it was a job interview. He said something about wanting someone to build a life with. Someone who’d stay even when things weren’t good.”

Maddie was quiet for a long beat.

“That sounds like what you used to write in your notebook. Freshman year. Back when you were still trying to pretend you didn’t care that no one sat with you at lunch.”

I gave a soft laugh. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything,” she said. “I remember the first time I saw you on the roof of the school library, not jumping, justsitting. Like you wanted the wind to do something for you that you couldn’t ask for.”

My throat burned.

“I remember you had those cheap earbuds and played the same six sad songs over and over. You said they made you feel less alone. And when I asked to listen, you handed them to me like it was sacred.”

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