#ampo

Just over One Month Earlier — 9th June:

Outside of school hours, I volunteer at a local charity shop. It’s nothing big, it’s nothing special, I’m not saving the world. But I’m playing my little part. I’m another pair of hands when I need to be, doing what I can, where I can.

I pack boxes. I order books. I wear a lime-green shirt with the charity’s logo on it (a blooming plant with leaves the shape of a heart, if that helps visualise) as I stand behind a counter and give change in two penny coins.

It’s nothing so extraordinary.

Maggie, the elderly lady who works alongside me, thinks otherwise. She’s volunteered here for around thirty years, and she sees everyone come and go. She says I’m the first person to really stick with it for any extended period of time.

“I’m telling you, Coulter, we need more kids like you.”

“Please, Maggie, there are plenty of others like me.”

“I’ve yet to see any.” She sighs and shakes her head. “And I tend not to believe in things I can’t find proof of.”

“God?”

“God? God?” She reaches into her mouth and plucks out a half-sucked throat-sweet, setting it down on a coaster she keeps nearby solely for that purpose. Someone picked it up trying to buy it once, and the sweet slid off and down their sleeve. They didn’t come back. “Pesky little barnacle, you are, making me philosophise so early in the morning.”

“Good exercise for your addled brain, Maggie.”

“No, Coulter, that’s what sudokus are for. Sudokus and candy crush. Not pondering the depths of the universe. I’m too old for such existential crises.”

“Sounds like excuses to me,” I tease.

“Excuses? Young man, you’re lucky you’re the best darn kid in the universe. If you were anyone else, you’d be getting a fistful of granny power right now.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Granny power?”

She nods sagely. “All grannies know Kung Fu.”

“I thought you meant you were radioactive.”

“Funny.”

“There’s enough funny ingredients in those throat sweets—”

“Oh, quit yer yappin’,” she says waving a hand airily in the air. She waits for a beat, then looks up. Not quite at me. “Besides, you can find proof of God anywhere. The wooden grain of the counter between us. The delicate pattern of leaves, rustling in the wind. The relieved faces of parents when their toddlers don’t beg them to buy our entire store’s worth of toys. The end of a life well lived.”

“Maggie?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

Now she meets my eye, smiling sweetly. “Never been better.”

12th June:

Maggie wasn’t there to open the shop today. Just me.

15th June:

Maggie hasn’t been in for a few days now. The throat sweet is still on the coaster, dried on and impossible to prise away. She must have forgotten to take it off. 

I wish I had some way to contact her, but she despises phones, social media and any mode of interaction not plucked straight from the 1800s.

So I just have to cross my fingers and hope. I just have to bide my time.

20th June:

They’ve got a new lady in now. Sarah. Just looking at her, I know she won’t last more than a few days here.

She’s not the sort.

23rd June:

Alone again.

25th June:

Today, a new gentleman comes in. Sleek black suit, silver watch gleaming on his wrist, platinum-blonde hair slicked back in a widow’s peak like he’s trying to emulate Dracula and a sneer to match. Very clearly out of place alongside racks of children's clothes that barely go up to his knees. 

His eyes roam the shop, almost bored, then settle on me. He crosses the room in little more than a stride. “If it isn’t the little philanthropist.”

“Sir?”

“Coulter, yes?”

I nod, not quite sure what to say. Stranger Danger bells are ringing in my head.

“She said you’d stick around.”

“Who? Maggie?” I ask, practically leaping forwards. Slightly embarrassing. “You know Maggie?”

He blinks, half-taken aback, then chuckles warmly and pulls something from his breast pocket. A small, weathered photo, folded into four. Him, a decade or so younger, alongside Maggie, looking not a day younger than the last I’d seen her.

“Know her? Margaret Atford is—was—my mother.”

Slightly more embarrassing. And then the realisation hits me.

I freeze, stomach dropping. I’m sure he can see the blood rush from my face. I know I can feel it. 

“Was?” I breathe.

“She’s been ill for quite some time now. Cancer. We thought she was getting better, but…”  He paused. “She passed away just yesterday.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head softly. “Don’t be. She was content. She said it was her time.”

I suck in a shaky breath, determined not to let myself cry. There’s something wrong about crying for the loss of someone you knew tangentially when the person who knows her the most is keeping their composure. “Sounds like her.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ll admit, we rarely interact anymore. I’m only glad I got one last chance to say goodbye.”

“Why did you stop talking?”

He straightens, ignoring my question entirely. “But she also wanted you to know. She said that you deserved closure.”

“Thank you for telling me," I say, going along with the subject change. I'll let him have this one. “I appreciate it.”

“I’m not done yet. You see, despite giving most of what she had to charitable causes, and devoting her time to helping others, Margaret still amassed something of a small fortune’s worth of stuff in her many years. Of course, she has left most of it to charity.”

I nod. “That makes sense.”

“She has also left some to you.”

My world tilts on its axis. “She's what?”

—

Left Field is a small village. Not quite to the point where everyone knows everyone else, but fairly close. It’s built right along a stretch of lush green hills, so there are little to no straight roads anywhere, and certainly no flat ones. Most people walk, and the plucky few cycle. There are one or two buses at most. Forests wrap their leafy tendrils around the streets, small cobblestone paths veering and meandering throughout them like little stone streams.

And, notably, an old manor house overlooks the town from its perch atop the tallest, most vibrant hill. Cream walls, white highlights, windows that shimmer in the sun. A sprawling drive, and an even larger garden. A single path leading up to it. No one really goes there, and no one really knows who it belongs to.

I suppose I am now one of the lucky few.

I now know it was Maggie’s.

The Gentleman—who still hasn’t given me anything to call him other than “Sir”—takes me up to the Manor in a sleek black car that’s clearly not meant for these kinds of roads. It growls up the track, sputtering and shaking as the hill just gets steeper and steeper.

“I get the feeling,” Sir says, “that it would be quicker, easier, and infinitely more pleasant for our poor ears if we had left the car behind and gone on foot."

“Oh, definitely,” I reply.

He stops the car. "Right then, out we get."

"We're in the middle of the road," I say. He's already opening the door. "We're nowhere near the house."

"And we'll stay nowhere near the house if we keep going at this pace." He closes his door and opens mine. "Come on, let's go."

—

Sir unlocks the door with a single silver key plucked from one of his many pockets, ornately twisted to be shaped like a rose. "I will warn you," he says grimly, "I can't say I know the state we'll be finding this house in. I left Aaron alone in here while I went out."

I look up to him, frown settling on my face. "Aaron?" A pet of some sort, maybe? It seemed a very city guy thing to lock up a dog indoors.

"My son. He's not thrilled to be here, but better alone in here than alone in the city."

Oh. So not a pet.

"And you think he can cause that much of a state?"

"I know he can," he says, dead serious. I shiver.

The door swings open, and he wipes the clumps of mud from his once-polished shoes on the doormat (reading "No visitors before 10:00am").

There's not much to be done about the mud and grass splattered right up the hems of his trousers though. It's somewhat funny, seeing someone so woefully out of place.

"We're home," he calls in through the door.

The sound of a vase shattering from upstairs. "Fuck you!"

"Nice to see you again too," Sir says pleasantly, and walks in.

The sound of something heavy being overturned. "I hope you shit yourself and have to walk a mile to find the nearest toilet in this fucking hellhole of a town!"

Sir slides off his suit jacket and hangs it on a flamingo-shaped hook, brushing his hands off against his ink-black waistcoat. "But Aaron, we have visitors!"

"Fuck them too!"

"You weren't exaggerating," I say to Sir.

"I wish I had been."

A beat of thunderous silence, and then a boy pokes his head into the stairwell, staring down at us with fury brimming in his eyes.

I blink, taken aback. He doesn't look like the sort of person to be throwing a violent hissy fit. He's dressed innocuously enough—like a rich city kid, sure, but not like a thug—with tight-fitting denim jeans torn very purposefully at the knees and a cream-coloured shoulderless-shirt (with sleeves, for some reason?) that looked like it had probably cost him double his weight in gold.

