Seven years after my death, the boy I grew up with became the biggest movie star in the country. Taylor was the darling of the silver screen, a man with a golden future, a stunning fiancée, and a life everyone envied. Then, during the live broadcast of a popular celebrity couple’s reality show, he found my diary. Inside were ten years of my unrequited love for him, and the quiet, agonizing details of the nights I was bullied by his fiancée. The very last page read: “My world is about to rain. Can you come and hold an umbrella for me?” The date at the bottom was the day before I jumped from the rooftop. And then, he went mad. … I have been dead for seven years, my spirit tethered to Taylor’s side, forced to watch him. Today, he brought his fiancée, Carlin, back to the old Victorian house where we had grown up together. The yard was packed with heavy camera rigs, filming a live-streamed dating show that was currently broadcasting to millions of viewers online. On the screen of a nearby production monitor, the live chat was scrolling at a dizzying speed. [user_9921: OMG Taylor and Carlin are finally on a show together!] [golden_hour: True love is real. Get married already, we’ve got the marriage license ready for you!] Carlin pushed open the door to my old bedroom. She immediately covered her nose with an exaggerated, delicate pout, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Oh, Taylor, it smells so musty in here. Like cheap, old dust. It’s suffocating.” Taylor stood in the doorway, the harsh midday sun casting a shadow that cut his face in half—one side bright, the other cast in darkness. He looked down at Carlin, his eyes filled with a tenderness that seemed almost performative. He reached out, playfully pinching her nose, and smiled for the cameras. That smile was once the brightest light of my entire youth. “Lucy was always a slob,” he said, his voice light and dismissive. “Don’t go in. You’ll ruin your shoes.” He had forgotten. This room was the one he had spent weeks painting and decorating for me when he was seventeen, using the very first paycheck he earned from his summer job. Now, I was just “that slob, Lucy.” My spirit stood directly in front of him, separated by the seven-year chasm of my death, watching the casual disgust pooling in his eyes. The live chat immediately exploded at the mention of my name. [cozy_vibes: Who is Lucy? Sounds like she had history with him?] [pop_culture_nerd: Are you new here? Just some clingy neighbor girl from back in the day. Taylor mentioned her in an old interview once—said she was a total parasite.] [sweet_pea: I hate the childhood-friend trope. Who did she think she was, trying to compete with our Carlin?] [chloe_fan_page: Look at Carlin’s face. She looks so uncomfortable. This Lucy person must have been trash.] Carlin glanced at the production monitor, saw the comments, and her eyes welled with instant, practiced tears. She leaned into Taylor’s chest, looking up at him with a helpless, fragile expression. “Taylor, tell them not to say things like that… Lucy… she was just the girl next door. Maybe… maybe she was just a little too intense sometimes, but she didn’t mean any harm.” It was a masterclass in manipulation. With just a few soft words, she painted me as a desperate, boundaries-crossing stalker, while simultaneously establishing herself as the saint who pitied me. Taylor let out a cold laugh, tightening his arm around her waist. He looked directly into the camera lens, his voice steady, deliberate, and cruel. “She was a selfish, cold-blooded leech who would do anything for a handout. It’s been seven years, and she hasn’t called once. We don’t talk about her. She’s bad luck.” My ghost stood close enough to touch him, staring at the sheer aversion etched into his features. “It’s been seven years, Taylor. How was I supposed to call you?” “Should I have burned letters to the grave? Or should I have crawled into your bed at midnight to ask you if, in all these years, you ever woke up in the dark and thought of me, even once?” To keep up her image of the perfect, dutiful fiancée for the cameras, Carlin offered to help clean up the dusty room. “Taylor, this is where you grew up. It’s full of your history,” she said, her voice soft. “Let’s clean it together. Consider it… a way to say a proper goodbye to the past.” Still wearing her four-inch designer heels, she swayed