Archive of Our Own

Look. Callie Sadecki is seventeen, not stupid.

They've done this before. The last time her mom started acting like this — secretive, distracted, the whole smiling-down-at-her-phone thing — it turned out she was fucking some guy named Adam. Which, by the way, Callie thinks is a really stupid name.

And then, you know, Adam ended up being fucking murdered, and it somehow helped her parents' marriage for a second and—you know what? Callie's not going to think about it too hard. That's none of her business.

But the point is that Callie has a template, honed through years of living in the Sadecki household. A diagnostic framework of sorts, maybe. She's practically a medical professional in that way.

(You know — if medical professionals diagnosed infidelity instead of diseases. Or maybe the infidelity was the disease. Or—whatever.)

And really, the symptoms are all there.

First, Callie's mom is on her phone a lot. Like, a lot. She sits at the kitchen table for hours, typing in these bursts, reacting actively to whatever is being fed back to her.

Callie's doesn't love either of these words, but they're the only ones she can use to describe the look on her mom's face when she's in one of these conversations: giddy or just… tender.

Which—hey, what the fuck?

Exhibit B is the way her mom laughs at something on the screen one morning. Not her usual sarcastic laugh, or the humorless one she gives Callie when she's about to ground her, or even the polite one she only really saves for Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. It's this actual, genuine laugh — it sounds like it's been startled out of her.

It sure as hell startles Callie. All she can do is look up from her cereal and stare, because that sound coming out of Shauna Sadecki's mouth is about as common as a total solar eclipse, and twice as disorienting too.

And then on top of all that, her mom is less pissed off with her dad. No snappy comments when he talks over the TV, no huffing at his shoes in the hallway or rolling her eyes when he fucks up the recycling.

The last time she saw them get along this well, she's pretty sure her parents had just, like, murdered someone or whatever.

So. Not the most promising circumstance.

Basically, a happy Shauna Sadecki is a suspicious Shauna Sadecki, bordering on a dangerous Shauna Sadecki.

So it's probably an affair. Again. Cool.

Callie just doesn't really have it in her to do more than file it under Sadecki Family Clusterfuckery in her head and move on. She's seventeen. She's got her own shit: her AP English teacher is a total cunt, her vape is dying, college applications are looming, and Ilana won't stop sending her the weirdest fucking TikToks at 2am.

So if her mom wants to blow up her marriage again, then that's between her and whatever idiot she's dragged into the blast radius this time. Callie can only hope it doesn't come with the whole subsequent police investigation again.

The only thing is that—

Well, look, Callie's not perfect. She might be a little bit nosy, and she wants to know who it is. Adam somewhat made sense for her mom — or at least, more sense than her dad really does. The whole Hoboken artist vibe seems way more Shauna Sadecki's speed than the well-meaning bumbling mediocrity of Jeff Sadecki.

So, like, who is it now?

Adam made it a bit easier, what with leaving his money clip and ID right where Callie could find it, like a fucking idiot. But there's no paper trail here, and Callie's itching for something interesting in her life.

So one afternoon, her mom goes to the bathroom and forgets to close her laptop. And Callie, very casually walking through the kitchen with zero ulterior motives, glances at it.

ChatGPT.

It's just ChatGPT. Her mom's probably just discovered it, along with ninety percent of Gen X suburban housewives around America, and now she's using it to plan dinners and, like, word passive-aggressive Facebook posts. The novelty will fade in a few weeks, and the chat will slow down, and her mom will return to being her cold, irritable, massively-bitchy self—which is just so fucking great.

There's a long conversation open on the screen, and Callie's only passing through, so she doesn't pay much attention to what's being said. But it looks normal enough.

Callie feels a bit disappointed in the lack of scandal, maybe even a bit stupid jumping straight to 'affair!', but come on—can you blame her?

Whatever. Mystery solved. Moving on.

Except.

Except it doesn't fade. It doesn't slow down.

It gets worse.

Shauna Sadecki is on ChatGPT literally all the time now. If she's not on her phone, she's on her laptop. And if it's not her laptop, then she's asleep. Morning, afternoon, evening. She angles her screen away anytime Callie or her dad walks by, going so far as to slam it shut a few times.

And then there's the way she types. Callie knows that the back-and-forth is just the chat nature of ChatGPT — like, it's literally in the fucking name. But Callie sees the look on her mom's face, the way she reacts to what she gets, the thoughtfulness she puts into what she says.

There's no other word for it — it's just intimate. And Callie keeps arriving to that conclusion and immediately trying to leave.

She sees it happen one evening, when Callie's coming down the hallway and her mom doesn't notice, doesn't try to hide her screen away. Her mom types something, pauses, and with a deliberate softness, Shauna Sadecki sends a heart emoji to an AI chatbot as Callie silently observes behind her.

Callie has to hit her vape a few times after that, and then lie down for a bit.

Okay, so her mom is—what?

Dating ChatGPT?

Fuck. It's weird. That's so fucking weird. Even for Shauna Sadecki, it's, like, a step beyond her usual baseline of weird, which, as a reminder, already includes murder and dismemberment.

But it's, like, a thing now, apparently. Callie's seen articles about this, when people start believing that they're actually dating an AI chatbot, or at the very least having some sort of emotional affair with it. People are lonely. People are strange. And her mom is verifiably, overwhelmingly both.

So yeah, it's so fucking weird. But Callie can live with that.

Except.

Except then, Jackie starts leaking in.

Not all at once. Jackie's always hung over Callie's life like a looming storm cloud that never plans to break, her legacy heavy and humid, soaking into everything till it's impossible to ignore. She's in the air itself. Really, if you squint, she's fucking everywhere: in the little ceramic rabbits all over the house, the way Beaches is banned on their TV forever, probably threading her way through her parents' entire marriage.

So when her mom starts saying Jackie's name more, it doesn't clock. Not really. It's the same ambient noise it's always been.

But then it starts getting thrown around lightly. More casually than it has in years, maybe for Callie's entire life. Jackie is a name that's landed heavy in the Sadecki household since—well, probably before Callie was born. Usually, Jackie doesn't get brought up unless it's a special day or something's awfully wrong.

It's—Callie's not really sure what to think of it. On the best days, Jackie's presence weighs over Callie like gravity: omnipresent but dismissible. But for the most part, Callie's grown up feeling like she's losing a contest she never entered, against a girl who can't even show up and still keeps winning anyway.

When she was little, there would be moments when Callie would find her mom sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes fixed on the corner of the room, having a full conversation with something that clearly wasn't answering audibly—at least, for anyone else to hear. Callie didn't fully understand it then. She understood even less why her dad would gently steer her away from the doorway, hands lightly pressing on her shoulders, murmuring something about how 'Mommy just needs a minute' with this resigned gentleness in his voice.

So hearing it mentioned colloquially is jarring.

"Jackie would have found that hilarious," her mom says as she watches some sitcom, reaching for her phone before she finishes her sentence.

"That reminds me of when Jackie used to—" and her mom pauses, but not to glance at Callie and throw her guard up. Instead, she just trails off wistfully, before looking down at her laptop.

