The morning in Clearwater is calm—no fog, no sign of anything unusual. Ava walks toward Mrs. Dalton's house, and her neighborhood seems unbothered by the previous day's apocalypse. Everything looks normal. Too normal. Each step feels heavier, like the world is pretending nothing happened. At the door, she trembles and knocks, certain this neighbor who has known her all her life will answer. When Mrs. Dalton opens it, her smile is wary and confused.
"Can I help you?"
The familiar lines of the old woman's face make Ava's heart jolt. "I—" She stumbles over the words, everything she thought she knew shaken. "Do you have any sugar I can borrow?"
Mrs. Dalton studies her with furrowed brows. Her glance darts to the empty street behind Ava, and then back. "I'm sorry, dear. Have we met?" Her tone is polite, but Ava catches the edge of suspicion.
Her hands clench and unclench at her sides. "It's Ava. From next door. Is my mom here?" She hopes for a flicker of recognition, a shift in Mrs. Dalton's eyes, anything to prove she's not losing her grip.
The hesitation grows in Mrs. Dalton's expression. She grips the edge of the door, deciding something. "I don't know anyone by that name on this block."
Ava's breathing quickens. She's coming undone. She stands frozen, willing this to be a joke, some mistake, something less than impossible. But Mrs. Dalton stands like she's protecting something, her eyes watching Ava too closely.
"Maybe you have the wrong house?" Mrs. Dalton offers, but the words have an uncomfortable finality.
Ava stumbles back, nearly losing her footing as she steps off the porch. "Sorry," she mumbles, trying to steady her voice, trying to find some control in this new chaos.
The door clicks shut, a gentle sound that resonates with an unsettling finality. Ava stands on the porch, her gaze fixed on Mrs. Dalton as she peers through the curtains, revealing a face that feels foreign—only vaguely resembling the warm smile Ava once knew. The chill of her phone against her leg is a stark contrast to the warmth of the fading afternoon sun. With trembling fingers, she retrieves it from her pocket and scrolls through her contacts.
"Hey, Mr. Jenkins," she calls out as she crosses the street, spotting him watering his garden. "Do you remember my mom? Maya Montgomery?"
He looks up, brow furrowed in thought before shaking his head slowly. "Can't say I do, dear."
Ava nods and walks on, approaching Mrs. Harris next door who's arranging flowers in a pot on her porch. "Mrs. Harris! Do you know my mom? She used to work at Clearwater General."
The older woman squints at Ava, confusion flickering in her eyes before she replies softly, "I don't think so, sweetheart."
Feeling more lost than ever, Ava continues down the block, asking each neighbor if they recognize either her or Maya. Each response deepens the knot in her stomach—a growing sense of isolation wrapped around her like a shadow creeping closer with every unanswered question.
Ava feels her phone vibrate gently in her pocket. She reaches in and pulls it out, noticing the soft glow of the screen against her palm. A new message notification appears, and her heart skips a beat as she sees that it's from Liam and Sophie.
Something's wrong.
Her fingers pause above the screen, struggling to find words that won't unmake the world.
Meet at school. NOW.
The urgency propels her away from the house, down the street, away from the ordinary that presses against her with impossible weight. She pushes her hair behind her ears, repeating the gesture over and over like it will hold her together. Her pulse pounds, loud and insistent in the empty space that was once her certainty.
Maya isn't there. Maya isn't anywhere. They are forgotten. Maybe they never existed.
The thought loops through her mind, gaining speed and strength. Her vision blurs, the neighborhood dissolving into a smear of shapes and colors. She breathes in sharp, deliberate gulps, fighting for a sense of reality.
It's like the world has been rewritten without them, and Ava doesn't have the code to change it back. But she's certain, as certain as she can be in this new unreality, that Liam and Sophie are part of this. That they're all part of it. She clings to that thought like a lifeline, forcing her legs to move faster, propelling her toward the only answers she can hope to find.
Every step feels both urgent and futile, a sprint and a stumble toward something she can't begin to understand. She concentrates on the movement, on the rhythm of her shoes against the sidewalk, on anything that makes this moment real.
The fear inside her builds, a rising tide. But beneath it, a stubborn refusal to let go of everything she knows: her mother, her friends, herself.
