Rhea Malhotra
Part 1 – The Announcement
The morning bell at Raipur High had always been shrill enough to cut through sleep, chatter, even monsoon thunder. But that day it sounded different—longer, harsher, like the metal clanged with purpose. Students rushed into the assembly hall, uniforms sticking with the last drizzle of rain, shoes leaving muddy half-moons on the stone floor. The ceiling fans swung lazily above us, too slow to dry the nervous sweat running down our backs. Something was off. Even the teachers stood stiff in their lines, whispering among themselves.
I stood in the second row, shoving my bag under my arm, eyes darting toward the podium where Principal Desai adjusted her spectacles. Her face looked like a storm waiting to break. Meera, my best friend, nudged me with her elbow. “Bet you it’s about exams again,” she muttered, her dyed red streak falling across her forehead. I shrugged, though in my stomach I felt something heavier.
Principal Desai cleared her throat, her voice echoing across the hall. “Students of Raipur High, I have an important announcement. One that marks the end of an era.”
Silence. Even the juniors in the back row froze.
She continued, slow and deliberate: “This will be the final academic year of Raipur High. At the end of this term, our school will be closing its doors permanently.”
Gasps, whispers, the thud of someone’s notebook dropping to the floor. My chest tightened. Around me, faces blurred—some shocked, some pale, some pretending to be unbothered but failing miserably. I felt Meera’s grip on my sleeve, nails digging into the fabric.
“For years, we have struggled with funding, infrastructure, declining admissions. Despite our best efforts, it has become impossible to continue.” Her voice wavered for the first time, but she pressed on. “You must focus on completing this year with dignity. Make it count.”
She stepped back, and just like that, it was over. No pep talk. No promises. Just the finality of it, heavy as stone.
The hall erupted. Some kids cried openly. Others laughed bitterly, covering up fear with bravado. The prefects tried to control the crowd, but it was pointless. It was as if the ground had shifted beneath us—our classrooms, corridors, the cricket field, even the graffiti-scarred canteen walls—all suddenly stamped with an invisible expiry date.
Later, in class, our teacher Mrs. Roy tried to explain it away. “You’ll still have your board exams, your results will count. This does not change your future.” But her voice cracked on the word future. She had been teaching here for twenty years. What would she do when the gates closed?
Meera slammed her notebook shut and whispered, “They can’t just erase a school like this. It’s our last year, Aarav. And they want us to just… study quietly?”
I didn’t reply. My throat felt tight. Raipur High wasn’t perfect. The walls were cracked, the labs under-equipped, the library dusty with outdated encyclopedias. But it was ours. Every corridor held memories—winning debates, losing cricket matches, first crushes, last fights. Now it would all be rubble and weeds.
That afternoon, the five of us—me, Meera, Kabir, Tanya, and Rishi—sat behind the basketball court, the place where bad news usually turned into whispered plans. Kabir was sketching in the corner of his notebook, eyes hidden under his messy hair. Tanya scrolled through her phone, updating her followers about the “death of Raipur High” with the perfect emoji combination. Rishi, always the outsider, leaned against the wall, expression unreadable.
Meera broke the silence. “We can’t let them shut us down like we never existed. This place… it’s more than just classrooms.”
“And what do you suggest?” Tanya shot back. “We protest? Block the gates? Post hashtags?”
“No,” Meera said, eyes blazing. “We document it. Every story, every secret, every scar this school carries. A real yearbook, not the glossy one the staff approves. Our yearbook.”
Kabir looked up from his sketch, pencil tapping. “A yearbook of truth.”
Rishi smirked. “Dangerous. I like it.”
I exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of what Meera had just set in motion. Something about it stirred me—anger, maybe, but also a strange kind of hope. If the school was dying, we could at least write its last chapter ourselves.
That night, as I lay in bed listening to the ceiling fan click with each turn, I thought about the announcement again. The last bell of Raipur High had already rung in a way. But maybe, just maybe, we could make sure it echoed loud enough to be remembered.
Part 2 – The Pact
The next day, Raipur High felt like a ghost wearing its own uniform. The notice board outside the office had a new sheet pinned up: “Closure Notification – Final Year Schedule.” Words like “final” and “closure” had never looked so cold in black ink. Juniors walked slower in the corridors, seniors argued louder, and even the teachers seemed to float like shadows, distracted and unsettled.