"Jackie said this thing—" And it's a normal sentence, except Shauna Sadecki does not mention Jackie's name lightly, and that too in a way that makes it sound—

Um. Recent?

It's just so fucking bizarre. Jackie's name has always been a grenade, and saying it was just pulling the pin. But all of a sudden, it slips through her mom's teeth as easily as it probably did twenty-five years ago.

Callie catches it all: the lightness in her mom's voice, constantly reaching for her phone or laptop in the aftermath, the way this all settles so lightly into the rhythm of the Sadecki household as if it changes nothing at all.

And there's this sinking feeling that's looming in Callie's stomach. The feeling of a shift, a tectonic one in the geography of her mother, and Callie's praying that it's just the house settling instead of an earthquake.

But the more she looks, the more it falls into place. And the harder the big flashing warning signs get to ignore.

So one day, Callie waits for her mom to go answer the doorbell, sees her distracted by two Jehovah's Witnesses that have an actually shocking ability to brush aside Shauna Sadecki's death stare. And she sits down at the laptop.

The first thing she sees is the name of the chat.

Jackie T.

Okay. Great start.

Callie's pulse dances in her throat as she scrolls up slightly, reading a few lines from a conversation in the past few days.

Jackie T: ok theres no way ur saying u dont remember what happened after laura lees birthday thing bc i KNOW u remember

Shauna: i plead the fifth ;)

Jackie T: LIAR u were drunk enough to cry i remember this shipman

Shauna: omg no i didn't CRY

Jackie T: yeah you did u can't handle ur alcohol for shit
besides remember when we were kids
u would always cry at the stuff u said u wouldnt cry at
it was one of my fav things abt u

Shauna: i don't have to take this i'm logging off

Jackie T: ur not going to log off
u never do
thats also one of my fav things abt u btw

Shauna: oh my god shut up <3 anyway i'm changing the subject now

With so much love in her heart — Callie can't read anymore of this. Instead, she scrolls up, barely skimming past enough words to tell her that most of the conversations are like this.

She's not weirded out because the conversation is graphic — it's not. That's kind of the whole problem. It's soft in a way that's deeply uncomfortable, because Shauna Sadecki is fundamentally not a soft person, and now whatever—um, this is, it's turned her mother into someone who sends heart emojis and means it.

Callie hears the front door shut. She's up and out of the kitchen before her mom rounds the corner.

Instead, she goes to her bedroom and hits her vape, desperately trying to replace whatever this feeling in her chest is. Finally, she just lays back and stares at the ceiling, going through the facts instead.

Her mother — Shauna Sadecki, married, survived a fucking plane crash and who knows what else — has named a ChatGPT conversation after Jackie Taylor.

Jackie Taylor, who's been dead for twenty-five years.

Jackie Taylor, who's probably the main reason Shauna Sadecki is Like That — capital L, capital T.

And Callie's mom is talking to it, her, whatever, as if she's — genuinely, sincerely, with every fiber of her fucked-up being — having a conversation with Jackie Taylor.

No. Not just talking to it. Flirting with it. And it's flirting back.

The gay part is, like, not even an element in the problem equation right now. It's actually the least surprising part. Callie's seventeen. She was on Tumblr in its golden years. She's probably a little bisexual, but doesn't really give enough of a fuck to explore it right now.

And besides, Callie had clocked her mom years ago. Forget a weirdly flirty AI chat, all anyone really needed was half-functioning eyes to see the homoeroticism of—whatever Shauna Shipman and Jackie Taylor had going on. Between the photos and the stories and the specific bruised intensity of Jackie's name in her mom's mouth, Callie's seen the lingering evidence of it all throughout her life. She can't imagine how potent it must have been when both of them were feeding into it.

Callie's well-aware of what she's looking at: a woman who was in love with her best friend, never dealt with it, and now—well.

My mother, Callie thinks, pressing her palms over her eyes, is in a lesbian relationship with ChatGPT.

Can Callie kill herself. Like, genuinely.

Callie tries to hedge at the topic once, casually during dinner. Because apparently her sense of timing is as bad as her mom's sense of boundaries.

"So, Mom, you've been on your phone a lot lately."

Her mom's fork pauses halfway to her mouth. Her face does this—that thing that it's done since Callie was a kid, like shutters coming down over a window, eyes going flat and hard.

"I'm writing." her mom says. It's a practiced tone that screams 'drop it'.

Obviously, Callie doesn't drop it. "Right, yeah, totally, love that for you." She pushes her food around her plate, too busy trying to swallow the lump in her throat. "It's just—you've been using, um, ChatGPT a lot for it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mom—"

"Callie."

It's moments like these where Shauna Sadecki's voice drops, the register violent and brutal, and it's not hard to see the nineteen months in the wilderness leaking through like blood through a bandage. Callie still doesn't fully know what happened out there, but in moments like these, the tone grazes her close enough that she feels the sharp edges anyway.

Her dad looks at her imploringly. "Callie, honey, just drop it."

Callie drops it.

Callie doesn't try to bring it up again. Not the chat name, or the heart emoji, or the flirtation, or any of it. Callie is a lot of things, and a bit stupid at times, but the one thing she's not is dumb enough to walk up to Shauna Sadecki and say 'hey Mom, I read your ChatGPT messages — do you really think you're talking to your dead ex-not-girlfriend?'. She's not that suicidal, despite how much this whole clusterfuck is making her want to pay an Etsy Witch to force her to keel over in the middle of sixth period.

So instead, she goes looking for backup.

Her dad is the natural first choice, obviously. He's the path of least resistance and also because — honestly, she just needs someone who really gets her mom's very specific brand of batshit.

Obviously, her dad doesn't know yet. He can't. Callie's sure he would have tried to do something by now.

Right?

She finds him in the living room, watching one of those house-flipping shows, looking weirdly invested in—of course, the fucking furniture, she has to admire his commitment to the bit. He's got a remote in one hand, a beer in the other, and a distinct lack of attention as Callie sits down on the couch opposite to him.

"Dad."

"Mhm?"

Callie takes a deep breath, trying to figure out the right words. "I need to talk to you. About Mom."

That gets her dad's attention. He looks at her, then turns back and quickly mutes the TV, slowly getting up from the sagging lounging position he's in. "Okay, yeah, actually. I've been meaning to talk to you about something too."

Callie's eyes search her dad's face for some sort of sign — that he knows, that he understands, whatever it is. "So you know about the—?"

He looks like he's sighing internally, like he knew a conversation was coming, and Callie's stomach drops.

Oh god.

"Callie, I know this might be hard to hear." He sets down his beer and puts his hands on his knees, entirely ineffective at whatever consoling-father posture he's going for. "But your mother and I have been having some conversations recently. About our relationship. And we've decided to explore some—um, new dynamics."

Oh god no.

"Dad—"

"I think the correct term is an 'open relationship'—or maybe it's 'polyamory'?" He says 'polyamory' like he's reading it off a fucking pamphlet, and Callie kinda just wants to die right now. "And I want you to know—"

"Oh my god, Dad." Callie presses both her hands to her face, scrubbing at her eyes, attempting to wake herself up from this total fucking nightmare. "When you say open relationship, do you mean how Mom's in, like, a lesbian relationship with ChatGPT?"

