Chapter Four | Static on Frequency Five

The radio only worked at 3:17 a.m.

Not 3:15. Not 3:30.
Marblecake had tested it—carefully, sleepily, with Petra’s quilt pulled up to her nose and a thermos of warm root milk by her elbow.
Frequency Five was always silent until that minute arrived. Then: static, a pulse, a flicker of something in between.

Milo called it coincidence.
Petra called it bedtime.
Marblecake called it a maybe.

She started waking up for it each night.
Wrapped in a scarf too big for her. Sitting on the floor of the attic with the radio’s dial glowing soft green.
She didn’t know what she was listening for—just that it was hers.

And one night, she heard it.

A whisper through the static. Not words, exactly. More like syllables that had forgotten how to behave.
It made her heart thump in a strange rhythm.
Not fear. Not joy. Something… familiar.

She wrote it down phonetically in her notebook, even though the letters didn’t make sense together. Even though it looked more like a memory than a message.

The next morning, she asked Petra, “Do you think people can miss places they’ve never been?”

Petra blinked sleepily over her toast. “I think people belong in more than one place. Maybe we leave little pieces of ourselves behind… or ahead.”

Milo added, “Or maybe you’re just weird. But like, the good kind.”

That day, the three of them skipped school.
They packed sandwiches and books and found a hill just outside Thimbletuck where the sky felt big enough for anything.
Marblecake played the radio, even though it wasn’t time.

Petra napped in the sun. Milo read a book upside down “for perspective.”

And Marblecake stared at the clouds, wondering if anyone was staring back.