gracefully into the room. Her eyes scanned the floor and locked onto a dusty, weathered cedar chest tucked beneath the bed frame. She walked over, pretending to lean down to move a side table, but as she did, her expensive heel “accidentally” slipped. With precise, heavy force, she kicked the wooden latch of the old chest. With a loud crack, the fragile, dry wood of the old chest splintered. The contents spilled out across the floorboards. There were old, scratched CDs I had saved up for weeks to buy; the hollow shell of a tiny turtle we had raised together; and… A faded, lock-bound diary. The diary rolled out from the pile of clutter, stopping right at Taylor’s feet. A tarnished, faded teddy bear keychain hung from its lock. That keychain was a cheap trinket Taylor had pulled from his pocket on his sixteenth birthday. I had saved up for months to buy him a pair of limited-edition sneakers, and he had felt so awkward about not having a gift for me that he tossed the keychain in my lap. He had said, “Here. Consider yourself lucky.” Taylor’s gaze froze on the diary. He bent down and picked it up, his fingers lingering on the worn cover. Carlin immediately chimed in, her laughter sharp and high-pitched. “Oh, what’s this?” She covered her mouth, giggling. “Don’t tell me it’s Lucy’s diary. Do you think it’s full of love letters to some random guy? Taylor, open it! Let us see what kind of terrible taste she had!” The moment the words left her mouth, Taylor’s expression darkened. His fingers gripped the small, fragile brass padlock. The veins in his hand bulged, and with a sudden, violent wrench, the metal snapped. He tore the diary open, flipping to the very first page. The paper held my neat, youthful handwriting. “September 3, 2008. Sunny. Taylor talked to the girl in the class next to ours again today. My chest felt tight. I hate that I’m like this.” Taylor read it and let out a dry, mocking laugh. Without a second thought, he turned the diary toward the camera crew following him. “Come on, let’s give the audience a laugh,” he said, his voice dripping with condescension. “A little adolescent melodrama to liven up the stream.” My spirit froze in the air. He was going to take the quietest, most vulnerable pieces of my soul and turn them into a punchline for millions of strangers. The live chat went wild. [user_4431: LMAO Taylor is savage! Public execution!] [drama_mama: Who is this Lucy? The thirst was real. How embarrassing to be exposed like this.] [hater_blocker: I bet ten bucks the rest of this diary is just her scheming to trap him.] Encouraged by the surge in live viewers, Taylor continued to flip through the pages, his tone theatrical and mocking. “June 7, 2012. Pouring rain.” “To make sure I get into the same college as Taylor, I haven’t gone to sleep before two in the morning for a year. My head feels like it’s splitting open. The exams are finally over today. I hope we both get what we want.” He looked up at the camera, raising an eyebrow. “Pure self-martyrdom,” he scoffed. “My grades were perfect back then. I didn’t need her staying up late to ride my coattails.” Carlin laughed, leaning against his shoulder. “Wow, she was really playing the long game, wasn’t she? Trying to guilt you even back in high school. Taylor, you must have been so exhausted dealing with her.” But he had forgotten. That was the year he had become addicted to online gaming, and his GPA had tanked. He had forgotten the storm-ravaged night he stood on my porch, his eyes red and swollen, gripping my hands like a drowning man, begging me. “Lucy, please. Help me. I don’t want to go to some community college. Please, you’re the only one who can help me pass.” It was for him that I stopped sleeping. I spent every night summarizing his textbooks, highlighting formulas, predicting exam questions. That was the year my health began to fail. That was the year I developed the chronic insomnia and the stomach ulcers that would never truly heal. He flipped the page to our sophomore year of college. “October 1, 2014. Overcast.” “Taylor has a girlfriend now. It’s the beautiful transfer student, Carlin. He told me he loves her. He said he’d do anything for her. Tonight, my pillow felt wet, like the rain from the window had leaked inside.” Taylor’s face flushed with a smug, victorious satisfaction. He turned around, and in front of millions of viewers, he pressed a