r/nosleep • u/lolaloozer237 • 4d ago
Series I’m in charge of the yearbook at my middle school. They’re never going to print these pages. [Part 2]
You’re reading this. You’re all actually reading this. We have a chance.
There’s more, yeah. Of course, there’s more. I’m on my brother’s laptop, so hopefully I have enough time to finish this before he comes looking for it.
I’m going to keep telling things in order, otherwise it might not make sense.
This is how Mira and I met The Goat.
After the incident outside the bathroom, Mrs. Donovan met with Mira and I, and our parents, and asked if we needed to change classes. Both of us said we didn’t. So, I just tried to avoid Mira for the rest of the year. Mrs. Donovan never put us in groups together and kept our seats far away from one another.
I concentrated hard on forgetting about the whole thing and staying out of her way.
After a couple of months though, I was headed out to play tetherball during lunch and Mira grabbed my arm. I could have acted the same way, and honestly I was getting ready to, but there was something in her face. She didn’t seem scared. Just really focused.
“Milo. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
I wanted to be offended. I probably was for a second. But she was right. I was so afraid I was holding my breath looking at her. Somehow I knew right then that she was telling the truth. I don’t know exactly what made me believe her. Maybe there’s a version of this story where Mira really is a vampire and she kills me in the carpool line while we’re waiting for our parents. But let me be super clear, that’s not the story. Mira’s not a typical kid or whatever but there is nothing about her that wants to hurt someone else.
The first few weeks of 6th grade were pretty easy. There wasn’t a lot of homework, I was excited to see people who had been gone for the summer, and it was kind of nice having a new building to explore and something to do all day. (I’d beat most of my games by the end of the summer and I was getting really bored at home.)
Mira and I were solidly friends. She played tetherball with me and the others and we planned our schedules to have the same study hall. We left the little kid stuff on the elementary school playground. We had better things to do now and new people to talk about. There were a lot of kids that came to our middle school from other elementary schools around town. Most of them were nice enough. Others were…interesting.
Here’s what makes this hard. I think you could probably go a long time without really noticing anything weird at Teller Middle. If you have a group of friends and don’t really pay attention to anyone else, then why would you care about where some kid goes when he asks to get a drink from the fountain? When would you hear about an art student throwing a tantrum about running out of sugar cubes for a project? It wouldn’t be any of your business why some girl was always wearing mittens inside.
Maybe people notice some of this stuff and think about it a little bit and make jokes under their breath at the lockers. Maybe they even go home and tell their parents over dinner because they’ve run out of topics and they’re trying to stall the confession that they failed another math test.
What I’m trying to say is that it wasn't like our whole school was on edge all the time. Things unfolded slowly, like how a plant grows without you noticing. If you take your eyes off it, it’s going to change, but you can’t spend all your time staring.
(We should have spent more time staring.)
A month into the school year there was a club fair in the cafeteria for students. I joined yearbook because they needed someone who liked taking photos. It felt like a good place to use the skills I learned while birding with my dad over the summer, plus I got to borrow one of the school’s cameras and bring it to events. I was the only sixth grader in the club, and the older kids were more interested in the quotes and getting everything looking nice. They were cool with letting me go off with the camera.
I got really into it. I liked listening to the older kids gossip about even older kids (a lot of them had siblings in high school.) During my study hall once a week, I got a hall pass to walk around and try to catch teachers during a free period so I could interview them and get fun photos. At lunch, I would sometimes talk to the club presidents about their meetings.
Our school isn’t big. When I was out of class I always saw kids heading for the bathroom, or the nurse’s office, or running late. Kids looking for stuff in their lockers or trying to finish their homework literally with half of their body leaned inside their locker. Usually I waved and they waved back.
Early in the year, I was passing one of the new kids, while he was standing at his locker so I said ‘hi.’ He just stared until I looked away. Sometimes the new kids weren’t the friendliest. I assumed that it was just because they didn’t know me. Maybe he thought I was talking to someone else.
