You tell yourself it was a dream. A glitch. The phone is three years old; the battery swells; the audio jack spits white noise. You delete the app from the app list—hold your finger on the tile, tap the little trash can. Uninstalled.
You open it. The red button is gone. Instead, there’s a list. The Sound Recorder -Windows Phone-
You press play.
The chair is empty. The rain is still falling. But the waveform on your phone spikes—loud, violent, redlining into distortion—and you hear the sound of running footsteps, getting closer, from inside the recording, even though the classroom is perfectly still. You tell yourself it was a dream