The Boy No One Remembered

At some point, I realized my seatmate, Grace Bell, had started looking at me strangely.At first, she only nudged her desk a little farther away from mine when she thought I wasn't paying attention.Then she simply moved her chair all the way to the window.I tapped her shoulder, trying to remind her to pay attention in class.I didn't expect her to fall straight off the chair in fright.Her face was full of panic. She scrambled up from the floor on all fours and bolted out of the classroom.I was completely confused. I wondered if I'd somehow offended her.I planned to ask Grace about it the next day and clear up the misunderstanding.But when I came to school the next morning, the seat beside me was already empty.Our English teacher told me, hesitantly, that Grace had applied on her own to move from the honors track to a regular class.Our class was the best honors class at Eastbridge High. We had the strongest teachers in the school.Grace had told me more than once how

Theo was the first to think of the paper Connor had found when he snuck back to the classroom during P.E. and searched my desk."He must have had a reason for doing that.""Yeah, but I can't think of one at all."Feeling helpless, I showed Theo the sheet of paper."It's just an ordinary health screening form. It says everything's normal."I'd racked my brain but still couldn't figure out why Connor would dig through my desk to look at my health report.Theo's frustration was written all over his face. "Was he afraid you had some contagious disease and would infect him?"I looked down at myself. "I'm clean, healthy, and look perfectly fine. How could I be sick?""Nonsense. Of course I know you're not sick." Theo rolled his eyes.The whole thing was too strange.I suddenly remembered that a few days ago, I'd asked the class president whether there was anything odd about me.He'd looked me up and down in confusion and said I seemed normal.So at least in the class president's

Ms. Keller suspected I had psychological issues, so she asked the class president to talk to me.Although he was reluctant, he still sat down beside me unwillingly.I didn't expect myself to ask directly, "Theo doesn't exist at all. So the reason you suddenly got so scared before wasn't because of the grove—it was because I mentioned Theo, right?"The class president's eyes widened. After a long while, he swallowed."Not entirely."Actually, I heard from Grace that you kept calling empty air Theo, then eating with a patch of empty air, playing ball with it..."But that wasn't the scariest part."The class president looked around with difficulty, his whole body trembling. Then he asked me carefully, "Is Theo here now?"I shook my head. "He disappeared yesterday."I still wanted to know why he'd disappeared.Only then did the class president let out a breath of relief. "At first, I thought there was something wrong with your head. But that day, when we were talking in the hallw

"Many years ago, a horrifying death happened at this school."Back then, school management wasn't very strict. Many elderly people would bring their grandchildren to the field to play, and quite a few scrap collectors survived by picking through the trash cans."A madman appeared around that time."The old teacher took off his glasses and sighed."At first, he only held a few bottles and sat in the corner, smiling as he watched the children on the field."Sometimes he also carried rotten vegetables and stale buns. His clothes were quite clean."So everyone guessed he wasn't entirely without family or care."I was the only one who found him odd at the time, so I reported it to my superiors. But the dean didn't take it seriously."I never expected that one day, the madman would suddenly pull a fruit knife out from the pile of rotten leaves he was carrying..."A crazed man grabbed children on the field.The knife went in clean and came out red. Stomachs were split open, dragging