Ezra blinked awake, sunlight warm and golden across the clothes strewn on his bedroom floor, filtering softly through the blinds. For a fleeting moment, a hushed peace settled over the world. Dust motes waltzed lazily in the air, and the distant hum of a lawnmower barely rippled the silence. He stretched, a slow, deep breath filling his chest, and his limbs were heavy with sleep.

His hand instinctively reached for his phone on the nightstand.

A text from his mum – dinner at Aunt Gilly’s.

Nothing from Willow.

Odd.

He stared at the screen, a beat longer than usual. Willow was an early bird. By now, she would have sent some ridiculous meme, or a picture of her cat mid-yawn captioned he understands my existential dread. Always something. At the very least, a curt "good morning, loser."

He scrolled through his messages, thumb flicking faster, until he hit the top.

No ‘W’.

A frown creased his forehead. He tapped into his contacts, typing her name.

Nothing.

His heart gave a small, sharp kick.

No. That could not be right.

He checked again. Willow Archer. Maybe he had accidentally deleted the contact. Maybe he had saved her under something silly, like “Wills” or “Glitter Gremlin” – whatever nickname she had last tolerated.

Every possible version came up blank.

Still frowning, he opened his photo gallery. He began swiping through the months, backward through December, November, October. He felt like a man chasing a dream that refused to hold still.

The photo of her in the blue dress. Gone.

The one from the Titanic Museum at sunset, her hair haloed by the light like a painting. Gone.

Their blurry selfies at the movies. The one from Halloween.

The photo he always came back to. Her in the rain, arms outstretched, eyes closed, as if she belonged to another world.

Gone.

All of it.

His stomach twisted. Maybe… maybe it was a bug. Some botched update. Perhaps his phone had reverted to an old backup. He sat up, sharper than he intended, and pulled open his cloud backups. His fingers moved on muscle memory. Google Photos. Drive. WhatsApp.

He typed her name into every search field he could think of.

Still nothing.

He had not realized he had stopped breathing until the edges of his vision began to fuzz.

Had he deleted them by mistake? Last night when he was half-asleep?

Or had he been hacked?

If that were the case… Why would someone erase just Willow?

More than that. If she was not in his phone, was not in his cloud, was not online, then where was she?

His heart hammered, quick and loud in his chest. He tried to reason through it. Maybe she had blocked him. Unfriended. Unfollowed. Even that did not explain the photos. They were his. She could not delete those. Why would she? They had not argued. Not seriously. Not in a way that would—

He rubbed his face, trying to recall the last thing she had said to him.

What was the last message? The last call?

It was there. Just on the edge of his memory, but when he reached for it, it slipped out of focus. Like a word on the tip of his tongue.

He remembered her laugh. Loud, unrestrained, and almost obnoxious.

He remembered the tiny scar on her chin from when she had fallen off her bike as a kid.

He remembered her crying during that ridiculous animated film because “the whale was too sad, Ezra!”

He remembered the feel of her hand in his. Her cool fingers were always twitching, like she was on the verge of saying something important, but the words never quite came out.

That was not a dream. You could not dream up months of memories.

Could you?

He threw the covers off and stood, suddenly too hot. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he moved to the window, lifting the blind to peer out.

The street looked normal. Quiet. Birds darted between the trees lining the pavement. Mr. Peterson across the road was trimming his hedges with shears, humming faintly off-key.

Everything seemed normal.

Ezra backed away from the window and sank onto the edge of his bed, gripping his phone like it might offer answers if he just held it tightly enough.

The dread was a quiet thing. Not a scream, but a whisper at the back of his mind, curling inwards like smoke. Something was wrong. He could feel it. In his bones, in the tiny prickling hairs on his arms. In the way silence stretched just a little too long between things.

He stood again and started pacing.

Think. Think.

He opened Instagram. Search bar. Willow Archer.

Nothing.

Facebook. Twitter. TikTok.

No user. No tags. No posts. No photos. No footprints.

It was like she had never existed.

But she had.

He knew it. In the same way he knew his own name. In the way his mouth still remembered the shape of hers.

He sat back down, slower this time. A creeping numbness started at the base of his spine. The kind that precedes the deep chill. His thumb hovered over her name in a draft message. He had typed it out of habit.