By lunch, the cafeteria buzzed with rumors. “They’re selling the land to build a mall.” “No, it’ll be luxury apartments.” “My mom said the principal already got another job in Delhi.” The rice on my tray had gone cold, untouched, as I listened. None of it mattered to me. What mattered was the ticking clock—the fact that in less than a year, everything we knew would vanish.
Meera dragged me out by my sleeve before I drowned in my own silence. “We’re meeting,” she said, her tone leaving no room for debate.
We ended up behind the basketball court again, the unofficial headquarters for bad ideas. Tanya was already there, legs stretched out, scrolling through her phone. Kabir leaned against the brick wall, sketchbook balanced on his knees. Rishi arrived last, tossing his bag on the ground like it weighed nothing.
“Alright,” Meera began, fiery as always, “we’re not letting Raipur High disappear like a footnote. We’re going to make something permanent. Something that shows who we really were.”
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “You mean, like, a documentary?”
“Not exactly.” Meera looked at each of us, her eyes daring us to disagree. “A yearbook. But not the fake, glossy version the school makes every year. No smiling photos, no boring achievements. A real one. Our yearbook. Full of the truths no one ever talks about.”
Kabir’s pencil paused mid-line. “Truths like…?”
“Like how the seniors bullied Arjun until he left. Like the teachers who play favorites. Like the fact that two years ago, a student disappeared and nobody talks about it.”
Her words hung heavy in the air. I glanced at Rishi, who smirked as though the idea thrilled him. Tanya scoffed. “And what, you think people will actually tell us their secrets? Half this school pretends nothing ever happens.”
“They’ll tell us,” Meera said, voice sharp. “We’ll make them. Interviews. Stories. Anonymous confessions, if we have to.”
For a moment no one spoke. The faint echo of a basketball bouncing somewhere inside the gym filled the silence. I felt my stomach knotting. Meera’s ideas were always reckless. But this one—this one felt like fire.
Rishi broke the silence. “So, we become investigators. Expose everything. Dangerous, but fun.”
Kabir tilted his head, sketching again. “A yearbook of shadows. I can design it. Illustrations, layouts. Something raw.”
Tanya sighed, but there was a flicker in her eyes—curiosity she couldn’t hide. “Fine. But if my name ends up in some scandal section, I’m burning the whole thing.”
Meera turned to me. “Aarav? You’re in, right?”
The question hit harder than I expected. I was the cautious one, the one who stuck to grades and safe choices. But the truth was, the thought of leaving Raipur High without making a mark terrified me. I nodded slowly. “I’m in.”
That was all it took.
Meera grinned, a spark of victory lighting her face. She dug into her bag and pulled out an old spiral notebook. Its cover was torn, pages yellowing. She slapped it down on the concrete. “This is where it begins. Our pact. Every story, every lie, every hidden thing—we’ll write it here before we put it into the yearbook.”
Kabir sketched a crude emblem on the first page: a cracked school bell, ringing. Beneath it, Rishi scrawled, The Yearbook of Truth. Tanya rolled her eyes but added her signature anyway, neat and elegant. Meera underlined it all in red.
Then it was my turn. My pen hovered for a second before I wrote my name beside theirs. And as the ink bled into the page, something shifted inside me.
This wasn’t just about saving memories. It was about defiance. About making sure Raipur High’s last year wouldn’t be buried under silence.
That afternoon, as the final bell rang and students spilled out of the gates, the five of us stayed behind, circling around that battered notebook. The pact was sealed.
No teachers, no rules, no glossy pages. Only us, and the truths we were about to dig up.
And somewhere deep down, I already knew: once we opened those doors, there would be no turning back.
Part 3 – First Interviews
The pact didn’t stay a secret for long. At a school like Raipur High, whispers traveled faster than the morning bell. By the end of the week, kids eyed us differently—curious, cautious, some even suspicious. Maybe they didn’t know exactly what we were planning, but they could sense it. Five misfits spending lunch breaks scribbling in a battered spiral notebook? It wasn’t exactly subtle.
We started small. Meera insisted we begin with classmates we already knew—people who wouldn’t immediately shut us down. “Ease them in,” she said, flipping her pen like a dagger. “Let them think it’s just fun. Then we dig deeper.”
The first was Shruti, from our section, who was always scribbling poems in the margins of her math book. She agreed to talk during free period. We sat in the back row while Kabir doodled absently on the desk. Meera did most of the questioning.
“Shruti, what’s your best memory of Raipur High?”
