THINGS WE LOST IN SUMMER.

CHAPTER 3 - DRAGON’S NEST.

The rock was still warm from the sun when Noah sat down, the map trembling in his hands. His heart wouldn’t calm. It beat too fast, too loud, as if the silence of the woods could hear it.

Start here. Don’t stop.

Her words. Elia’s. No one else. He knew that handwriting. He knew it like a face.

But why here? Why now? Why after eleven years of nothing?

He shoved the map into his pocket, stood, and circled the ridge. The stone stretched jagged, broken edges cutting the sky. When they were kids, they used to call one side the “dragon’s back.” He remembered climbing with her, knees scraped raw, her voice always ahead Come on, slowpoke Don’t be scared.

He hadn’t been scared then. But now there was something in the air waiting.

He crouched low, running his hands over the cracks in the rock. Dust smeared his fingers, but something felt off. A gap, almost hidden, stuffed with dried moss. He tugged. It crumbled away, a hollow space inside.

His breath snagged.

There was something there, small and wrapped rapped in plastic, brittle with time.

He pulled it out with shaking hands.

A cassette tape.

The label was almost gone, smudged and water-warped, but faint letters were scratched in blue pen. Her handwriting again. He didn’t need to read it to know.

Elia.

His knees gave. He sat hard on the stone, the tape in his palms.

It didn’t make sense. Why would she hide this? Why leave it for him? And why here, at Dragon’s Nest, the first place on their map?

His throat tightened, too full. He hadn’t thought of her voice in years not really. But the tape, the shape of it, the thought of pressing play, it was enough. It was like she was sitting beside him again, legs swinging off the edge, daring him to listen.

But he didn’t have a player. Not here. Not now.

Frustration tore through him. He pressed the tape to his forehead, eyes closed. He wanted answers, he wanted her, he wanted to rewind the world to the last day before she disappeared and freeze it there forever.

A twig snapped behind him.

Noah spun, chest lurching.

The trees shifted in the wind. Shadows swayed. Nothing else.

But he couldn’t shake it the feeling of being watched.

He shoved the tape into his jacket, climbed down faster than he shoud’ve, almost slipping on the last ledge. His hands stung, his breath ragged. He told himself it was nothing. Just nerves. Just memory playing tricks.

Back in the woods, the light had changed. The sun slanted lower, shadows longer, the air colder. He followed the path, but it didn’t feel like the same path anymore. Every rustle of leaves made him flinch.

By the time he reached the edge of town again, his shirt clung with sweat, his pulse refusing to slow.

The tape was heavy in his pocket. Too heavy for its size. Like it carried all the years he’d lost, all the silence, all the questions no one dared answer. He wanted to play it, needed to. But not here. Not yet.

Instead, he wandered. Past the streets where kids once biked until the streetlights flickered on. Past houses that looked the same, only smaller, sadder. He stopped at one. Elia’s.

The paint peeled worse than his father’s house. Curtains drawn, driveway cracked, grass uncut. It looked abandoned and lifeless.

He stood there too long, staring at the windows, waiting for something, a movement, a shadow, or even a ghost but nothing just loud darkness and silence

He remembered her mother’s face, pinched and pale, her voice low as she told the police she wasn’t surprised Elia ran. She was always restless. Always chasing something that wasn’t here.

Noah hated that, still hated it. Elia hadn’t just left. She wouldn’t have left him. Not without a word nor a goodbye.

And now this tape, this map, this whisper from the past it felt like proof. Proof that she hadn’t gone the way they said. Proof that there was more.

The street was empty, the air still. He turned, hands shoved deep into his jacket, gripping the tape so tight it dug into his skin.

If Elia left him something to follow, then he’d follow.

Even if it broke him, even if the truth was worse than the silence.

The map burned against his chest. The next X waited.

Ghost Rock.