The west hall looked different at dusk.
Not haunted, exactly. Not eerie. Just… quiet in the kind of way that made your skin remember every mistake you've ever made.
Harper stood in front of the locked double doors. The corridor beyond them had been sealed off years ago for unknown reasons but everyone knew that was just the school's way of hiding what it didn't understand.
She slipped the bobby pin from her hair and bent toward the lock. Her heart was racing, hands a little too shaky. But the door clicked open with a soft sigh, like it had been waiting for her.
The air inside was colder. Not freezing—but heavy, like the memories it carried hadn't breathed in years.
The light above flickered. Just once.
Then the hallway stretched out before her: quiet, lined with trophy cases covered in dust, and a set of old lockers that still had names carved into them.
She walked slowly, careful not to make a sound.
And there—just past the halfway point—was the trophy case.
The glass had a faint silver shine . Old fingerprints. Faint cracks near the corners. But what caught Harper's attention wasn't inside it.
It was what wasn't.
Her reflection.
She stood in front of it, but the glass stayed empty.
No face. No outline.
Just the hallway stretching on behind her.
She took a shaky step back. The lights buzzed. Then flickered again.
And there, in the flicker, he was there.
Jamie.
Not in the hallway. Not in the reflection. But in that split second of darkness between the lights blinking off and on.
Harper froze. Her throat tightened. "Jamie?"
Silence.
She stepped forward again, reaching her fingers toward the glass.
This time, when she stared harder-really stared-something shimmered behind the surface. Like a film overlaying reality. Faint scribbles. Symbols she didn't recognize.
But then she saw it.
A piece of folded paper. Tucked behind one of the trophies. Hidden in plain sight.
She yanked the case open and reached in.
The paper was old, edges curling like it had been folded and unfolded a hundred times. Her name was written on the front in Jamie's uneven handwriting.
Harper.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
If you're reading this, it means they didn't get to you yet.
They erased me. Not completely—I'm still here, somewhere between. Not alive. Not gone. Just... stuck.
The room remembers everything.
You do too. That's what makes you dangerous to them.
You can't trust what you see in mirrors.
You can't trust what you hear when you're alone.
But you can trust this-
Room 13A is hiding.
You need to find it again.
In reality.
I left a marker. In the book we read together. The one with the stars in the margins.
Find it before they move it again.
-Jamie
Harper pressed the letter to her chest, feeling her heartbeat thundering against the paper.
She hadn't lost her mind.
Jamie .
And he'd left her a trail.
This time, she wouldn't fail to follow it.
She turned and ran, the echo of her footsteps chasing her down the west hall.
She didn't even see the reflection that followed her one step behind.