Shruti smiled shyly. “The library. I know it’s dusty, but it’s where I wrote my first poem. No one ever goes there, so it felt like my space.”
“And your worst?” Meera asked, leaning forward.
The smile faltered. Shruti hesitated, then whispered, “When Mrs. Dutta tore up my notebook in class. She said poems wouldn’t get me anywhere. Everyone laughed.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Meera scribbled furiously. Kabir drew a sketch of a torn notebook, pages scattering like leaves. For the first time, I realized how powerful this could be—not just stories, but pieces of people no one else bothered to notice.
Next was Aman, captain of the cricket team. He acted cool at first, leaning back against the bench with his arms crossed. “Yearbook, huh? Sure, write about how I won us the inter-school finals.”
Meera rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that story. We want the ones no one hears.”
Aman smirked, but his confidence wavered. “Fine. Write about how the principal almost kicked me out last year.”
We leaned closer. “Why?” Tanya asked, finally interested.
“Because the school blamed me for stealing sports funds. Said I bought new bats without approval. Truth is, the money was already gone before I touched it. They just needed a scapegoat.” His jaw tightened. “No one ever cleared my name.”
Kabir drew a cracked cricket bat. Meera scribbled. Tanya, for once, put her phone down.
By the third interview, the notebook felt heavier. Every word sank deeper, pulling us into places I wasn’t sure we wanted to go.
One afternoon, Rishi convinced Ankit—the quiet kid from the science stream—to talk. He rarely spoke to anyone, so I was surprised when he agreed. We sat in the chemistry lab after school, beakers glowing faintly in the late sunlight.
“My brother studied here too,” Ankit said softly. “Two years ago. He… he disappeared.”
The air went cold. Even Meera stopped tapping her pen.
“Disappeared?” I repeated.
Ankit’s hands trembled around his pencil. “He was in class twelve. One day, he just didn’t come home. Police searched, school denied knowing anything. Everyone stopped talking about it. My parents still think he ran away. But I know he didn’t.” His voice dropped lower. “The last place he was seen… was inside these walls.”
For a moment, none of us could speak. The sound of water dripping from a tap echoed too loudly.
Meera finally whispered, “Why didn’t anyone tell us this before?”
“Because no one wants to remember,” Ankit said, staring at the floor. “Raipur High pretends it never happened.”
When we left the lab, the corridors felt darker, heavier. The pact was no longer just about capturing memories. It was about digging into something the school itself wanted buried.
That night, as I flipped through the notebook, I saw the fragments we’d collected—poems torn apart, accusations silenced, a brother who vanished. The cracked bell Kabir had sketched on the first page seemed to ring louder with every secret we wrote down.
I thought about Principal Desai’s announcement again. Maybe she was right—Raipur High was ending. But with every interview, with every truth we uncovered, I realized something terrifying: this school wasn’t just shutting down.
It was hiding.
And we were about to drag everything into the light.
Part 4 – Secrets Surface
By the time September crawled in, the notebook had grown thick with voices. Pages filled with confessions, sketches, half-remembered whispers. Meera carried it everywhere, as if losing it would mean losing the pulse of Raipur High itself. But the more we wrote, the more dangerous it felt to hold.
It was Kabir who found the first real crack in the school’s mask. He’d been sketching near the staffroom one afternoon, blending into the background as usual, when he overheard two teachers whispering. Later, sitting with us behind the basketball court, he repeated their words:
“They said the closure isn’t about money. Something about… ‘keeping the past buried before it ruins more lives.’”
Meera’s eyes lit up. “Buried past. That means scandal.”
Tanya groaned. “Or it just means they want to save face. Not everything is a conspiracy.”
But even she couldn’t hide her curiosity when Kabir pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “I followed one of them to the office. She dropped this.”
It was a photocopy of an old report, edges yellowed, stamped with the school crest. The headline read: “Disciplinary Committee Proceedings, 2019.”
The lines beneath were smudged, but a few words stood clear enough: “student misconduct… funds misappropriation… missing records… recommendation: silence.”
The five of us huddled close, hearts thudding.
“2019,” Rishi muttered. “That’s the same year Ankit’s brother disappeared.”
Silence pressed around us like thick fog. I felt the ground tilt. What if Raipur High hadn’t just lost money or students—what if something had been erased on purpose?
Meera slammed her hand on the notebook. “We’re going deeper. We’re not just recording memories anymore—we’re exposing the truth. If the school’s hiding something, our yearbook will drag it out.”