The only thing to do is move forward, even if the direction makes no sense, even if the whole world has decided to forget them. The school is a fifteen-minute walk, but the raw fear and its jagged edges make everything appear sharper. It focuses Ava, and her mind runs as fast as her legs, bringing pieces of truth into what the diner began to show them. Reflections, shadows, the glitch of their existence. It's starting to make sense. A sense of grim calm sets in. She allows herself to stop running, and she focuses on breathing, waiting, hoping she isn't alone.
Students linger outside, a dozen small worlds going about their everyday orbit. The flood of relief Ava expects to feel when she reaches campus doesn't come. Instead, the thought of facing this strangeness alone terrifies her more than anything else. She scans the crowds, searching for Liam's tall frame, for Sophie's unmistakable curls. Each second stretches like a new forever. Her pulse is louder than the noise around her. She closes her eyes, reopening them to the familiar outlines of her friends in the distance.
They're here. They're real.
She pulls herself together.
Liam sees her first, his expression a mix of worry and determination. "Ava!" he calls, his voice a lifeline across the courtyard. She moves to meet them, forcing each step to stay steady, reminding herself to breathe.
"They don't remember us." The words burst from her in one uncontained breath. "My neighbor—she didn't know me. She didn't even know our family. It's like we never lived there."
Sophie nods. "I tried everyone on our street. Even Mrs. Ortiz. She was my mother's maid of honor." Her voice cracks, a small fracture in her otherwise controlled delivery. "No one recognized me."
"Same for us," Liam says. "Mr. Paxton just looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about my dad."
Ava's heart beats in time with theirs, the chaos finding a shared rhythm. The confirmation grounds her even as it unsettles. She forces the panic back, breathing slowly, controlling the rapid-fire thoughts that keep pushing into her mind. "It happened when we blew out the candles. It has to be connected."
"Then why weren't we erased too?" Liam asks.
"We're still being erased," Ava says, remembering Mrs. Dalton's puzzled eyes, her own hands shaking too hard to type. "It's like it's spreading. First them, then us. We have to figure this out before it's too late."
They stand together, an uncertain island in a rushing tide of students, but Ava feels the steadiness of their presence. It's the only thing that feels real. She looks toward the school building, a single thought in her mind.
"We start with the records," she says.
Sophie and Liam share a quick look. It's not quite relief, but Ava can tell they're all thinking the same thing. They move as one, crossing the campus with purpose. Ava's heart feels different now, still pounding, but more determined than desperate.
Whatever is happening, they're going to find out. Together.
A crash of movement. A sea of blurred, familiar faces. Ava feels erased with each step they take into Clearwater High. Her shoes are too loud, and her breath is too shallow as she navigates the dense currents of other students. Her sense of urgency heightens, and she moves like she might dissolve. Everything presses in, and time seems to slip away. They reach the attendance office, where reality fractures further. Sophie focuses on class rosters, but her calm shatters as she flips through the pages. Their names are nowhere. This time, they aren't even shadows.
"Start of term," Sophie mutters, frantic now. "End of year. First semester." Her hands shake, and the pages slip as she turns them. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Try picture records," Liam suggests. The tension in his voice matches the tightness in his posture. He's taking up too much space, agitated in a way Ava rarely sees. "We should still be in the files. There has to be something."
Ava stands frozen, her pulse too fast. Her eyes scan the rosters, but the neat, printed lines blur together. She swallows hard, forcing herself to focus. "This can't be right. Check last year. The one before."
Sophie's movements grow erratic, flipping through every paper she can find. Her breath comes too quick, and Ava watches, panic growing, as she finally admits, "It's like we were never here."
She drops the last set of pages. The certainty she usually has is gone, and the papers float to the floor.
Ava's vision blurs, her thoughts tangling into raw panic. It's the diner. It's the reflections. They're disappearing, and she doesn't know how to stop it. Her legs feel weak. She leans against a table to steady herself, breathing in ragged bursts, trying to stop her world from spinning out of control.
"This has to be some kind of mistake." Liam's voice sounds far away, as if they're already fading from each other's minds. He picks up a discarded yearbook, flipping it open with sharp, aggressive movements. "We need to check these too."
The book lands on the table with a dull thud. Ava watches as Liam's breathing becomes heavy and uneven. His jaw is tight, and his hands are shaking with frustration and fear. He tears through pages. More photos are missing than filled.
"I don't get it," Liam snaps. "It was fine last week." He looks up, desperation clear in his eyes. "Where are we?"
Ava watches the lights overhead flicker, casting harsh shadows. Her nerves are raw, stretched to their limits. She's dizzy with the pressure, but there's a momentary break, a fraction of time that feels as long as their lives. She can't let it slip away.
