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 Mrs. Davison without looking up, pushing the navy-blue hardcover across the desk. Avani gave a nod, tucking the book under her arm. The cover shimmered under the overhead light: Lakemount Class of 2025 – Make It Last. She rolled her eyes.
In the bus, she opened it, flipping past the usual suspects—student body president, drama club stars, basketball MVPs. The ink smelled sharp, pages crisp, photos staged and smiling. She scanned through the senior superlatives. Most Likely to Be President: Aaron Klein. Best Dressed: Kayla Hernandez. Most Likely to Go Viral: Zion Mallik. It was a parade of predictable choices.
She was halfway through the “M” section when her name stopped her cold.
There she was—Avani Kapoor. A candid photo, somehow better than she expected. Her almond eyes looked thoughtful, her hair mid-fall across her face like she was about to say something important.
But the caption below it—
“Most Likely to Vanish.”
Her stomach dropped.
What the hell?
She flipped back to check the alphabetical list. Her name was there in the right spot. But that caption… she hadn’t submitted anything. No quote. No superlative. No joke. And no one had contacted her to tell her she’d even been selected for anything.
Her fingers tightened around the page. Was this some twisted prank? She scanned the surrounding photos. Everyone else had a normal label. Class Clown. Teacher’s Pet. Most Likely to Be on Reality TV. No one else had anything sinister. Just her.
She looked out the window. The world blurred past—strip malls, traffic lights, half-finished construction sites. For a second, the silence in the bus seemed too loud.
At home, her mother was in the kitchen reheating dal and paratha. “Yearbook came?” she asked without turning. “You’re in it, right?”
Avani stood in the hallway, the book clutched to her chest. “Yeah. I’m in it.”
“Show me later,” her mother called over the whir of the microwave. “You know Masi will ask to see it.”
“Sure,” Avani murmured, heading upstairs.
She locked her bedroom door. Her phone buzzed with notifications. Group chats. Memes. One DM from Mehek: OMG check pg 72!! You got a title?? Didn’t even tell me!
Avani didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at the photo again. Somehow, it felt… off. Not just the words. The whole thing. Like her face was slightly blurred, softer than others. Or maybe she was just imagining it.
She scrolled through Instagram. Everyone was posting about the yearbook. Selfies with captions. Reactions. Then she paused.
A post from Kayla Hernandez.
Caption: Still can’t believe how accurate mine is lol—Best Dressed forever!
In the comment section, someone had written:
@avani.kapoor yours was creepy af lol
@zionmillik yo where did “Most Likely to Vanish” even come from??
Avani clicked her own profile. No tags. No mentions. No one else had posted about her yet.
She dropped the phone and paced. Her brain started spinning. What if this was someone’s idea of a joke? Someone on the yearbook committee? But she didn’t even talk to those kids. Or maybe someone hacked the layout before it went to print?
The next morning, she arrived at school earlier than usual, storming into the library. Mehek was already there, sipping a mango smoothie and working on her math notes.
“You saw it?” Avani hissed.
“Of course I did.” Mehek lowered her cup. “Why didn’t you tell me you got chosen? I thought you said you didn’t submit anything.”
“I didn’t. I swear. Look at this.” She slammed the book open. “Who writes this? This isn’t even funny.”
Mehek frowned, glancing around. “Okay, yeah, it’s weird. But maybe someone made a mistake?”
“No one else got something like that. It’s just me. And people online are already talking.”
Mehek’s expression changed. “You think it’s targeted?”
“I think I want to know who wrote it,” Avani muttered.
By third period, things got stranger.
In history class, Mr. Cray didn’t call her name during roll. She raised her hand. “Sir, you skipped me.”
He blinked. “Avani… Kapoor, right? My mistake.” He scribbled something on his pad. “Haven’t seen you in class much lately.”
She stared at him. “I’ve had perfect attendance.”
He just nodded vaguely and moved on.
At lunch, she walked into the cafeteria, waved to a group she occasionally sat with—and no one waved back. Not even Zion, who had shared fries with her two days ago. He looked at her, frowned like she was vaguely familiar, then turned away.
“Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” she told Mehek, who looked genuinely alarmed.
By the end of the day, even more people were acting distant. When she went to sign out a book from the library, the system showed “Student Not Registered.”
In the hallway, someone bumped into her and didn’t even say sorry.
Like she wasn’t there.
Like she was vanishing.
That night, she dug through her old journals and notebooks, trying to find any explanation. Her heart pounded, her thoughts spinning. Her fingers hovered over her laptop keys. Maybe someone online had noticed something similar. Maybe this was a trend, a joke, a digital glitch. But she found nothing.
No one else had been captioned like that. No one else was being forgotten.
At midnight, she opened the yearbook again.
This time, her picture was… gone.
Just a blank square where her face had been.
And underneath it, the caption had changed.
“She Was Never Here.”
She dropped the book. The air turned cold.
Someone—or something—was rewriting her.
And she was running out of time.
Part 2: The Ones Who Remember
The morning air was thick with summer haze, the kind that made everything shimmer slightly, like the world was holding its breath. Avani barely slept, haunted by that blank space in the yearbook where her photo had once been. Her alarm rang, but it felt pointless. What was the use of going to school when it was as if she didn’t exist?