His face is covered with freckles that travel all the way down his neck in clusters, pooling around his shoulders like someone had flicked a wet, coffee-stained paintbrush over him and left him to dry in the sun. His golden-brown hair is strafed out so that it hangs in messy strands over his face, and it gleams with the sun streaming through the windows.

"This is him then?" He asks, and his voice is posher when he's not screaming profanities at the top of his lungs. “This is the kid who inherited more from my Grandmother than I did?"

"In the flesh," Sir says, patting me on the shoulder. "I thought it might be nice for the two of you to get to know one another in advance of the funeral—" He turns to me once again. "—to which you're invited, of course."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. It's on her request."

"She sure requested a hell of a lot for a dying woman," Aaron cuts in, clomping down the stairs. "Not much of it to do with her own family."

"It's only fair," Sir replies. "We haven't spoken with her in many, many years. Disagreements will do that to a family."

"It's the principle of it," Aaron snorts.

"Now you sound like her."

"Fuck you."

"That's quite enough of that language." He claps his hands together. "I'm thinking of starting a swear jar. Since we're here for as long as it takes us to settle her estate, we might make quite the little fortune."

"As if we haven't done that already," Aaron snorts.

"Behave yourself, and you might earn yourself a larger chunk of it. Introduce yourself to Coulter. Show him around the remains of the house. Break anything that's left to him and you will be paying it from your own pocket."

It's awkward enough being caught in the middle of a family argument between two strangers. Knowing you're the cause of it? Near unbearable.

"I hate you," Aaron glowers. I'm not sure which of us it's directed to.

"Better. Much more civil. Maybe one of these days you'll explain why." He claps his hands together. "I'm heading back to the car. I'll leave it down in the town, I reckon. Have fun."

He is gone in a blur, and the door swings shut behind him. The lock clicks.

I turn back to Aaron, and he's moved just as fast as his Father, till he's right up in my face—maybe it runs in the family. It's a funny thought, Maggie moving at that speed when the most speed I've ever seen her muster is just faster than your standard snail. An angry snail, maybe. I giggle.

He blinks. "Something funny?"

"Nothing, nothing," I say.

He snorts, then slams me against the wall in one deft movement. He's right in my face, and I'm breathing in his hot air. "I want to make one thing clear. I don't like you. I don't like your town. I don't like whatever fucking charity you work for. And, in case this wasn't clear already, I will not be touring you around this house."

He draws back, running a hand through his hair as he composes himself.

"Wish I could say it was nice meeting you, Coulter, but I really can't. Go die in a hole."

With that, he's gone too.

26th June:

The funeral is a sombre affair. Everyone wears black. She would have hated it.

27th June:

It seems I'm going to get my inheritance in bits and pieces. The first thing I get is a porcelain model of an animal somewhere between a giraffe and a cat. Its mouth is just open enough to slot something into. When I shake it, something clinks inside. 

I hope it's not a throat sweet.

28th June:

Sir clearly thinks he's going to need all the time he can get because, come Monday, Aaron is at school with us. And he’s not enjoying himself.

He stands stiffly, arms tight as if ironed to his side, next to Professor Willow’s desk at the front of the classroom as she gives the class a quick introduction to him.

“I’m sure you would all like to extend a warm welcome to the young man who will be a student here alongside you for this week. In from the Big City, Aaron Ordicg is the son of businessman and entrepreneur, Mark Ordrich, and heir to a quarter million sterling. I’m sure we will all have something to learn from such an interesting young man.”

With every word she speaks, the class seems to grow in interest. People go from twiddling their thumbs and staring down at their desks to watching him, eagle-eyed. And I do have to admit, though I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs in boredom at the beginning, I am more interested now than I was a few seconds ago.

Especially since I've learnt Sir’s name was Mark. That just isn’t right.

Now finished with her impromptu Wikipedia article on Aaron, Willow turns back to him. “Now, Aaron, this is something of a right of passage here, so I’m going to have to ask you to indulge me.”

He turns to face her, face set in a frown. The rest of the class is murmuring to one another—is she really going to subject him to this?

“I want you to name three things about yourself. Plus one ambition, for luck.”

She is.

“Of course you do,” he says tartly, then turns back to face the class. And somehow, for some reason, he looks directly at me. “I would like to precede this with a small expression of gratitude for being allowed to speak about myself in a village that clearly defines people by the amount in their wallets.”

Willow frowns, and Aaron seems to relish in it.

“1.) My favourite colour is yellow. Think buttercups. 2.) I am missing my final few weeks with my best friend before they move to a different country to be here, and there’s not even enough signal to message them. 3.) My father does not care.”

The class is dead silent.

“And your ambition?” Prof. Willow says, voice barely more than a whisper.

“To make him care. To make him and anyone he calls an ally regret ever crossing me. To burn everything they know and love to the ground.”

He strides across the classroom without another word, and sits at the one empty seat. The one next to me.

He swivels his head and looks me dead in the eye. “Any questions?”

I realise my mouth is open, and quickly clamp it shut, shaking my head.

“Good,” he says, then sits back and puts his feet up on the desk. “Professor, you may start your lesson at will.”

—

It doesn’t take much to make someone the talk of the town in a place as small as Left Field. And it takes even less to make someone the talk of Progress Academy, secondary school extraordinaire. Still, I don’t think anyone has managed it quite as quickly before as Aaron has today.

Willow clearly saw that he was going to be a handful. She clearly saw that he knew me, somewhat. And she clearly passed on the message to every other teacher in the school, because for the rest of the day so far, we've been paired together for everything.

As the class files in for the fourth lesson of the day, he turns to speak to me for the first time since this morning. “This is getting a bit old now.”

“You don’t say,” I respond drily. “Look, I’m not exactly a fan of this pairing either, but it’s not like there are people queuing up to work with you instead.”

As I say that, a tall girl, one who I’ve shared classes with for the entire year but never really paid much heed to, appears between us, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Hi, hello, hiya,” she says, sticking out her hand in a way that doesn’t make it quite clear if she’s expecting Aaron to shake it or kiss it, “I’m Melody. Melody Ryans. It’s lovely to meet you, Aaron. Would you like to sit with me for this lesson?”

He looks her up and down.

“No thanks. I’ll stick with the prodigal son over here.” He gestures to me with his thumb.

She looks between us, sniffs slightly, and patters off and away to her posse of girls, who all take turns to pat her shoulders very sympathetically.

“Hang on,” I say, turning to Aaron. “Weren’t you just saying that you wanted to—”

“Who said you could speak to me?” Aaron scoffs, throwing his bag down on the seat next to mine. “Keep your mouth closed, and we might not have any more issues.”

“Fuck you,” I grumble, but resolve to keep quiet after that. 

Aaron Ordrich is the sort of storm you don’t try to fight against. You just find shelter.

“Tsk tsk,” he says mockingly. “Language. Haven’t you heard? Father is starting a swear jar.”

29th June:

My next snippet of the inheritance is a compass, which—I have checked—does not point north. Ever.

I'm starting to wonder why Aaron even thought this was so much of a big deal. And why Sir—I can't call him Mark, I just can't—feels the need to stay for so long.

It's all beyond me.

2nd July:

I've gone up in the world of charity shop volunteers. Apparently, Maggie left a good word for me before she passed away—as well as a hefty donation—and that's got me to the prized role of Chief Volunteer™ now.

I don't know where she got the money for a donation in the sort of scale that I've heard whispers about. Maybe she had a little more than a small fortune of stuff. Maybe she had a real fortune too.

As I'm pottering about, doing all my Chief Volunteer Duties™, the bell rings and I look up to see Sir striding in, with a petulant Aaron in tow, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his beige trench coat.

"Congratulations on the promotion," Sir says blandly.

"Not really much of a promotion, Sir. I'm still a volunteer."

"Yes, well, I've heard you now have the authority to boss around other volunteers."

I scratch the back of my neck, setting down the Thomas the Tank Engine toy I had been about to shelve. I think I can see where this is going. "In theory."

"Marvellous," he says, nudging Aaron forwards. "In that case, you have a new volunteer. Be as harsh as you will. I think he needs a little tough love."

