Chapter Thirteen - The Name in the Margins

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Name in the Margins

THERE’S A RULE you’ve followed your whole life without knowing.

If you see your name where it shouldn’t be, stop reading.

It started small.
Maybe on a bathroom wall.
A receipt with your initials.
A saved file on a shared computer.

Coincidence, you told yourself.

But that was before the margins.

You didn’t notice them at first.
The tiny scribbles at the edges of books.
The corners of pages that looked thumbed through before you got there.
The way one word was always underlined, and it was always a word you’d just said earlier that day.

This book has margins.
You just can’t see them.
Not with your eyes.

But your mind has been scanning them all along.

And now it’s starting to remember.

This chapter didn’t add your name.
It found it.
Buried in the fold of the pages you dog-eared.
Hidden between the lines of everything you were afraid to write.

You didn’t leave the story behind.

You left it for yourself.

You’ve read this before.
You just couldn’t admit it.
Not until the book called you by the name you haven’t said in years.

Not your first name.
Not your last.
The one you only hear when something is deeply, cosmically wrong.

You just heard it, didn’t you?
A whisper too close.
A thought that arrived too fast.
A voice that wasn’t yours, but used your tone.

You’re ready now.

The story stops warning you here.