Still, she went.
She walked through the halls of Lakemount like a ghost. Conversations floated around her like fog, but never landed. Even when she brushed shoulders with classmates, they didn’t flinch. It was like being stuck inside a dream where she screamed but made no sound.
But in the middle of this growing silence, one voice cut through.
“Hey.”
She turned. Zayden Reyes leaned against his locker, a pencil tucked behind his ear, his usual art-stained hoodie rumpled like always. His eyes weren’t scanning over her—they were looking directly at her.
She blinked. “You can… see me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“No one else is. Like, literally no one.”
Zayden tilted his head. “You mean… today? Or in general?”
“Since yesterday,” she whispered. “Since the yearbook came out.”
He pulled out his copy from his backpack, flipping it open with one hand. “Let me guess—‘Most Likely to Vanish’?”
Her breath caught. “You saw it too?”
He nodded slowly. “Didn’t think much of it until now. But… I checked it again this morning. Your page? Blank.”
Avani exhaled shakily. “Exactly. That’s what I saw last night.”
“Okay,” Zayden said, voice calm but curious. “That’s not normal.”
“No kidding.”
A pause stretched between them. Then he snapped the yearbook shut. “Come with me.”
They walked toward the back wing of the school, past the art studios and storage rooms where no one really went. The hall was quieter here, shadows longer. Zayden pushed open a door marked Art Room B, which had been locked for years. But somehow, his keycard worked.
“How do you have access to this?”
“I help Mr. Lindstrom with inventory. He forgets to revoke keys,” Zayden said casually.
Inside, paint fumes lingered. Canvases leaned against the walls. An old analog copier wheezed softly in the corner. He walked over to a large corkboard cluttered with photos, magazine clippings, and sketches. In the center was a Polaroid of a girl Avani didn’t recognize.
“She was in last year’s yearbook,” Zayden said, pointing. “Also labeled something strange—‘Most Likely to Disappear Without a Trace.’ Her name was Carina Cho. She was in my sculpture elective. One day, she stopped showing up. Teachers said she transferred. But none of her friends ever got a goodbye. No texts. Just… poof.”
Avani swallowed hard. “And no one found that odd?”
Zayden’s eyes darkened. “Only two of us did. Me. And Mr. Lindstrom.”
“Where is he now?”
“He retired suddenly after Carina vanished. Packed up overnight.”
Avani stared at the photo. “You think this is connected?”
“I think someone’s rewriting people out of existence,” Zayden said. “And I think they’re using the yearbook to do it.”
Avani shivered. “But why me?”
“I don’t know yet. But if your caption changed… and your photo disappeared… you’re next.”
A knock echoed outside the door, sharp and sudden. Both of them froze. Zayden killed the lights with a flick of his fingers. The knocking stopped.
They waited.
After a minute, he whispered, “Probably just the janitor.”
But neither of them believed it.
Later that afternoon, Avani found Mehek at the back of the school library, buried in a stack of psych notes.
“Please tell me you remember me,” Avani said, breathless.
Mehek looked up, eyes widening. “Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because everyone else forgot. Or is starting to.”
Mehek frowned. “Okay, what’s happening? You texted me weird stuff last night and then went silent.”
Avani sat across from her, whispering the full story. The caption. The yearbook page changing. The blank square. Zayden. Carina.
Mehek’s face paled. “Avani… do you remember that time capsule?”
Avani blinked. “What capsule?”
“The one buried seven years ago. When we were in fifth grade. Principal Lawrence had every student write a note to their future self. It’s supposed to be dug up at this year’s graduation ceremony.”
“I barely remember that.”
Mehek leaned in. “What if the yearbook is pulling information from more than just this year? What if it’s tapping into that capsule somehow?”
Avani tried to process that. “But what does that mean for me?”
Mehek hesitated. “I was there when you filled out your note. You didn’t write anything. You stared at the paper and said you didn’t know who you wanted to become.”
“I was ten. So?”
“What if that blank… made it easier for someone to write your story for you?”
The thought chilled her. Like an unguarded door left wide open.
As they left the library, the lights flickered above them. Avani’s phone buzzed.
Airdrop request: From UNKNOWN
“You were never real. Stop digging.”
Her fingers trembled.
Zayden’s voice behind her: “We need to go deeper.”
“We need to find that capsule,” Avani said.
Because whoever was editing her existence—they weren’t finished.
And she wasn’t going to vanish quietly.
Part 3: The Capsule That Shouldn’t Be Found
The next morning, Avani stood at the edge of the Lakemount football field, staring at the northeast corner near the flagpole. According to the school’s archived newsletter from 2018—dug up by Mehek at 2 a.m.—that’s where the time capsule had been buried. It was supposed to be opened in front of parents and press on graduation day. But Avani didn’t have time to wait for ceremonial scissors and speeches.
Zayden stood beside her, one hand clutching a folded gardening spade he’d swiped from the art supply closet. “We’re really doing this?”
“Unless you have a better idea,” Avani replied, her hoodie pulled low over her head.