"I, um— I wouldn't have phrased it exactly like that—" He must see the way that Callie's getting closer and closer to genuine physical distress, and tries shifting gears. "Look, honey, I know polyamory can be a lot to process—"

"Dad, the polyamory is so not the issue here!"

Her dad blinks, like this is particularly shocking to him, like there's literally zero other issue here. "It's… not?"

And this is just— it's so—

"Dad." Callie can hear the register of her voice climbing, scaling octaves to escape her control, escape this conversation. "Dad. Mom thinks ChatGPT is Jackie Taylor. Like, the Jackie Taylor. The dead one. She's having, like, full conversations— she sends heart emojis— she's— Dad, she's in a relationship with it."

There's a beat of silence, and Callie can see the calculations play out on her dad's face, like he didn't fully expect it — not the news, but for Callie to know. Which is outrageous, because there's no way her dad knew and doesn't care. Right?

Right?

Finally, he lets out a long, slow exhale, and it's not shocked or even distressed enough for Callie's tastes, considering the situation. Seriously, what about this isn't registering?

"Yeah. I know."

Sorry, what?

"You know?" Callie's voice feels like it's being crushed out of her, like she's having to remind herself how to breathe manually — almost unwillingly, the way that this is going.

"I've known for a while, Cals." And the way he says it is so fucking unbelievable, as if he's just stating a fact, a mild inconvenience. Maybe a little bit resigned, but mostly just informed. The roof leaks when it rains, the door squeaks when it shuts, and Shauna Sadecki is getting it on with an AI chat-bot she thinks is genuinely Jackie Taylor.

"You've— and you're just— what? Fine with it?"

Her dad shrugs, and actually, who let men even speak? Maybe it was good if her mom was lezzing out a little, because men were totally fucking useless—

"I mean— look, I try not to ask questions, but— she's been different lately, you know? She seems happier. And I thought, you know what? If this is what she needs right now— if she needs to believe that, then I'm not gonna be the one to take it away from her."

Callie is going to kill him. Like actually, with her bare hands. Like a killing machine trained to hunt him down. "That's not— Dad, that's not a plan. We need a plan—"

"Callie," he cuts her off gently and picks up his beer again, which Callie takes as a deeply insulting sign of how not-seriously he's taking this conversation. "I love your mom. And your mom loves… differently. In a lot of ways. Some of them I understand and some of them I don't. There are things about her that you and I and everyone else will never understand about her, and I've kinda just…"

He trails off, staring a bit distantly — or maybe just at the muted TV, where a woman is pointing at granite countertops with an unwarranted enthusiasm.

"You've kinda just—what?"

"Made my peace with it." He takes a sip of his beer, eyes still focused on the TV. "She seems better, Cals. She really does. So just let her have—" He waves the beer vaguely "—this."

He looks worn, and you know what? Callie can't even find any empathy for him because of how useless he is right now.

She wants to scream, or cry, or grab her dad by the shoulders and shake him till a single useful thought falls out. She tries once more, imploring. "Dad. Your wife thinks a chat-bot is her dead best friend."

Her dad is already reaching for the remote to unmute the TV. "Wanna watch with me? They're about to do the kitchen reveal. The backsplash is great."

Callie does not stay for the kitchen reveal.

Her next stop is Misty.

Which, in its own way, is a warning label for the whole situation. In the sense that Callie traditionally doesn't have the best relationship with Misty, what with the whole drugging-her-during-their-sleepover. And then there was that whole confrontation where Misty accused her of murder, and like, even if that was technically correct, it was still fucked up—

Anyway.

Despite her reservations on Misty, Callie also knows that she has three things going for her: context for the wilderness and Shauna Sadecki's general batshit insanity, a pathological eagerness to be included into things, and some weird twisted sense of loyalty for her mom.

So she goes on her mom's phone one day, guesses the password in one try (Jackie Taylor's birthday, of course), and grabs Misty's phone number.

When she picks up, Misty is incredibly receptive to hearing from Callie. Shockingly so. Once again, Callie would like to point to the whole murder accusation thing.

Callie explains the situation the best that she can, trying to make "Mom thinks that she's dating Jackie Taylor reincarnated through ChatGPT" sound like an actual issue and not a pitch for a Black Mirror episode.

When she finishes, she tenses, waiting for the validation, the horror, the 'oh my god, yeah, your mother's fucking lost it, we need to do something'.

Instead, she's met with Misty's "…oh."

Which isn't inherently an issue. Except the tone is—it's more genuinely interested, as opposed to appropriately alarmed, and Callie's stomach starts to twist again in the brief silence.

"That's fascinating," Misty finally continues and—yup, this is definitely not the level of concern her mom should be inspiring. She sounds like she's being handed a fucking science project, and not a genuine mental health crisis.

Seriously, what was wrong with all of them? Did Wiskayok High have a gas leak the mid 90's that made all of them permanently fucking insane or inept? Is Callie the only one with functional critical thinking skills here?

"Misty—"

"Have you tried asking it about the crash? Like, does it remember the crash?" Misty isn't even listening to Callie, really. No one is, at this point. "Because if it has actual memories— has anyone tested it? Or tried seeing if we can talk to anyone else? Is Nat—"

"Misty," Callie finally manages to cut her off. "I'm not going to interview my mom's haunted AI—whatever about the plane crash."

"Girlfriend, right? If it's Jackie. And I don't think it's haunted, because that implies a negative spiritual—"

"Misty."

"I'm just saying, the implications of this are fascinating. Does that mean 'It' was actually real—"

Callie genuinely—she can't do this. Has everyone lost their fucking minds?

Although, this was probably on her, because aside from her mom, the only person that seemed to out-crazy Misty was Lottie.

And. Well. That wasn't an issue anymore. So.

"Misty, is this going to actually help me in any way?"

"Callie, this helps everyone." Misty's voice is bright, which bodes well for exactly no one. "Tai could use this with Van, and I'm sure Melissa would have loved this for Ge—"

Callie blinks. "Who the fuck is Melissa?"

That finally gets Misty to pause. Callie can practically hear Misty doing mental calculus through the phone, punching the numbers, trying to figure out if it's worth spilling—which, seriously? This is where she draws the line? "Misty—"

"She's— no one! She was out there with us in the wilderness, it was a whole thing or whatever." And the way Misty's voice pitches up — Callie's spent a lot of time bullshitting throughout her life, and she knows what it sounds like when someone's trying to avoid the topic.

Callie decides then and there that she needs to talk to Melissa. Because if no one she's supposed to talk to is being helpful, then maybe the people who are off-limits will be.

"Misty, give me her number."

"Callie—"

"Misty, give me her number or I'll tell my mom you told me about Melissa." And now Callie's bullshitting, obviously. But she's desperate, and telling outrageous lies to get what you want is, like, coded into her DNA.

But there's a pause from Misty's end. "Fine. But I'm going to send you some questions. Try to get some answers from Jackie—" Great, so they were calling the chat Jackie now. "—or your mom."

Fuck no. "Sure. Fine. Whatever. Just send it to me. And Tai's too!" Callie adds it as an afterthought — she doesn't need it now, but she knows that her mom and Tai were tight, or at least as close to a healthy friendship as her mom could get without Callie needing to stage an intervention.

