Marcie shot up in bed.

That couldn’t have been it. She didn’t jump. There had to be more. She didn’t…

Vision returned to her slowly. The room she was in was familiar, locked behind her haze of memory. She was getting pretty tired of that. The walls were completely bare. No decorations, no shelves, nothing. Cargo pants, shirts, and a work jacket, all caked in mud, were strewn across the floor, and the whole room smelled something like a wet dog.

Sunlight glowed through shut window blinds, enough to light the room but obscuring the view to the outdoors. Was it morning again?

Pain pulsated around her spine and pounded from her legs up to her skull. This was the first time she’d felt genuine pain since her resurrection. Even when they were attacked by that monster, she’d only screamed because she was frightened. It could have torn her apart all day and she would have felt nothing but dull pin pricks or the feeling of pulling off a partially healed scab. But this. This pain had her body raging against her as she moved. This felt like after she was full-body tackled by Curt sophomore year. The damn bastard wasn’t even given detention for that.

Sand particles had found their way between her grinding teeth, sending a rattling crunch sound through her skull. A slow migraine in her head felt like the grinding of a mortar and pestle. Questions swarmed her thoughts. What happened at the beach? Why was she in such pain? Was pain good or bad? Did it mean she was more alive or dying all over again? Should she tell Hunter?

She was scared again now.

Everything was suddenly so warm, like burning coals had sunk into the pit of her chest cavity. The sun was too hot and her clothes were clinging to her body. She felt like she was drying out like a raisin. Marcie threw off the blankets and tore the button- down overshirt Hunter had styled her witht off her shoulders, leaving only her lace undershirt on.

A knock came at the door to the room as she had her thumb around the waistband of her jeans. She turned, hoping it was Hunter, even if she was nervous to tell him what was going on. She wanted to lay her head on his chest and convince herself it would all be okay. Disappointingly, she saw Grant poke his head in. Grant’s face lit up with surprise and relief.

“Coffee?” He offered.

Marcie sat up in the bed and brought the scratchy blankets up with her. She’d deal with her apparent heatstroke if it meant she’d be as hidden away from Grant Jeong as she could make herself.

“Sure.”

Grant popped back out of the door and after a moment, returned with two steaming mugs. He sat in a chair near the bed, positioned where a visitor would sit to watch over a hospital patient. One of the mugs contained plain black coffee. Marcie never understood how Grant could drink something so vile. She was about to voice her very correct opinion and demand he at least put some cream and sugar in hers until she saw the other mug. Milky brown liquid filled the cup, probably more cream than coffee, and small clumps of cinnamon floated around the surface.

“You remember how I take my coffee?” asked Marcie. She surprised herself with how inviting her voice sounded, despite the fact that she’d yet to extend a hand to take the mug or even unwrap herself from her blankets.

“Lotta cream, lotta sugar, cinnamon on top,” he recounted bashfully.

Was this gesture supposed to make her feel better? Grant had remembered their weekly coffee meetups in their pre-adolescence all this time. He remembered how Marcie had to use up most of the weekly allowance that her dad kept secret from her mom just to get a latte and a coffee cake and he had to go to the ATM to take cash out so he could hide from his parents that he was dabbling in the dark art of coffee drinking so they wouldn’t see the charge on their credit card. He remembered bonding over having chaotic home lives and overbearing immigrant mothers and getting made fun of at Ridgewood. He remembered all this time, and yet he still decided to make nice with their cruelest bullies.

The unclouded memories of Annabelle and her friendship was evidence that at least one of them could change. But she didn’t know Marcie before Ridgeview. Grant had.

“I guess, I’ll just–uhh–put it on the night stand,” he said. He placed the mug quickly, accidentally clicking it against the bedside lamp, in an attempt to rush out of the room. Another round of aches rolled over her.

“¡Nooo! No te vayas.” she squeaked out. “Please.” Without thinking, she’d reached out to grab Grant by the shirt, pulling him back down.

“Okay, okay,” he said comfortingly.

Moments passed before Marcie could find any words. “Where's Hunter?”

Grant cocked an incredulous eyebrow. “He's in the dining room talking to your uncle and his friend. Apparently, the rest of the neighborhood watch is supposed to get here soon.”

“My uncle? What the hell does my uncle have to do with this? What’s going on?” Marcie attempted to launch herself out of bed, but all her body could manage was a slow lurch as more aches came. Grant pushed out his hands. In any other circumstance, he might’ve been able to shove her back, but Marcie didn’t budge.

“Damn, Hunter told me you got a lot stronger, but this is…” Grant started playfully pushing back on her shoulders to try and move her until he noticed the death glare she was giving him. “Your uncle helped us keep you in one piece long enough to get you off the beach. They did some sort of ‘healing ritual’ on you? Hunter was up in arms at first…You need to rest. I don’t know what happened, but you were falling apart. It wasn’t until we got back here and you ate that you started going back to normal. Man, you ate a lot.”

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The word ‘normal’ felt so out of place. What was normal about this at all? Her soul had been shoved back into a corpse whose mechanisms she didn’t understand. This must have been what it felt like to contract a rare disease before the advent of medicine, unable to comprehend why your body worked the way it did, scared and confused when what few solutions you had started to make less and less sense.

Marcie laid back down and Grant relaxed. They drank their coffees together in silence. Grant had trouble meeting her eye. For a moment, she wondered if her eyepatch had slipped. Seeing him shift and look uncomfortably from the wall to the ground, she realized that he hadn’t looked at her directly since they’d met again.