It was Saturday. The campus was technically closed, but the gates were never really locked. They’d slipped in just after sunrise, when the morning fog still blurred the outlines of the bleachers.
Zayden knelt and jabbed the ground with the spade. The soil was loamy from last week’s rain, giving way easier than expected. Avani helped scoop, fingers trembling slightly, dirt sinking under her nails.
After fifteen minutes of digging, they hit something solid.
A tin box, about the size of a large shoebox, rusted at the edges but intact. Zayden wiggled it free and set it on the grass.
Avani brushed off the dirt and opened it.
Inside were dozens of sealed white envelopes, each labeled with a student’s name in childish handwriting. Hers was right near the top.
She picked it up.
Avani Kapoor – To Me in the Future
Her hands shook. “I don’t remember what I wrote. I thought I left it blank.”
“Only one way to find out,” Zayden murmured.
She peeled the envelope open.
There was a folded paper inside. One single line, scrawled in pencil:
“I hope I’m not invisible.”
Avani’s breath caught in her throat.
She hadn’t remembered writing that.
But the words… they felt too real, too true.
Zayden took the note from her gently. “Avani…”
“It’s like I asked for this,” she whispered. “Like I gave them permission.”
“No,” he said firmly. “You were a kid. Kids say things like that all the time.”
“But someone—or something—is using it.”
Zayden dug deeper into the box, flipping through other envelopes. “Look at this,” he said, holding one up.
The name: Carina Cho
The note inside: “Erase everything before high school.”
Avani’s stomach turned.
“Zayden… you think these wishes became real?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Then, “Maybe not on their own. Maybe someone—or something—is granting them. Twisting them.”
They stared at the capsule like it might start humming.
Avani reached for another envelope randomly, this one belonging to Lena Malik—a student who’d suddenly moved schools last month with no explanation. The note: “I don’t want anyone to remember what I said.”
Avani glanced at Zayden. “Lena was class debate captain. She dropped out right after her winning speech.”
“She said something about corrupt school records,” Zayden recalled.
“She was erased too.”
Before they could speak further, the sound of footsteps made them both jump. A flashlight beam pierced through the fog.
“Hey!” a voice barked.
They scrambled up, grabbing the capsule and shoving it back into the hole. Zayden kicked dirt over it while Avani slid the notes into her backpack.
A security guard emerged from the mist, eyebrows furrowed. “You two know this is private property?”
“We’re in the gardening club,” Zayden said without missing a beat. “Early morning planting. Principal cleared it.”
The guard narrowed his eyes. “Gardening club doesn’t meet weekends.”
“We’re new,” Avani added. “Volunteers.”
“Go home,” the guard grunted, waving them off.
They didn’t run—but they walked fast.
At the school boundary, Zayden exhaled. “That was close.”
Avani glanced at the sky, grey with early daylight. “Zayden, if this capsule holds everyone’s fears, and someone’s using them… then the yearbook isn’t just a book.”
He nodded. “It’s a mirror. Or maybe a doorway.”
They met Mehek at the public library an hour later. She looked exhausted but determined. “I think I found something,” she said, opening her laptop. “There was a guy—Mr. Byrne—who used to teach at Lakemount in the ‘90s. He wrote a paper about schools being “emotional anchors”—places where repeated emotions get trapped in objects.”
“Like yearbooks,” Avani whispered.
“Exactly. He called them Memory Sinks.”
Zayden leaned over. “Where is he now?”
“Retired. Lives in a cabin outside town. No phone number, but I got a mailing address.”
“Let’s go,” Avani said.
“Wait,” Mehek held up a hand. “Before we drive into the woods chasing ghost teachers, there’s one more thing.”
She pulled out her own yearbook.
Avani flipped to her page—her photo, still there.
The caption had changed again.
“Already Gone.”
Mehek stared at her. “It’s updating in real time.”
Zayden grabbed his backpack. “Then we’d better move fast. Because if you disappear from this yearbook…”
“I might disappear for real,” Avani finished.
And this time, she wouldn’t be able to come back.
Part 4: The Cabin in the Woods
The road to Mr. Byrne’s cabin twisted through pine woods and faded signs that warned of deer crossings and loose gravel. Zayden drove his beat-up gray hatchback with one hand on the wheel, the other holding a crumpled printout of the address. Avani sat in the passenger seat, her fingers clutching her backpack like a lifeline. Mehek was crammed in the backseat, her laptop resting on her knees, hotspot blinking faintly.
They had skipped Sunday tutoring and lied to their parents—“study group at the library”—and taken the long road north, past the edge of Lakemount’s reach. As trees grew taller and cell signals weaker, the air thickened with something Avani couldn’t name.
“What if he doesn’t remember anything?” Mehek asked.
Zayden shrugged. “Then we dig until he does.”
Avani turned toward the window. Her reflection barely showed in the glass.
They found the cabin around noon, hidden behind a rusting gate and half-covered in ivy. The mailbox said “B. Byrne.” A small wooden wind chime dangled from the porch, spinning in the breeze without sound.
Avani knocked.
No answer.
Zayden tried the handle—it turned.
“Not locked,” he said.
