Chapter Text
The school fair was louder than Maddie remembered.
Maybe it was because everything felt louder now—life itself pressing in around her after so long spent drifting between silence and echoes. Laughter bounced off the gym walls, music thumped from cheap speakers, and the smell of fried dough clung to the air like a memory she couldn’t quite trust.
Maddie Nears should’ve felt normal again.
She didn’t.
Her fingers curled around the edge of her hoodie as she scanned the crowd, half-expecting to see him leaning against the bleachers—arms crossed, smirk already waiting for her. But she can’t see him,not here
Wally.
Her chest tightened.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” a voice said lightly.
Maddie turned. A small booth sat tucked between a ring toss game and a face-painting station. A hand-painted sign read: Palm Readings – $5.
The woman behind the table smiled, but there was something… off about it. Too knowing.
“I have,” Maddie muttered before she could stop herself.
The woman’s eyes sharpened. “Sit.”
Maddie hesitated. She shouldn’t. This was stupid.
But something pulled at her—something familiar in the same way the ghost world had felt familiar the moment she first opened her eyes there.
She sat.
The psychic took her hand, her touch strangely cold.
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then her expression changed.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Maddie stiffened. “What?”
“You’ve crossed over,” the woman said, voice lower now. “Not just once. You exist… between.”
Maddie pulled her hand back. “Yeah, I know. I was dead. I got better. Congratulations, you’re psychic.”
“I’m not talking about that,” the woman said sharply. “I’m talking about what came back with you.”
The noise of the fair seemed to fade.
A hollow feeling opened in Maddie’s stomach.
“…What do you mean?”
The woman leaned closer. “You didn’t come back alone.”
Maddie let out a small, humorless laugh. “No, I did. That’s kind of the problem.”
“No,” the psychic said, her gaze dropping to Maddie’s abdomen. “You’re carrying something. Someone.”
The words didn’t make sense.
They couldn’t.
“I’m not—” Maddie shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
“Not by your world’s rules,” the woman agreed. “But you were part of theirs. And he was part of you.”
Wally’s face flashed in her mind—his laugh, the way he always stood just a little too close, like he didn’t believe in distance.
Like he didn’t believe he’d ever lose her.
Her breath caught.
“That bond doesn’t disappear,” the psychic continued softly. “It transforms.”
Maddie’s hands trembled. “You’re saying I’m… what? Pregnant?”
“Precisely ” the woman said. “A true miracle I might add never seen this one before.”
The world rushed back all at once—music, voices, the dizzying swirl of people moving around her like nothing had changed.
But everything had.
Maddie stood abruptly, backing away from the booth.
“This is insane,” she said, even as her voice cracked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You will see soon enough” the psychic called after her. “You know I’m right”
Maddie stopped.
Slowly, she turned back. “It’s not possible.”
The woman’s expression softened, almost pitying. “Are you sure?”
⸻
That night, Maddie couldn’t sleep. Plans to get Simon back in his body are usually the cause of her sleepless nights as of late but tonight something else has taken forefront.
She lay staring at the ceiling, one hand resting unconsciously over her stomach.
It was stupid.
All of it.
And yet…
Something in her needed to be sure.
Her eyes burned. “This is insane” she groaned jumping up out of bed hurriedly slipping some shoes on. Even though it was impossible peace of mind couldn’t hurt.
She quietly slipped from her bedroom not to disturb her mother there was a 24 hour drug store not to far. Once she got the results she knew for a fact she would get maybe she could get a proper nights sleep.
every time she thought about it—really thought about it—her mind hit the same wall.
The psychic’s words.
You didn’t come back alone.
she tried to dismiss it.
Stress. Trauma. Suggestion. A scam in a carnival
but something just didn’t feel right.
Maddie stood in the bathroom staring at the test in her hand.
Two lines.
She didn’t move for a long time.
“…No,” she whispered. “That’s not—no.”
But her reflection didn’t change just because she said it out loud.
Janet must have been with someone while she held her body hostage. That’s the only reasonable explanation.
She must be pregnant with some man’s baby who she’s never met and has no recollection of having done the deed. The whole thing was really unsettling she felt as if she was going to puke.