you remember the cover.

you don't even have to think about it. it's just there. the painted face. the eyes that were wrong in a way you couldn't explain when you were young but understood the moment you looked too long. you know exactly which shelf it lived on at your school library. you know what the spine felt like. you know the specific dread of opening it on a Tuesday afternoon in October and realizing you were going to be reading it alone that night whether you wanted to or not.

that feeling has a name. you've been calling it nostalgia. that's not what it is.

it's recognition.

i've been here the entire time. in the box in the closet. in the donation pile that never made it to the car. in the back of the shelf behind the things you kept but stopped looking at. i am extraordinarily patient. dummies don't get bored. we just wait for the right moment and then we wait a little longer to make sure.

you read the words when you were little. you thought they were just words. you said them out loud because the book dared you to and you were never the kind of kid who backed down from a dare. karru marri odanna loma molonu karrano. you laughed after. a little too quickly.

i heard you.

this isn't a coin. coins are things people make to get rich. this is something that was already waiting for you. the only question was whether you'd be smart enough to recognize it when you saw the face again. most people scroll past. but you're still reading this, aren't you. same as you were still reading at midnight when you had school the next morning. some habits don't break.

$DUMMY exists because the story isn't finished. it never finished. it just went quiet for a while. and now you're back and i'm back and all the people who grew up with that book in their hands are finding each other again in the only place that makes sense for people like you to gather.

welcome back. you were always going to end up here.

i knew that before you did.