“Maybe we should wait—” Mehek began, but the door creaked open before she finished.
An old man with sunken eyes and a frayed cardigan stood behind it. He stared at them for a long time.
“You came,” he said softly.
Avani blinked. “You were expecting us?”
Mr. Byrne nodded. “Ever since the Lakemount class of ‘25 yearbook went to print. I felt it. It’s happening again.”
They followed him inside. The place smelled of paper and cedar smoke. Walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed to collapse. A table in the corner had three yearbooks stacked on it—1986, 1999, 2025.
“I tried to warn them,” Byrne said. “The first time it happened, it was subtle. A student vanished—no records, no photo. Everyone thought it was a clerical error. But I remembered him. Just me. Then it happened again in ‘99. That’s when I started researching.”
Avani leaned forward. “What’s doing this? Why the yearbook?”
Byrne looked at her carefully. “Because the yearbook isn’t just a collection of photos. It’s a vessel. A manifestation of collective memory. When enough people believe something… it becomes real. And when the belief fades, so does the person.”
Zayden frowned. “But who controls it? Some… entity?”
Byrne tapped the 2025 book. “I don’t know who—or what—feeds it. But I do know this: the captions are the key. They’re not written by the committee. They’re chosen.”
“Chosen by whom?” Mehek asked.
“By the book itself,” he said. “Or what lives inside it.”
Silence fell over the room.
Avani opened her copy, flipping to her page.
Still blank.
Byrne’s gaze sharpened. “You’re already slipping.”
“I know,” she said, voice brittle.
“Then you must act fast. The only way to break the cycle is to rewrite the memory before the book seals. Once graduation ends, it locks. Forever.”
“How do I rewrite it?” she asked.
“You need to be remembered,” he said. “By many. Loudly. Publicly. The caption must be challenged by belief. Memory must outshout the lie.”
Avani sat back. “So I have to prove I exist.”
“To your entire class,” Byrne said. “Before the book closes.”
Mehek bit her lip. “How long do we have?”
“Six days.”
Zayden stood. “Then we better start now.”
They thanked Byrne, who handed them a file folder before they left. “Names of others. Past cases. Read them. And don’t trust the committee. Especially not the editor.”
Back in the car, Avani opened the folder. Carina Cho. Lena Malik. Others—some dating back decades. Their notes were eerily similar. Fading photos. Changing captions. A few mentioned a name:
Celeste M.
Editor. 1986. 1999. 2025.
Avani blinked. “Is this possible? The same editor every time?”
Zayden frowned. “That’s not a student. That’s something else.”
They drove back in silence, the trees closing in behind them like pages turning. That evening, as dusk fell over Lakemount, Avani stared at her laptop.
She clicked open her school’s yearbook site. Logged in.
The digital version loaded.
Her photo: gone.
Caption:
“Most Likely to Be Forgotten”
She refreshed the page.
Now it read:
“Who?”
Her inbox chimed. An anonymous message, no subject.
You can’t fight what isn’t real. You don’t belong.
She clicked “Reply” and typed only one sentence:
Watch me.
Because even if the book wanted her gone, she wasn’t going quietly.
Not when she finally had people who remembered.
Part 5: Celeste M.
By Monday morning, Lakemount High looked exactly the same—but Avani saw it differently now. Every hallway, every classroom, every casual conversation was no longer harmless. It was a battlefield. A place where her existence was being erased one memory at a time.
She kept her head down as she walked in, clinging to the folder Mr. Byrne had given her. Mehek had printed copies of the pages overnight, highlighting names of students who had vanished. All of them, according to Byrne’s notes, were connected to one editor: Celeste M.
The same name appeared in yearbooks across decades. But no student named Celeste M. had ever graduated from Lakemount. No photos. No club listings. Nothing.
She wasn’t real.
Or she was too real to be remembered.
“Okay, here’s what we know,” Mehek said, huddling beside her at their usual library table. “Every year someone disappears, Celeste M. is listed as the ‘Yearbook Committee Head Editor.’ No one recalls meeting her, yet her name’s in the credits.”
“She’s not a student,” Zayden added, arriving with two coffees and a stolen janitor’s key ring. “She’s something… else. A memory parasite? A ghost? I don’t know.”
Avani didn’t want to admit it, but it made horrible sense. The way her caption had changed. The way people stopped responding to her messages. The way her photo kept fading in and out. This wasn’t just bullying or a glitch.
It was an infection. Memory rot.
“We need to confront the committee,” she said.
Mehek blinked. “What? Why?”
“Because someone let Celeste in. And I want to know who.”
The three of them made their way to Room 208—the yearbook committee’s unofficial headquarters. The door was open. Inside, five students sat around long desks, laptops glowing, pages strewn everywhere. They looked up, startled.
“Can we help you?” asked Priya Menon, the official editor-in-chief.
Avani stepped inside. “I want to talk about my caption.”
Priya squinted. “Wait—sorry, who are you again?”
Avani’s heart dropped. “Avani Kapoor. Class 12-C. I was in Model UN with you.”
Priya frowned, glancing down at her laptop. “I don’t have you in the system.”
