The Kid in the Class Photo

Picture day has looked exactly the same at this school for decades — same gym, same lineup, same studio hired every single year, going back further than anyone currently enrolled can explain. This year, the framed class photo goes up in the hallway with one extra kid in the back row — a face nobody recognizes, half-smiling, standing where no twenty-fifth student should be. That same face turns up in class photos on the same wall going back years, never aging a single day. Then a classmate's face starts fading out of this year's print, and days later, he's gone from school entirely — and everyone acts like there was never anything strange about it at all.