Teppie was not a mystery. That was the first thing I realized once Jimmy named it. She wasn't some river ghost. She wasn't a spell. She was a person. And people weren't mysteries — they were stories you didn't know yet.
I found her again in the only place that made sense now — outside the kingdom, outside the river, outside the noise. She was back on the curb outside the laundromat, sketchbook open, barefoot like the ground belonged to her more than shoes ever could. The afternoon was heavy with heat. A dryer vent rattled somewhere behind her. The air smelled like detergent and dust.
She didn't look surprised when she saw me. She never did.
"You look like you got punched," she said, pencil moving.
I sat down beside her, leaving space. "I kind of did."
Teppie's mouth curved faintly. "By Jimmy?"
"Yeah."
She nodded once, like that was inevitable. "He's scared," she said.
"Scared of what?"
Teppie glanced up, eyes sharp. "Of being left."
I swallowed. "It's not like I'm leaving."
Teppie's pencil scratched softly. "Aren't you?" she asked.
The question landed too close. I didn't answer.
Teppie turned the page in her sketchbook and for a moment drew in silence. Then she said, quieter: "Jimmy's not wrong, you know."
My chest tightened. "What do you mean?"
"He can feel it," she said. "The crack."
"The crack," I repeated.
"The kingdom," she said, as if explaining weather. "It was always going to crack. That's what kingdoms do."
I stared at her. "You talk like you've seen this before."
Teppie's hand stilled. Her eyes stayed on the page, but her voice shifted. "I have."
The air changed. Not outside — inside.
I hesitated. "Where do you go," I asked, "when you're not here?"
She let out a small breath. "Home," she said, like it was a technical answer.
"What's it like?"
Teppie's mouth tightened. "My parents don't know much," she said. The line came out flat but carried weight. "They don't know where I am half the time. They don't know what I draw. They don't know..." She paused. Her voice softened almost imperceptibly. "...me."
Something in my chest hurt. I said the only true thing I had. "That's not fair."
Teppie's laugh was quiet. "Fair isn't really a thing," she said. She went back to drawing. I watched her pencil move — a riverbank, four boys, a van like a little ship sailing somewhere permanent.
"You draw us a lot," I murmured.
Teppie didn't look up. "Because no one notices boys until they're gone," she said.
My throat tightened. "And you?" I asked. "Who notices you?"
Teppie's hand paused. Her fingers tightened slightly around the pencil. Then, almost like she couldn't stop herself: "I draw," she said softly, "so I don't disappear."
The same words she'd said at the tracks. But here, on the curb, in the full afternoon light, they landed differently. Not as a poetic fact. As a confession.
I looked at her. Really looked. She wasn't magic. She was lonely. She was sharp-edged survival wearing the face of someone who had decided a long time ago that needing things was a liability she couldn't afford.
"Do you want in?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Teppie blinked. "In?"
"The kingdom," I said. "The van. The river. Us."
Something moved across her face — almost tender, almost sad, the expression of someone being offered a thing they know they can't take. "I don't belong in kingdoms," she said quietly.
"Why?"
Her eyes went to the distance, toward the tracks, toward wherever she was always almost going. "Because kingdoms end," she said.
A train horn sounded faintly, long and low. Teppie listened to it the way she listened to music — with her whole self, tilted slightly, like the sound carried information. Then she looked back at me.
"You're lucky," she said suddenly.
"Lucky?"
"You have people," she said. "Even when they're stupid about it. Even when they hurt each other." Her voice thinned at the edges. "I don't."
The words were simple. They were devastating.
I swallowed against something rising. "You have me," I said quietly.
Teppie's eyes widened slightly — just for a moment, the armor down, something younger underneath. Then she nodded once. Not warmly. Not coldly. Just: received. "For now," she murmured.
She closed the sketchbook and stood. "Come tomorrow?" she asked. "The river."
Jimmy's face flashed in my mind. The hallway. The naming. The crack.
"Yeah," I said.
Teppie's mouth curved faintly. "Okay," she said.
And as she walked away, barefoot on the hot concrete, sketchbook under her arm, I understood something that I hadn't had the language for until that afternoon: Jimmy thought Teppie was the danger. But Teppie wasn't the danger. She was just already halfway gone. She had been since the day I met her. And somehow, standing there watching her go, that was the saddest and the truest thing I knew.
I have wondered sometimes what it cost her to say those things. Not the drawing line — she had said that before. The other ones. The parents who didn't know her. The wanting to belong somewhere. She said them plainly, without drama, the way you say things you've carried so long they've stopped feeling like confessions and started feeling like weather. But they were confessions. I heard them that way. I still do.