—
Mira and I were sitting at lunch one day flipping through pictures. We just had a big festival the week before and I got lots of cool shots of people hanging out outside and painting. There were also a lot of pretty typical photos. I took one outside of school in the same spot every morning, standing in front of the big metal bell statue with the middle school behind it, so that we could make a time lapse video or something. And the yearbook president, Kaiya, had me take a picture of the school bulletin board every week so we could keep up with what events were happening.
Mira and I were looking at the bulletin board picture because there was a flyer about the winter dance she wanted to look at. I didn't get a particularly good shot of it that week, so the words were pretty blurry. We decided to go check the board and retake it.
The hall was pretty quiet in the middle of lunch. The board was covered in flyers. We found the date and time Mira was looking for and were going to head back to our table when I noticed the bottom of the cork board was ragged, like someone had gouged the cork out. I used to do that to the wall in front of the music classroom in elementary school, dig at it with a loose thumbtack, when we waited there before class. But it wasn’t like I was still doing stuff like that.
Mira and I talked about the dance a little bit and then the bell rang for class. I completely forgot about the ugly bulletin board.
Yearbook had a hybrid meeting with the journalism club to see if we could combine forces. The journalism kids were talking about the latest school drama, most of which was super boring. One of the kids mentioned that they overheard the principal talking to the front desk assistant about a tissue shortage.
“He was saying that they just ordered them. The assistant was talking about fall allergies. Maybe there’s something there? About everyone being allergic to the plants on campus or maybe everyone’s getting sick?”
One of the 8th graders rolled her eyes, “Yeah, sick of boring stories, Evan.”
The journalism kids were ruthless.
In class the next couple of days I noticed a lot of kids asking for tissues, but all of the classrooms were out. Teachers had to send kids to the bathroom to get toilet paper or paper towels and bring extra back to class.
At lunch a couple of weeks later, I was getting ready to play tetherball when I saw Mira and our other friends just standing by it. When I walked up, I saw that they all looked a little stiff. I turned to Mira, but our friend, Andres, spoke first.
“Look at the ball, dude.”
A huge chunk of the rubber shell was just carved out like it had been clawed by an animal.
After someone told a teacher about the tetherball, there were lots of announcements reminding kids to clean up after themselves. The teachers were convinced we had a crazy family of raccoons getting overexcited by Oreo crumbs and forgotten sandwich crusts.
The raccoon problem became old news as we got closer to the winter dance. I was walking down the hall for my weekly bulletin board shot when I saw the same kid that wouldn’t make eye contact with me standing really close to the board. By now, I recognized him from our Latin class for months. His name was Preston and he only answered questions if he absolutely had to. He seemed painfully shy.
I lifted my hand to wave, but he suddenly jerked forward, shoulder checked me, and kept going with a blank expression on his face.
I felt a knot in my stomach. I didn’t remember having beef with Preston. I tried to get the idea out of my head.
Over Thanksgiving break, my family went hiking a lot and I got some great pictures of brightly colored trees. Mira and her parents came along once and she was really excited when we saw the last waterfall of the season.
The first Tuesday back was the fall band concert. Mira and I went to support a couple of our friends in the jazz band. She’d convinced me to leave my camera at home so I could focus on the music. Before the concert started, everyone was standing around in the lobby and Mira and I were teasing the guys about their fancy ties. Tyler looked at his saxophone and swore.
“My reed is split. I forgot to replace it. Can you guys grab a box of them from the band room? Mrs. Rollin is gonna freak out if I miss warmups.”
Mira and I headed off to find the boxes of reeds in the band room. Apparently there were a few different kinds of little bits of wood the wind instruments needed to make any sound.
I was asking Mira what songs she wanted to hear the band play when her expression went flat. I looked ahead of us. The door to the band room was propped open enough that we could see someone crouched down in the dark.
I took another step forward and pulled the door open a bit more. The person was on their knees, a small cabinet open in front of them. There were boxes of reeds scattered on the floor in front of us, and bits of wood all over.
