Turn 12 of 12

Open the laptop and show Meera everything

You walk to the bedroom. Meera says something behind you — your name, a question — but you don't stop. The closet door is already open from this morning, the laundry pile disturbed where you shoved the laptop back twice. You pull it out from under the winter shirts and carry it to the kitchen table and open it, and the page loads like it's been waiting.

Seven entries. The cursor blinks in the empty box. Below it, the ledger sits in its plain grey type. You turn the laptop toward Meera and step back, because you can't sit next to her while she reads it. You can't be that close to her face while she sees your name next to those words.

"I found a website last night," you say. "I was up at three a.m. and I couldn't sleep and I found this — a page, just a blank page, with a text box. It said CONFESS at the top. I typed things into it. I pressed enter. And then the first one came true."

Meera looks at you. Then at the screen. She pulls the laptop closer and reads, and you watch her eyes move down the ledger the way you'd watch someone read your autopsy. The first entry — the job, the salary. GRANTED. Her eyebrows pull together. The second — *I want everyone who's ever looked through me to see me.* PENDING. The third — *I want to know what Meera really thinks of me.* Her eyes stop. She reads it again. Her mouth opens and closes.

The fourth. The fifth. The sixth.

She reads the sixth confession three times. You can tell because her eyes track back to the start of the line, then forward, then back again. *I want Meera to need me the way I need her. I want her to come to me first, every time, for everything. I want to be the person she can't do without. I want to be the one she calls at 3 AM when she's falling apart. I want her to choose me over everyone, and I want her to never stop.*

The kitchen is very quiet. The morning light is sharp and warm on the table, on the laptop screen, on Meera's hands, which are flat on the table on either side of the laptop, fingers pressed white against the wood. She doesn't look up.

"Rowan." Her voice is low and careful, the voice she uses when she's choosing words from a very small set of options.

"What is this?"

"I don't know. A website. I found it at a URL someone posted and deleted, and I typed — I was tired, and I was — I typed things I shouldn't have, and the first one came true. The job. The email. I didn't apply. I told the box I wanted it and someone sent me an offer for the exact salary I typed."

She looks up at you. Her eyes are different — wider, more present, seeing you with a clarity that makes you want to step backward out of the kitchen. You can feel it. She's seeing through you the way she never has before, and you remember the second confession, PENDING, and you wonder if the word has changed on the screen behind her.

"And this?" She taps the sixth entry, her fingernail clicking against the trackpad.

"You typed this about me?"

"Yes."

"At three forty-seven in the morning, you sat down and asked a website to make me need you."

"I wasn't — I wasn't thinking. I was tired and I was —"

"You were thinking." Her voice is quiet and it cuts like a blade.

"You were thinking exactly this. You just didn't think anyone would see it."