“Who are they?” Luna asked, gesturing with her chin toward the door. “I don’t think they’re staff. Me and Alex met everyone already.”

In six seconds flat, Stella made it from her table to the entrance. Her parents had arrived. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “It’s not time to leave yet! We had a deal! You said the whole weekend! You promised!”

Diane lunged forward, capturing Stella in a bear hug.

“What are you doing? I am yelling! You can’t hug me when I’m mad and yelling!”

But her mom didn’t let go, hugging her tighter. “I’m so proud of you.” She sniffled and said it again. “Brilliant. Just—brilliant and perfect. You handled yourself so well.”

“… what?” Stella looked at her dad and noticed his extremely loud face had gone uncharacteristically soft. He opened his arms and hugged them both.

Stella nearly fainted. All the blood left her head because she realized Jewel had given them access to the livestream.

“You will never in your life, ever call me Lloyd, ever again,” he said. “But I’m proud of you too. You did good, kiddo.”

They’d seen everything. Oh no. Oh God.

“You were watching,” Stella asked. “But you emailed me multiple times a day. You never said you were watching.”

“Jewel asked to keep it a secret for the game,” he said. “We agreed it could be a good learning experience for you. And for us.”

“We watched the whole thing. We slept when you slept, and if you were up, we were up cheering you on,” Diane said. “We even saw the ending in the planetarium. Jewel told us she cut the stream off before that but wanted us to know what you did.”

“Oh,” Stella said, for lack of anything better to say. “This is probably a good time to tell you I have a cat now. He’s bald and possibly hypoallergenic. I don’t actually know, but he’s very cute and wrinkly.” She continued to stand there while her parents hugged her. No, she wasn’t crying. Much. (Leave her alone.) “I have friends now too. Really good ones. And a job. They’re going to hire me.”

“We know,” her mom said, pulling back. She wiped her tears. “I’d like to meet them. If that’s okay with you?”

“That’s why we asked to come to brunch,” Lloyd said. “We wanted to meet your friends.”

Family and friends. What a concept.

Goldspiracy Forums

Transcript #1015

Original Golden Rule diary entry by Jewel Van Hanen

June 8, Year Three

Transcribed by Oreo524

FAMOUS LAST WORDS | Remember me.

Here we are. There you go.