I hesitated. “Meera, this isn’t just gossip anymore. If we push too far—”
“Then we’ll finally matter,” she snapped, her eyes burning. “Don’t you get it, Aarav? This is bigger than exams or festivals. This school tried to erase people. We can’t let them.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The report’s words haunted me—recommendation: silence. I imagined Ankit’s brother walking these same halls, then vanishing into that silence. I thought of Shruti’s poems torn apart, Aman’s stolen name. How many lives had been quietly erased so the school could survive another year?
The next morning, Meera dragged us into the dusty archives room. It smelled of damp paper and rusting metal, the air heavy with neglect. Old trophies lined the shelves, their brass dulled, plaques faded. Boxes of files leaned against one another like tired soldiers.
We pried them open, coughing as dust flew into our faces. Tanya filmed everything on her phone, muttering, “If we get caught, I’m blaming all of you.”
The files told stories no one had dared to say aloud: complaints from students that vanished mid-sentence, disciplinary actions scribbled out with black ink, letters from parents unanswered. Each discovery tightened the knot in my stomach.
One folder stopped us cold. It held a photograph—class twelve, 2019. Ankit’s brother stood in the back row, his eyes solemn, his hand half-raised as though waving. Scrawled across the photo in red ink was a single word: WITHDRAWN.
Kabir sketched it instantly, his pencil sharp as a blade. Tanya’s hands shook as she snapped a picture. Rishi whispered, “Withdrawn? That’s not a student status. That’s an execution.”
We packed the folder back quickly, but the damage was done. The secrets were no longer buried—they were awake in our hands.
When the final bell rang that day, I lingered outside the gates. The sound that had always meant freedom now felt like a warning. Raipur High wasn’t just a school collapsing under bad luck.
It was a vault of ghosts.
And we had just pried the lock open.
Part 5 – The Rival Group
The cracks in Raipur High didn’t just widen—they became visible to everyone. By October, rumors about our “secret yearbook” spread like wildfire. We hadn’t told anyone, but in a school like ours, secrets never stayed secret for long. Suddenly, people we barely spoke to started treating us differently—half curious, half hostile.
It was during lunch when the storm finally broke. Aarav Deshmukh—my ex-best friend—strode into the cafeteria with his usual entourage of prefects, athletes, and wannabes trailing behind like bodyguards. He had always been the golden boy: straight-A student, cricket team vice-captain, the one teachers bragged about. Once upon a time, we had been inseparable. Now, he looked at me like I was dirt under his shoes.
“You think you’re some kind of heroes?” he said loudly enough for the entire cafeteria to turn. “Walking around with your little notebook, digging through trash, spreading lies?”
Meera stood instantly, fire in her eyes. “At least we’re not pretending this place is perfect when it’s rotting inside.”
The cafeteria buzzed with whispers. Aarav’s smirk didn’t falter. “People don’t want your truths, Meera. They want memories worth keeping. That’s what we’re doing.” He pulled out a sleek leather-bound book, its cover embossed in gold letters: The Official Raipur High Yearbook – Class of 2025.
My chest tightened. A rival yearbook. Glossy, safe, approved by the staff. And with Aarav leading, half the school would line up to give him their best smiles.
“You’re making fairy tales,” Rishi muttered, leaning back. “We’re making history.”
Aarav’s voice sharpened. “What you’re making is trouble. You think teachers will let you publish this garbage? You’ll all be suspended. Expelled, maybe.” He glanced at me, eyes cold. “Especially you, Aarav Sharma. I thought you were smarter.”
The words stung more than I expected. Once, he had been my shadow, my ally in every mischief. Now he was my enemy.
After lunch, the five of us regrouped behind the basketball court, tension buzzing like static. Tanya paced furiously. “They’ve already got support. Everyone loves Aarav. If they push their version, ours will look like trash.”
“Good,” Meera said, her jaw set. “Then we’ll hit harder. People like Aarav want pretty pictures. We’ll show them the bloodstains behind the paint.”
Kabir flipped open his sketchbook, showing us a rough cover design: the cracked bell he’d drawn earlier, this time shattering into shards across the page. Beneath it, he’d scribbled: The Yearbook of Truth.
Something about the image gave me chills. It wasn’t just a project anymore. It was a weapon.
That week, the rivalry turned into open war. Aarav’s group spread posters calling us liars, attention-seekers. Some even said we were making up Ankit’s brother, that no one had ever disappeared. A lie layered on top of a tragedy.