deep, lingering kiss to Carlin’s forehead. “Sorry to disappoint you, Lucy,” he murmured into the microphone, his voice dripping with romantic charm. “But my eyes have only ever been on Carlin. As for you… you were just an anchor I wanted to cut loose.” The chat erupted into a frenzy of swooning fans. The hashtag #TaylorTheUltimateFiancé began trending nationally. I looked at his face, feeling a wave of nausea. I remembered the night he got blindingly drunk, sobbing under my dorm window. He had held me so tight I couldn’t breathe, crying into my shoulder, “Lucy, she said I’m not famous enough. She said I don’t fit in her world and she wants to break up. Lucy, don’t you ever leave me. I’m so scared.” But the next morning, sober and cold, he had taken Carlin’s hand and told me, “Lucy, stay away from me. Carlin gets upset when she sees you around.” It was terrifying how easily a person’s memory could be rewritten to fit their own convenience. Because of this impromptu reading, the stream’s viewership hit an all-time record for the platform. The hashtags #LucyTheManipulator and #LucyTheParasite were pushed to the top of the trending topics by Taylor’s public relations team, marked with a stark, deep red “Popular” tag. He was using my dead, silent heart to build a pedestal for his own career. He kept flipping pages, determined to tear down whatever shred of my dignity remained. But as the dates in the diary progressed, the tone of the entries grew heavier, darker, and more suffocating. The smirk on Taylor’s face slowly began to fade. “December 24, 2015. Snowing.” “It’s Christmas Eve. Carlin and her friends dragged me to the abandoned cold storage unit behind the dining hall. When they left, they locked the heavy iron door from the outside.” “It’s so cold. Taylor, where are you? I’ve called you twenty-three times. Why won’t you answer?” The atmosphere in the live chat suddenly froze. The stream of comments stopped for several long seconds, leaving a bizarre, empty void on the screen. Then, the tide turned. [user_112: Wait… what? Locked in cold storage? Is this… is this real?] [west_coast_girl: Holy crap. That’s not drama, that’s straight-up assault and kidnapping. Is Carlin a psycho?] [melancholy: Twenty-three missed calls… Oh my god, she must have been freezing to death.] [watcher_7: I don’t think this diary is a joke anymore.] Carlin’s face turned paper-white. She threw herself into Taylor’s arms, her tears flowing instantly, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “It’s a lie! Taylor, she’s lying! I would never do something like that! She was jealous of me, she made up these awful stories to ruin my life! She’s sick!” Taylor looked like he had been struck. He stared at the shaking woman in his arms, then at the rapidly shifting comments on the monitor. He pulled Carlin behind him, shielding her from the camera, and spoke with forced conviction. “Lucy was a compulsive liar,” he said, his voice tight but loud. “She’d say anything for attention. This is just some cheap, fictionalized diary she wrote because she couldn’t stand seeing us happy!” He was so certain. He didn’t hesitate to defend her. My ghost floated closer, screaming into his ear with every ounce of my non-existent voice. “Look at my hand, Taylor! Look at it! Did you forget that the index finger on my right hand is missing a joint because of severe frostbite?” “You were the one who drove me to the emergency room! You signed the consent forms for the amputation! How could you forget?” But he couldn’t hear me. He only remembered that when I had tried to tell him what happened back then, he had looked at me with nothing but exhaustion and disgust. He had said, “Lucy, you’d seriously mutilate yourself just to make me hate Carlin? You make me want to throw up.” The diary went on. “March 11, 2016. Overcast.” “The doctor says I have clinical depression. Severe.” “I can’t stop doing it. I take the blade to my wrist, drawing line after line after line…” “When the blood flows, the hollow ache in my chest doesn’t hurt as much.” Taylor stared at the page, a flicker of irritation passing over his face. He scoffed at the camera, his voice cold and dismissive. “Depression? Right.” “Back then, she’d take a tiny razor and scratch her skin just to show up on my doorstep crying, claiming she couldn’t go on.” He paused, a flicker of pride returning to his eyes as if he were