• English - Young Adult

    The Last Broadcast

    September 12, 2025 - By 

    Ayesha Malhotra Part 1 – Silence After the Flare The desert had always been quiet, but after the flare, silence was something else entirely. It pressed against the windows, settled on the roof tiles, thickened the air between words. Before, there had been the hum of ceiling fans, the tinny burst of radio jingles from the next-door grocer’s shop, the shriek of kids playing cricket on the dust-patched street. But the morning after the sky burned orange and green, none of that returned. The fans sat useless. The grocer closed his shutters. The cricket bat lay abandoned in the sand.…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Yearbook Lie

    July 1, 2025 - By 

    Part 1: The Caption That Shouldn’t Exist The bell rang for the last time that Friday afternoon, and the hallways of Lakemount High flooded with bodies—seniors hollering, juniors buzzing, lockers slamming shut like punctuation marks on a chaotic sentence. Avani Kapoor walked slower than most, her earbuds in, her playlist whispering solace. She didn’t need to rush. No one was waiting for her at the front gate. No one ever was. She stopped by the main office to pick up her copy of the senior yearbook, sliding her name onto the clipboard with practiced awkwardness. “One copy left, Kapoor,” said…