In retaliation, we released a single page from our notebook—anonymous, photocopied, and slipped under classroom doors. It contained Shruti’s torn-poem story and Kabir’s sketch of shredded pages. By the next day, whispers filled the corridors: “Did you see it? That’s real. That happened.”
For the first time, we weren’t just misfits. We were dangerous.
But danger came with a cost. Teachers started watching us more closely. The principal called me in one morning, her tone deceptively calm. “Aarav, I hope you’re focusing on your studies, not… distractions.” Her gaze lingered on me too long, as though she knew.
Walking out of her office, I felt the walls of Raipur High closing in. Our pact had started as defiance, but now it was rebellion. And rebellions had consequences.
That night, as I flipped through the notebook, I noticed something I hadn’t before: on one of the blank pages near the back, someone had scribbled a message in uneven handwriting.
“STOP DIGGING. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UNLEASHING.”
The ink was fresh.
And none of us had written it.
Part 6 – The Hidden Room
The warning shook me more than I admitted. That uneven scrawl—STOP DIGGING—kept flashing in my mind like a neon sign I couldn’t switch off. I didn’t tell the others right away. Instead, I carried the notebook tighter, as if holding it closer would keep the words from leaking into reality.
But Raipur High had a way of pulling us deeper whether we wanted it or not.
It happened on a Tuesday, the kind of day where the corridors smelled of damp chalk and half-burnt samosas from the canteen. Kabir had gone wandering, as usual, sketchbook in hand. He liked tracing the old parts of the building—the wings no one visited, the ones with cobwebs thicker than curtains. By evening, he came running back to us, breathless, eyes wide.
“You have to see this,” he said.
We followed him through the east wing, past classrooms locked for years, their doors swollen with moisture. At the end of the corridor stood a heavy iron door, its paint flaking, hinges rusted. Kabir pointed to the bottom corner. “There’s a gap. Big enough to crawl through.”
Rishi grinned. “A secret room in a dying school? Now we’re talking.”
Tanya groaned. “Or maybe it’s just storage full of rats.”
But Meera was already pushing her way in, fearless as always. “Come on. This is where they hide things.”
The gap was narrow. One by one, we slid through, scraping our elbows, landing in darkness. My phone flashlight cut through the dust, and what I saw made my skin prickle.
Stacks of cardboard boxes lined the walls, some collapsed under their own weight. Metal filing cabinets stood crooked, drawers half-open. The air smelled of mold and something sharper—ink, maybe, or secrets that had been trapped too long.
On the far wall, a banner hung crooked: Raipur High Annual Day 2018. The smiling faces of students stared down at us, frozen in time.
“This is it,” Meera whispered. “The graveyard.”
We tore into the boxes, our fingers blackened with dust. Inside were confiscated items: diaries, letters, even a guitar with broken strings. Kabir pulled out a stack of photographs—students standing proudly in front of the school building. On the back of one, scrawled in red marker, was the word: Expelled.
Rishi tugged open a drawer and whistled. “Look at this.”
It was full of disciplinary files, each with a student’s name, offense, and outcome. But entire sections were blacked out with thick ink, like someone had tried to erase history by hand.
Tanya’s hands shook as she lifted a folder marked 2019 – Confidential. Inside were notes about “misconduct,” “funds misappropriation,” and then, in the margins, a phrase underlined twice: “student went missing – no further inquiry.”
Ankit’s brother.
The room grew colder. My throat tightened. The warning in our notebook suddenly felt less like a threat and more like a plea.
Meera’s eyes burned with fury. “They buried him. Buried everything. This is proof.”
Kabir sketched the room quickly, his lines sharp and frantic. Tanya snapped photos, muttering under her breath about getting caught. Rishi stuffed a few files into his bag despite my protests. “If they’re hiding this, then we need copies. Evidence.”
But even as we worked, I felt eyes on us. The shadows in the corners seemed to breathe. The building creaked as if groaning under the weight of secrets finally disturbed.
When we crawled back out, dust coating our uniforms, the corridor outside was silent. Too silent.
I glanced back at the iron door, its rusted frame gaping like a mouth. For the first time, Raipur High felt alive—not as a place of learning, but as something that didn’t want to let go of what it had swallowed.
As we walked away, I opened the notebook to jot down what we’d found. But the page I flipped to wasn’t blank anymore.
New words had appeared, written in that same uneven hand:
“LEAVE THE PAST ALONE. OR YOU WON’T HAVE A FUTURE.”
