The thing about being invisible is that it's kind of freeing, once you stop fighting it.
Like... no one expects anything from you. You can walk into a room, trip over a chair, mutter something about gravity being rude, and no one will remember it five minutes later. You're basically a non-player character in everyone else's life.
And at Blackwell House Academy, that's saying something. Because this place? Everyone's the main character.
You've got violin prodigies who "accidentally" compose symphonies at breakfast. Debate champions who wear blazers like they were born in them. A girl in my Chem class hacked a biotech patent in October and just… moved on. Apparently she got bored.
Meanwhile, I once put metal in the microwave by accident and watched it spark like a dying star. So, you know. I'm here for balance.
My name's Erica. I'm eighteen.
I like soft pretzels, warm hoodies, and not raising my hand in class unless I absolutely have to. I'm not that tragically gifted. I didn't grow up in a basement full of books or get rescued from a crime ring in Romania or whatever.
I think I'm just here because my file said "no legal guardians" and "above-average reading level." cause Blackwell's dream is students who are talented, orphaned and moldable.
I don't think they meant to let me in. Probably a clerical error?
Anyway! It all started with a poster...
Well... more like a passive-aggressive cry for help in glitter pen, taped crookedly to the corkboard outside the East hallway room. Which, by the way, no one uses. It smells like damp socks and trauma in there.
The poster said:
"THE UNREMARKABLE CLUB
For students who aren't tragic enough to be interesting, or brilliant enough to be praised.No expectations. No applause.Just snacks!"
I put it up because I was bored. Or maybe just tired of pretending I cared about extracurriculars that sounded like a job recruiter had a baby with a nervous breakdown.
The "Entrepreneurial Philosophy Society" sent me a fruit basket once because I forgot to RSVP. I'm not even sure what they do even now.
Anyway, I expected nothing.
Which is exactly what I'm used to.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
A few random students came.
Six of them.
One kid with purple headphones and a jacket three sizes too big. A girl who used to dance until she "accidentally" failed every class last term. A boy who didn't talk but brought gummy worms and passed them out like communion, and a few others, I did not pay much attention to.
No one said much. No one had to.
We just… sat in the abandoned rec room near the West Hall, under a flickering ceiling light, eating off-brand Doritos and existing in mutual silence.
It was kind of perfect.
For a second, I thought maybe the universe was softening. Letting me have something small and strange and mine.
And then, a week later, Jude didn't show up.
No text. No call. No nothing.
Her room? Presumebly empty.Her name? Gone from the attendance list... the class monitor said.And when I asked a girl from her English class if she'd seen her?
She looked at me and said...
"Who's Jude?"
Like she never existed.
I laughed. Just a little. Because come on. That's not something that actually happens in real life, right?
Except it did.
I did what any rational person would do when faced with a vaguely paranormal disappearance.
I double-checked my caffeine intake, blamed it on midterms, and tried to move on.
But see, once you notice something's missing, it's like your brain goes full detective mode, zooming in on every half-smudged footprint and half-eaten granola bar like it's a clue.
I kept waiting for someone to mention her.
Jude, the tall, sarcastic, eye-roll Olympic medalist Jude.
But nobody did. Not in the halls, not in Chem, not much in the Unremarkable Club even... which was starting to feel more like an emotional support group for people with bad cafeteria luck and abandonment issues.
I even Googled her.
Nothing. No socials, no yearbook photos, no cringey middle school dance pics. Which is impossible, by the way. Nobody our age just doesn't exist online unless they're in witness protection or have weird relatives with tech boundaries.
I started to get twitchy.
You know how in those movies there's always the one girl who's like "I think something weird is going on" and everyone's like "You're just stressed" and then two scenes later she's being chased by a faceless entity in the woods?
Yeah. I was her now.
Except instead of a forest, I had an aggressively landscaped quad and a suspiciously silent student body who blinked too long when I said things like "Jude was in our club."
It wasn't just Jude either.
A week later, Gummy Worm Boy—real name Dylan, I found out once—just… stopped showing. His gummy stash was still in the drawer. His chair was still there. But the seat cushion stopped being warm, which sounds stupid until it's not. Until you're sitting next to it thinking, Was he ever even here?
I'm not saying ghosts.
But I'm not not saying ghosts.
I started keeping a notebook. Not like a "dear diary, life is hard and so are math tests" kind of thing, but a log. A record. Names. Dates. Little details. Like the way the hallway by the archives always smelled like burnt toast, or how the intercom glitched and said "Room 9" in the middle of our Tuesday fire drill. I don't even think there's a Room 9.
And okay—maybe I was spiraling. Just a little.
But something was off. And not in a "who put raisins in the brownies" kind of way. More like, "this school might be erasing people" kind of way.
The others in the club didn't say much, but I could tell they felt it too. There was this… edge. Like we were all holding our breath and pretending not to. Purple Headphones Kid started sketching weird symbols in the margins of her planner. The dancer—Kira—kept flinching every time the bell rang. And me?
I started staying awake until 3 a.m., just listening.
For what, you ask?
I don't know. Footsteps. Static. Whispers through the vents.
Or maybe just the sound of someone else remembering.
I still don't know why they're disappearing.
But I'm starting to think the Unremarkable Club wasn't a mistake.
I think it was a warning.
And I think we're next.
I think we're next.
Or maybe I'm just being dramatic.
(But probably not.)
Anyway. That brings us here.
Right now.
It's a Thursday. The kind that feels like it's waiting for something to happen. The Unremarkable Club is down to four of us. The rec room light flickers like it knows secrets. And I'm sitting in my usual spot, legs crossed, hoodie sleeves pulled over my hands, trying not to look like I'm waiting for someone who isn't going to show up.
Except I am.
Because if one more person disappears, I swear I'm going to lose it. Like, full breakdown. Public crying.
Purple Headphones is pretending not to watch me. Kira's got that look again... half-here, half-ready to bolt. And Marcus (he finally told us his name, two gummy worm meetings ago) just whispered that someone's been following him between classes.
So yeah. This is real.
Whatever this is.
I don't know how to fix it. I don't even know what "it" is. But I know one thing.
If someone in Blackwell House Academy wants to play weird memory-hole games and vanish people like it's no big deal? Fine.
Because the day I get even one clue to what's happening, I'll-
"Did you hear that?"
Kira stood up.
"What?"
I asked. I wasn't paying much attention.
"I think someone knocked the door"
She said like we were going to die altogether.
I frowned looking at the door.
But my judgemental soul paused when I heard another knock for real this time.
We all stood up.
I looked back at them.
"Who's going to open that goddam door?"