recalling some great achievement. “I didn’t fall for it. I took an utility knife from my desk, threw it at her feet, and told her if she wanted to die, she should do it right instead of using cheap tricks to get my attention.” “I told her I don’t tolerate threats.” The live chat, which had briefly wavered, swung back in his direction. [fan_boy_9: King behavior! That’s how you handle toxic, manipulative exes!] [cloud_nine: People use ‘depression’ as an excuse for everything. She was just obsessed.] [dark_knight: She should have just gone through with it instead of ruining Taylor’s life.] The words on the screen mirrored the very comments I had seen online before I died. Behind Taylor’s back, Carlin let out a tiny, triumphant smile, her eyes filled with malice. Taylor turned the pages faster, desperate to find more proof to show the world that I was a lunatic, a liar, a parasite who deserved no pity. Finally, he reached the last page. The final entry was short, only a few lines of text. The handwriting was smeared and blurred by heavy water stains—the dried remnants of my tears. Taylor had to lean close to the paper to make out the words. He read them aloud, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Taylor, my world is about to rain. Can you come and hold an umbrella for me?” “It hurts so much. The pills aren’t working anymore.” “Please answer the phone. Just once.” Suddenly, his voice caught in his throat. His eyes locked onto the date at the bottom of the page. “December 24, 2016. Christmas Eve.” A memory, sharp and violent, crashed into his mind. That night, to give Carlin the perfect, grand proposal, he had rented out the most expensive plaza in the city center, setting off a massive display of custom fireworks that lit up the winter sky for hours. While the fireworks surged, his phone had vibrated relentlessly in his pocket. He had found it annoying. He had declined the call over and over again. Carlin had giggled in his arms, saying, “Who is that, Taylor? They’re ruining the moment. Just block them.” So, when the twenty-fourth call came through, he had finally swiped answer. His first words to me—and his last—were: “Lucy, are you out of your mind?” “Why don’t you just go die and stop tracking me like a rat in the sewers?” Then, he had blocked my number. He had personally extinguished the very last thread of hope I had left. On the live stream, everyone noticed the sudden, drastic shift in Taylor’s demeanor. His face had gone entirely pale, and the fingers holding the diary were trembling uncontrollably. Carlin felt a cold dread sink into her chest. She quickly stepped forward, trying to break the tension with a sweet, innocent tone. “Taylor, don’t let her play with your head. She was always such a good actress. Why don’t you just call her right now on speaker? Let’s show everyone she’s perfectly fine, probably living comfortably somewhere, laughing at how she tricked us all.” She wanted to destroy my memory completely. Even after death, she wanted to drag my name through the dirt. Taylor seemed to snap out of his daze. Desperate to push down the suffocating, inexplicable panic rising in his chest, he gritted his teeth and pulled out his phone. “Fine. I’ll call her. I’ll make her apologize to you on camera.” In front of millions of viewers, he went into his blocked contacts, found the number that had lain dormant for seven years, and pressed dial. He put it on speaker. The long, drawn-out ringback tone echoed through the silent house, heavy and metallic. “Ring…” “Ring…” The silence in the room was absolute. Just as Taylor was about to let out a breath of relief, the line clicked. It connected. The entire audience held its breath. But the voice that came through the speaker wasn’t mine. It was a deep, stern, official-sounding voice of an older man. “State Police, Records Division. Who is calling, and what is your relationship to the registered owner of this number, Lucy?” Taylor froze, his voice faltering. “I… I’m looking for Lucy. Put her on the phone.” The voice on the other end went entirely cold. “That is impossible.” “The registered owner, Lucy, committed suicide by jumping from an abandoned building in the south district at 3:00 AM on December 25, 2016. She was pronounced dead at the scene.” “Who are you? And why are you only calling now, seven years later?”
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