The Missing Student

By: Noah Ramos

There has been something bothering me lately at school. At first I had no idea what it could’ve been for the longest time. It took a couple weeks to figure out that a chair in every one in my classes was empty. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered me but something about that empty spot just didn’t seem right to me like someone used to be there, and had suddenly vanished. I tried to ignore it but it was like the chair was beckoning to me in the back of my mind no matter what I did to try to forget about it. I decided to finally come back late at night when no one was around to see if I could find anything that would prove my theory. If there really was someone who had vanished without anyone noticing somehow the answer had to lie in the school somewhere. I had tried to see if the attendance had any names that didn’t belong with nothing that caught my eye. Next I went into the principal’s office first to check the files of students in that class to see if there would be evidence. 

Luckily the door was unlocked which made it easier to get into the office undetected and soon I locked the door behind me. However when I looked around I found nothing and was just about to leave when something on the desk caught my attention. One of the drawers was smaller than it was compared to the other one which was a bit suspicious so I felt around until the bottom opened up to a secret compartment. Inside I could see a large envelope but before I could grab them I suddenly heard the jangle of keys like someone was about to come in. Quickly I grab the envelope before closing the drawer’s compartment and hiding under the desk right as the door opened into the office. Luckily it was only the janitor who had come to clean out the waste bin and left a couple seconds later. After I was sure no one else was coming I slipped out of the office and headed outside to the playground to read what was inside.

 Inside were two pieces of paper, one of them was an incident report of an accident that occured here at the school. It detailed how a student had been badly burned by acid and later pronounced dead at the hospital from the wounds. For some reason I didn’t remember the news ever reporting on this which was strange. I looked at the next paper that showed the dead student’s profile and was absolutely mortified with what I saw next. The person in the profile had my name and not only that but the picture looked exactly like me! But this couldn’t be I was still alive for sure. This had to be some sort of sick joke someone was playing on me. It was already morning for some reason when I lifted my head and saw one of my friends heading towards the door. I ran to them to ask if they were in on it but when I tried to grab their shoulder my hand touched nothing. I looked towards the glass door and instead of seeing my reflection I simply saw nothing…