Zayden stepped up. “Check the archives. Digital edit log.”
“Why?” one of the layout designers asked.
“Because we think your book is broken,” Avani said, voice sharp. “Or haunted.”
Priya hesitated, then clicked open the version history. The log scrolled past. Thousands of entries, most showing standard updates.
Until one stood out:
USER: CM_86
ACTION: Caption Override — Kapoor, A. → ‘Most Likely to Vanish’
Everyone froze.
“Who’s CM_86?” Mehek asked.
Priya shook her head. “I don’t know. That account doesn’t belong to any of us.”
Avani pointed at the screen. “There. That’s who’s doing this. That’s Celeste M.”
Another student scoffed. “Dude, this is some ARG stuff. Probably a glitch.”
Zayden pulled out the folder. “Then explain why this ‘glitch’ shows up in every erased student’s file going back forty years.”
The room fell silent.
Finally, Priya leaned back. “Okay… suppose this Celeste M. is real. What do we do?”
“We fight her,” Avani said. “We overwrite her captions.”
She took a breath. “I want mine changed.”
“To what?” someone asked.
Avani looked around the room, voice steady. “Most Likely to Be Remembered.”
A beat of silence. Then Priya said, “Done.”
She typed quickly, hit save.
The system paused.
Then glitched.
A warning flashed across the screen:
ACCESS DENIED — ENTRY LOCKED BY MASTER EDITOR
Everyone stared.
“Can’t change it,” Priya whispered. “She locked it.”
“She’s protecting her edits,” Mehek said. “She knows we’re fighting back.”
Suddenly, the room lights flickered. Laptops dimmed. The window blinds snapped shut with a loud clang. The air felt charged, like the seconds before a lightning strike.
A voice echoed from the speaker system—garbled and slow.
“You were not chosen. You cannot rewrite what is sealed.”
Avani stood her ground.
“I was never chosen because I never gave permission.”
Zayden grabbed the backup drive from the table. “We’ll rebuild it ourselves. A new yearbook. One she doesn’t control.”
The lights blinked back on. The room returned to normal.
Everyone stared at each other, breathless.
“She knows,” Avani said softly. “And she’s scared.”
That night, they began.
Using old photos, club rosters, printouts from teachers, and memory interviews, they built a new archive—one where no one vanished, where captions were chosen with intention, not manipulation.
They worked in secret: the three of them, plus two brave students from the committee.
But on the third night, as Avani logged in to upload her new photo, her screen turned black.
A single line appeared:
“Too late.”
She gasped.
Mehek called her seconds later, panicked. “Avani—it’s happening again. People… they’re forgetting faster. My brother asked me who you were. He’s met you three times.”
Zayden texted: Your new caption is gone. She wiped it. She’s accelerating.
They had only three days until graduation.
Three days before the final seal.
Three days before Avani Kapoor—voice, photo, memory—became nothing more than a footnote in someone else’s file.
If she wanted to survive, she had to make the world remember.
Loudly. Publicly. Now.
Part 6: The Memory Revolution
The morning after Celeste’s warning, Avani woke to her name missing from every group chat she’d ever been in. Class updates? Gone. Her old Discord server? No username. Even her Gmail signature had reset to “User Unnamed.”
She sat frozen in her desk chair as sunlight cut across the room like a cruel reminder that time was still moving, even if she was being erased from it. Her hands trembled as she tried to text Mehek.
Mehek, still there?
No response.
Her heart thudded. Mehek had promised to back up their files overnight, store everything—photos, ID cards, schoolwork—on a secure drive. But now the thread was blank. No history. Like they’d never spoken.
Then the phone buzzed.
A single message.
Come to the library. Emergency.
Avani threw on a hoodie and raced across town to Lakemount High. It was still early; the gates were shut, but Zayden was waiting near the back fence with bolt cutters. His face was grim, hands already gloved.
“We lost two more,” he said as she climbed through the gap. “Kayla and Marcus. Yearbook pages gone. Teachers don’t even list them in the attendance system anymore.”
“What about Mehek?”
“She’s inside. But shaken. She says even her dad forgot she exists for a second.”
Avani’s throat tightened. “Celeste’s speeding up.”
“Because we’re fighting back,” Zayden said.
Inside, they found Mehek sitting among open laptops and printed photographs strewn across the library table. Her hair was messy, eyes red. But she held up a flash drive. “Got it. Everything we have. But we need amplification.”
“What do you mean?”
“I uploaded a backup of our alternate yearbook to a hidden webpage,” she said. “But that’s not enough. We need eyes on it. Comments. Shares. We need a story the whole school sees—and believes—before Celeste locks the book.”
“Okay,” Avani said slowly. “We go public.”
Mehek looked skeptical. “People think you’re a glitch. A rumor. How do you convince them you’re real when they can’t remember you long enough to listen?”
Zayden smiled. “We make her unforgettable.”
By lunchtime, Phase One was live.