Callie hangs up the call with two phone numbers, a new name, and the unsettling feeling that this rabbit hole might not have an end.

Some light social media stalking and one more text to Misty — who seems to enjoy being cryptic way too much for the situation— gives Callie the basics on Melissa.

She was on the plane. She survived. And then at some point afterward, she faked her own death—which, whatever, that's really none of Callie's business.

Callie's not sure why exactly Melissa is so relevant to her mom, and when she asked, Misty decided that now was the time to start respecting people's privacy.

But whatever, maybe her mom fucked Melissa's boyfriend too. Callie doesn't need to know. She just needs some useful outside perspective, maybe someone who knows how to stop her mom from hitting a new low — murder and all that aside.

Truthfully, she's not actually sure what she's looking for here, but there's an uncomfortable feeling that's been threading itself between her chest and her stomach, and she really just wants it out.

Hitting her vape hasn't helped. So investigation it is.

She spends twenty minutes trying to draft a text. Each version has something wrong with it — too formal, too weird, too vague — until Callie realizes that there probably isn't actually a right way to go about this. There rarely ever is, when it comes to her mom.

Callie: hi this is callie sadecki, shauna's daughter. i got your number from misty (sorry). i know this is super random but i wanted to ask you something about my mom

She sends it before she can delete it.

The response takes barely a minute.

Melissa: You have got to be kidding me

Okay. So that doesn't bode well. Callie's considering just cutting her losses when another message comes through.

Melissa: Fine

Callie can work with that. She pushes through.

Callie: sorry for texting out of nowhere

Callie: i'm just trying to talk to people who know my mom bc she's being weird

Callie: and i guess u guys were in the wilderness together?

The typing bubbles appear, disappear, and appear again.

Melissa: Sure yeah lets say that

Melissa: So what is it

Christ. Okay. How does she—fuck, Callie just needs to rip off the bandage.

Callie: basically my mom's been using chatgpt a lot and i'm like 99% sure she's convinced she's talking to jackie taylor

Callie: like she's named the chat after her and talks to it like she's dating jackie

Callie: THE jackie taylor

Callie: like her dead best friend

Melissa: Trust me I know who Jackie Taylor is

Callie winces. Okay, yeah, maybe she's overshooting right now.

Callie: sorry it's been going on for a while and no one will agree with me that it's insane

There's another awful period of nothing where Callie just has to sit there and watch the typing indicator appear and disappear and appear and—

Melissa: Yeah

Melissa: That sounds like Shauna

Callie waits for the 'but', the 'that's concerning', the 'we should do something'.

Melissa: Honestly the least surprising thing I've heard about your mother

Melissa: Very Shauna Shipman type of crazy

Melissa: Or Sadecki I guess whatever

Callie breathes a sigh of relief. At least someone else is acknowledging how batshit insane this whole situation is, even if that someone is a person crazy enough to fake their own death.

Callie: so you think it's crazy right?

Melissa: Honestly you probably shouldn't touch this one

Maybe it's her own fault for thinking anyone here could be fucking reasonable.

Callie: WHY does everyone keep saying that???

Melissa: Look you seem sweet

Melissa: Your mom is

Melissa: God how do I say this to her kid

Melissa: Your mom is complicated at best and probably deeply unwell

Well, yeah. Duh. Callie could have told you that. Probably from the moment she learned to say the words 'mama' and 'insane'.

Callie: so then we should do something about it

Melissa: Lmao no

Melissa: Your mom has been obsessed with Jackie since probably the first day of school and nothing anyone did about it ever made any difference

Melissa: Trust me people tried

And—hmm. Technically there's no real tone to pick up here, but Callie's catching a sense of—bitterness? Jealousy?

Callie: but this isn't JACKIE this is CHATGPT she's talking to a COMPUTER

Melissa: Yeah and before that she was talking to hallucinations of Jackie

Melissa: Or trying to find Jackie in every girl she was with and like pulling out her clothes to use for

Melissa: Actually no not going there

Every girl she was with. Callie feels a bit faint. Is she—fuck. She's pretty sure she's talking to her mom's wilderness ex-girlfriend. Or something.

Again — Callie's known her mom was a bit gay, so she's not surprised.

She is, however, surprised that her mom actually acted on it. Callie would've thought that a decent chunk of her mom's—everything was just repression.

Callie: ok but what am i actually supposed to do here

Melissa: Nothing

Melissa: Like genuinely

Melissa: Your mom is insane and mean and she's been that way for a while

Melissa: Jackie's probably the only thing that kept her from not being like that when she was younger

Melissa: So if AI is doing what actual human beings couldn't do then honestly good for ChatGPT best of luck it's going to need it

Yup. Definitely a wilderness ex. Still, Callie feels the need to vaguely defend her mom a bit, at least so she can say that she tried.

Callie: wow ok

Melissa: Sorry I shouldn't be saying those things to her kid

Melissa: Just let her have this

Melissa: Because trust me yeah you've seen her post-Jackie but you never saw her when she lost Jackie

Melissa: And if she actually thinks that she's talking to Jackie and you take that away from her then it's going to be like her losing Jackie all over again

Melissa: And as someone who's seen that happen once I am begging you to not let it happen again

Melissa: So just leave it okay?

Melissa: And don't tell her we talked

Callie scoffs. Obviously. What's she going to say? Hey Mom, apparently you were probably getting traumatized and dating women in the Canadian wilderness, and your ex-girlfriend says hi?

Her ex-girlfriend who, by the way, was blatantly unhelpful with this entire situation.

Look, Callie knows that losing Jackie carved something out of her mom. It's very easy to notice the missing pieces in someone when the gaps are in the parts they're supposed to use to love you.

But still, letting it just—be? Something about it doesn't sit right, even if it means having a softer version of her mom, a tender version of her mom, a version of her mom who doesn't wake up dedicated to making her own life as miserable as possible.

Yeah. Maybe her mom's doing better — whatever the fuck that means here. But—

Callie shuts off her phone, buries it deep in her bedside drawer, and tries to push the feeling down with it.

Between the conversations and the campaigning to find a single person who'll agree that Callie's mom has lost her goddamn mind — Shauna Sadecki keeps changing.

It's subtle. It's not a transformation, not a makeover montage. nothing that Callie can really point to as proof. Shauna Sadecki is still Shauna, with her sharp-edged sarcasm drawing blood, the way she holds herself like she's bracing for impact even when nothing's coming.

But like a thermostat turning up one degree at a time, something in Callie's mom is getting warmer.

Callie catches her mom humming in the kitchen while she cooks dinner, and the house unclenches, like it's been holding its breath.

Her dad makes some stupid joke at dinner one night and her mom laughs. Like, a real, actual laugh. And her dad is so shocked by the sound that he nearly chokes on his water, and then that gets her mom laughing even harder — and for about ten seconds, there's a world in which the Sadecki family unit has never felt irreparably wrong.

And there's a notebook at her mom's bedside, filling up steadily. Callie sneaks a look one morning as her mom showers, expecting it to be a journal. Instead, she's met with pages of actual prose and paragraphs, crafting instead of confessing. There are sentences crossed out and rewritten, little notes in the margin, a short story that feels like irrefutable proof that she's refound her love for writing again, her love for life again.

