The House We Couldn't Leave

The chalk didn't work anymore.

Aria dragged it along the wooden floorboards of her room again and again, but the mark never stayed. It vanished the moment she blinked. Not faded—vanished. As if the house was wiping her notes from existence the way one scrubs dust from a mirror.

Even worse, her handwriting had started to change.

Letters curled differently. Her lowercase e's had begun looping like someone else's hand. Her cursive slanted more to the right than she ever wrote it. Her fingers trembled when she noticed. She'd written her own name down in the corner of her sketch once, and when she came back…

It read: Naomi.

She tore it up.

Burned the scraps in the fireplace until only ash remained.

But the name stayed with her.

Etched beneath her skin like a birthmark she hadn't noticed before.

Naomi.

Each time she whispered it under her breath, something in her chest stirred.

Familiar.

Frightening.

But familiar.

She started sewing her own name into her dress.

Threaded into the seam, hidden from sight.

ARIA.

Four letters.

She sewed them into her pillowcase, her socks, the inner lining of her sleeves.

Then she added another.

NAOMI beneath it, smaller, stitched in red.

Not to embrace it.

But to prove it didn't belong.

That it was other.

That night, the girls gathered in the sitting room.

Reya's sketches sat in the center of the rug. Pages torn and strewn like a tarot reading too chaotic to understand.

Each page showed a variation of the same thing:

The six girls.

But always, one was crossed out.

One had her face smudged or blackened.

One stood slightly apart, or wasn't drawn at all.

And the name scribbled above each girl?

None of them said Aria

None said Reya, Tara, or Sofi either.

They were wrong.

Twisted versions of themselves.

And in the margin, one name appeared again and again.

Naomi.

Sofi was the first to break the silence.

"Why does she keep showing up?

No one answered

Then Tara: "Because she never left."

That night, Aria returned to her room and locked the door.

She wasn't going to disappear.

Not like Lina.

Not like Naomi.

She lit a candle and began writing on the walls.

Not in chalk.

In ink.

She carved some of it into the wood.

My name is Aria.

I came here with five others.

The house moves when we forget.

We are being erased.

This is not the first time.

She pressed her hand to the words.

They were solid.

She could still be solid.

The sound came just after midnight.

A voice.

Soft. Fragile. Whispering behind the plaster

"Aria…"

She froze.

The candle flickered.

She turned to the wall and pressed her ear to it.

Nothing.

Then again—closer this time.

"Do you remember me?"

The voice wasn't hers.

It wasn't Tara or Sofi or Reya.

It was a girl's voice, but older. Tired.

"I used to write on the walls too," it said.

"They burned them all. They always do."

Aria backed away.

"No," she whispered. "You're not real."

"You were me," said the voice

"And I was you."

Her knees buckled.

She sat on the floor, heart hammering against her ribs.

"You're not in my head."

"I was," the voice answered. "But then I got out."

Aria shook her head.

"I won't become you."

"You already were."

She couldn't breathe.

The room felt smaller.

The ink on the wall had begun to drip.

She wiped it.

It smeared red.

Not ink.

Thread.

The threads she'd sewn into her sleeves were unraveling.

The seams pulled loose, letters tangling.

ARIA became NAOMI before her eyes.

She screamed and tore at the cloth, throwing it across the room.

Then silence.

A knock.

A real one, at the door

Three times.

Then a pause.

Then once more.

She rose, trembling, and opened it.

No one was there

But on the floor…

A folded piece of paper.

Inside:

"You don't have to forget everything. Just the part where you gave up."

In the morning, the ink on the wall had dried.

The name Naomi was gone.

But so was Aria.

The wall was blank.

Not a word left.

Not a mark.

As if the room had been repainted overnight.

She opened her drawer.

Empty.

No clothes. No socks. No pillowcase.

Only a name tag

"Naomi" stitched in red.

At breakfast, Tara stared at her longer than usual.

Aria sat quietly. She didn't speak.

Not because she didn't want to.

Because she was waiting to see if they remembered her.

Mina was tense, distracted.

Sofi clung to Pip and whispered into his ear.

Reya didn't meet her eyes.

When Aria said, "Good morning,"

Tara flinched.

And answered softly: "You're still here."

Aria's breath hitched.

Then Tara reached under the table.

Slid a folded napkin into her lap.

In pencil, barely legible:

"Fight it. You're not her yet."

Aria held onto that scrap like a lifeline.

She left breakfast early.

Didn't say goodbye.

Didn't say her name.

Just in case.

She went back to her room.

Lit a candle.

Stared at the wall.

And began to write again.

With thread this time

One stitch at a time.

My name is Aria.

Even if they take it. Even if they twist it.

I will remember.

I am not Naomi.

Not yet.