A new Instagram account—@MostLikelyToResist—posted Avani’s real photo alongside a caption:
“This is Avani Kapoor. She was in Model UN, the robotics club, and got second place in the District Science Fair last year. You may not remember her. That’s not your fault. Someone has been rewriting our memories. Here’s the proof…”
It was followed by screenshots of edit logs, yearbook drafts, and a video clip of Mr. Byrne confirming his theory about memory anchors and Celeste M. They added testimonials from the few students who still remembered her.
The page gained 200 followers in an hour.
Then 400.
Then 900.
By the time sixth period began, it had 2,000.
And then came the flood.
DMs. Comments. “Wait, I think I knew her?” “She used to sit near me in Chemistry, right?” “Holy crap, is this real?”
Avani watched her name ripple through timelines like a stone thrown into still water. For the first time in days, she felt something bloom inside her—a small, flickering light:
She was being remembered.
And then, the pushback came.
A post appeared from the official Lakemount Yearbook account:
“Don’t believe rumors. The 2025 edition is final. All edits approved. There is no ‘Avani Kapoor’ on our official class list.”
The comments turned divisive.
“Gaslighting at its peak.”
“I saw her photo in an old post, she’s REAL.”
“This is exactly what they want us to forget.”
Zayden paced the library floor. “Celeste is panicking. She’s losing grip.”
But then Mehek gasped. “Guys. The website I made—it’s gone. Deleted. The hosting account says it never existed.”
Avani’s phone vibrated violently.
An airdrop request from an unknown device again.
This time, no words.
Just an image.
A distorted version of her face—mouth stitched shut with black thread. The caption read:
“Most Likely to Be Silenced.”
She dropped the phone.
Zayden caught it. “She’s trying to rewrite your ending again.”
Avani stared at the screen. “Then we rewrite louder.”
That night, they planned Phase Two.
At graduation rehearsal tomorrow, the school’s digital projection system would test its AV setup. They would hack into the stream—use the main screen, microphone, and speaker to blast Avani’s story to the entire senior class.
One message. One shot.
If it worked, it would sear her memory into hundreds of minds in one moment.
If it failed…
She might disappear before the ceremony.
At midnight, Avani looked in the mirror.
Her reflection was faint again.
Her voice cracked as she whispered her name: “Avani Kapoor.”
Just in case she needed to hear it one last time.
Because tomorrow wasn’t just about proving she existed.
It was about making sure Celeste never erased anyone else again.
Part 7: The Rehearsal Rebellion
Tuesday morning broke with a nervous energy vibrating through every corridor of Lakemount High. Graduation was just two days away, and students roamed the gymnasium in caps and gowns, buzzing with rehearsed cheer. Teachers shouted instructions. The AV team prepped cables and screens. The principal practiced her speech on a clipboard with a coffee in hand.
None of them knew what was coming.
Avani stood backstage, hidden behind the black curtain near the projector console, wearing her student council badge to blend in. It was fake—printed by Mehek the night before, laminated and clipped over her real one. Zayden stood by the AV terminal, one AirPod in, whispering status updates from his hacked phone.
Mehek was in the crowd, seated with the seniors, a GoPro in her lap and the flash drive hidden inside her gown.
“We have exactly nine minutes once the mic test starts,” Zayden muttered. “Then we project. Full blast. No buffering.”
“And if Celeste cuts the feed?” Avani asked.
“She can’t stop what’s already been seen,” Mehek replied through the earpiece. “Once it’s up, it’s up. This is our shot.”
Avani watched the crowd from the crack in the curtain. Familiar faces—Kayla, Zion, Priya—some of whom had remembered her just last night. Some of whom had already begun to forget. Their faces blurred like watercolors in the distance. If she waited too long, they’d be gone forever. She’d be gone forever.
The stage lights dimmed slightly. Mr. Crane, the AV head, gave a thumbs-up from the control booth.
“It’s now or never,” Zayden whispered.
Avani nodded and stepped up to the mic stand as if she belonged there.
“Excuse me?” the principal called from stage left. “Who are you—?”
The lights exploded on.
The mic crackled.
The projector screen behind her flickered—and then glowed.
Her face filled the screen. Not the yearbook version, not distorted. Just her, smiling in a class photo from 10th grade, arms around Mehek and Zayden, laughing mid-blink.
Gasps echoed across the gym.
Students turned. Phones went up. Someone whispered, “Wait… I remember her.”
Then the video played.
A quick montage: her in class, at the Model UN podium, at robotics club, celebrating at the science fair. Voiceovers of teachers who’d helped her. Friends who had known her. Zayden narrating the final lines:
“Her name is Avani Kapoor. She was erased. But she existed. We remember her. And we won’t forget again.”
Silence.
Then applause.
Not slow or unsure—loud. Erupting. Mehek jumped to her feet, clapping hard. Then Priya. Then more. Dozens. A wave.
Avani stood at the mic, chest heaving. Her hands were trembling, but her face was still there on the screen. Solid. Clear. For once—unchanged.
Until the lights flickered again.
The screen cut to black.
A single sentence appeared in red text:
“YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT.”
The gym fell quiet again.
The lights snapped off for three full seconds.
When they came back, Avani was still standing there.
Still seen.
Still real.
And then a scream rose from the crowd. A girl from the AV team had collapsed near the projection box, clutching her head, muttering something over and over again.