"I'm afraid corporal punishment isn't a thing in the insidious world of charity shop volunteers, Sir."

"So long as you keep him out of my hair, I couldn't care less. I just can't have him wrecking Margaret's house more than he already has."

With what Sir clearly thinks is a chilling last word, he turns and strides away. The chiming of the bell marks his exit, and the shop descends into silence once again.

After a beat, Aaron throws himself down into one of the toddler's chairs for sale, which is quite clearly ten or so sizes too small for him. He doesn't seem to care.

"I will not be volunteering," Aaron says, without looking up. "In case that wasn't obvious."

"It was. Just keep quiet, don't get underfoot, and I can't see us having much of an issue."

"Joy," He says, plucking a pocket dictionary from one pocket and flipping it open to an earmarked page.

I pick up the Thomas toy and pop it on the shelf. I wait a beat. I let a second or so slide by. I give in. "Is that a dictionary?"

"No. It's a birthday cake." He turns the page without looking up. "Obviously."

I feel myself flush bright red. "What I mean is, what are you doing reading a dictionary?"

"I like it," He answers drily. "It's something to do. I might learn new words to add to the curse I am mentally composing against your bloodline."

"Fun." I perch myself up on the counter, careful not to accidentally knock the Throat Sweet Coaster with my hip. "Or, could it be that the ineffable Aaron Ordrich actually has a hobby other than swearing bloody vengeance against everyone he knows?"

He opens his mouth like he's about to swear, realises that would prove me right, and closes it again. He shuffles about in his seat, flips another page, then looks up at me. "You ever heard this word? Vellichor?"

I shake my head. "No bells are ringing."

"Noun. Vellichor (uncountable) (neologism). Defined as the pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper. First used in this context by John Koenig in 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows."

"Huh," I say, because I feel like that's a fair reaction. "That's pretty cool."

He tosses the dictionary to me. "Test me."

I turn to the definition to Vellichor, and listen in shock as he recites it word-perfect.

"Just how freaky good is your memory?"

"Very."

3rd July:

My third part of the inheritance turned up today: a worn little book of poetry, bound in greenish leather and tattered at the edges. Enclosed in the front cover sits a little envelope (opened and then re-closed?) with a £20 note in it.

It's sweet. There's not much more to say.

5th July:

I'm cycling home from the park when I see it unfolding. Aaron and another boy, standing outside the Eggy Cafe (yes, it's really called that) yelling their heads off at one another. I can't quite make out the words, but there's definitely a lot of sounds spilling from between their lips, and they don't seem to be happy ones.

I slow down as I near them.

The boy throws his arms in the air and storms away, and Aaron flips him the bird as he stalks away.

I screech to a stop, coming in at an angle that would look really cool if it had been anyone else pulling it off. I'd like to say my bike spits up asphalt, but that's not really true. More like a load of tiny pebbles.

"What was all that about?"

"If it isn't the prodigal son," Aaron sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Don't ask. I don't want to have to add another clause to the curse. It's long enough as it is."

I tilt my head to one side. "Can curses have clauses? I always thought they were more in verse."

"Just—" Aaron sighs. "Just leave it. I'm tired."

"You know, they serve pretty good coffee in there."

"I don't want—"

"Yeah, yeah. Quit your whining. But maybe think about getting yourself a cup. You need one, for all the bloody vengeance you're wreaking."

With that, I kick back off and cycle away. I don't turn back, even though I can feel Aaron's gaze, hot against my back.

There's something about it.

It's Electric.

7th July:

We're in the middle of a heatwave right now. Prof Willow said it might just be the hottest day on Left Feild's record.

It feels like the world is going to end.

Aaron and I are in the shop, as usual. Me behind the counter. Him sitting in the toddler's chair. He's graduated from the dictionary to Maggie's old poetry book now, flicking mindlessly through the pages as he looks for a poem he likes.

"The Treasure, Rupert Brooke," He says, holding the book up by one cover so that the pages flop downwards. "This is a good one. Listen to this."

"I'm all ears," I reply, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. The Throat Sweet is starting to go rank. I'm going to have to throw it out soon.

I just can't bring myself to do it.

"When colour goes home into the eyes—" Aaron stops reading suddenly and squints at the page. "This isn't right."

"What?"

"This isn't right," he repeats. "I reckon Maggie started going senile in her old age. She's underlined a load of letters like they're typos, but they're not. They're the correct letters."

"Are you sure," I breathe, wiping my forehead again, "that it's not the heat playing tricks with your head?"

Aaron scowls at me, the book, me again, the book (once more for good measure), then sighs and sets it down on his lap. "Normally I'd say absolutely not, and add another three clauses to the curse for even suggesting that. But it's so hot today you might just be right."

"I'm thinking of closing the shop early. No one's coming in anyway." I say, plucking the book from his lap and setting it into my satchel. "I still can't believe your Father still made you go here in this heat."

"I can," Aaron grimaces. "It's very in character."

I sling the satchel over my neck and dust myself off. "Well, not much he can do if I choose to close the shop. There's a stream in a nearby forest we can go dangle our feet in if you want. We could cycle over there."

"I don't have a bike. Father's controlling all of my property at the moment. He won't give any of it back until I stop breaking things, and I won't stop breaking things until he gives it back."

"So you're at an impasse."

He nods.

"Ride with me then. We'll double up."

He looks me up and down. "That is an absolutely terrible idea, and I will not lower myself down to the point where I give it a drop of consideration."

—

Two minutes later, the shop is closed and we're on the move.

8th July:

We don't even open the shop today. We head straight from school to the stream, wind rushing by our faces as we ride recklessly right through the centre of the roads, swerving around other people, on foot and other bikes.

With his arms around my waist, his chin rested in the crook of my shoulder, his breath on my neck, I feel supercharged. I feel like I could do anything, even in this sweltering heat.

Aaron Ordrich is a storm. And I'm right in its eye.

"Am I off the list of people to curse now I'm officially your taxi service?" I ask as we hurtle right out of the town and into the forest.

Aaron snorts, bouncing as we race over rocky trails and green underbrush. "Give it a few more trips and then we'll see, Prodigal Son."

—

It's not just shoes off and feet in the stream today. I don't know which of us does it first, but soon we've both stripped off down to our pants and sat ourselves side by side in the stream, letting the cool water rush over us.

I tip my head back, feeling the soft grass of the riverbank against my neck. My eyes are closed. "Got any poetry memorised in that ineffable head of yours?"

"Only the bloody vengeance sort, I'm afraid," Aaron replies.

"Hmm, might ruin the mood," I say.

"I hate it when you're right."

A beat of silence between them, filled only by the gentle rush of water.

It's me who breaks the silence. Again. "I've got a question."

"Perish the thought."

"Shut up," I chuckle, then compose myself again. "How come you chose to sit with me?"

"You brought me here?" Aaron asks, voice toned with confusion. "Where did you want me to sit? Ten meters away?"

I flush bright red, and hope Aaron's eyes are closed like mine. "I meant on the first day. When Melody came up to you."

"I wanted to keep it secret. The whole son of a businessman thing. People try get close to me. For the money. For the company of someone more refined. So I drive them away. I put on my violent, villain act. It's easier when they're sided with father too. Easier to chase them away."

I nod, realise he probably can't see me, and make a small hum of acknowledgement.

"And then you came along. You made it clear you didn't care about my money. You didn't care what you could be losing by fighting back to me. You didn't even care about my Father, even though he'd seemingly hand-picked you as one of his future sycophants."

"Big word."

"I know."

"I guess I like that about you. You liked me—or you know, hated me—for me. Aaron Ordrich. Not for Mark."

"Don't call him that," I chuckle. "It's just wrong."

A beat of silence.

"You know the boy by the Eggy Cafe?"

"Yeah?"

"He confessed to me, not that he'd even known me long enough to do that. He just said he liked my, and I quote, bad-boy charm, and asked me to the cafe. I got there—a little bit of entertainment, you know? I was a tiny bit hopeful I might find something there— and the first thing he asked is if I'd pay for him."