Part 7 – Betrayal
The second warning in the notebook hit us harder than the first. None of us had written it. None of us even knew when it had appeared. Tanya swore she kept the notebook in her locker during class; Kabir said it never left Meera’s bag. Still, there it was—thick black ink carved into the page like a wound: “LEAVE THE PAST ALONE. OR YOU WON’T HAVE A FUTURE.”
We argued about it for hours behind the basketball court. Tanya wanted to quit. Kabir said maybe the school was playing tricks to scare us. Rishi only grinned, calling it “proof we’re close.” Meera, of course, was fire and iron.
“Let them threaten us,” she said, her hands trembling but her voice unshaken. “That means they’re scared. That means we’re winning.”
But winning had a price.
The tension among us started to show. Little cracks that hadn’t been there before. Tanya complained that she was putting her reputation on the line while the rest of us had nothing to lose. Kabir grew quieter, sketching more furiously as if afraid to speak. Even Rishi, usually unshakable, kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting someone to follow.
And then it happened.
On a gray Thursday morning, Principal Desai summoned Meera to her office. We waited outside, nerves tight as wire. She came out twenty minutes later, pale but defiant.
“She knows,” Meera whispered. “About the yearbook. About the interviews. Everything.”
My heart sank. “How?”
Meera’s jaw clenched. “Someone told her.”
The word betrayal hung unspoken in the air.
That afternoon, as we flipped through the notebook, the truth hit us like a punch. Several pages were missing—ripped clean, leaving only ragged edges. They weren’t random pages either. They were the ones with the most dangerous confessions: Aman’s story about the stolen sports funds, Shruti’s torn poems, the photo of Ankit’s brother with WITHDRAWN scrawled across it.
“Who did this?” Tanya snapped, her voice shaking. “Who took them?”
Meera’s eyes narrowed. “One of us.”
Silence.
Rishi smirked, though there was no humor in it. “So which of you sold us out? Was it worth it?”
Kabir slammed his sketchbook shut. “Don’t look at me.”
Tanya’s face turned red. “I don’t need to steal pages, okay? If I wanted out, I’d just walk away.”
Meera’s voice cracked as she said the words we were all afraid of: “What if one of us already has?”
For the first time, we weren’t just fighting Raipur High. We were fighting each other.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the torn pages, the blank spaces where stories had lived. Whoever betrayed us hadn’t just stolen paper—they had stolen voices. Proof. Truth.
The next day, Desai made an announcement during assembly: “Certain students have been spreading harmful rumors about our school. Let me be clear—this behavior will not be tolerated. Anyone found guilty will face disciplinary action, including suspension.”
Her eyes swept the hall, pausing just long enough on our row. My stomach knotted. The war wasn’t underground anymore. It was out in the open.
Later, when we met in secret, the trust that once bound us felt thin as glass. Meera’s fury boiled, Kabir’s silence deepened, Tanya’s sarcasm turned sharp enough to cut, and Rishi kept smiling that dangerous smile.
I looked at all of them and realized something terrible: it wasn’t the rival group, or the teachers, or even the school that could destroy us.
It was us.
And someone among us had already started.
Part 8 – The Last Festival
November at Raipur High always smelled of paint and sawdust. It was the month of rehearsals, costumes stitched too late, banners painted overnight, and the frantic chaos of preparing for the annual festival. This one, everyone knew, would be the last. The posters plastered across the walls didn’t say it, but the words buzzed in the air: Final Annual Day. Last Curtain Call.
For most students, it was bittersweet. For us, it was an opportunity.
“We use the festival,” Meera said one afternoon, eyes glinting like fire. “They’ll have parents, alumni, even reporters. Perfect stage.”
Tanya looked horrified. “You’re suggesting we go public? With all of it?”
“Not all,” Meera corrected. “But enough. Enough to show them we’re not making things up. A preview of the Yearbook of Truth. Once it’s out, they can’t bury it.”
Kabir’s pencil was already moving across his sketchbook, lines forming a rough storyboard: a screen projection, shadows flickering, words flashing across the stage. He didn’t say much, but the drawings told us he was in.
Rishi grinned like it was a dare. “If we’re going down, we might as well go down spectacularly.”
I hesitated. My chest felt heavy with the risk. Suspension, expulsion—those weren’t just rumors anymore. But I also remembered Ankit’s trembling voice, the missing brother, the torn pages. Fear burned in me, but so did something else. Defiance.
