Chapter 3

Closing Time

The fluorescent light over the register flickered twice before settling. Cara didn’t flinch. She kept tapping numbers into the keypad, the buttons clicking beneath her fingers with a rhythm that felt more familiar than her own heartbeat.
9:02 p.m. The pharmacy was officially closed. But closing wasn’t just a time—it was a ritual. A slow exhale after a day of folding into herself, becoming part of the shelves and the shadows.

Jonah stood next to her, counting the drawer. His movements were methodical, precise—comfortable in their predictability. For all the awkward years between high school and now, he was the one person she didn’t have to explain things to.

“You know,” he said casually, stacking the twenties with a crisp snap, “one day the drawer’s gonna come up short just to spite us.”
Cara glanced over. “Not if I keep balancing it.”

Jonah smirked. “Still convinced you’ve got pharmacy magic.”

“No,” she replied, dry. “I’m just not a walking chaos event like Devyn.”

“Fair.”

He slid the final bills into their slots and closed the drawer with a soft thunk. “All good. Drawer’s clean.”

Cara gave a mock salute. “Another crime-free shift. Alert the media.”

Jonah leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “You know… place won’t be the same without you.”

She froze mid-click on the screen. “That dangerously resembled a compliment.”

He shrugged, but didn’t look away. “You keep this place… human. Even when everything else here feels like a fluorescent death trap.”

Cara tilted her head. “That’s your way of saying I’m the least robotic of the staff?”

He smiled faintly. “Exactly.”

A silence settled between them—not uncomfortable, just… quiet. The kind of pause that said something unspoken might still be hanging in the air.
She broke it first. “Don’t go getting soft on me, Jonah. You’re going to ruin your whole disaffected pharmacist aesthetic.”

“I’ll survive.” He hoisted his bag over one shoulder and stepped toward the back door. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” She hesitated, then nodded. “Tomorrow.”

But they both knew tomorrow didn’t have many shifts left.

Jonah hesitated in the doorway. “Don’t let the ghosts get you.”

Cara offered a smirk, soft and tired. “If they do, I’m charging rent.”

When the door clicked shut behind him, the silence it left was too deep. Not peaceful. Not still. It was the kind of quiet that pressed against your ribs.

She moved through the routine anyway—wiping down counters, restacking the plastic bins no one used, checking the fridge door even though she’d checked it ten minutes earlier.

The lights overhead flickered once. Just once.

She looked up.

Nothing.

Her eyes lingered on the ceiling before she grabbed her bag, slinging it over one shoulder. She paused at the front counter, staring down the long aisle—empty, sterile, but somehow heavy. Like the building already knew it was fading.

Her fingers curled tighter around the strap. And before she could stop herself, she whispered into the quiet:
“If You’re still there… I’m listening.”

The words startled her as they left her mouth. She didn’t plan to say them. She didn’t even know who they were for.
Nothing answered.

Just the soft hum of the cooler kicking back in.

She pulled the door open and stepped into the night.

The cold outside startled her. Cara zipped her coat up to her chin, breath clouding in the air. Behind her, the pharmacy lights glowed faintly through the front window. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs and soda cooler was replaced by the quiet hush of the street.
She walked.

Her boots clicked against the cracked sidewalk. Three blocks past the pharmacy. Two turns through the grid of houses. One long stretch along the train tracks.
Same path. Same rhythm. Safe in its familiarity.

She passed the corner where the old church had once stood. The building remained, but its soul had been gutted—now a community center with paper flyers peeling from the windows. Flu shots. Food pantry hours. Tax help.

The stained glass was gone. Replaced by plexiglass and practicality.

Cara slowed.

She remembered sitting in the last row on Sundays, when she was twelve and the world felt louder. She remembered the smell—old pews, dust, candle wax, something else she couldn’t name. The hush in that room had never felt empty. Only full. Like someone else was there.

Her hand brushed the railing as she passed, eyes on the empty space where the bell tower used to stand.

“Are You still there?” she whispered.

She didn’t expect an answer.

And none came.

She shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets and kept walking.

Half a block later, she saw him.

A boy—maybe twelve—stood beneath a flickering streetlight. His coat swallowed his frame, sleeves drooping past his hands. His backpack sagged like it had been carried too far, too long.

He didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Just stared up at the light above him.

Cara slowed.

The light above buzzed… then shimmered. For a breathless second, it looked like the air itself warped—like heat waves on hot pavement. Then she saw it:
A thread.

Thin. Gold. Stretching from the streetlight to the boy’s chest.

It pulsed once.

Her breath caught.

The boy looked at her.

Not startled. Not confused.

Knowing.

Then, without a word, he turned and walked away—down a side street she’d never noticed before.
Cara stood there, frozen, heart hammering.

She looked back up. The streetlight glowed steady. No shimmer. No thread.

“Okay,” she muttered, dragging a hand down her face. “Definitely not enough caffeine for ghost threads.”
She shook her head and walked faster.

Her pulse didn’t slow until she reached her apartment building.