"You said no?"

"I said no. We fought."

"I'm aware of that bit. It wasn't subtle."

"Well, I'm not exactly a subtle person."

"You can say that again."

"Much as I know I could make a dad joke there, I'm going to be the bigger man and refrain from that."

"You? The bigger man?" I chuckle. "That's new."

"Fuck you," He says, with absolutely no bite in it at all.

"Swear jar," I chide.

He sighs. "And then you came along, and I thought you were going to ask me to buy something for you too. But you didn't. You just cycled away. Not before, of course, you recommended me a drink. A drink that, may I add, was awful—"

"You tried it?"

"Shut up."

"You tried it?"

"Look at you, making an awful situation even worse with a real shitty recommendation." He paused, sighing deeply. "Fuck, I hate confessions."

"In that case," a cool voice said, "it's lucky you're awful at keeping secrets. And also, swear jar."

We jolt at the same time.

Standing in the shade, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and the long sleeves of his white button-up shirt rolled up above his elbows, is Sir. His eyes drift from us to the pile of clothes behind us, my satchel heaped along with them, and then back to us again.

"Coulter," he says, "you're meant to be a good influence on my vagabond son. Don't tell me these interactions are having the opposite effect."

"It's too hot to be a good influence, Sir," I respond. "Give it a few days, and then I'll try again."

"Hmm. We'll see."

"What are you doing here?" Aaron snaps.

"Same thing as you, I imagine," Sir replies, shrugging easily. "Trying to cool off."

"Did you walk?" I ask. "All the way up here?"

"I've given up on driving around here. The only reason I'd even touch that car before I leave this town is if I had to run someone off the road."

"Progress," I say. "Ominous progress, but progress nonetheless."

9th July:

I get a petite, hand held gardening shovel today. Another part of the inheritance. Another mystery.

10th July:

Not wanting to have another strange run-in with Sir, we opt today to not to turn to the stream as our release from the feverish grip of the heatwave. Instead, we down to my house, Aaron pressed up against my back once more.

"You should have told me we'd be having guests," Mum says as the two of us walk in. "I would have prepared snacks."

Aaron suddenly stiffens.

"It's okay," I say, running a hand through my hair. "You deserve to relax just as much as we do. Don't go giving yourself heatstroke."

She wags a scolding finger. "Young man, I'm not the one cycling through the baking streets with another sweaty boy at my back."

Aaron looks even more awkward—like he did standing before Prof. WIllow, but without the burning anger.

"No, but you're up to...you know, whatever it is parents get up to when their kids are out."

"Be that as it may," she shrugs, "I'll whip up some lemonade."

"Thanks, Mum," I say, kissing her on the cheek.

She ruffles my hair. "The things a parent does for their child."

I turn to Aaron, and gesture towards the stairs. "My room's up this way."

He nods, swallowing nothing but the air in his mouth, and follows me upstairs.

—

He sits on the edge of my bed, eyes darting across my bedroom. "You get on...well with your mother."

"She tries."

He sighs deeply. "Is it mean if I say I'm jealous?"

"Since when have you cared about mean?" I say, opening the draws of my desk one by one. I know there's a hand-held fan in one of them, hidden away somewhere.

I feel his gaze on my back, setting my entire body aflame. The passion he'd directed into anger, destruction, and fighting his father tooth and claw for every little action when I'd first met him now transferred into something else entirely.

"Since I met you," He says it without withdrawal. He lets its meaning linger.

I turn to face him, hands still in the draw, fingers brushing over the chain of the faulty compass. It points, now, towards him.

"Is that so, Mr. Ineffable?"

"It is, Prodigal Son."

"I never apologised for how I first treated you."

"You don't need to."

"I do."

A beat of silence, broken only by our breaths.

"You can't see it, but I'm symbolically ripping up my curse against you at the moment."

I chuckle, but my next comment is interrupted by a sudden rapping on the door.

"Come in," I call, and it swings open.

"Another guest, boys," Mum says, passing each of us a cool glass of lemonade.

Aaron looks up. "Who?"

"Your father."

Sir steps neatly in through the door, lemonade glass in his hands. He takes a slow sip. "Hello, young man."

I look up to Mum, and her notably empty hands. "Didn't you get a lemonade?" I mouth.

"Only made three," she mouths back.

Sir takes another sip. "If you're not going to be volunteering, Aaron, I'd rather you be at Margaret's estate with me. If you help lend your clever little brain to the cause of...organisation, we might just get done sooner."

The last statement seems to be just as loaded as Aaron's earlier. Maybe it runs in the family too.

Aaron stands rapidly, and I realise suddenly that between me and getting back to say goodbye to his best friend, I lose. Every time.

"I expect you two will be volunteering again tomorrow?" Sir says, looking to me. It isn't a question, not really.

"If the heatwave's over."

"It will be," he says. "I hear the storm is coming."

His eyes dart down to the compass, and his mouth opens to make the tiniest of o-shapes, like he's finally coming to an important realisation, but wants to keep it quiet.

I close the draw without looking away. Maggie gave that to me, not him. It doesn't feel like something he should see, even though I know, logically, he's looked over everything before he gives it to me.

His eyes narrow.

I've just started something. I wish I knew what.

11th July:

After every heatwave, there comes a storm. So, logic dictates that the larger the heatwave, the larger the storm—and the writhing mass of black clouds looming just above the horizon, edging slowly closer to Left Field with every passing second, certainly doesn't seem to be proving me wrong.

Aaron and I stay in the charity shop today. Sir didn't make it seem like we had much of a choice.

Aaron helps shelve a box or so of rock CDs before he sits down in his usual toddler's seat, but the silence between us is tense, stilted. Not like it was yesterday.

Maybe he realises the silent choice he made yesterday. Maybe he regrets it.

"Hey," he calls from the seat. "Do you still have that poetry book on you?"

"Yeah," I answer. A beat passes. "You want it?"

He nods. "Now it's cooler, I want to look at it again. With a clear head."

"Smartest thing you've ever said," I say, tossing the book over. "Not a high bar though."

He catches it with a little snort, and flips it open to the page.

A beat of silence.

"What is it? What's happened?"

"Gone." He holds up the book, and the entire chapter is ripped out.

"Why would anyone do that?" I squint, confused. "And who would even wan—"

Aaron stands. "Father, by the stream. God, I should have known he was up to something. He was asking me, last night, what I knew. God, I should have known."

"What? What was he—"

"Paper, paper and pen," He snaps, hands rising to his temples. "Now! I remember the page, all of it. We need to look at those not-quite-typos again."

I toss him the till's notepad and pen, staring over his shoulder as he scrawls down the poem, so fast his wrist is little more than a blur, complete with typo marks.

A beat of silence. He puts the pen down, then leans in towards the paper, squinting down at it like its holds the answer to all life's secrets.

"G...O...T...O...T"

"The letters underlined?"

"Exactly." He squints at the paper. "Go to...the banks. Follow...the needle."

"What does that even..." I freeze. "The name of the poem. The treasure. It's a fucking treasure map."

"The banks?"

"Riverbanks."

"It's a stream."

"I doubt Maggie would have cared. We know what she means."

"And the needle?"

"The compass," I breathe, already flinging on my raincoat. "She left me a faulty compass too."

"Fuck," Aaron says, following me. "Mad old Maggie had more than just a fortune of stuff. She had a fortune. And she left it to me."

I whip around. "And your father—"

"He's been looking for it, he must have been."

"We need to go," I say, hopping onto my bike. Thunder rumbles overhead. The clouds are closing in on us. "He knows where the compass is, come on. We might already be too late."

He hops on, clutching me like a life raft, and we're moving immediately. We're racing down the hill, and I don't think all the millionaires in the world could stop us now.

Rain begins to fall, slowly at first, then gaining in speed and ferocity, until we're caught in the midst of a near-Biblical deluge. Still, we cycle onwards, wet to the bone in little more than a second.

Time blurs with the onslaught of water, washing away the barriers between minutes so that the only way to tell the time at all is our heartbeats. We're at my house in no time, and I barely stop the bike before we're off and rushing in through the door.