"Mr. Gonzalez," she calls, her voice cracking with hope and despair. She catches sight of him passing in the hallway, a familiar shape among the blur of other students.
It's all too bright. Too sharp. She forces herself to move toward him, waiting for the universe to unwrite this part too, waiting for him to turn around and know them.
Mr. Gonzalez stops, blinking at them with a puzzled expression. He clutches a stack of attendance sheets, and his fingers tap nervously against them. He looks at their faces. Then he looks through them.
"I'm sorry," he says, frowning at the papers in his hands, flipping through them in search of answers. "Are you new students?"
Ava's hope shatters like the sharp glass edge of the world. She can't bring herself to speak. She stares at the man who has been her favorite teacher since freshman year, at the absolute lack of recognition on his face.
He gives an awkward, apologetic smile, the kind given to strangers and not to the kids who have spent the last three years in his class. "I don't seem to have your names here," he says, still rifling through his notes.
Ava can't breathe. The words are like everything else today: wrong. Impossible.
"It's okay," Liam says. Ava can hear the strain in his voice, the anger he's fighting to hold in check. "Sorry to bother you."
Mr. Gonzalez turns away, back into the moving stream of students. Ava watches as he disappears, their last hope fading with him.
She looks at her friends. They're still here. Still real. Still together.
But for how long?
She doesn't want to know the answer, doesn't want to waste time finding out. "Come on," she says, urging them toward the door. The raw desperation on Sophie's face tells her they don't need convincing.
They rush through the halls, panic and determination driving them past students who brush by without a second glance. The sense of not being seen, not being heard, presses down harder than ever. Ava moves with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, the weight of this new world settling into her chest.
They reach the library, out of breath, out of answers, and out of time. Ava hesitates, hope and fear fighting for space inside her.
Sophie looks back, meeting Ava's eyes. Her voice is steady, but Ava knows her well enough to hear the tremor beneath. "If anyone knows who we are, it's Mrs. Chen."
Ava nods. It's a thin thread to hang onto, but she can't let go.
They cross the threshold, and it feels like crossing a border between what they knew and what they don't.
Mrs. Chen's glance is precise and practiced. It sees them, but not quite. Ava's certainty wavers as she watches the older woman's expression. The polite distance in Mrs. Chen's eyes tells them the answer before they ask. They're disappearing everywhere. Ava feels the same inescapable unmooring, the same wrongness she felt at home, with Mrs. Dalton, with Mr. Gonzalez. They find an empty classroom to regroup, a sense of fractured unreality in every step. Sophie's voice trembles as she outlines a plan, logic and desperation battling it out in the sharp notes of her words.
Ava stares at the empty desks. At the blank chalkboard. At anything but the fear in her friends' eyes. "We're looking for information about the Montgomery, Foster, and Clarke families," she imagines herself saying again and again. Each time, she hears Mrs. Chen's careful, practiced response: "I'm afraid I don't recall any families by those names in Clearwater."
It's worse than being erased. They're unknown.
Sophie's voice rises, insistent and tight. "We need tangible evidence. Yearbooks, student IDs, newspaper archives. Anything with our names or faces." She takes out a notebook, her fingers moving fast as she writes their plans in precise, clipped sentences. The strain in her voice is more than fear; it's anger, sharp and raw.
Ava leans against the wall, the chaos pressing in on her. Her head spins. "If we can't find anything, it's like we're..." Her voice falters. She doesn't know how to finish.
Sophie gives her a long look. Ava expects to see doubt, but there's none. Only determination and panic. "Like we're what?"
"Ghosts," Ava says. The word is heavy in the silent room.
Liam stands abruptly, crossing the room in three quick strides, his frustration growing more visible with each step. "Then let's prove we aren't."
Ava takes a breath, focusing on her pulse, her breathing, her own voice. "How?" she asks, wanting to believe there's an answer. Wanting to believe there's anything.
Sophie looks at them both, her voice full of conviction and desperation. "We get everything we can and figure out what to do later. But first, we have to know." She rips the page from her notebook, holding it up like a flag of surrender and determination all at once. "We have to know."
Ava pushes off the wall, the strength of her friends' determination carrying her more than her own legs. They move back toward the library with new resolve, with a desperation they can't contain.