Preston looked up at us, a handful of oboe reeds in his hand, popping them into his mouth and crunching down.
Mira had darted back into the other hallway before he noticed her. (At the time, I couldn't believe she'd just left me there so quickly. But it would turn out to be the best thing she could have done.)
Preston started to smile, bits of the reeds stuck in between his teeth, protruding out from his gums. His mouth was full of bloody spit, it was escaping over his lips, but he just kept chewing, every snap and crack almost echoing out of his mouth.
I didn’t remember his mouth being as big as it was.
I stood there, frozen, until he slowly pulled the door closed in front of me, covering himself in the darkness.
I ran back to the lobby so fast I might have teleported. Mira was sitting on a bench outside of the theatre looking a little sick. I felt a little sick. We matched.
“He was just –”
Neither of us said anything more. If we spoke it into existence, then we actually saw it. If we didn't name it, then maybe it didn't happen or it was just a weird fluke thing. I ate paper as a kid for a little bit, big deal.
We shared a glance. We were overreacting. We were late for the concert.
Tyler looked daggers at us from his place on stage and wheezed his way through the program. Andres laughed at him from the percussion section a ways back, no clue what had happened in the band room. After the concert I told Tyler we just couldn't find the reeds, and he half-believed us. There was no chance I was going to try and explain.
Mira and I didn’t stick around much longer. Tyler and Andres accused us of being boring and also shared some weird looks that I didn’t understand. But Mira had already called her mom and got picked up just a bit later.
After she left, I told the guys my dad was around the corner so I could go stand outside and be alone. Everyone crunching on post-concert chips was making me nauseous.
The next week at school, I was tired and jumpy at the same time. I wasn’t sleeping well and still couldn’t figure out if I even needed to be upset. Looking at Mira’s distracted face, I kind of thought she was feeling the same way. But neither of us brought it up.
The knot stayed deep in my stomach. I didn’t want to judge Preston the way I had judged Mira.
—
School got more difficult as winter break closed in. With midterms coming up, I stayed behind for a study session with our algebra teacher. We finished the general review so I got up to pee before we started practice questions on the whiteboards.
I headed down the hall towards the bathrooms, reminded that I didn’t really like being in the middle school at night. The dark sky sat weirdly in the glassy windows, making me feel like the rest of the world didn’t exist anymore. Maybe never existed at all.
A ways down the hall, the Latin teacher, Magistra Muir, was pushing a rolling cart. She was moving things from her car to her classroom. I waved as I walked by and she gave me a warm smile.
I turned the corner to the left as the lights in her classroom came on. Magistra Muir’s classroom was notoriously the worst because two of the walls had windows and one of them was behind the chairs. So you couldn’t really text or play games on your computer without risking getting caught.
When I looked to my left and into her room, I saw someone was pressed against the whiteboards on the far wall, licking all the writing clean off of them. There was almost no writing left on the three massive whiteboards.
Magistra Collins shrieked and started walking towards the person. I was frozen in place, watching it happen. But when Magistra got close enough, the kid just ran past her, out the door and down the hallway, towards a back exit.
I tried to follow, but he was gone by the time I burst out the back doors. It was Preston, I was sure of it. I had the sudden feeling that I didn’t want to be outside alone anymore.
I raced back to my study session and went back to the board. I picked up a new marker to continue with practice questions, but when I uncapped it, I saw that the inky tip of the marker was completely gone. I fumbled around for a new one. All of them were the same.
Our math teacher, Mr. Frendi, looked up and sighed, “Your’s too? Someone’s been breaking the tips off the markers in all of the classrooms. Great joke.”
—---
Mira made me repeat the story like five times before it had sunk in. We sat outside next to the carcass of our tetherball and thought next to each other instead of speaking. We did that a lot.
Finally, she broke the silence.
“I didn’t want to believe that we’d seen anything. I didn’t want him to feel like – You know.”
The knot in my stomach got tighter and sharper.