In the living room, Sir sits opposite Mum. "Thank you so much for—"

She jumps up when she sees us, cutting him off midsentence. "Boys?"

"Not now," I yell, heart pounding in my ribcage.

"Aaron, what are you doing?" Sir calls after him.

"Fuck you!" He yells, and we scramble up the stairs, slam open the door to my room, dive for the draw. It's still there. Thank God. Sir must have thought he had more time.

Aaron is right behind me. "Got it?"

I show him, enclosed in my fist, and shove the gardening-shovel into his hands. "Come on, let's go!"

He nods firmly, and we race back down the stairs.

Sir stands in the living room doorway in shock, and Mum is trying to squeeze past him. His eyes narrow in on the compass, and he reaches out for it. "Wait!"

Aaron whirls round on him, brandishing the shovel like a knife. "Fuck you, fuck your rules, fuck your swear jar, and fuck everything you've ever taken from me. We're about to return the favour."

"Boys," Mum breathes, but we're already out and away.

Thunder booms overhead.

"Boys!" Her voice echoes after us, barely audible over the storm. "It's not safe!"

—

Lighting slices through the sky, shattering and dividing it into a million slate-grey segments of rolling clouds and streaming rain.

We're soaked to the bone, tired to the core, splattered with so much mud we may well be unrecognisable, but there's something supercharging us in that moment. Maybe it's each other.

After all, with Aaron on my side, it's Storm against storm.

The roar of a car behind us cuts through the sounds of nature like a knife.

Headlights slice through the murky darkness of the forest, like a lighthouse illuminating a tiny ship, adrift in a tempestuous sea. We are swallowed by them.

"It's father," Aaron yells over the roar of wind.

I pedal harder, and he grips tighter.

I can barely breathe. I can't breathe.

Risking a glance behind us, for the smallest fraction of a second, I see Sir's car baring down on us, wheels squealing and spitting up tidal waves of mud as it stops and starts, fighting tooth and nail for grip on the road. Behind the wheel, Sir himself, fury in his eyes, sleek hair now wild and uncouth. Mum sits next to him, paler than I've ever seen her before. Terrified out of her mind.

I mouth an apology, then turn back to the way we're travelling. We're at an advantage here, against the sleek city tech that's useless out here in the hills.

We push forwards.

—

We throw the bike to one side as we reach the stream. The compass hangs from my neck from its chain, and Aaron grabs it, flicking it open.

I'm jerked towards him, but I can't bring myself to care.

"This way!" Aaron yells, and we're running again. Somewhere in all the chaos, he takes my hand.

Thunder booms and lightning crackles overhead. Sir's car sputters and roars behind us. The world is nothing but a cacophonous roar of sound, incredible and impossible to reckon with.

Aaron grounds me in all of that, running ahead, kicking up mud behind us. He is my compass, and I follow him blindly into the forest.

An ill tree crackles behind us, and the car bursts violently through it with a metallic roar and a wretched splintering of wood. Sir has gone off the track entirely, literally and metaphorically.

He opens his car door, and it is immediately ripped off as he drives narrowly by a more solid tree.

We speed up.

He's half standing out of the car now, rain beating down on him—it barely seems to be slowing him down, like he's some sort of avenging angel—and Mum has unbuckled and leapt forwards to take the wheel.

"Stop!" He booms.

We ignore him.

I cast my eyes down to the compass, rattling against my hip as we charge forwards, and the needle seems to have found a mind of its own, urging us onwards into a sharp left. A left the car could never manage.

"Left!" I yell, and we dive forwards as a branch crashes down to the forest floor behind us.

The car screeches to a sodden halt, and Sir casts his furious gaze down to Mum, who appears to be yelling her head off at him.

"Start the car," He screams at her. "Start the car!"

"Have you lost your mind?" She screams back.

They disappear from view as we press deeper into the trees. Thunder booms overhead, and Aaron flinches.

"How do we know when we're there?" He yells over the rain.

A shattering of glass, and the needle springs right from the compass and embeds itself into the sodden earth.

"That's how," I breathe, and we dive for it, Aaron digging with the shovel, me with my hands, scrabbling and scratching at the mud.

A crackle of lightning, and the entire world turns to white for a beat. When it fades, we see a tree only a few metres away burning, even in the torrential downpour.

"Faster, faster!"

The corner of a wooden chest now pokes out from the earth, and Aaron digs the shovel under it, using it like a crowbar to lever it upwards. I leap for the exposed end, pushing it up until the entire chest heaves from the earth and lands like an upside-down turtle before us.

I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. "What now?"

An earth-shaking thud nearly knocks me from my knees, and the flaming tree hits the ground with a hellish spurt of fire, like a geyser of blood.

Sir rounds the corner, snarling like an animal. "First my own mother thought she could keep this from me, thought I wasn't worthy to hold her precious fortune, and now my own son and a fucking no-one stand in my way. Move!"

We stay rooted in place.

He pulls a gun from his pocket and levels it right at us. "I said move! Move, Goddamn you!"

Aaron puts his hands in the air and stands slowly, walking dead ahead. Sir keeps the gun raised, so it's aimed right at his own son's head.

Aaron looks right into the barrel. "You're a terrible father."

The fire is spreading now, flickering around us like a predator out for blood.

"I told the class," Aaron continues, "that I would burn down everything you'd ever loved."

The fire licks at their heels.

"I meant every last word."

"Aaron!" I yell.

He doesn't turn around, instead shaking his head furiously as he's speaking. Sir doesn't see it for what it is, but I do.

Slowly but surely, I begin dragging the chest away.

"You thought you could control my life. You thought I was just another asset to bring you profit." Aaron spits.

"I thought no such thing—"

"Lies!" Aaron screams. Thunder booms. I draw further away. "You thought you could do the same for Coulter. You see every moral, principle and shred of human decency as a stepping stone to greatness. And I'm here to provide a little bit of a wake-up call."

Sir lowers the gun, then swings it round and slams the butt of it right into Aaron's face. He staggers backwards, hands rising to protect his face. "You little shit. The only wake-up call you're providing is that I should have disciplined you a hell of a lot harder a long, long time ago."

The crackle of fiery wood tumbling down all around them, the hiss of rain as it fights valiantly against it.

I leave the treasure behind, running back to them. Aaron, not gold, is my compass.

Sir looks up and meets my eye. For a fraction of a second, he seems genuinely scared.

Then, a fiery branch whirls round, arcing towards his head, and he's battered to the ground with a guttural groan. Behind him, holding the flaming wood like a sword from heaven, stands my Mum.

"You, Sir," she thunders, "should be completely and utterly ashamed of yourself and everything you have done. You are a terrible Father, a terrible person, and, if I have a shred of say in it, will be going away for a long, long time."

A crackle of lightning, and the world goes once white once more.

12th July:

"All that," Aaron says, staring down at the singed chest on Maggie's sleek dining room table, "All that and we can't even open it."

"It does seem a little odd." Mum raps on the top with her knuckles, then turns to me. "Are you sure there's nothing she gave you that might have unlocked this?"

I shake my head.

"No key? Nothing?"

It doesn't make sense. Why would she get me all the way to the treasure, then not give me any way to open it? All she gave me was the shovel, the book, the compass and—

"Wait!" I yell. "I know where the key is!"

—

Mum has taken a sliver of the fortune and gone to book Aaron a taxi back to the city. If it makes it in time, he might just manage to wish his best friend goodbye.

The storm has passed. Or at least, one of them has. Aaron is still here, alone with me, for a little while longer.

"You've got something you want to say," he says. "I can tell."

"Smart," I say, not quite meeting his eye.

Golden sun seeps in through the grand, arched window, a liquid Midas touch that leaves everything in the room tinged with sepia. It’s not the sort of scene I would ever have expected to live through, a melancholy reserved for portraits of fields, faded photos in trim brown frames, or the beginning scenes of the Wizard of Oz.

In some twisted way, that makes sense. Aaron Ordrich is not something you live through.

He’s the end of everything. But more than that, he’s the love of my life.

