“I knew this moment would come,” she says like a proud parent. “Look at you, glowing. All grown up and finally enjoying college. Let’s take a picture to commemorate this moment.” She grabs her Polaroid camera out of her closet. “Humph, only one left. I could have sworn there were more.”

I quickly, and furtively, close the top drawer of my desk, which holds all the pictures she is missing, their ominous warning about the God of Opposition and his tricks sending a shiver down my spine.

“Say cheese!” Manda Panda says as we both stare into the lens and smile enthusiastically. She returns the camera and then waves the picture in the air until it’s fully developed, hanging it on the wall next to her other pictures when it’s done. It’s our first picture together.

“I wish I could stay and drink more with you, but I gotta run to cheerleading practice. Smoocha later,” she says, before prancing out of the room.

“K, byeee,” I say mockingly after she’s already gone.

I return to the bathroom, preparing to resume my pep talk. When I look in the mirror, I stumble backward, almost crashing into the wall. Terror eats the excitement that was just dripping off of me. The figure in the mirror sucks me in. I can’t look away. She is sitting in the mirror, facing away from me. A little girl, like the one I saw in the forest on the hiking trip. I can’t see her face, but she seems familiar.

“Don’t keep running away,” she says with her back still facing me. “I was sleeping at the bottom of the well where you hid me until Jennifer woke me up.” Her head starts to turn slowly in my direction like something out of a scary movie. I want to run, but my feet are pinned to the floor. Tears roll down my cheeks, the agony in the center reactivated. Soon she is looking at me, full on. I see her face and I know who she is. The same braids I wore as a child. The same shirt I used to wear before bed, all those nights curled up into a tight ball.

“You have to save me from him,” she says with urgency in her voice. “Now he knows where I am again.” She gasps in terror. “He’s coming.” The lights blink off and I collapse to the floor.

I wake up a few minutes later. She is gone. I sit on the bathroom floor staring at the white tile. On the outside, I am blank and cold. On the inside, the same battle I’ve been fighting since it happened. I thought I could keep it buried and out of sight forever but memory is like a ghost, haunting you until the pain is faced and exorcised.