The first time Olivia saw the flyer, it was taped crooked over the laundromat bulletin board: MIDNIGHT EXCHANGE. BRING WHAT YOU CANNOT KEEP. No fee, no phone number, just an address across town.

She went as a joke. That was what she told herself while she walked the six blocks in the cold, fingers shoved deep in her hoodie pocket around the small plastic hospital bracelet she had never thrown away.

The address turned out to be the old roller rink, the one that closed long ago. Its neon sign flickered a dull blue, buzzing like an insect stuck in a jar. The front doors were unlocked.

Inside, the rink had been cleared of everything except a circle of lawn chairs and a single folding table in the center. A boom box muttered static from the DJ booth. Seven people sat waiting. They looked like grocery-store cashiers, exhausted teachers, the guy at the gas station counter. Ordinary faces, all turned toward her.

A woman with streaked gray hair and a Cubs sweatshirt stood up. "You must be new," she said. "I’m Rita. Tonight, you are Participant Eight."

Olivia almost laughed, but the sound died on the slick floor.

"Set what you brought on the table," Rita said. "Then the bell goes around."

The object in the middle of the table was a brass handbell, the kind teachers used decades ago. It gleamed, polished bright. One by one, the others placed things beside it.

A broken watch. A folded wedding photo. A bus pass snapped in half. A collar with no tag. A worn-out inhaler. A baby sock.

The man from the gas station, whom Rita called Carl, gestured to Olivia. "You too."

She set the hospital bracelet on the table. Her name faced up. The dates did not.

"Rule One," Rita said. "The Exchange takes only what you cannot keep. It will not take what you pretend you can let go of."

"Rule Two," Carl added, eyes on the bell. "You must ring it when the moment feels wrong."

Olivia frowned. "Wrong?"

Rita smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. "You will know."

The lights above the rink hummed and dimmed until everyone’s faces were pale coins floating in gray water. Carl picked up the bell and started it around the circle.

When it reached the woman with the dog collar, she rang it once. The collar shuddered, then slowly unwound, threads separating like smoke. Within seconds, nothing was left on the table where it had been.

"Good trade," Rita murmured.

The baby sock’s owner rang next, jaw clenched. The sock dissolved more slowly, as if reluctant. Tears ran down his face. No one moved to comfort him.

Then the bell came to Olivia.

It was heavier than it looked. The brass was cool against her palm, but her hand sweated around the handle.

"Think of what you are giving away," Rita said softly. "Think of what will fill its place."

Olivia pictured the bracelet in the trash, imagined her kitchen drawer without it, her dreams without that weight at the back of them. She tried to imagine mornings that did not start with counting what was missing.

The bracelet materialized on the table.

She lifted the bell. The moment felt almost right.

Then she heard it: a high giggle, echoing where the DJ booth used to cast colored light over the floor. It was not in the room, not exactly, but it was like someone whispering through a wall.

Olivia froze.

"Wrong," she whispered.

Her hand shook. The giggle came again, closer this time, wrapped around her name the way it had sounded only in her head. Cold rolled over her scalp.

The moment cracked sideways.

She did not ring.

"Pass it," Carl said quietly.

Her throat closed. Olivia passed the bell to the next person. The bracelet stayed on the table, bright white under the dim lights.

Rita watched her, expression unreadable. "Sometimes the Exchange refuses," she said. "Or you do. Either way, it remembers."

The bell circled the room, swallowing grief one object at a time. Each time it rang, something vanished. Each time, the air grew a little lighter and a little stranger, as if the rink were hollowing out from the inside.

When the last object dissolved, the lights brightened with a pop. The boom box snapped off mid-static. Everyone stood, chairs scraping.

"Thank you for participating," Rita said. "You may notice changes. Side effects. That is the nature of imbalance."

"What about mine?" Olivia asked. "It did not work."

Rita glanced at the untouched bracelet. "You brought what you cannot keep," she said. "But you also brought what does not want to leave."

On the walk home, the streets felt narrower than before, as if the houses had leaned in to listen. The air smelled faintly of popcorn and floor polish.

In her apartment, the bracelet waited on the kitchen counter, right where she had left it, though she was certain she had not carried it back.

Olivia touched it with one finger.

The giggle bloomed again, unmistakable this time, bubbling up from under the linoleum, from inside the walls, from the space directly behind her ribs.

"Next month," a small voice said, sounding like both memory and hunger. "You will ring it next month."

She snapped her hand back and stared at the plastic circle that refused to be thrown away.

Outside, somewhere in the city, a brass bell chimed once, clear and distant, as if agreeing.