And now, he looks at me from across the expanse of the table stretching out between us, sleek marbled wood lined with golden trim along the edges, curled into intricate shapes and gleaming animal heads. I look at them like that will keep me from feeling the weight of his gaze.

“Go on then,” he says. “Out with it.”

“I want to start by making one thing clear.” I raise my eyes to meet his, ringed with gold as they are. He is the sun, and I’m nothing more than a speck of dust caught in his sway. “This is not a confession.”

He pauses. "Oh? And what is it?"

"This is a conversation, from me to you. You've read the dictionary. You've memorised every Goddamn word. I have done nothing wrong, and I have nothing to be embarrassed of. I like you, and I like liking you. I don't want to lose you after we've come this far."

Aaron watches me with surprising tenderness. He crosses the table to stand opposite me.

"So, the prodigal son finally speaks his mind."

I hang my head, already feeling stupid. It was a stupid hope. "I'm sorry. I know you hate confessions."

His hand reaches the back of my neck. "Lucky for you this isn't a confession."

And he kisses me.

—

He promises he'll write, and, one day soon, come back. I trust him. I've learnt that, with the exception of one man, the Ordrich family seems to be one to trust.

Maggie wanted her fortune to go somewhere good. She didn't want it to go to a millionaire who would only use it to make himself richer. But she clearly didn't just want to give it to charity, or she would have done that herself.

I think she wanted me to make my own charity. To pave my own future. I intend to honour her wish.

ABOUT US:

Nico:

Hello! I'm Nico, he/him. I handle a lot of the post making for AMPO, while Mika moreso creates the prompts. My main blog is @/nicola-writes, I love the colour blue, and I most commonly write original fantasy fiction. My post tag is "words from nciko".

Mika:

hi! i'm Mika, otherwise known as @strawberrystarcake! i use she/her pronouns, i love the colour pink and haikyuu (both of which are very relevant facts about myself) & i run this event (and now this blog) with Nico. My post tag is "strawberrie speaks".

DNI:

- bigots (transphobes, homophobes, aphobes, ableists, racists, antisemites, islamophobes, sexists, exclusionists)

- MAPs/NOMAPs/PEARs (p*dos.)

- blogs that are 18+ or NSFW (the mods are minors, so please go away)

- Harry Potter themed blogs (we also will not rb harry potter fanfic, as a personal boundary of the mods. please respect this)

~

--

The posters went out immediately, Walter's innocent face plastered all over the town. It wasn't a recent photo, so to speak, but Ms Rose wasn't very well going to cover the village with photos of her son looking a state, was she? There was a slight mischievous edge to the photo she ended up choosing, from the remarriage of his Father a few years earlier, eyes shimmering as he smiled, flaxen hair neatly combed so that it fell to the right of his face, and gelled so it stayed that way. Freckles smattered over his sun-kissed skin and button nose. Eyebrows raised slightly, caught somewhere between excitement and surprise. He wore a nice, pale blue suit and tie, with the collar only slightly crooked.

It was the same way his Father wore his suits: sloppily.

The man, incidentally, was the main suspect. Tall and broad-shouldered, 41-and-a-half, stubble flecked over his broad chin. Eyes sunken, skin sallow, mouth little more than a taut line. He'd let go, people about town seemed to spend their time whispering. It was the second divorce that did it. He never was the same. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine him kidnapping the boy.

That's what they told themselves, themselves and each other. It was better than the truth—that it could be any one of them, the people they held closest to their heart, the man always standing by the printer at their workplace, the woman sat opposite them at the restaurant, the one they can't tear their gaze away from. Their friends and family.

Because there was no way Walter's Father was the kidnapper.

The man had slipped after the second divorce, there was no doubt about that. And when people slip that far, they usually grab onto something. Their cat. Their therapist. Their child.

Walter's Father lived for the days he could see his son, marked them off on the calendar hanging slightly askew to the left of his bed with a thick red marker that he kept in a special case solely for that purpose. He always cleaned his flat every Thursday, making sure all empty glass bottles were out of reach, dishes were cleaned (a rare occurrence for him), and every children's book sat neatly alphabetised on the stout Ikea bookshelf in the corner of the guest room (he used them to prop open doors sometimes, and The Princess and the Pea had a permanent home beneath one leg of the dining table.)

He saw Walter every weekend, and he had enough common sense to know the police would put a stop to that if he kidnapped him. There was nothing he would do to jeopardise his time with Walter. Nothing.

--

Ms Rose had long shown the police the message she'd received that fateful day, and it didn't take much time for people to pick up on it. The village newspaper ran a countdown every day of the three weeks, stamped onto the top left corner of the front page. And, as is often the case with local stories, as the number grew smaller with each passing day, the anticipation grew higher.

Seven days till Return, it read. Six days till Return. Five.

And still, no ransom demands had been made. In fact, they'd had complete radio silence from the mysterious number. The police looked into it, of course they did, but nothing came up. It was as if the person on the end simply didn't exist yet.

The regional news picked up the story, and then the national news. It was everywhere, and the same could be said for Ms Rose herself (she had never been happier with her choice of picture). Three talk shows in just as many weeks, sitting angled towards the camera with a stony face and grave eyes, fingers interlinked like she was a newscaster announcing her own son's death.

No such news had come through.

And then, it was one day left.

The police set out a camp in the location, encircling it with rolls of police tape and striped cones to match. It was an eerie place. Otherworldy.

An abandoned car park behind an equally abandoned supermarket, the only way to see was by the flickering light of stone-grey lamposts, lined in neat rows between parking spots whose lines had been long worn away. That, or whatever little lights the police had thought to bring.

It was the sort of place that seemed to run by its own laws entirely, where shopping trolleys found themselves drifting aimlessly along the hard concrete surface despite the lack of any sort of wind or slope.

The local Chief Detective Inspector, Robert Alistair, stood on the fringe of the officers he'd lined up to stare out across the hazy darkness, keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of Walter. Alistair himself watched with slitted eyes through a pair of silver-rimmed binoculars technically made for birdwatching.

A journalist, just behind the tape, snapped a photo, a momentary flash of light illuminating the car park before it fell back into darkness. Alistair saw it later, his sillhouette set against the darkness, standing with feet spread apart and officers all long the line staring in on him. His long trench coat billowed by his feet (despite the notable lack of wind), and his silver hair did the same.

In the moment, he spared it no thought, but years later, when he sat in the peeling leather chair in the Reverend's confession booth, he couldn't help but wonder if it had been a sign. A sign of the devil at work.

The moon fell behind a cloud, and his watch let out a shrill beep. He cast his eyes down towards it. Midnight. Zero days left.

A beat of silence hung in the air between them. And then, very calmly, Walter walked out of the supermarket.

Jaws dropped all down the line. Alistair's binoculars skittered from his hands and landed on the floor with a violent crack of glass. The supermarket had been entirely empty—they checked it before, and they checked it after. There was no one keeping him in there against his will to let him go at the right time. And there was no way he had been there at the beginning.

He had disappeared in the blink of an eye, and he was back in just the same way.

--

The crisis had been resolved, people said. This was not true. The mystery had been solved, people said. This was not true either. It was just easier for them to put the situation aside and get on with their lives if they told themselves it was all sorted now he was back. After all, now he was back, he'd give them all the evidence they needed to make an arrest and be done with the situation.

No one could get a word out of little Walter as to where he'd been for three months. After the first two weeks, Alistair took charge of the case himself, dispatching the previous detective inspector.

He had Ms. Rose pick Walter up from school early to bring him to a special room in the police station, the one they called the Box Room. It was taller than it was long, with room for just one table and three chairs, short and stout, with legs designed to look like crayons. The walls were a neat pastel blue, like the sky on a cloudless day, and a large mural of the beaming sun shining down on a field of sheep covered the back wall.

He and his lead Child Psychologist, Dr. Murtell, sat opposite him in the room, were simply determined to get all the information they could from him.

What did he remember? Why did he wait to come out? Was there someone in there in him? Where was he hiding?