We planned in whispers, in stolen moments. Tanya smuggled in a projector from her cousin’s studio. Kabir designed slides—sketches of torn notebooks, cricket bats cracked in half, a faded photograph marked WITHDRAWN. Meera recorded voiceovers, raw and angry. Rishi handled the tech, muttering gleefully about “hijacking the system.”
The night of the festival arrived. Fairy lights wrapped around the trees, the air thick with popcorn and sweat. Students in costumes rushed backstage. Parents filled the courtyard, fanning themselves with programs. Onstage, speeches droned about heritage and pride.
When the cultural performances began, we slipped away. The projector hummed in the storeroom, its light like a heartbeat. Tanya’s hands shook as she connected her phone. “If this backfires—”
“It won’t,” Meera cut in. “It can’t.”
At 8:15, just as the principal took the stage to introduce the closing ceremony, the lights flickered. Then our images appeared on the giant screen.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. At first, confusion. Then shock.
A voiceover—Meera’s—echoed through the speakers: “This is the truth of Raipur High. Not the stories they put in glossy books, but the ones they erased.”
Kabir’s sketches flashed: Shruti’s shredded poems, Aman’s broken bat, the class photograph with WITHDRAWN slashed in red. Then, words filled the screen: “A student disappeared. No one asked why.”
The courtyard erupted. Parents shouted. Teachers scrambled to cut the feed, but Rishi had locked the system. Students stared wide-eyed, whispering, some cheering, some crying.
Principal Desai’s face was stone, her hands trembling around the microphone. “Enough!” she shouted. But the images kept rolling.
For three minutes, Raipur High’s buried stories lit the night sky.
Then the screen went black. Silence hung heavier than thunder.
The principal’s voice shook with fury. “Whoever is responsible will be punished. Severely.”
Security guards rushed toward the storeroom. We bolted before they arrived, hearts pounding, adrenaline burning through our veins. By the time the courtyard emptied in chaos, we were already scattered into the night.
Later, hiding in my room, I replayed the gasps, the shouts, the faces. We had done it. We had pulled the skeletons from the closet and thrown them onto the stage.
But victory tasted sharp, edged with fear.
Because when I opened the notebook that night, there was a new message, scrawled darker and more jagged than before:
“YOU WERE WARNED. NOW YOU’VE CROSSED THE LINE.”
Part 9 – The Aftermath
The morning after the festival, Raipur High didn’t feel like a school anymore. It felt like a battlefield.
Parents stormed the gates, demanding answers. Teachers huddled in whispers, faces tight with fear and anger. The air was thick with suspicion; every student looked over their shoulder, waiting for the next blow. And in the middle of it all stood Principal Desai, her voice rising above the chaos: “Discipline will be restored. Order will be restored.”
But the truth was already out.
In the classrooms, nothing felt the same. Students who once ignored us now whispered behind their hands—some with admiration, some with disgust. “Did you see their video?” “They’re liars.” “They’re legends.” Our names passed through corridors like contraband.
At lunch, the five of us sat together, but it didn’t feel like before. Tanya kept snapping at everything, her nerves fraying. “We’re finished. They’ll expel us.”
Rishi only smirked. “Expel me, please. Best excuse to never take another exam.”
Kabir was silent, sketching a face I recognized instantly—Ankit’s brother, but older, gaunter, like he had lived in the shadows too long. The sight made my stomach twist.
Meera, though, was unshaken. “This is exactly what we wanted. They can’t hide anymore.”
Her words rang bold, but I saw the tremor in her hands. Even she knew we’d crossed into dangerous territory.
The punishments came swiftly. Notices pinned on the board: “Unauthorized use of school equipment. Spreading harmful propaganda. Pending disciplinary action.” They didn’t name us directly, but everyone knew.
And then, the betrayals multiplied. Parents started pulling their children out early, afraid of the “corruption” at Raipur High. Alumni posted online, arguing whether we were heroes or disgraceful brats. Rumors twisted faster than we could keep up.
The worst came when Aman cornered me outside the library. His face was pale with fury. “Why did you put my story out there? Do you know what you’ve done? My dad’s furious—he says people will think we’re thieves.”
I tried to explain, but he cut me off. “You said it would be anonymous! But everyone knows it’s me. You’ve ruined my life.” His voice cracked, and he shoved past me. The guilt stuck like a stone in my throat.
Even Shruti stopped sitting with us. “I didn’t ask to be remembered like this,” she whispered before walking away.