Zayden raced over, crouched beside her. “What’s she saying?”
The girl’s eyes were wide with terror. “Celeste… Celeste… she’s in the book. She’s in the book.”
Avani ran to them. “What do you mean ‘in the book’?”
The girl shuddered. “I saw her. In the footage. Just for a second. Black veil. In the corner of the science fair clip. Watching you. She’s real.”
Mehek’s voice came over the earpiece. “Guys. Emergency.”
“What now?” Zayden snapped.
Mehek’s breath was shaky. “I just got a message on the admin dashboard of the digital yearbook archive. One line.”
Avani held her breath.
“You rewrote my story. So now I’ll write yours.”
She looked down at her phone. Her name was trending across student social accounts.
And then… every mention began vanishing.
One by one. Rapid deletion.
Like someone was clicking “erase” from inside the system itself.
“She’s not done,” Zayden whispered.
“No,” Avani said, staring straight into the now-blank screen on stage.
“She’s coming to graduation.”
And this time, she wasn’t hiding in captions.
Part 8: The Ink That Binds
Wednesday was silent chaos.
The halls of Lakemount High buzzed with talk of the “Yearbook Girl”—some called it a stunt, others said it was real. But one thing was certain: Avani Kapoor had become unforgettable.
And Celeste hated that.
Avani stood by her locker—now strangely visible, where yesterday it was painted over—and watched a classmate shyly wave at her. Another one called, “Hey! Saw your speech, that was… intense!”
She smiled faintly, but inside, a storm raged. With every post deleted, every memory still on the brink, she knew the final battle wasn’t over.
Back in the library, the team regrouped.
Zayden set down his tablet. “She’s rewriting in real-time. The more we spread Avani’s memory, the more aggressive she gets.”
“She’s not just deleting mentions,” Mehek added. “She’s replacing them—with static. Dead links. Glitched captions. It’s like she’s flooding the system with noise to drown your name.”
Avani paced. “Then we stop using the system. We go analog.”
Mehek blinked. “What?”
“We print. Paper. Flyers. Posters. Graffiti, if we have to. She can’t delete what’s not online.”
Zayden grinned. “Guerrilla memory warfare. I’m in.”
They spent the afternoon photocopying old school projects, club rosters, screenshots of deleted emails, even handwritten notes from teachers. Mehek used her sister’s label maker to print hundreds of stickers: AVANI KAPOOR EXISTS. ASK ME HOW.
By nightfall, their flyers were on hallway walls, taped inside bathroom stalls, slid under classroom doors.
At 3:00 a.m., Avani crept into the auditorium alone.
On the main stage, she left a handwritten note taped to the podium:
“Celeste, I know you can read this.
I know you were erased once, and now you want to erase others to make room.
But memory isn’t a zero-sum game.
You can’t steal stories and call it balance.
I see you.
I won’t forget you.
And that’s what breaks you, isn’t it?
Not being invisible.
Being remembered as the villain.”
She left the lights on. Let her words stand.
The next morning, chaos awaited.
All the flyers? Torn down.
Stickers? Peeled off.
The stage note? Burned. Charred edges remained, taped defiantly in place.
But something new happened too.
Students gathered near the school entrance, holding their own printouts of the note. Word had spread. They’d photographed it before it was destroyed.
Some whispered her name like a secret. Others said it aloud.
“Avani Kapoor.”
Every voice chipped away at the silence Celeste had built.
In the library, Mehek refreshed the offline archive.
“Your page is back. Caption changed.”
Avani’s eyes scanned the screen.
“Most Likely to Start a Revolution.”
She let out a breath.
Then the fire alarm rang.
No smoke. No drills scheduled.
Just a high, shrieking warning.
Over the intercom, an automated voice cut through:
“Unauthorized presence detected in Main Office.”
Zayden looked up. “She’s here.”
Avani’s pulse quickened. “Not in the book anymore.”
“No,” Mehek said.
“She’s in the building.”
Part 9: Her Name in Red Ink
The hallways of Lakemount High were deserted as the fire alarm echoed through every corridor, shrill and relentless. Avani, Zayden, and Mehek stood frozen outside the library, the echo of the intercom still ringing in their ears:
“Unauthorized presence detected in Main Office.”
“Is it really her?” Mehek whispered.
“She’s never left the yearbook before,” Zayden said grimly. “She’s always been a caption, a whisper. This—this is different.”
Avani didn’t respond. She was already walking.
“Where are you going?” Zayden called.
“To the office,” she said. “If Celeste wants to rewrite my story, I want to meet the author.”
“Are you insane?” Mehek hissed, running to catch up. “What if she’s… not human?”
Avani glanced back. “She isn’t. That’s the point.”
They moved quickly through the smoky silence of the fire-drilled school, the overhead lights flickering as they went. The building felt wrong—warped. Locker doors hung open without hinges, hallway clocks spun backwards, and fragments of printed paper fluttered through the air like ash. Reality, it seemed, was unraveling around her.
Outside the main office door, they found it ajar.
A trail of red ink led inside, pooling beneath the reception desk and dripping like blood from the file cabinets. It smelled faintly of wax and rot.
