Turn 11 of 11
Erase the board completely — right now, before anyone else writes
You lunge for the board.
Not the marker — the board itself, both hands flat against it, palms spread wide across the dry-erase surface like you're trying to smother a fire. Marchetti startles backwards, her hip catching the counter's edge, and the marker swings wild on its string and cracks against the fridge. You don't care. You grab the cloth from the sink — the damp grey one that's been sitting there since last night, the one that smells of dish soap and old tea — and you wipe.
The ink comes away in streaks. BINS — TUES (JAKE'S TURN, YES JAKE, YOURS) goes first, smearing into a blue-grey ghost of itself. Then the milk carton with the knife through it — two years of passive-aggressive flatmate art, gone in one swipe. Then RENT IS SPLIT EVENLY, the words dissolving under the cloth like sugar in water. Then QUIET HOURS 9PM. HOST'S DECISION IS FINAL — Marchetti's midnight handwriting, the rule that ate her memories — gone. And then your own: PRIYA IS THE HOST, scrubbed away before you've even had time to understand what it meant.
The board is blank. White. Clean. Nothing on it but the faint shadow of old ink in the corners, the ghost of every rule that's ever been written, and you stand there with the damp cloth in your hand and you wait.
Nothing happens.
No ripple, no shift, no feeling of reality snapping back like a rubber band. The kitchen looks the same. The fridge hums. Your cold toast sits on the counter. Dermot's laugh carries from the front room, muffled and easy. Marchetti stands pressed against the counter, staring at the blank board with an expression you can't read — not relief, not anger, something rawer than either.
"What did you do?" she says, and her voice is very small.
"I erased it. All of it."
"I can see that. Why?"
"Because it's taking things from you. Because it took your memories and it took your —" You gesture at her, at the way she's standing, at the space she occupies. "And because if it can take from you, it can take from me."
Marchetti looks at the board. Then at the marker, dangling from its string. Then at you. Her face is doing something complicated — the calculation you've come to expect, but underneath it something looser, something that might be gratitude if she'd ever let it show.
"It might not hold," she says quietly. "Someone can just write again."
"I know."
From the front room, Dermot's voice, calling out: "Oi, who cleaned the board? Was the bin thing today? I can't remember if it's my turn or — actually, when did we start the rota?"