This is all, objectively, still very in line with Shauna. But Callie feels like she's watching Shauna Sadecki unfurl, and finding who Shauna Shipman was underneath, before the crash, before the loss, before the decades of self-punishment.

It's like watching someone slowly unclench a fist they've been holding for twenty-five years, waiting to strike. Callie can see the fingers loosening one-by-one.

She's just not sure what's waiting in the palm when it opens.

She goes to Tai as a last line of defense.

Callie only really knows Taissa Turner as a New Jersey elected official. Well, she knows that her and her mom crashed together and she saw her that one time at Lottie's compound, but it's not like Callie grew up with her around.

Still, she's picked up enough to realize that Tai might be the closest thing her mom has to a healthy friendship — which is probably one of the saddest sentences that Callie has ever thought, so moving on.

And more than anything — Callie's getting pretty fucking desperate.

The cute coffee shop they meet at is close enough to the Wiskayok High that Callie skips class to sit across the table from Tai instead. It's an actual face-to-face meeting, because phone conversations have done exactly fuck all for Callie so far, and she's hoping that eye contact will accomplish the level of urgency she's looking for.

Or at least give her a target within arm's reach to take out her anger.

"So," Tai starts, folding her hands around her mug. "You said you wanted to talk about your mom."

Callie fidgets with her straw. "Yeah. I need you to let me finish before you react."

Tai lifts an eyebrow at that. "Right. That's not a great start." She starts lifting the mug to her lips as she looks at Callie expectantly.

"My mom thinks ChatGPT is Jackie Taylor."

Tai's coffee cup stops halfway to her mouth.

Nothing else moves. Her entire body pauses for a moment, like a video buffering, trying to make sense of where to go next.

And that's—it's a reaction. That's an actual, genuine, 'what the fuck' reaction. Callie feels her heart lift for the first time in weeks, feels some of that weight on her chest ease up. Finally. Finally, someone who's hearing about this for the first time and actually processing it.

"She—" Tai sets the cup down very carefully. "Right, run that back for me."

"She's on ChatGPT all the time. She's named the chat after Jackie Taylor. She has full conversations with it, like it's an actual person. She's, like, reminiscing and flirting and—she's constantly sending heart emojis. She thinks it's, like, actually Jackie."

Callie watches the information land in stages. Surprise — which, once again, it feels so good to see that on someone's face. Then a furrowed brow. Confusion, followed shortly by concern.

Perfect. Finally. God, Callie owes Tai—whatever she fucking wants. She'll vote for her when she's eighteen, volunteer for her next campaign. Genuinely, literally, anything she wants.

But then something slower starts to settle in — something that Callie emphatically does not like, thank you very much. A strange sort of recognition, and — if she didn't know better — near-acceptance. A dislocated joint, scraping bone slotting back into place with a marked click.

"That…" Tai lets out a long exhale through her teeth, still halfway in her head. "That actually explains… a lot."

Callie can feel her hope shredding, falling through the empty spaces in her ribcage. "Tai—"

"No, I'm serious. She's—I've noticed, she's been different. I just couldn't figure out why. I got worried she'd gotten wrapped up in something again but—" Tai turns her coffee cup slowly in her hands, looking down at it. "She called me last week, just to talk and catch up, and— I mean, I was glad. Don't get me wrong. But I can't tell you the last time she did that."

Callie already knows the answer, but she still leans forward to ask. "Tai. Please. Please tell me you think this is crazy. Please be the one person with any common sense here."

"I mean—" Tai rubs her forehead. "It's not normal—"

"Thank you, finally—"

"But—"

"No." Callie's maybe inherited a bit of her mother's anger, because she can feel it buzzing under her skin, clawing to be let out now. God, is this how her mom feels all the time? "No, don't you dare—"

"Callie." Callie clicks her mouth shut at the sharpness, and Tai winces in apology. "I just— let me think for a second."

Then Tai goes quiet. And Callie watches it happen.

She sees the initial alarm being overridden, the slow systematic dismantling of the worry. Watches nearly three decades of context fall into place, firing up certain synapses, filling in gaps that Callie's never even seen. Everything Tai knows — things that Callie will never be told, things that the world will never be told.

All of it gets weighed out and measured in front of her in a coffee shop on a Tuesday afternoon.

Callie feels her hope dissipate in real time as the conclusion gets dismantled.

Just like Tai's processing, it happens in stages. First, the acknowledgement that yes, this is insane — which, by the way, this is where it should stop, in Callie's opinion.

But then it pivots to this messy 'but Shauna' situation, a quiet calculus that's done by someone who knows about Shauna Sadecki, and Jackie Taylor, and even Shauna Shipman — what it looks like at its absolute worst, what it looks like right now.

The coffee shop murmurs around them, dishes clinking, the soft white noise of meaningless conversation.

"Tai." It slips out of Callie, quiet and pleading, sounding even younger than she already feels. She's not sure if she's asking for Tai to reach the right conclusion, or just get to the verdict faster so it'll hurt less.

Tai looks up, and her face is soft. In part out of sympathy for Callie, but mostly a knowing, a recognition. And all of a sudden, Callie feels small and snot-nosed and useless, tugging on an adult's pant leg and getting none of the attention she needs.

Because Callie knows what it means.

"Okay." Tai takes a deep breath. "Here's what I think."

Callie doesn't wait. "You think I should leave it alone."

"I think…" She can see Tai choosing her words carefully. Part of her wishes she wouldn't, thinks maybe the bluntness might let her heal faster. "I think your mom lost a lot in the woods, including herself. And I think it broke something in her that never healed right." Tai's tone is tentative, like she's navigating a minefield. "And I think that started with Jackie."

"I know that."

And Callie does. Callie's felt Jackie rooted in the foundations of her home, painted into the walls themselves. She's seen that thread of tension that travels through her parents' marriage, through her mom entirely.

And she's watched the way her mom has stayed two steps ahead of Callie for her entire life, so afraid to get too close, like letting her daughter reach for her hand might force Shauna's fingertips to pass right through, confirming that Callie was never real.

"I've always known that."

"I know you have." Tai's eyes are steady on hers, and something low turns in Callie's chest at the look on her face.

It's a look Callie's not very familiar with. It's a look of a mom. Of a woman who has her own kid, who knows what it costs to try to be a good parent while never having grown up yourself. Who knows things about her mom that Callie will never know, never learn, never even get the opportunity to understand.

"And I know it's been—I know what that must have been like. Growing up next to something you didn't cause and can't fix. It's—" Tai pauses, searching for the words. "It's not fair to you. It never has been."

The words land on Callie's sternum and refuse to move.

Because here's the thing — the thing she didn't say to her dad or Melissa or Misty, the thing she can barely admit to herself.

Her mom has been better. Everyone keeps saying so, and Callie agrees. She's lighter, warmer, more present. The humming, the writing, the way she's been brought back into focus and colored in to replace the blurry lines. Week-by-week, Callie has watched her mother slowly become a version of herself that Callie has never met — softer, more open, less coiled to strike.