The app prompted: This contact does not exist.

He stared at it. That single sentence. As if reality had folded over a page and glued it shut.

He dropped the phone on the bed.

It bounced once, landing face-down.

His breathing had quickened, shallow and ragged. He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers catching in the curls. The silence around him felt heavier now, as if the air itself had thickened.

She had been here. In this room. That hoodie in the corner, she had borrowed it after they got caught in the rain. That cushion. She had once launched it at him in mock fury because he said Pride and Prejudice was “kind of slow.” That mug on the desk. She had used it for her terrible herbal tea.

Yet, there was no online proof that said: this girl existed.

He stumbled to the bathroom. His limbs felt leaden, his chest tight.

The mirror above the sink greeted him with a version of himself he barely recognized. His pale skin was tinged slightly grey, his curly hair was wild and flattened on one side, his eyes were wide and rimmed with something that looked too much like panic. The silence here was deeper. Harsher. No street noise penetrated the double glazing. No birdsong. Just the echo of his own breath bouncing off the tiles.

He gripped the sides of the sink with both hands. Hard.

His fingertips had gone cold.

“Willow,” he said, his voice quiet, hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time. “Willow Archer.”

He watched his lips move in the mirror. It was as if they belonged to someone else.

“Seventeen. Went to King Arthur Grammar.” He swallowed. “Favourite film: Weathering With You. Favourite food: raspberry mochi. Laughed like a car stalling. Loved thunderstorms.”

Still no confirmation from the universe. Just his own reflection, staring back at him.

He hated the look in his eyes. They looked desperate, like the moment just after something dreadful had happened. He tried to hold himself still, to breathe properly, but something beneath his skin was buzzing.

It was not just that she was gone. It was as if she had been peeled out of the world. Deliberately. Precisely. Without a trace.

He shook his head and turned on the tap. He leaned forward and splashed cold water over his face. It shocked him enough to pull his mind back from the brink, but only for a second. As he reached for a towel, he caught another glimpse of himself in the mirror.

Something, just for a second, looked wrong.

His reflection was a breath behind.

He blinked, heart lurching, but when he looked again, it was normal.

He gripped the sink harder, knuckles whitening.

Get it together.

This was probably some kind of mental break. Or a waking nightmare. Or… a hallucination brought on by stress. That was what people said. When your brain overloaded, it filled in gaps with things that were not real. Willow was real, though. She had weight. Shape. Specifics. She was not a dream construct. She was not something invented by a tired brain.

She was someone.

He closed his eyes and tried again.

“Willow. You hated coconut. You used to tap your nails when you were bored, but only with your left hand. You refused to watch horror films because you said your dreams were already scary enough.”

A tremble started in his fingers and crawled up to his wrists. He was not cold. Not really. Although his body did not seem to know that.

He opened his eyes.

His reflection did the same.

“I'm not making you up,” he whispered.

What if he was?

No.

He could not accept that.

He forced himself to breathe slowly, evenly, counting seconds in and out like his parents had taught him for panic attacks. He was not sure this counted as one, but something was rising in him, hot and desperate, and he did not know where to put it.

The silence in the bathroom stretched long. It was usually comforting here. Predictable. Now it just felt wrong. Like something was missing. Like the whole world had a gap in it where Willow used to be.

He backed away from the sink, only half aware of what he was doing, and sank onto the edge of the bath.

Maybe she was just gone. Moved away in the middle of the night. Maybe her family had to go into witness protection. Changed numbers. Deleted her socials. Ghosted him entirely. People did that. Sometimes without warning.

Even if that had happened, all those things should still be on his phone, though, but there was no trace of her.

He rubbed his arms, trying to shake off the chill. His mouth was dry.

This could not just be nothing. It was not normal.

He remembered reading something once, about early-onset dementia. How sometimes it started with things going missing. Memories slipping out of order. Entire people being forgotten. Was that what this was?

Was something wrong with him?

He would ask his parents, he thought suddenly. Maybe there was a family history no one had ever mentioned. Maybe this had happened before to someone else.

He stood, legs slightly shaky.

His reflection moved with him.

Normal now.

He turned away from the mirror and pressed his palm against the cool tile on the wall.

Focus.

CONTINUE READING