For every truth we freed, someone else felt exposed, betrayed.
But the darkest blow came from Ankit. He found us after school, his face shadowed. “Stop using my brother’s name.”
Meera stared at him, shocked. “But Ankit—your brother—”
“He’s gone!” Ankit’s voice broke. “And you’re just turning him into another story. Another performance. Do you think that brings him back? Do you think that helps me sleep at night?”
Silence. None of us could answer. He walked away, leaving a hole we couldn’t fill.
That night, I sat on my bed, the notebook heavy in my lap. Pages torn, warnings scribbled, sketches like scars. We had wanted to immortalize Raipur High, to fight silence with truth. But instead, we had cracked open wounds people weren’t ready to see.
The city was buzzing with our names now. Parents threatening lawsuits. Teachers whispering about shutting us out before we brought the whole school down faster. And yet, under all the fear, I felt it—the stir of something real. We had pulled off what no one else dared.
Still, when I flipped to the last page, my heart froze.
A new message, written in the same jagged ink, spread across the bottom:
“TRUTH HAS A PRICE. ARE YOU READY TO PAY IT?”
Part 10 – The Last Bell
The end came faster than any of us expected.
December mornings at Raipur High were usually lazy, fog curling across the field, sweaters pulled over half-buttoned uniforms. But now every day felt like the last page of a book. The teachers spoke softer, the juniors roamed like they were already mourning, and the walls themselves seemed to sigh with exhaustion.
The disciplinary committee had dragged its feet for weeks, but the verdict was clear: we were guilty. Of disruption. Of spreading “falsehoods.” Of dishonoring the legacy of Raipur High. Expulsion was whispered, suspension was threatened, but in the end the school decided to let us finish the year—under strict watch. As if they wanted us silent until the doors closed forever.
We weren’t silent. Not yet.
On the final morning of term, students filed into the assembly hall. The old brass bell—hung crooked above the stage—gleamed dully in the pale winter light. Principal Desai spoke of “moving on with dignity,” of “new beginnings elsewhere.” Her words fell flat. Everyone knew this was goodbye.
I looked at my friends—what was left of us. Tanya, exhausted but still defiant, arms crossed. Kabir, pale, fingers smudged with graphite, clutching his sketchbook as if it were armor. Rishi, grinning like the chaos had been worth it. And Meera—our firebrand—eyes locked on the bell as though it were her enemy.
When the speeches ended, tradition demanded the seniors ring the bell one last time. Aarav Deshmukh—my former best friend, now leader of the rival yearbook—was supposed to do it. He stood tall, perfect as ever, the official leather-bound yearbook in his arms. The safe version. The one parents approved.
But before he could move, Meera strode forward. Gasps rippled through the hall. “This bell belongs to all of us,” she said, her voice echoing. “Not just the ones who wrote fairy tales.”
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then she beckoned to us. My legs trembled, but I followed. Kabir, Tanya, and Rishi too. Together, we stood under the bell, our battered spiral notebook clutched tight in my hand.
Meera gripped the rope. “For every poem torn, for every lie told, for every student erased—this is for us.”
She pulled.
The bell rang out, louder than I’d ever heard. A deep, trembling sound that shook the hall, the walls, maybe even the city outside. Students gasped, some cheered, some cried. Teachers stared in fury, but they couldn’t stop it—the echo was already alive.
In that moment, Raipur High was ours again. Not the glossy pages. Not the official speeches. Ours.
Afterward, chaos returned. Teachers tried to drag us offstage. Parents shouted. But I barely heard them. The sound of that bell still thrummed in my chest.
The school closed its gates the next day. Furniture was packed into trucks, the field left barren. Students scattered to new schools, teachers to new jobs. Raipur High became an empty shell, another forgotten building waiting for demolition.
But our yearbook survived.
Meera scanned the pages, Kabir’s sketches framing every story. Tanya, despite her threats, edited it like a professional. Rishi found a way to put it online, hidden but accessible. Within days, whispers turned into downloads, and the truth of Raipur High spread far beyond its broken gates.
I kept a copy for myself, the spiral binding frayed, the warnings still inked in the margins. TRUTH HAS A PRICE. ARE YOU READY TO PAY IT?
We had paid. With friends lost, with enemies made, with sleepless nights and scars we’d carry forever. But we had also won.
Because long after the building fell, long after the golden yearbook gathered dust, our story rang louder. The last bell of Raipur High would never stop echoing.
And neither would we.
