Valarie

The past holds her dear.
Yes, the present is already here.
She knows the future is near,
and yet the dear fear is here.

The little blue book, whose cover page is covered in stars and song lyrics lies in my hand. Aria's journal, lies in my hand. I can't count the number of times I annoyed her to let me read it. And now that I finally have it, it feels wrong. But I crack it open to the first page anyway.

The words, ‘This is not a journal.’ is scrawled over on the first page. I chuckle at Aria being Aria before turning over to the next page. ‘These are just pages with stuff written on them. Probably weird, creepy, stupid stuff. But its is NOT A JOURNAL.’

This is totally a journal. I think before flipping to the next page. ‘Hello is just hell no without the n’ I snort at the words before realize how much I really miss her. I miss the way how she always says the wrong thing, and the way she used to steal all of Javi and my waffles. It may not sound fun, but now that I think about it, those were one of the best little moments I ever had.

I skip through a few pages of her doodling easter eggs in games I've never heard of before I reach a page mentioning 72 Hours. Almost every page after that has ‘Make me your villian’ scrawled over it with doodles next to it. Sometimes the doodles are just random food items and sometimes they are pirate ships and vampire teeth. Hearts and skulls are too common between pages and I also see some of the warnings and clues Javi and I already found.

I shoot a text to Javi about the journal and send a few pictures before I toss my phone away. I try to read through more of the words but I get lost between her terrible handwriting and my sleepiness. I don't hear my mom calling me for dinner as my eyes shut close.

This time, I don't dream of the past. I hold on to all those moments I held dear as I move on to making new ones. My past may not be with me, but it is always a part of me. And that isn't a bad thing anymore.

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“This is bad.” Javi murmurs as he checks the downloads on 72 Hours again. My blog went viral and everything went downhill from there. People started obsessing over it, I should have expected this. The consequences that I thought would throw Kylo under the bus just ran over hundreds of other people instead.

“I know.” I groan. This is all my fault.

“We can't really do anything about it.” He continues. “And we aren't even making any progress with the game.”

“I took the blog down, Javi. God, this never should have happened.”

He takes in a deep breath and calms himself down. I try doing the same but it doesn't work. The words just keep ringing over and over in the back of my head. This is all my fault.

“Put the blog back up and add Aria's death along with it. It may not be connected afterall but let’s hope people are as paranoid as we are.” Javi says in an attempt to calm me down. My breathing evens out and I nod before following his advice. I really hope this works.

“At least the new players may find something we have not.” He says, “That way we can spend more time on the last puzzle than these ones.”

“Speaking of 72 Hours,” I start off carefully, “Do you want to read this anytime soon?” I flash the blue not-a-journal at him and somehow his sadness seems to deepen.

“Nah, you exist for that sole reason.” He jokes but it does nothing to bring back the smile that once would have come along with it.

“Okay then, as your personal Google assistant I’m here to report that a few dialogues are missing from the game.” I have scoured the whole journal looking for more clues but all I found were more warnings. Which, for some reason are not in the game anymore.

“Which dialogues?” Javi asks, suddenly interested.

“Nothing of much importance. Just lines like ‘Knives are a good warning sign, but so are these words.’ and ‘Ignorance is bliss, until you die from it.’”

“That might just convince me to stop playing. Maybe the game creator suddenly became smart?”

“It doesn't really matter. Also Aria may or may not have mentioned the answers to almost all the other levels.” If Aria is a ghost, I bet she is one of those helpful ghosts who also steal other people's food.

“You should have lead with that. I wasted twenty hours of gameplay on the fifth level in the last few days.” Javi complains.

“I found it just this morning, so shut up. And I wasted twenty three hours on it because you did not pick up the phone to tell me how you solved the damn thing.” He is the last person who gets to annoy me by talking about time. On second thought, physics deserves that title.

“I fell asleep.” He says and hurriedly changes the topic, “So, we can just skip over to the end. How much playtime have we used up?”

We both take our phones out and scroll to find the usually abandoned digital wellbeing and clock apps to crosscheck how long it's been. Surprisingly I am already at sixty seven hours and Javi is closely following at sixty six.

“This is going to end soon.” Javi says. And I can't decide if he is talking about the game, about us missing Ari so much that it hurts or our lives.

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