No one remembers
774 Words
POV: Zara Lay
I asked six people before I reached the school gate.
"Did you see him?
Silver hair, dark jacket he was standing under the oak tree."
The first three looked at me blankly.
The fourth said, "Who?"
The fifth pulled an earbud out, frowned, and put it back in.
The sixth my classmate Priya, who sat beside me in History and had been crossing the courtyard at the exact moment I saw the boy tilted her head and said, with genuine concern:
"Are you feeling okay?"
I stopped asking strangers.
Mr. Holt, the afternoon monitor, stood near the main entrance ticking names off a clipboard.
He was meticulous about the courtyard.
He knew every student by face.
"Silver hair," I said.
"He was by the oak tree.
Tall.
Dark jacket."
He ran a finger down his list without looking up.
"No one matching that description is registered here.
Transfer student?"
"I don't know.
He wasn't"
I stopped myself.
He wasn't doing anything.
He was just standing there and nobody looked at him.
I already knew how that sounded.
"Could I check the security footage?
From the east courtyard?"
Mr. Holt looked up at that.
I watched him decide whether this was worth the paperwork.
"Five minutes," he said.
The security office smelled like burnt coffee and old carpet.
A bank of small screens showed the school from every angle parking lot, gymnasium entrance, hallways, courtyard.
He rewound the east courtyard feed to 3:47 PM.
I watched myself appear on screen.
Bag on my shoulder.
Slowing near the path.
I watched the students stream past.
I watched the patch of grass beneath the oak tree.
Empty.
I leaned closer.
The feed was clear.
Good resolution.
I could see individual faces in the crowd, the detail on the brick wall behind the tree, the dead leaves lifting in the wind.
I could see myself standing in the middle of the courtyard, completely still, staring at absolutely nothing.
"I don't see anyone," Mr. Holt said.
"Play it again."
Still nothing.
Just me, motionless, looking at empty grass.
"Is everything alright at home?"
He had the careful tone of someone who had attended a safeguarding workshop recently and remembered most of it.
"Fine," I said.
"Thank you."
I took the long way home.
Past the oak tree.
I didn't know what I expected to find a footprint, maybe, or some evidence that the ground beneath it was different from the ground around it.
There was nothing.
Just roots and dirt and a few damp leaves pressed flat by old rain.
You're not supposed to remember me.
I crouched and pressed my palm against the base of the trunk.
Cold.
Rough.
Ordinary.
I stood.
Adjusted my bag.
Walked home.
Mum had made dinner.
My brother had left his football boots in the hallway again.
The television ran through the evening news with its usual particular exhaustion.
I sat at the kitchen table and ate without tasting anything.
I'd learned, a long time ago, not to tell my mother about the strangers.
The last time I had, I was eleven, convinced the grey-coated man outside my classroom was following me it had resulted in four sessions with Dr. Aisha, who was kind and thorough and ultimately concluded that my imagination was simply more active than most.
Overactive imagination.
Except I had watched myself on camera.
I had watched myself standing in the courtyard staring at empty grass.
My imagination didn't appear on security footage.
He didn't appear on security footage.
Those were two different problems.
I was halfway through my homework when I reached into my bag for my pencil case and my fingers closed around something that wasn't there.
I pulled it out.
A feather.
Silver not grey, not white, not the dirty cream of a pigeon feather but genuinely, impossibly silver, the same shade as the boy's hair.
Long and perfect, unmarked by dirt or damage, catching the light from my desk lamp the way metal caught light, throwing small reflections across my notes.
I set it carefully on the desk.
I sat very still.
My bag had been closed.
I hadn't set it down near the oak tree.
I hadn't set it down anywhere I'd carried it straight from the courtyard to the security office to the road home.
No one had touched it.
I picked it up and turned it slowly between my fingers.
Warm.
Feathers weren't warm.
This one was.
You're not supposed to remember me.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I opened a fresh page in my notebook and wrote down everything I could remember about his face.
- Writer