They repeated the questions every day after school, save for the days when he was with his Father, who wouldn't let them near him, or the days his Mother dragged him along to yet more talk shows (once people realised there would be no simple answer, interest began to rise again, as it so often does.)

Walter sat just as silently for the hosts as he did for the police, crossing his arms and refusing to speak a word. Once or twice, he brought a colouring pad and began to doodle, without once looking up at the people talking to him. Once, someone asked him a question and he just looked down at the new sliver watch his Mother had gotten him.

She never let him wear a watch to an interview again.

--

Three months to the day of his reappearance, and they sat as they always did in the Box Room. Walter had brought a book.

Murtell smiled softly at him, pushing her round, red-rimmed glasses slightly further up her nose. "What's the book about?"

Walter's eyes flickered up, locking on hers. "Polar bears."

Her mouth widened into a little O shape, as if that explained everything. "Of course. They are pretty fun animals. Anything in particular about them?"

"Did you know polar bears are black under their fur?" He asked.

"I didn't, no," Murtell said. "You're a very smart young man."

"You're really obvious with your baby talk," Walter said blandly, then looked back down at his book. "I'm nine, not two."

Alistair massaged his temples. In recent days, he'd caught his hands more and more often drifting up to his face to worry away at the dark bags under his eyes. He didn't always recognise himself when he looked in the mirror. "Listen, we're not trying to hurt you here. We want to help you, and make sure you're completely okay. The best way we can do that is by catching whoever took you and bringing them to justice."

Walter snapped the book closed. "You've said that one already."

"That doesn't make it any less true."

"But," Walter tugged at a strand of his tousled hair, "it does make it a waste of both of our time."

"And what are you planning to do with all that time?" Alistair snapped. "Go on more talk shows? Fly to goddamn France?"

Murtell raised a calming hand in his direction, but he ignored it.

"Read about polar bears," Walter answered calmly. Then: "Have you ever been on a talk show before? They have all sorts of snacks behind the scenes, like those really powdery doughnuts. They don't let me eat them until after the show though, or they say I'll get all messy. So I just have to sit there, knowing the doughnuts are just out of reach. And then, finally, when I get to them, the people there hand me a box of raisins, pat me on the head, and take the doughnuts away ."

Alistair ran a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath as he leaned back on his chair. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Murtell nodded serenely. "Do these sessions feel just as frustrating as that?"

"You say you'll help," Walter said, "but then you don't believe me when I say I don't know anything. You just ask again."

"I think it's about time we finished these sessions," Murtell said softly. "We don't want to waste your time any longer."

Walter smiled softly. "I think I'd like that."

"Good," Murtell smiled. "If you do remember anything later on, you can always come in and let us know."

"That won't happen," Walter smiled tightly. "Thank you though."

"Bull," Alistair snapped, slamming his hands down on the table as he rocketed up from it. "You haven't told us anything! We're not just going to let you leave."

"Robert," Murtell warned. "Control yourself."

Alistair snorted, turned sharply and stormed from the room. The door swung closed behind him, handle coming to rest with a soft 'click'. A beat of silence hung in the air.

"I don't remember anything," Walter whispered, staring down at the back cover of his book. "Not one bit."

--

"Robert," Murtell pressed later, in the otherwise empty Meeting Room, chairs angled away from the table like the room was filled with ghosts, silently watching and judging them both, "you're making a mistake which I can't, in good faith, allow to go unchallenged."

Alistair grunted and ran a hand through his hair. "Screw your good faith. Three months you've been unable to get a word out of him. You finally pull your weight and get a lead—three whole weeks of complete goddamn amnesia, not a second he remembers—and now you want to let him go? Bull."

"For his own mental health, and the sake of the investigation, I say we keep this quiet. He'll be more cooperative if we let him get back to his life."

Alistair loomed over her, setting sun gleaming in through the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. It matched the fire in his eyes. "Actually, Doctor, I think it's time we let you get back to yours. You're relieved from duty."

Murtell drew back, eyes widening in shock. "You can't—"

"I think you'll find that's not true," Alistair shot back. "I am the Cheif Detective Inspector of a case that has caught the hearts of a nation. I am going to get it solved, mark my words."

"Which is why we need to get doctors on him," Murtell stressed. "You said it yourself, we're making sure he's okay. The best way to do that is not to hurt him ourselves, not to continue interrogating a nine-year-old like he's a hardened criminal."

"So you suggest I step back?"

"I suggest we both step back," Murtell replied softly. "Clear our heads, make sure we're thinking rationally."

"I'm thinking more rationally now than I ever have before," Alistar said coolly—a lie—, "So believe I am completely confident when I say you're fired. Pack your bags."

Murtell stared him down, a hundred thousand unspoken emotions flashing through her eyes. "Time will prove me right on this one, Robert."

"If you need time to prove you right," Alistair growled, "then you've already lost."

--

Murtell paid Walter one final visit, out of hours, to let him know as much as she could about the future of his case. The future of his life, really. It was a blustery Friday night, breeze tugging at the fraying ends of her scarf and sending autumn leaves flurrying through the air, dancing in and out of her eyeline as she walked. She clutched her woollen coat close to her chest like the feeble layering it provided, rubbing over her skin, would be enough to keep her warm—she shivered as the thought crossed her mind, as if the universe itself was working to prove her wrong.

Maybe it was. Or maybe it was just telling her she had bigger fish to fry.

She had contacted Walter's Father in advance, and he only agreed to let her see them both once she revealed that she wasn't with the Police anymore—information she wasn't technically allowed to reveal.

He swung open the door to greet her before she could even ring the doorbell, and beckoned her in with a furtive glance and nod of his head. The door swung shut behind him.

"Good evening," she said, plucking her scarf from around her neck. "Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Rose."

"Lewis," the man grunted. "And thank Walter. His idea, not mine. If it were up to me, you'd be staying far, far away."

Murtell pursed her lips slightly, winding her scarf around her wrists like bindings. "I wasn't under the impression he was so fond of me," she said slowly, "but it's comforting to know that I gave him someone he could turn to in an institution full of result-driven, angry-eyebrowed—" she paused, hands rising like she was trying to think up a word, physically pluck it from the air in front of her, "—bullies. How did he talk you into it?"

Lewis snorted, turning around to gesture her into the living room. "Everyone has their weak spots."

Walter sat on one side of the tangerine-hue couch, legs curled in on themselves and polar bear book balanced on them. He looked up as she walked in, face breaking into a half-smile.

"Miss Murtell," he breathed, shifting slightly. "What are you doing here?"

Murtell cocked her head in Lewis's direction. "I thought you said—"

"You'll get it," Lewis said, "one of these days."

Murtell filed that away for a later date, turning back to Walter. "Look, I want to be completely open with you about what's happening next. Because, as much as it might sound like baby talk, you really are a very smart young man, and you deserve to be treated as such."

Murtell heard Lewis' breath catch in his throat behind her, but she focused her gaze on Walter, who nodded as gravely as a nine-year-old can.

"Alistair doesn't like that I've said we'll let you go, so I've been removed from both the case and work with the police. It's likely he will continue to investigate you."

Walter's face fell, and Murtell crouched down to his level, leaning closer as she lowered her voice to her little more than a conspiratorial whisper. "I want to tell you to forget them all. Do what you need to to get through it, read as many polar bear books as you like, and stay safe. And if you ever have anything you want to say or people you want to complain about, I want you to know I am still here. I'm giving your Father my number. You two can contact me at any time."

Walter nodded gravely.

“It’s never too late to make a change for the better,” Murtell smiled. “You have that power.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ask.”

--

Walter was 11-and-two-thirds when the police finally announced the case cold.

Almost as cold as Alistair's body, found crumpled at all the wrong angles on the dirt-grey ground at the bottom of the concrete Police Station stairs a year prior. Blood pooled out from his temple, grey hairs strewn over his face, arms blown back like he was flailing for balance. Like someone had pushed him.

Following his death, interest in Walter's case peaked—had Alistair been getting too close for the kidnappers liking? Or was it just a coincidence?—then dwindled, and life returned to normal.

