THINGS WE LOST IN SUMMER.

CHAPTER 6 - THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.

The old tape player sputtered, its gears whining as if it hadn’t been touched in decades. Dust coated its surface, the kind that clung to your fingers even after you wiped it away. Noah sat on the floor of his father’s shed, knees drawn up, cassette clutched tight.

His whole body shook. From the fight. From the bruises. From the truth pressing in from every direction.

He slid the cassette into the deck.

The buttons stuck before they gave way with a clunk.

For a second, nothing. Just static, hissing and swallowing the silence.

Then her voice.

Elia.

Faint, muffled, older tape distortion warping her vowels. But it was her.

“Okay, um… if you’re hearing this, it means I was right. Or maybe it means I was wrong. I don’t know.” A nervous laugh. A shaky breath. “I don’t have much time, so listen, okay? Don’t show this to anyone. Especially not… not him.”

Noah’s stomach clenched. Not him.

Her voice dipped, whispering. “Your dad… Noah, he found out. He knew. He tried to stop me.”

Noah froze.

She continued, words tumbling fast, scared. “It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t some runaway story. I found out about the money. About the shipments they kept hidden down by the lake. Casey, the others… they were in it. And your dad too. He wasn’t the same man when we were kids. You saw it. You knew it. He wanted me to keep quiet. Said no one would believe me.”

Noah’s chest burned. His throat locked.

Elia’s voice cracked, softer now. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay. So I left this. For you. So you’d know the truth one day. If you find the map, if you’re hearing me now be careful. They’ll do anything to bury this. But don’t let them bury me.”

A beat of static. Then, faintly, as if she’d leaned close to the recorder:

“I didn’t leave you, Noah, I promise.”

The tape clicked. Spun. Then went silent.

Noah sat frozen. Her words rattled inside him, colliding with memories his dad’s disappearing acts, his hollow stare at the dinner table, the night Noah finally left after their worst fight. His dad had called him ungrateful and weak. Told him to stop asking questions about Elia.

That was the last night Noah slept in this house.

He’d thought his father’s silence was grief. Thought it was just the weight of losing Mom, of being alone. But now… now he knew. His father had been hiding more than sadness.

The shed walls felt too small, the air thick with dust and betrayal. Noah’s hands curled into fists. He wanted to throw the player, smash it, scream. Instead, he pressed it to his chest like it was her heartbeat.

Tears burned, hot and sudden.

He thought of Elia’s last summer her laughter bouncing off the lake, her hand tugging him along the trails, her voice daring him to climb higher, swim farther. He thought of the way she whispered secrets in the dark, swearing they’d never leave each other behind.

And his dad, standing in the doorway that last night, voice hard as stone. “Drop it, Noah. Forget her. Forget all of it.”

Noah hadn’t understood then. But he did now.

He shoved the tape into his pocket, stood on unsteady legs. Outside, the night stretched wide, the woods thick with shadows. Somewhere out there was Casey, still watching, still waiting. Somewhere out there was the rest of the truth.

Noah wiped his face with the back of his hand. His chest hurt, but his spine straightened. For the first time since coming back, he wasn’t just chasing ghosts. He was chasing answers.

He stepped out of the shed, the cold air biting, the stars pale and distant above.

At the edge of the yard, the map fluttered in his pocket, Elia’s voice still echoing in his ears.

Don’t let them bury me.

Noah whispered into the dark, a vow stitched from grief and rage and memory:

“I won’t.”

And then he walked toward the trees, toward the Edge of the World, where summer’s ghosts were still waiting.

It was morning when Noah finally stopped walking. The woods gave way to the lake, still and silver under the rising sun. Ghost Rock loomed behind him, the shed and the house farther still. He felt miles older than the boy who’d opened the attic box just days ago.

The cassette sat on the ground beside him, silent now, but heavy with her voice. He didn’t play it again. He didn’t need to. Elia’s words were etched into him, like the map, like the scars of that summer.

He skimmed a stone across the lake. It leapt three times before sinking, ripples spreading wide. That used to be their game, counting skips until the sun dipped low. She always won.

Noah smiled, broken and small, but real.

His father’s shadow would always be there, woven into the silence of the house, into the way he’d disappeared long before death. But Elia’s voice was here too, soft and stubborn, refusing to vanish.

The town would keep its secrets. Casey would keep lurking. The past wouldn’t undo itself. But Noah had something they couldn’t take: the truth, and the proof of it, and the memory of a girl who’d loved the world too fiercely to be silent.

He stood, brushing dirt from his palms, map in one pocket, cassette in the other.

For the first time in eleven years, the summer didn’t feel like it had been stolen. It felt like it had been waiting.

He looked across the water, at the pale shimmer where the sky touched the trees, and whispered her name.

“Elia.”

The ripples carried it outward, scattering light across the lake.

And then he turned, walking back through the woods, toward whatever waited next.