Eli sat down beside her, too stunned to be afraid. “Is this… a dream?”

He stepped outside. The dock was the same, but the water had turned syrupy and slow, reflecting a sun that was perpetually setting. A girl sat at the end of the dock, legs dangling. She had a shag haircut and held a boombox on her lap.

He smiled. He couldn’t remember her face exactly. But for the rest of that summer, every time he heard a cicada or saw a pair of roller skates in a thrift store window, he felt a warmth in his chest—like a secret zipped up tight, waiting to be unzipped again.

Eli nodded. He understood. Some summers aren’t meant to be remembered with evidence. They’re meant to live under your skin like a low-grade fever.

“No,” she said, pressing play on the boombox. A warm, wobbly synth chord bloomed into the evening. “It’s a charm . A little spell. My dad used to say that a zip file is just a suitcase for things that don’t belong together. I put this summer in there. The best one.”

The summer Solstice hit Maplewood like a warm, sleepy secret. Eli hadn’t meant to disappear. He’d just driven past the last cell tower, past the “Last Chance for Gas” sign, and into the thick, velvet quiet of his late grandmother’s bungalow on Echo Lake.

Eli was back in the attic. The USB drive was gray and inert in his palm. The laptop showed an empty folder. Outside, the sun was high and harsh. His phone buzzed with 17 missed messages.