--

Walter Catherine Rose was 12 when he disappeared again. He and his Mother, a wealthy and influential public figure of thirty-eight-and-three-sevenths, stood leaning against the worn-down wooden fences that separated them from the Petting Zoo pigsty.

"So," she asked, staring ahead at the pigs bucking and rolling in the mud, "how's this for a day out?"

"It's nice," Walter replied simply. She could hear the slight tremor in his voice. "Did you know pigs are the only—"

"Walter, please," Ms Rose sighed, "You're giving me fact overload."

"I was only saying."

"Well, don't," came her frosty reply. Then: "Save your talking for the show tomorrow. First one in a while, eh?"

"I thought all that had died down," Walter sighed, dangling his arms over the fence so his fingertips brushed against the muddied, grainy wooden surface on the other side. "Why are people still interested?"

"It's a cold case show," Ms Rose replied. "It's a living."

"It's just—" Walter lurched forwards, coughing and spluttering. "I feel sick."

Ms Rose stared square ahead, watching the horizon line like it would give her all the answers to life. "You don't feel sick that quickly. It doesn't work like that."

“I’m going to—”

“No, you’re not,” his Mother cut him off, without looking down.

Silence hung in the air between them. She swung her gaze to look at him, finally, after an era, and he was gone. Empty air stood where he had been, finger-trails through the mud on the gate the only sign that he was ever there at all.

--

Murtell burst in through the door, silver key clutched in her hands tight enough to leave indentations running through her palm. “Again?” She cried, breath hitched. “There’s no way.”

Lewis grimaced, running a hand through his tousled hair. “Cath, breathe. Panicking won’t help either of us think. We’re both going to take a walk to the park; we need the fresh air.”

Murtell shook her head. “No, we need to do something. I was too late last time, I came into the fsituation ter he was already returned. But this time there’s no date, he could be anywhere. We need to find him. We need to do something to help.”

“The best way we can help is take a walk,” Lewis said.

Murtell pursed her lips, tugging at her scarf. “You know something.”

Lewis sighed slowly and held up an envelope, torn open, yellowed at the edges like it had been sitting in a box for hundreds of years. On the front, that day’s date was stamped. He angled it towards Murtell, who plucked it carefully from his fingers and pulled from within a single piece of lined paper, folded roughly into a square.

She unfolded it, letting the rough morning light stream through and illuminate its thin fibres. Nothing on it but the words THE PARK scrawled in a child’s writing.

“How long have you had this?”

“A long time,” Lewis replied. “Someone I trust very dearly gave it to me.”

“Do I get to know who?” Murtell asked.

“I’ve spent two years trying to get you to think I’m not crazy,” Lewis shot back, “you need to see it to believe it.”

“Try me.”

Lewis smirked, corner of his mouth rising to tug at his sallow cheek. “Let’s go take a walk.”

--

The park was strangely empty, a tension thick as fog hanging in the early morning air, pulsating and thrumming like pure electricity. Like fire. Maybe that was what drove everyone else away, or maybe that was what called Murtell and Lewis in. They ran, which self-proclaimed sensible adults don’t often do, all the way there, and then burst through the gates huffing and puffing.

The world seemed to still around them.

Murtell turned to Lewis, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “So, what now?”

Lewis turned his head to peer about the park. “We wait?”

"Brilliant plan," Murtell said drily. "How long?"

"How should I know?" Lewis asked. "I only—"

“Hello,” an old man’s voice called out from behind them. They whipped around. “Mr. and Mrs Rose?”

“Murtell,” Murtell replied slowly, pretending not to notice the slight flicker of confusion in the man’s expression. “And you?”

“An old friend,” the old man said, child-like grin lighting up his face and wiping away the confusion in an instant, silver hairs gleaming golden, almost as bright as the shimmer in his eyes. “Emphasis on the old. Or maybe the friend. Depends which you consider more important.”

“What?” Lewis asked. “What are you talking about?”

The man laced his fingers together. “Two months after Walter returned, you were visited by a teenager. A 19-year-old, if I remember correctly. He told you various things: his name, some proof of identity, to trust Murtell, but only once she cut ties with the police. And then, he gave you an envelope, yes?”

Murtell turned to face Lewis, watching as he sucked in a deep breath and leant backwards, blinking like couldn’t believe his eyes. “How did you—”

Murtell blinked, and a teenager had suddenly appeared at his side, lanky and long-limbed, with scruffy blonde hair and a smattering of freckles over his face. Sixteen at most. “That boy was Walter Catherine Rose. He knew the date and location because of me.” The boy stuck out his hand. “Also Walter Catherine Rose.”

“What?” Murtell breathed. “I don’t understand.”

“I got here by remembering this little meeting,” the old man said. “By this point, I’m able to control it slightly. Although I must have gotten my memories slightly muddled. Dates and times are very hard for me, you have to understand.” He held out his hand too. “Walter Catherine Rose, at your service.”

Murtell raised her hands to massage her temples, closing her eyes like shutting out everything she could see would make it easier to concentrate on what she was hearing, and Lewis pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t understand,” he grimaced.

“I didn’t, for so long,” Elderly Walter smiled, “but I think I’ve got it now. But first, to quell your panic, your twelve-year-old Walter is currently safe with a kindly Priest in South America. He’ll be back in a week or so.”

“Lovely man,” 16-year-old Walter nodded.

“A—” Murtell started, stopped, started again. Stopped, sucked in a deep breath, and tried again. “What?”

“There are Walters dotted about his living history, echoes all throughout his lifetime of different versions of himself. I think there’s a twenty-four-year-old Walter having an interesting discussion with Robert Alistair right about now, or, in your time, about a year-and-a-half ago. There’s a thirty-six-year-old Walter attending a wedding in a lovely sky blue suit about four years in the future. There’s a fifty-six-year-old Walter at his own funeral.” He shuddered. “Strange to consider how soon that is. After this, I'm going to head back to the day of Walter's first disappearance and send his Mother a lovely text.”

“These aren’t spoilers?” 16-year-old Walter asked cheekily.

“Think of it more as a road map,” Elderly Walter replied.

“How is all this happening?” Murtell gaped. When all heads swung to her, she tried to backtrack slightly, but to no avail. “I mean, sorry to interrupt a moment, but I really don’t get it.”

“It’s okay, breathe,” 16-year-old Walter said placatingly. “I’m sure we’re about to find out. I don’t really know either, so, old me, spill the beans.”

“I’ve spent my life studying this, unpicking and unravelling the secrets of time and the way it works. And I've discovered so much. Time isn’t truly linear. Every action has effects that ripple backwards and forwards in time, affecting things like a complicated spider’s web of cause and effect.” Elderly Walter grinned. “And there are defining moments so strong that they change the course of someone’s life. So strong that they retroactively affect the past.”

“I don’t—” Murtell paused. “That doesn’t make logical sense.”

“Ripples spread in all directions, not just forwards,” Elderly Walter replied. “You told Walter, in a time of need, that he—well, I—would always have the power to make a change, and in doing so, you gave him—well, me—that power. You told could me I could contact you at any time, and look, here I am.”

“How did I do that?” Murtell asked, voice wrought with emotion. “I’m just a person.”

“Every act of kindness is remembered. When you care, it can change someone’s world." Walter said gravely. It, despite being a wizened voice, croaky and hoarse, sounded just like him. "At first, all the disappearing was involuntary. A snap of the fingers, a stray thought. But I channelled my energy, and here I am.”

Lewis looked him up and down. “I’m proud of you, kid.”

“You’re a great Dad,” 16-year-old Walter piped in softly. Then, even softer: “Try taking this all to court. Ms Rose has lost me twice in her care. You could argue negligence there.”

Lewis stared at him, then swallowed back a sob. Murtell put a comforting hand on his shoulder. Everything was going to be alright, she could feel it.

And she was right.

--

Ms. Rose sat in a cold blue seat of a talk show, beneath cold blue lights. She felt like she was underwater, like the air was being sucked from between her lips, like she was filling up with water inside and out.

“I think,” she whispered, “looking back, this was all Walter’s fault.”

She was booed off the stage.