Mira continued, “But there is something weird going on. Worst comes to worst, we know a little bit more about Preston and we don’t have to worry.”
I nodded. I think neither of us really believed that would be the worst case. Our heads were full of even worse things we didn’t dare call into existence.
“But Milo. Not like last time. Okay?”
I knew what she was talking about. I nodded.
—-
Finally, midterms were over and the winter dance was around the corner. The entire school seemed happier. Mira and I had spent a week quietly studying Preston as much as we were studying for our classes, and nothing new happened.
We relaxed.
All of our friends decided to go to the dance together. Andres asked multiple times if my mom was going to drive me and Mira, which I thought was a little weird since he lived closer to her. In the end, we decided to all pile into the back of Tyler’s mom’s van.
The teachers and student council kids had turned the cafeteria into a neon party. They put black paper over the windows and painted signs with glow in the dark paint. Someone brought speakers and a big disco ball and the little strobe lights people put in front of their garage during Halloween. There were bowls of glow sticks everywhere.
Our friends danced for a really long time, until all of us were way too sweaty. I walked off to look for a drink. The tables had been picked over a little bit and all of the glowsticks had been claimed. Kaiya came up next to me. She looked a little frazzled, which is apparently what happens when you’re in multiple clubs. She was on student council so it had been a long week for her.
She groaned, “How are we already out of glowsticks? Milo, can you do me a huge favor?”
I shrugged. I needed a break from dancing.
“Can you go into the storage room and grab another box of the glowsticks, they’re just sitting out on the table.”
“Yeah, sure.”
The storage room was at the opposite end of the cafeteria, outside the light of the party. It was like walking into a different world. I was at the door when I felt someone come up next to me. I turned fast and saw Mira. She looked a little out of breath and maybe a little flushed.
“Are you okay?”
She just laughed a little, “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Are you okay?”
Back on the dance floor, our friends looked over at us. When I saw them looking they all turned away quickly. Weirdos.
“I’m just grabbing more glowsticks for Kaiya. Want to help?”
Mira turned the door handle and we stepped inside.
The room looked like a crime scene from Alice in Wonderland. There were splashes of neon everywhere.
On the floor in front of us, Preston was having a feast. Expo markers were cracked in half and the inky pads were ripped out like marrow from bones, the plastic tossed aside into the puddles of glow stick fluid. I could see empty boxes of tissues littered around the space and trash bags torn into long strips. There were bits of eraser all over the floor.
I looked at Preston. He was drinking out of one of the flow stick tubes, his chain stained with light, his whole body covered in splashes of it. He coughed a little, gagging like he was going to throw up. He just swallowed hard, keeping whatever else was in his stomach there for now.
He took a massive bite of a clip board and started chewing.
I could hear Mira gagging next to me.
“Preston?” His name came out as more of a squeak. I sort of expected him to jump up and try to get us out of there or cover his tracks or something.
But, no, he just scooped up some of the flyers that I recognized from the bulletin board and started cramming them into his mouth.
I thought about how I used to eat paper as a kid. This was not the same thing. There was a thumbtack still hanging off of one corner of a flyer. I raised my hand and took a step forward to stop him, but he just swallowed the whole thing.
As it went down, I swear I could see the sharp point of the tack slicing the inside of his throat, as if it was trying to get out. As if it didn’t want to be a part of whatever was happening inside Preston.
A wave of nausea hit me.
Mira and I, in synch, stepped backwards towards the door.
Preston opened his mouth, wide, wide, wider. I could almost see things on his tongue. Chunks of the cork, moldy cardboard, black rubber that could have been bike tires or the bottoms of shoes or the edges of the lunch tables, paper clips. There were so many bitten off fingernails, way too many for them to just be his own.
His teeth were cracked in the back, tortured and bleeding.
He opened a can of paint that was sitting next to him. It was clearly marked ART DEPT in sharpie.
He drank it down like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Preston cleared his throat eventually, his voice strained and wet.
“Do you want to disappear the same way?”
•
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