There were very few people Marcie was good at reading, and even then her intuition never seemed to reflect the whole picture. Grant was especially difficult. He could have been hiding something, or he could be looking away simply because he didn’t know what to say. She had so many questions she needed answers to. Questions for Grant, for Tío. And she thought she might burst if they didn’t start talking.

“What happened to me?” she asked.

“I told you, Mar, I don’t know,” he assured.

“No. Grant. What happened to me?”

The distance between them grew. Like the air between them became thicker, harder to reach through. She wrapped her fingers around his arm, careful not to grip it too hard. Small would be the last word she would ever use to describe Grant Jeong. And yet, at that moment, he seemed smaller than she’d ever seen him, shriveling deep into his chair and paying no mind to the coffee splashed onto his track pants.

“Nobody saw it happen. Julie–” Grant paused, and seemed to gauge her reaction to the name, fearful he accidentally struck a nerve. Marcie didn’t wince, didn’t even really acknowledge it. She’d resigned herself to the fact a long time ago that Julie Lovett would be in her life forever. “She was the closest, but even she says she doesn’t know. None of us do.”

“I didn’t think you would know. And Julie didn’t do it.” agreed Marcie.

“Oh my god! You have your memories back?” Grant rose with excitement.

Marcie shook her head. “Not really. Only a few. I just remember she walked away before it happened. But I meant before that. You and me. And I have these memories of Annabelle and I. Were we…friends?”

She almost couldn’t believe she was saying it.

Grant sighed. “Yeah. You and Annabelle got closer, but I hesitate to call anyone her friend.” His comment seemed to make himself laugh, though it barely provided any relief from the conversation.

“And you and I? We were friends again?” The question came out like a staunch atheist grilling a theologian. The edge of disbelief was so cutting, it whittled down Grant’s confidence even further. He shriveled inward, and seeing him so small felt so wrong to her.

“I’m sorry.” Marcie down at her twiddling thumbs, focusing in on small patches of skin that were half-scabbed and red like they’d been sandpapered down and left to fester.

“Please don’t apologize,” Grant said. His spoon hit ceramic as he stirred his coffee. It was largely untouched and certainly cold by then. Small drops fell from Grant's face into the mug and were swept into the whirlpool. “I’d like to say we were friends again. But I never asked. Everyone was stuck in the Cove – maybe we were just lonely.”

“Hey could we maybe not…tell Hunter about the Annabelle thing–?”

Marcie halted. She would’ve preferred to carry on with the conversation normally, but Grant was crying to the point of hiccuping. She’d never been good with tears, especially when they fell from the cheeks of any of the men in her life. Even over the years with three younger siblings and two working parents, it only got marginally easier. When she was tasked with watching them, it was her duty to soothe every scrape, bump, and cut. Even Hunter, crybaby that he was, gave her ample opportunity to up her nurturing chops. Being the ‘mom friend’ had become her natural default, despite the fact that she didn’t really have any friends. Even so, she still could never figure out how to properly comfort someone weeping. And in this case she didn’t know if she wanted to.

Good. He should be sad. He should hate himself and think he’s a terrible person. So why was she crying too? Or at least, her eye was attempting its best facsimile considering her body was devoid of tears to shed.

“I wish I remembered,” Marcie cried. “But all I can see is that terrible side of you, Grant. I was so gung ho about getting you on board, I guess I didn’t consider what it would be like to actually face you.”

Grant wouldn’t stop spinning his coffee. “I know how you feel. There were so many things I wanted to say to you. And you’re here which is crazy! And here I am, still unable to speak up. It just sucks that I don’t know what happened to you. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“There’s still time. I don’t know if I can die twice, but you’re right. I’m here now.” Marcie placed a hand on Grant’s shaking knee.

A resolve came over him and he met Marcie’s eye. “You have every right to be angry or uneasy around me. It’s what I deserve. I guess I thought that I could start moving on from who I am. I’ve been pretty unhappy with Julie and all of them for a while. I’ve been pretty unhappy with myself. And when you got brought into the fold and we actually got to talking again, it gave me a lot of hope. I want to be different…Things were so easy when we were kids.”

“Is that everything?” asked Marcie.

He wiped his glossy eyes. “I missed you so much, Mar.”

Maybe at another time, in another life, Marcie would have felt compelled to hug Grant. She’d wrap her arms around him and tell him that everything was okay and she could forgive and forget. But Marcie was getting really sick of forgetting, and she couldn’t fathom where her past self dug up any forgiveness. And anyway, there were bigger fish to fry.

Another knock came at the door. Hunter walked through and stopped at the sight of a bawling Grant, then he ran when he saw a conscious Marcie.

“Dude. Why didn't you tell me she was awake,” he chastised. Then to her, “You're okay!”

He swaddled her in a tight hug. She returned it even though it flared her aches. All of her simmering frustration seemed to boil away. Deep breaths allowed both of them to compose themselves. “How are you feeling?”

The pain had almost slipped from her memory too, until another one pulsed in her shoulder. She rolled her shoulder back in a subtle motion to massage it. “I’m fine. I think it’s all back to normal.”

Hunter pressed his palm into his forehead. “This is why we need the Necronomicon back. I have no idea what could happen to you. You just started fading out of nowhere and if it weren’t for your uncle–”

He took another deep breath. “Everyone just arrived. They want to talk to us. All of us.” His face had darkened as he turned to include Grant as well.

“The neighborhood watch,” Marcie acknowledged, trying to keep the panic and confusion out of her voice. “What do they know?”

Hunter’s face portrayed a foreboding concern. “Your uncle wouldn’t tell me, but it's obvious it's more than we do.”

That didn’t necessarily make her feel much better.