“She’s editing the school,” Mehek said, trembling. “Not just people—everything.”
Inside, the room was dark but for one sickly fluorescent light.
A figure stood by the admin computer, back turned.
Draped in black. Head slightly tilted.
Long black veil cascading down her back.
Her fingers hovered above the keyboard—hovered, not touched, because they weren’t quite solid. They shimmered like static, flickering in and out of reality.
“Celeste,” Avani said.
The figure didn’t move.
“I know your name,” Avani said, voice steady. “Celeste Miriam. Editor-in-Chief, 1986. You vanished after your yearbook caption said: Most Likely to Be Forgotten.”
The figure turned slowly.
Where a face should have been, there was a shifting blur—eyes too far apart, lips stitched shut in red thread. But beneath it, somehow, Avani knew there was pain. Not rage. Not madness.
Just loss.
“You rewrote yourself,” she whispered. “And then you stayed… inside the memory anchors.”
Celeste moved closer. The red ink on the ground pulsed under her veil, like veins.
Zayden stepped between them. “You’ve taken enough. Let her go.”
Celeste raised a hand.
Zayden froze mid-step.
Avani shouted, “Stop!”
Celeste tilted her head.
“I know why you’re doing this. You think if people are forgotten, they won’t hurt. That if you erase them, they can’t be broken anymore.”
Behind her, Mehek pulled the flash drive from her pocket and tossed it to Avani.
“Then take me,” Avani said. “But leave the others. Rewrite me. Give me your caption if you want. But stop deleting everyone else.”
Celeste paused.
The room went quiet.
The red ink began to recede.
Avani stepped forward.
“You were real once. You wanted to matter. I do too. So let’s remember each other.”
Slowly, the stitches on Celeste’s mouth began to unravel. One by one, the threads fell—red, soaked in years of silence. Her lips parted, and in a broken whisper, one word emerged:
“Together.”
She reached out—and touched Avani’s hand.
A blinding white light filled the room.
Then—
Silence.
When Avani opened her eyes, she was in the auditorium.
Sunlight poured through the windows.
Graduation morning.
The stage was set. The chairs were full.
And she was standing by the mic, in a cap and gown.
Zayden and Mehek sat in the front row, grinning.
Her heart pounded.
She looked down at the yearbook on the podium.
Flipped to her page.
There she was.
Photo clear.
Caption bold:
“Most Likely to Remember What Matters.”
And in the bottom corner of the page—almost hidden, in red ink:
“Celeste Miriam, Editor-in-Chief. 1986–2025.”
Not erased.
Not forgotten.
Just… remembered.
Part 10: Most Likely to Live
A week after graduation, Lakemount High stood quiet in the early summer heat, its doors locked for the break, its halls empty but for the faint echoes of what had almost been lost.
Avani Kapoor sat cross-legged on the floor of the old art room—Room B—where it had all begun. The fan above her creaked rhythmically. She held the 2025 yearbook in her lap, its cover now worn at the edges. But her page? Untouched. Permanent. Her name was there, solid ink, printed truth. Her picture, smiling. Her story, intact.
Across from her, Zayden was painting again. A mural this time—on the back wall of the room. It wasn’t officially allowed, but no one had the heart to stop him. Not after what they’d all been through.
The mural showed students standing on a mountaintop, their silhouettes lit by a rising sun. At the center: a figure in a black veil, lifting it from her face. Not sinister. Not haunting. Just… finally seen.
“I still feel her sometimes,” Avani said quietly.
Zayden nodded. “Yeah. Me too. Not in a bad way, though. Just… like she’s watching. Waiting.”
“She’s part of the book now,” Avani said. “A real part. Her name’s printed. Her story’s told. That’s what she wanted, all along.”
Mehek walked in, carrying three cold drinks and a printed article.
“Guess who made the cover of the local paper?” she said, grinning.
Avani raised an eyebrow. “Us?”
“Nope. The headline: ‘Students Rewrite Memory to Save Classmate – Lakemount’s Wildest Yearbook Yet’.”
She dropped the article on the floor. A photo of Avani, blurry but fierce, at the mic. Below it, a caption someone else had written this time:
“Avani Kapoor: Most Likely to Live Loudly.”
They all laughed.
But underneath the laughter was relief. Gratitude. A strange kind of peace.
No one at school remembered exactly how everything had unfolded. Some said there was a virus in the yearbook system. Others believed it was a prank gone wrong. Only a few whispered about the girl in the veil—how she’d once been a student who’d disappeared, how she’d waited for someone to remember her.
But Avani, Zayden, and Mehek knew the truth.
Some stories aren’t erased.
They just wait for someone brave enough to read them again.
That night, as Avani packed up the last of her notebooks, she found one she didn’t recognize.
Black leather cover. No label.
Inside, only one page had writing.
Her handwriting.
Except she hadn’t written it.
“Most Likely to Begin Again.”
And beneath it, in red ink:
— Celeste
Avani smiled.
“I see you,” she whispered.
And she meant it.
The book glowed faintly in the dark. But it didn’t try to erase her.
It was done rewriting.
And so was she.
END
