Please take care of them. My brothers. Emerson. They’re idiots and they’re broken after they thought you burned, but they’re ours. Please try to forgive them someday for not being there. Please don’t let them destroy themselves looking for answers.
There’s one more thing.
The video. The TikTok we were making that night.
It caught more than just us being stupid.
Berk… it caught everything.
You won’t find it on the camera roll. I hid it—locked it inside that hidden app that looks like a calculator. The passcode is still the same. I couldn’t delete it. I needed it safe, somewhere only you’d know to look. Just in case.
If anything happens to me, if no one believes us… you have proof.
I’m sorry, again. For all of it. I love you.
—R
I sit motionless for a long moment, the letter loose in my trembling hands. My eyes are tracing the words over and over as if I missed something—some code, some way to change the ending. I can’t move. I can’t speak. The weight of her voice is too real. Too final. It feels like a goodbye wrapped in a secret. A cry for help she knew might never reach me.
Then the last paragraph hits me like a punch to the chest.
The TikTok.
The video we were making that night—stupid, silly, harmless. But what if it wasn’t? What if it caughteverythinglike she said? My gaze drops to the phone still sitting in my lap, Reign’s old one, forgotten and cracked but whole.
Could it still be there?
Could the truth we’ve been searching for this whole time be waiting inside it?
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, folding Reign’s letter slowly and placing it in my lap like it might break if I move too fast. My mind is spinning, emotions layered one on top of the other so thickly I can’t pull them apart—grief, fear, anger, disbelief. But underneath it all is that same steady pulse of determination that brought me here. I glance down at the old phone, Reign’s phone, nestled in my hands. My thumb traces over the worn edge of the screen, the casing chipped in the corner from where she must’ve dropped it more times than she ever admitted.
Then I freeze.
My gaze flicks to the far wall, just beside her bed, and a breath catches in my throat. The charger. Her charger. Still plugged into the outlet like it never moved. Like it was waiting. The cord is slightly frayed near the end, wrapped in a bit of silver tape I helped her wind around it years ago when we didn’t want to replace it. I scramble forward and reach for it, my fingersfumbling to untangle it from behind the nightstand, heart racing as I slot it into the bottom of the phone.
The screen stays black.
I wait—impatient, tense, chewing on my bottom lip until I taste blood. The seconds drag. The silence in the room sharpens with every breath I take. Then finally, the screen flashes with the battery symbol, glowing red and dull, but alive.
Relief pulses through me like heat after a cold sweat.
I watch it charge until there’s just enough juice, then press the power button. The screen comes to life with that old, familiar loading animation. Reign never updated her system. She hated the new version, always said it slowed her down, and she didn’t trust how easily things could be erased.
When the home screen finally appears, it takes a moment to recognize her background photo—one of us, curled together on a couch, faces blurred by motion but grins unmistakable. My heart lurches.
I swipe up instinctively, and the facial recognition unlocks without hesitation.
She never removed me.
I take a breath and steady my hands. I know where to go. She told me everything I needed in that letter—every breadcrumb. I open the folder labeled “Tools,” scroll past the normal icons, and stop at the one that looks like a calculator. It’s a fake app we used to hide notes and photos back when we wereteenagers—an old trick for girls like us, who always had secrets worth protecting.
I tap it. A number pad pops up.
Without thinking, I punch in the code: her birthday.
The app opens instantly.
There’s only one file inside.