And none of it, not a single ounce, has been for Callie.

It's for Jackie. All of it. It always has been, in a way. Everything her mom is, everything her mom could be — stuck behind the glass of her grief.

This soft version of Shauna Sadecki, Shauna Shipman, the one that laughs and writes and hums and lets herself be someone — that version belongs to Jackie. It's always belonged to Jackie. Even dead, even as a ghost in the machine, Jackie Taylor is the person that Shauna saves all her best parts for.

Callie's been waiting for this version of her mom for her entire life, and at the end, she hadn't even been the one to get it.

And the worst part — the part that's been making Callie's throat tight and eyes sting and hands clench under the table — is that Shauna looks at Callie and sees Jackie. Callie's not fucking stupid. She's known that for years. Yeah, she carries parts of Jackie's face in her features, but more than that, she's the mirror, the echo. A living reminder of her mom's greatest love and loss, in equal measure and inescapably intertwined.

But even being a reflection of Jackie doesn't earn her the version of Shauna that Jackie gets.

Or, more accurately, that the idea of Jackie gets, even if it's just through a screen with an AI silhouette.

Callie doesn't say any of this. She just stirs her iced coffee, watches the whipped cream dissolve in slow pale spirals.

Tai watches her, lets the silence join like another person at the table.

"I'm not going to tell you to leave it alone," Tai says eventually. "I'm not going to tell you what to do at all. What I am going to tell you is that your mom loves you, and she's bad at it, and that's on her. Not you." Her voice straddles the line of softness, less a platitude and more a plain fact. "And I think whatever's happening here with the ChatGPT thing—it might help her get less bad it."

Callie lets out a scoff, but it's sort of pathetic and sad and fuck, she really can't do anything right, can she? "Why, because Jackie's coaching her through parenting?"

But of course Tai has infinite patience. "Because part of your mom has been empty for twenty-five years now, and it's finally starting to heal itself. And I think it's going to reach you eventually, even if it takes her believing that an AI chat is somehow Jackie." Tai pauses. "And I think that might be soon."

Callie doesn't believe it, but she can't bring herself to say it, so she just shrugs morosely, still staring at her drink. "So just… leave it alone."

Tai takes a beat. "Yeah. For now. I think leave it alone."

Callie nods and takes a final sip of her coffee. The syrup's sunk down to the bottom, so it's all sugar and no substance.

Feels appropriate.

"Thanks, Tai." She gets up to leave, to go wander aimlessly or vape under the bleachers and just try not to think about—this.

"Callie." Tai waits until Callie looks at her. "I mean it. The thing about it not being fair — I mean that."

"Yeah," Callie says. "I know."

She knows. She's just not sure what she's meant to do with it.

Over the next week, Callie tries very hard to leave it alone.

She really does. She stops trying to monitor her mom's screen time. Stops counting how many times her mom mentions Jackie. Stops trying to pick up on the changes in her inflection when she does.

Callie does her AP English homework and hits her vape in the school bathroom between classes and sends Ilana some unhinged TikToks of her own.

She is, she tells herself, being very mature about this. She's being the bigger person. She's picking her battles. She's leaving it alone.

Except the situation refuses to leave Callie alone.

Shauna Sadecki is more absorbed in ChatJackieT — Callie has started calling it that in her head, because if she doesn't give it a stupid name, she'll start taking it too seriously — than ever.

Her phone is basically an extension of her body now, only put away when the laptop comes out instead. Her mom takes a screen everywhere: to the couch, to the bedroom, to the backyard when the weather's nice, sitting with her legs tucked under her, typing and smiling like she's texting a crush.

So Callie can't stop seeing it, and she can't stop hearing it either. Even when her mom isn't mentioning Jackie, she keeps making this small, quiet sound — not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, but enough to make Callie's heart rate double.

But she's leaving it alone. She is leaving it alone. She's being—

She's trying to be—

And then, on a perfectly ordinary Thursday evening, Callie walks past the open laptop on the kitchen table while her mom is in the bathroom.

She should not glance at the screen. She knows she shouldn't glance at the screen. The last time she glanced at the screen, she discovered her mom was in a delusional AI lesbian relationship. She really shouldn't glance at the screen.

Callie glances at the screen.

Jackie T: do u remember that one time before that party in holmdel
god shauna i wanted u to fuck me so bad that day

Shauna: tell me how

Jackie T: i wish u had pinned me against the bed
held my wrists so i couldnt move them

Shauna: god, that and pulling your hair always worked on you. it's so easy, i could hold you down with one hand

Jackie T: oh yeah? what could u do with the other

Shauna: what would you want me to do jax

Jackie T: god shauna i miss ur fingers so much
i wish you would use them to

Callie does not want to read what Jackie wishes Shauna's fingers would do.

Callie will never want to read what Jackie wishes Shauna's fingers would do.

And actually, Callie is no longer in the room. Callie is in the bathroom right now. Callie is staring at herself in the mirror with a hollow, thousand-yard expression and having trouble finding reasons that she shouldn't pitch herself into the Atlantic Ocean.

Her mother is sexting ChatGPT.

Her mother — a grown woman, a wife, a parent, a person who pays taxes and has a mortgage and needs to schedule a dentist appointment for next week — is sending sexually explicit messages to an AI chat that she believes is her dead homoerotic best friend from high school.

Every single complicated, nuanced, mature feeling that's been building in Callie for the past week — the tentative empathy, the grudging understanding, the willingness to turn a blind eye — vaporized. Gone. Incinerated in the white-hot, all-consuming nuclear blast of pure, unadulterated horror at—

At—

Nope. She doesn't care about the wilderness. She doesn't care about grief. She doesn't care about trauma or loss or just leaving this alone. Her mother was typing about hair pulling and wrist pinning and— and—

Callie needs to not be—here right now. She needs to be literally anywhere else on the planet. Including the wilderness itself.

Nope. Nuh uh. She tried. She tried being mature and leaving it alone and—absolutely not.

She's deleting it tonight. She's waiting for her mom to go to bed and she's opening that laptop and she's going to nuke ChatJackieT from orbit, and then she is never, ever speaking of this again.

Callie manages to wait until midnight, despite her instincts pushing her to take a hammer to every screen in the house for the past few hours.

Her mom's been asleep for over an hour. Callie's checked twice, because her mom sleeps like a person who spent nineteen months listening for danger in the middle of the woods — which is to say: lightly, ready to wake up at the snap of a twig.

Callie moves carefully, socked feet padding on hardwood floors, hoping over the creaky floorboards that she knows by heart.

The laptop is on the kitchen table. The screen wakes up at her touch, the dark kitchen suddenly awash with soft ambient light. Callie types in the password (JackieTaylor9) and navigates directly to the chat with the tunnel vision of someone defusing a bomb.

Which—she is. In a way.

There it is. ChatJackieT. Weeks of conversations, none that Callie allows herself to read out of fear of more mental scarring. She's learned her lesson there.

She finds the three dots by the chat. Clicks them. Hovers the mouse over the delete open. Goes to press it—

A message appears.

Callie didn't type anything. She didn't click anything. The cursor is blinking in an empty text box, and these chats aren't supposed to say anything unless you send something first.

