Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog

Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories
Comments
Library
61 Followers
60 Following

150 Stories

1551 karma pts

?

The Cost of Pretending

People smile before I say a word. They laugh at jokes I haven't made yet. They tell stories about me while I'm standing right there, and half the time I don't recognize the person they're describing. Apparently, I'm fearless. That's the version that spread. The one who never hesitates, never doubts, never loses sleep over a decision. I don't know who started it. Maybe it was the time I walked into a room pretending I wasn't terrified. Maybe it was luck wearing the right expression. The truth is, I rehearse phone calls. I stand outside doors ...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Treasure We Leave Behind

The first thing Mollie heard that Monday morning wasn’t the school bell. It was a whisper. “I heard someone found a hidden room under the library.” She froze just outside the classroom door. Two eighth graders stood nearby, talking in hushed voices as though they were sharing a dangerous secret. “My cousin said they sealed it years ago,” one of them added. “People who went inside never talked about what they saw.” Mollie rolled her eyes. Her school was more than a hundred years old, so strange stories appeared all the time. There had been ru...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Photograph

The first envelope arrived without a stamp. It was waiting on Geiszel’s kitchen table when she came home from work, even though she had locked the apartment that morning. Inside was a single photograph. It showed her standing outside the old lighthouse on the night her brother disappeared fifteen years ago. She had been seventeen then, soaked through by the storm, her dark hair clinging to her face. Behind her, the lighthouse rose against the black sky, its beam cutting through the rain. Geiszel stared at the photograph until the room seemed...

7 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Empty Room

The room was locked from the outside, and it held almost nothing. No windows. No furniture. No decorations. Just smooth concrete walls, a steel door without a handle on my side, and a single light humming overhead. The emptiness felt deliberate, as if someone had scrubbed away every clue that could explain why I was there. I checked my pockets for the third time. A key. A folded receipt with no writing on it. A marble the color of smoke. None of them made sense. Then the light flickered. When it steadied again, there was a chair in the middl...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

More Than Music

Every Thursday at six, Renee unlocked the community center, switched on the lights, and arranged twelve folding chairs in a circle. People knew her as dependable. She remembered birthdays, always had extra pens, and somehow knew exactly when the coffee needed refilling. She had a habit of solving problems before anyone noticed they existed. If a table wobbled, she fixed it. If someone forgot the cookies, she quietly ran to the grocery store. Asking for help never occurred to her. In her mind, needing people and burdening them were almost the...

8 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

Packing Boxes

The kitchen filled with the gentle hiss of butter melting in the pan. Sabeena tipped in a handful of sliced mushrooms, stirring them with a wooden spoon until they turned golden at the edges. The smell of garlic drifted through the apartment, drawing her brother Dave from the living room. "That smells unfairly good," he said, leaning against the doorway. "You can complain after you grate the cheese." He laughed, grabbed the box grater, and got to work while Sabeena poured in a splash of cream. The sauce thickened slowly, wrapping itself arou...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Shape of Summer

The list had started as a joke. On the last day of school, Sherell had grabbed a marker and written "Things to Do Before Summer Ends" across a piece of cardboard she'd found in the garage. Underneath, she filled it with everything that seemed important in June. Watch a meteor shower. Swim after sunset. Learn to make blueberry pie. Read three novels. Ride a bike to the old lighthouse. By the middle of August, every item had a thick black line through it except one. Tell Peter the truth. She could have crossed it off with a lie. Nobody else ca...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Summer Map

The town of Harbor Point only came alive in June. By September, the ice cream shop closed its blue shutters, the souvenir stores packed away seashell wind chimes, and the beach belonged to gulls and waves again. But for twelve weeks every summer, the boardwalk filled with music, laughter, and people pretending time moved more slowly by the ocean. Kelly had spent every summer there since she was six. At twenty-three, she worked mornings at the bookstore near the pier and spent afternoons reading behind the counter whenever business slowed. Sh...

8 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Measure of Doors

The clock above the bakery door had been stuck at 4:17 for three years. Nobody bothered fixing it anymore. It was right often enough to fool strangers and wrong often enough that everyone who lived on Alder Street learned to ignore it. Philomina glanced at it out of habit anyway as she locked her bicycle to the bent signpost outside. Rain threatened but never committed. The air smelled like warm bread and wet pavement. Inside, the usual rhythm carried on. Trays slid into ovens. Someone laughed in the kitchen. Mrs. Lockwood argued with the es...

9 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

After the Silence

Before the meeting, neither Debbie nor Don expected anything to change. Three years had passed since their painful breakup, and they had carefully built separate lives. The only reason they agreed to meet was to finalize the sale of the apartment they had once shared. At first, the conversation stayed polite and distant. They discussed paperwork, finances, and renovation costs without making eye contact. The silence between subjects felt heavier than the words themselves. Then Don quietly admitted that he had spent years believing Debbie had...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Yeah, Grandma, I Stayed.

The train pulled into the station ten minutes late, hissing as it settled against the platform. Susana stepped off with a single suitcase and a folded map she hadn't looked at in years. The town seemed smaller than she remembered. The bakery was still on the corner. The clock tower still leaned slightly to the left. Even the old bookstore still had the same faded sign in the window. As she crossed the square, a man sitting on a bench looked up from a newspaper. His eyes widened. “Have we met before?” Susana stopped. The question should have ...

10 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Year the Stories Broke

When the dragon arrived, nobody screamed. The farmers in the valley looked up from their fields, nodded politely, and went back to work. The dragon seemed disappointed. “I am Vargath the Terrible,” he announced from the hilltop. “Welcome,” said an old woman hanging laundry. “I have come to destroy your village.” “Of course you have.” The dragon blinked. That wasn't the usual response. “Do you understand?” he asked. “I breathe fire.” “That sounds useful in winter,” the woman replied. Vargath spent the next hour setting several empty sheds abl...

10 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Door Left Unlocked

The train station closed at midnight, but Tyler stayed on the bench anyway. The departure board had gone dark an hour ago. The coffee stand was shuttered. Even the cleaning crew had finished their rounds and disappeared. Outside, rain tapped softly against the glass roof. Still, he waited. A paper ticket rested in his hands. It was worn thin at the folds from being opened and checked and folded again. The date printed on it was six months old. Most people would have called it foolish by now. His sister had promised she would come back on tha...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Where Lost People Go

The last train arrived at Platform 7 at exactly 11:47 p.m. Jill almost missed it. She sprinted through the nearly empty station, her backpack bouncing against her shoulders. The train's doors were already chiming their warning when she slipped inside. The doors closed behind her with a hiss. The carriage was empty except for one passenger. An old man sat near the far end, dressed in a dark coat despite the summer heat. He looked up as Jill entered and gave her a small nod. She nodded back and sat several rows away. The train lurched forward....

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Longest Journey Home

For seventeen years, everyone in Brindle had listened to the same answer. "It's not coming back." They said it when they passed the old railway station with its boarded windows and rusted tracks. They said it when they saw Eric Romanucci sweeping leaves from the empty platform every Saturday morning. They said it when they noticed him carrying paint cans, replacing broken signs, or clearing weeds from rails that hadn't felt the weight of a train in decades. The train line was dead. Everyone knew it. Everyone except Eric. The railway had once...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story