They're barely across the threshold before Mrs. Chen's eyes are on them. This time, there's curiosity behind the polite mask, a trace of something like interest. It unnerves Ava more than if the older woman had simply looked away. She hears Sophie's words again and again: We have to know. We have to know.
They start with the yearbooks, their movements hurried, panicked. Ava flips through the pages, her hands moving faster than her eyes can track. She barely pauses to scan each section, knowing the outcome before she sees it.
Nothing.
Page after page of nothing.
Her chest tightens, but she forces herself to breathe. She forces herself to focus. It's the only thing she can do to keep from losing her grip completely. She looks at her friends, at the desperation in their eyes. This time, they're more than ghosts. They're missing people who never were.
Sophie flips through another book. Her fingers shake. "There has to be something."
Ava feels the world unraveling, a slow, deliberate unmaking of everything she knew. They are gone. Their parents are gone. Her heart sinks further as she realizes the magnitude of their situation. Worse than being forgotten, worse than never existing. There is nothing.
"Keep looking," Liam urges, his voice tense, his control slipping.
Sophie nods, a single, sharp movement that betrays her own sense of unravelling. Ava watches her, sees the certainty she usually has replaced by something new and unfamiliar.
"What if it's not just us?" Ava's voice is almost a whisper, but it cuts through the air like a shout.
Sophie looks up, the question stopping her movements. Ava can see the gears turning in her mind, the terrifying possibility settling in. "Then who else?" she asks, her voice breaking in an unfamiliar way.
The words hang between them. The emptiness of Clearwater has never felt so full.
Liam's breathing grows more ragged as he pulls another set of files from the cabinet. "How far back does this go? How deep?" His voice is more vulnerable than Ava has ever heard it, a frightening echo of her own thoughts.
Ava struggles to respond. Her heart beats too fast, and her words feel too slow. "We need to know more. We need..." She doesn't finish, doesn't have to.
Liam stands abruptly, his frustration reaching a breaking point. He paces the length of the library, then returns to the table, his fists balled at his sides. The familiar certainty in him has shifted into something harder, more brittle.
"This is impossible," he finally snaps, slamming his hand on the table. The sound is louder than it should be. More final.
Ava watches in horror as his shadow ripples unnaturally across the floor, stretching and distorting like something alive.
She holds her breath, waiting to see if anyone else notices, waiting to see if it's real or just another sign of her world coming apart. Her mind can't keep up with the strangeness. It breaks open in terrifying ways.
The room feels like it's holding its breath. No one moves.
"Did you see that?" Ava's voice is barely a whisper, but it feels deafening.
Sophie nods, her eyes wide, her notebook clutched tightly to her chest. "It's not possible," she says, the words catching in her throat. She can't bring herself to write it down.
But Ava knows it's more than possible. It's the truth they can't ignore, the explanation that frightens them the most. It isn't natural. It isn't random. It's happening, and they're powerless to stop it.
Liam doesn't speak, but the tension in his shoulders says more than words. Ava can see the fear in his eyes, the thing he doesn't want to admit.
"Let's go," she says, urgency overtaking despair. Her voice is steady, even as her world crumbles. "We need to figure this out before it's too late."
The shadows settle, but the uncertainty remains. Ava takes one last look around, her heart pounding with panic and determination.
She looks at her friends, at the emptiness that surrounds them. "It's not just forgetting," she tells them, needing to say it out loud. Needing to make it real.
Sophie stands frozen, her fingers still gripping the edges of the notebook. Her mind works to catch up with everything, to make sense where there is none.
"It's worse," Liam agrees, his voice low, controlled.
They don't wait for another answer, for another ripple, for another impossible thing. They don't wait for Mrs. Chen's confused look or for the missing records to magically reappear. They don't wait for the next thing to unravel.
The library is too full, too silent. The world is too strange and too certain. Ava watches as her friends move with her, as they walk together into a new kind of emptiness.This is just the beginning.
They don't wait for another answer, for another ripple, for another impossible thing. The school has become too quiet in all the wrong ways, and the world outside offers even less certainty.
Ava walks with her friends through the courtyard, but something tugs at her—a memory, a hunch, something unspoken.
"We need to figure this out," Liam mutters. Ava hesitates at the corner where their paths usually split. "I'm going home," she says softly. "I need to see if anything's left. If my mom left something… Anything.
"Sophie looks like she wants to argue but doesn't. Liam just nods, jaw tight."Call us if you find anything," he says."I will."
They part ways in the late afternoon light, shadows stretching behind them—too long for the hour.