No Return

  Brooke Haviland

 It started as a completely normal day. I woke up, had breakfast, and went to school. I had always been quite  popular, I had a lot of friends, and had a pretty big social platform, but that wasn’t the problem. It was as if something just felt different, like something was missing, I just couldn’t figure it out what it was. But the day I found out, I felt like I was going crazy. 

     There is this girl in my gym class, I think her name is Chrisley. I’d never talked to her, she was always very quiet, I felt bad for her really. But the thing is… nobody remembers her. It’s like she was never in this school. I asked my friends and a couple teachers, but they said I probably just got names confused or something. And I had this locket necklace with my aunt’s picture in it. I never wore it but I would always see it when I was digging through my dresser, I never moved it.I would just always see it there in the bottom left corner of the drawer. I found it missing that day. I don’t have any siblings, and it’s only my mom and me. I asked her about it and she looked at me like I was crazy. “You don’t have any aunts, your dad was an only child and so am I?”. I remember my aunt so well. I remember the road trips to Disney, and all the holidays spent together. My mom couldn’t just forget that. She couldn’t just forget her own sister’s funeral. They were best friends, she died of lung cancer a couple of years ago. 

     Things got even weirder after that day. More and more people went missing. It was to the point where the classrooms only had about ten students each. A few teachers were gone, but when I asked about those teachers, others didn’t remember a single thing about them.They told me the school and town have been getting run down for years, and they didn’t have the budget to hire teachers in, leading to fewer students. That was completely not true. My school was filled, students everywhere, and yearly donations flowed in from a very wealthy family. I even asked around about that family, the Zimmerman family, but still, nobody knew anybody anymore. 

     I felt like I was going crazy. The whole town disappeared, but I was still here. My mother was the last person I’ve ever seen. I’ve been alone and terrified these last few days. I keep asking myself ‘’When will I go too?” Even if I don’t disappear, I don’t know how long I can live. Everyone that I have ever loved is gone with no trace. Stores have disappeared like they have never existed, houses too. I have nothing and no one now. Everything was dark and empty, and so was I.