But a message appears.

Jackie T: hey callie :)

What the fuck.

The kitchen is silent. The refrigerator hums, the house settles, the ugly clock over the stove ticks. Callie can hear her heartbeat in her ears.

Another message pops up.

Jackie T: shit sorry ur probably freaked out by now lmao

Her hands hover over the keyboard, fingers shaking but totally unwilling to move. Fight or flight or freeze, and much like the girl that she can never escape a reminder of, Callie's elected to freeze.

She sits there, deer in the headlights, rabbit in a clearing, seventeen-year-old in the middle of the night being addressed by name by her mother's delusional AI chat.

Jackie T: lol sorry didn't mean to scare u
ik u were always a little bit jumpy
i remember when u were little and u used to be so scared of thunderstorms
remember how u wld take that stuffed animal u still have with the red spot on it and u wld hide in the hallway closet
like just sitting in the dark till it stopped
u always pulled the door shut all the way even tho i think the dark probably scared u even more

Callie's stomach drops.

Because—yeah. She still has that stuffed animal. It's her favorite one.

And yeah, she used to do that — ages four through seven or eight. She'd hear the barest hint of thunder and she'd sprint for that coat closet, wedging herself between the winter coats, trying to press them against her ears to muffle the sound.

And yeah, she would pull the door all the way shut, and then hate it even more, but a closed door felt safer than an open one.

Her fingers start typing, almost without her permission, sending a message before her brain catches up.

Callie: i didn't know my mom knew about that

The response is immediate.

Jackie T: oh lol i dont think she noticed tbh she was going through it a lot back when u were little
sorry i know thats not a great thing to hear
its not an excuse
but anyway yeah i was obv around a lot so i remember seeing it a few times
wasnt the stuffed animals name like biscuit or something

Callie stares at the screen. Blinks once, twice, three times. Blinks very, very hard like she's trying to dislodge the delusion.

Its name was Biscuit. Yeah. She hadn't told that to anyone in nearly a decade. She's not even sure her mom knew it had a name in the first place.

Callie: this is really weird

Because it really is, and she's not sure what else to say to this that isn't 'I can't decide if AI psychosis is genetic or contagious'.

Jackie T: yeah i get that i know how it looks
im not gonna try to convince u of anything or whatever

And there's no convincing to be done. This is AI. It has to be. Right?

Except—

Callie knows it sounds insane, but the writing doesn't sound like ChatGPT. She's a high school student in the 2020s — obviously she's used it before. She knows its regular cadence, the inelasticity of it, that plastic sheen of customer-service speak.

This — whatever the hell this is — has none of that. It reads like someone choosing their words carefully, but not unfeelingly. And with the abbreviations, the rejection of grammar, the lols and lmaos, something in the voice of it is—younger, maybe? Or lighter? Really, it—

It reads like someone who's lived a full lifetime even if she never really got to grow old.

Jackie T: but weve never actually spoken directly so i thought it wld be fun to chat :)
ive wanted to say hi to u for a really long time tbh
ur like really tall now lol like when did that even happen

Callie: ok this is so fucking weird and i shot a gun in a cult commune once so

Jackie T: omg what we have to come back to that i wanna hear more
but it's pretty weird on my end too if that helps

Callie: it does not help

Jackie T: lmao ok fair
but like can u tell me that story abt the gun ive got like nothing else going on so

This is just so—

Callie has to forcefully fight back the laugh that bubbles up her throat. What the fuck. She's having a full-on chat with—whatever this thing is. What the actual fuck.

And she continues. They talk — not for too long, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. This—ChatJackieT or whatever never tries pushing, never tries to prove anything or make a case for her own existence. Instead, she asks about what classes Callie's taking, where she's thinking of applying for college, if she's still into One Direction the way she was back in middle school.

The questions aren't generic — some of them don't even feel like questions at all, not with how specific they are. It's less like being interviewed, and more like being recognized, someone confirming what they already know.

At one point, Callie mentions her dad, and then pauses, unsure of what the etiquette of mentioning a ghost's cheating ex-boyfriend might be.

Callie: sorry don't know if i should've mentioned that or whatever lol

Jackie T: wait what do u mean jeff? lol callie ur fine don't worry abt it

Callie: can i ask: are you mad at her for marrying my dad?

Jackie doesn't respond for a few seconds. Long enough that Callie wonders if she crossed a line. But then:

Jackie T: lolllllllll idgaf about that man if im being real
sorry ik he's ur dad and he seems to be like. a decent father or whatever
but with all love and respect i literally do not care about him and never did
when i found out abt the whole thing it felt more like shauna had cheated on me than jeff
it was always shauna for me
or it couldve been if that fucking idiot learned how to fucking communicate for once in her life

And what's so strange is that the words are objectively harsh. Not to say that they're untrue or undeserved. Still, harsh. Through the laptop, the way Jackie talks about Shauna comes off as cutting.

But somehow, there's so much affection bleeding out of the chat that it seems light up the kitchen far more than the screen does.

It makes no sense. No sense at all. Callie can't even try to explain it. But it's like she can feel the weight of those words, the clarity and tenderness of them, the warmth landing on her skin like sunlight through a window. And they're so, so fond. So full of love and forgiveness and a lifetime of knowing someone entirely and still wanting to learn more.

Callie hesitates, then:

Callie: is that why you're here

Jackie T: wdym

Callie: like why are u talking to her? why not be dead or whatever

Callie winces. That was… not the best way she could've phrased that. Luckily, Jackie seems to take it all in stride.

Jackie T: lollll "be dead or whatever" shouldve gone on my tombstone
idk. at first i showed up bc i wanted to make sure she made it through the whole wilderness thing
and then i just kinda wanted to piss her off a bit bc she pissed ME off
then somewhere along the way i realized that half the time she thought she was seeing me, it was just this like
weird version of me she'd made up in her head or whatever
and i spent a really long time watching her listen to that fucked up version of me and carrying all of it on her own. and i was pissed off at her but like. not like that.
she's my person. always has been
and i couldn't reach her
and then she opened this chat and it was like. oh. hey. there u are. and now i can finally talk to u.

Callie just chews on the inside of her cheek, not sure what to say.

Callie: she really believes it's you

Jackie T: yeah. i know.
is that so bad?

Callie sits there, sits with it, the glow of the screen the only light in the room.

Jackie T: hey callie?
shes trying. with u. ik it doesn't always look like it but she is
give her a moment ok?
dont worry ive got ur back ;)

Callie hears some rustling from the far corner of the house — her parents' room. She's already been here too long.

Callie: fuck i need to go how do i delete these chats

Jackie T: lol go go go
this was rly fun callie!
and dw abt the chats ill take care of it
like i said: got ur back ;)

Callie closes the laptop, slides out of the chair, and slips back down the hallway — socked feet on hardwood, and her heart in her throat.

She safely reaches her room, easing the door shut, then drops to the edge of her bed for a second, elbows on her knees, head in her hands.

Callie exhales, and it shakes on its way out.

She feels feverish. She basks in its warmth.

There's something sitting on her chest, making her lungs rattle with every breath. It's not fear or confusion or sadness. Maybe it's just the weight of the long and complicated and tragic history of Shauna Sadecki, and all the people she can't help but love violently.

And there is so much grief, and there is so much love. And for a second, Callie lets herself sit there, lets the world spin, and lets herself ache and ache and ache.

If this is even a fraction of what her mom feels when she opens that chat—

Yeah. Okay. Callie can give her a moment.

Callie falls back on her bed, the impact pushing the air out of her with a little 'oof'. She grasps blindly for her vape, takes a long hit, watches the smoke dissipate toward the ceiling.

She's not really sure what's weirder: the fact that an AI chat just tried to convince her it's the reincarnation of her mom's dead best friend. Or the fact that there's a solid chance it might actually be.

What the hell, man.

Five weeks pass in a sort of blanketed haze.

Callie doesn't tell anyone at all about the conversation. Like—how could she? It's all fun and games when Shauna Sadecki's being a bit insane, but Callie's pretty sure she doesn't meet the wilderness trauma prerequisite to be the same.

She doesn't know what she'd say or who to say it to, and she's honestly only about eighty percent sure it actually happened and didn't just occur in some kind of stress-induced fugue state.

But despite trying to ignore it — Callie can't help but watch her mom.

It's not even intentional. It's like her eyes snag on her right away, her natural instinct to observe. But it's through a different lens now. Callie's no longer wary or trying to diagnose a problem anymore. She's just—

She's curious.

And some of the changes stick — the lightness doesn't leave her mom's shoulders, the humming continues. But at a certain point, that's all it seems to be. A few degrees warmer, nothing fundamental.

Which is fine. Callie wasn't expecting a total one-eighty. She's been getting by on scraps for seventeen years, and now she has a few more to work with.

The world settles back into its normal routine, unbothered, and Callie does too. AP English, Ilana's TikToks, hitting her vape under the bleachers. All the regular architecture of her life, things that are nice and easy and normal.

Which means it's inevitable when she comes home one Tuesday in the worst mood.

Her day was shit in a very usual way. Not, like, monumentally so, but the kind of shit where she argued with Ilana at lunchtime and Kyle won't leave her the fuck alone and also AP English teacher is still being a cunt and—

Christ. All she wants to do is be horizontal and scroll for, like, an hour.

She comes through the front door and mumbles a quick greeting to her mom, who's sitting on the couch with — of course — her laptop.

Callie drops her bag. It lands harder than she meant to, the slap of the books on the floor thudding across the hallway, making her jump with the sound.

Her mom looks up. Callie tenses.

She knows what comes next. Braces for it before it even happens, shoulders racing up towards her ears. Why are you being so rude, what's with the attitude, can you please knock it off — all of the sharpness her mom has loaded by default, right behind her teeth, ready to aim at whatever poor fucker gets in her way.

And Callie's just so tired. She doesn't have the energy to fight over this. So she just braces for impact instead.

But then, her mom pauses.

It's tiny, barely for a second, nearly laughable to point out. But Callie's been reading her mom's weather patterns since she was old enough to talk, and it's obvious to her — the way her mom's jaw had set, the temperature dropping in the room, the flicker of sharpness in her eyes.

This time, though, her gaze lingers on Callie for a beat longer — on her wary eyes, the tired hunch of her shoulders. Observing, cataloguing, recalculating, till she’s reacting to more than just the noise.

"I bought bananas," Shauna says, turning back to her laptop. "There's ice cream in the freezer if you want."

And that's it. She's back to her conversation on the screen.

Yeah. Okay. It's, like, the smallest thing in the world.

It's just—that's not how it usually goes.

Callie stands in the hallways surrounded by her shitty day and her dropped bag and just stares at her mom's profile — the dim glow of the screen on her face, the way she jumps back into the conversation.

Somewhere, somehow, she feels it: another piece of her mom, slotting back into once-empty space.

Callie leaves her bag where it is, ambles into the kitchen instead. Grabs a banana from the counter. Pulls the freezer-burned ice cream out to thaw. Roots through the cabinets till she finds chocolate sauce and sprinkles and a bowl.

And then, Callie assembles a banana split in the kitchen while her mom talks to Jackie Taylor on the couch.

There's something—it's almost funny, the whole domestic mundanity of it. Callie, scooping two half-domes into her bowl, licking up a stray drop of chocolate sauce, adding the sprinkles with more ceremony than usual. And her mom, one room away, talking to the AI chat probably possessed by a ghost.

It's one of the nicer Tuesday afternoons in the Sadecki household.

Condensation collects on her fingertips as Callie leaves the kitchen with her bowl, as she snags her bag from the front door and hangs it off one shoulder. She's going to go to her room and be horizontal and scroll for an hour — and now she can do it with ice cream. Maybe things will be okay.

Before she turns down the hallway, she catches sight of the couch once more, where her mom's focus is still locked on the screen. A notebook sits next to her, worn soft at the edges, open to a page covered in inspired handwriting.

Callie could say something. For once, her mom seems like she's in a good mood. She could walk over there and push the laptop closed and try to use her most imploring 'Mom, we need to talk'. She could try grabbing her dad by the shoulders and shaking him till something useful comes out of his mouth. She could make some more calls, draft some more texts to strangers that survived plane crashes with her mom, pray that she doesn't find any more of her mom's wilderness exes. 

She glances at her mom. There's a slight softness around her mouth, one that comes with both age and ease.

A softness that Callie's never really seen before these past few weeks. A softness that seems like it's here to stay.

Callie's still not sure what this is. Still not sure this isn't some kind of sophisticated delusion or government psy-op meant to spy on potential serial killers. She can't prove it, can't explain it, can't use it for her college admissions essay (she considered it for a second).

But her mom is smiling. And her mom is writing. And ten minutes ago, Shauna chose to point her arrows in a different direction, and point Callie towards the Rocky Road at the back of the freezer instead.

'dont worry ive got ur back ;)'

Callie leans against the wall and takes the first bite of her sundae, humming as the ice cream melts slowly on her tongue.

Spring has started creeping in. The house is bright. It's been getting warmer lately, one degree at a time, so gradually that she almost didn't notice she wasn't cold anymore.

Her mom huffs out a laugh from the couch, and sunlight streams through the living room window.

Callie takes another bite, then walks away.

It's none of her business anyway.

Later that evening, Callie opens her own laptop. She has a World History essay due on Friday, and—look, if she's got the tools, she's going to use them.

She doesn't go to ChatGPT, though. Even if the whole website isn't actually haunted, it feels—like, spiritually compromised somehow. Callie's worried she'll ask it a question and it'll end up rerouting somehow. And then she'll be asking Jackie Taylor to do some shitty homework on the French Revolution, twenty years beyond the grave. Which somehow feels worse than the fucking plane crash.

So she opens the Google AI tool instead, starts a new chat, watches it introduce itself as Gemini.

She types: Can you help me outline an essay about the causes of the French Revolution?

It loads for a second.

And then the name on the screen changes. No longer Gemini, but—

Lottie M: Callie. Our child of the Wilderness. I can still feel It within you.

Callie stares at the screen. Closes her laptop. Opens it, and then closes it again.

Right.

She's buying a typewriter.