You know that moment when you're staring out the window in the class and suddenly realize that you have no idea what the teacher's been saying for the last fifteen minutes?
Yeah, that was me. Mr. Hammond was yammering about…something. Functions? Limits? Honestly, I stopped paying attention after "x approaches y" or whatever.
It was almost like my pencil was controlling me the way I had it clamping on the table until it rolled out my grip after I lost myself for a minute there. Of course, Jonah laughed at me. Enough for everyone in the back row to hear. Didn't take much thought for me to cuss him under my breath though.
I finally stopped slouching on my chair and straightened up enough to catch Mara scribbling in her notebook like the world depended on it. I rolled my eyes. Some people actually enjoy this crap, I thought. I didn't. Not one bit.
I looked at the clock above the chalkboard. For a moment, I could swear it glitched backwards. It made me freeze. Weird, I thought, Maybe I'm imagining it. Yeah. Tired. Definitely tired.
But the weird feeling wouldn't go away. Something in the air seemed heavier, like the library itself held its breath. My pencil taps started getting faster, almost on its own. I shook my head. Calm down, Elias…normal Thursday stuff.
I took a look around the library expecting someone else to notice the change in atmosphere too. No one else did. Jonah was still smirking and Mara buried herself in her book.
I reached for a book on the bottom shelf but it wasn't there. Another weird incident, I thought. I saw the book right there when I came in.
I took a quick glance at the other shelves, then looked back and there it was, in the middle row, like it never left.
"Okay… what the hell?" I muttered
"I should lay off the cafeteria food for a while" assuming that was the cause of my particular brand of crazy right now. I stuffed my pencil into my bag, trying to control my heartbeat and get it back to a normal rhythm. Jonah leaned over, elbow nudging me with that smug grin plastered on his face.
"Dude, you're seriously staring at the clock like it's gonna start talking to you" he whispered, loud enough for me to hear, but still being quiet enough for Mr. Hammond not to notice.
"Not like you'd understand" I muttered, tugging my bag even closer.
He chuckled. "Try me. Chem tomorrow? Tryouts this weekend? Or are we back to your harmless prank phase"
I rolled my eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about dude"
"Right," he said. "Tell that to cafeteria"
That forced me to bite back a laugh
"You know", he said, tilting his head. "there's way more interesting stuff we could be doing right now"
"Yeah thanks but I'm good. I'm already on thin ice and under strict surveillance. Gotta keep a low profile for now" I responded clearly.
"Alright man. I'll leave you to your clock fantasies" he whispered again, adjusting to face his desk.
He wasn't wrong. Sitting here wasn't helping. And if I was going to spiral, I might as well do it somewhere with a ball at my feet.
Tugging closer to my desk, I whispered into Jonah's ear, offering a chance to go down to the field after this session. He didn't say a word. Instead, he gave me a real zesty wink along with an okay symbol. I can't even begin to describe how that made me feel.
The bell rang before I could overthink things. Chairs scraped, bags zipped, and the room broke apart into noise. I stood up slower than everyone else, letting the rush pass me by. My head still felt a little…off. Not like I was dizzy or sick. Just misaligned, like I'd stepped half a beat out of rhythm with everything else.
Jonah waited by the door for me, spinning a pen between his fingers. "Let's go", I nodded.
We cut through the hallway traffic and pushed to the field, the air outside was colder than I expected. The sky was clear, too clear, like was scrubbed clean. I told myself that was normal. Late afternoons did that sometimes. I just hadn't notice before.
The field was completely deserted. No coaches. No teams. Just open grass and a quiet that felt heavier that it should've.
"Maybe we're just early" Jonah said right before dropping his bag.
I came here to not think about stuff, so I really shouldn't be dwelling on the wrong in everything right now.
I bounced the ball once. It came back to my foot a little too fast. I frowned and tries again. Same thing. Not impossible. Just…wrong enough to notice.
"You feeling okay?" Jonah asked, squinting at me.
"Yeah" I responded without much thought. "Just tired"
I passed him the ball. He trapped it clean, kicked it back—and for a split second, I saw it twice. One arc, then another, slightly delayed, like an echo trying to catch up with itself. I blinked. Hard.
The ball landed at my feet.
Jonah was watching me now. "You sure?"
I forced a grin. "Relax. If the ball starts talking, then we panic."
He snorted and jogged off toward the goal. I stood there a moment longer, heart beating faster than it should've, staring at the empty field. The air hummed—not loud enough to hear, but just enough to feel.
Whatever was happening hadn't stayed in the classroom. And for the first time, I had the uncomfortable sense that it wasn't done with me yet.
I jogged after him, telling myself to drop it. Fields feel weird when they're empty. That was all. No crowd noise, no whistles—just space. Space messes with your head.
Jonah lined up a shot and missed wide. He clicked his tongue. "I swear that thing drifted."
"It didn't," I said too quickly.
He glanced back at me, eyebrow raised. "Didn't say it did."
We reset. I took the ball again, backed up a few steps, focused on his feet. Simple pass. Muscle memory. Don't think about it.
I kicked it hard. Halfway across the field, the ball jerked. Not a bounce. Not the wind. A hitch—like the motion itself had caught on something and skipped forward. For a fraction of a second, it blurred, doubled, possibly even glitched, then snapped back into place before hitting Jonah's foot.
We both stopped.
Jonah looked down at the ball. Then up at me. "Okay," he said slowly. "That one wasn't just me."
My throat felt tight. I nodded once.
We stood there, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did. The field stayed the same. The sky stayed too clean. The ball sat perfectly still between us.
Jonah laughed, short and forced. "That was weird."
"Yeah," I said.
Neither of us moved to kick it again.
That was the part that bothered me most—not what happened, but how quiet everything stayed afterward. Like whatever had slipped wasn't done moving yet. Just…waiting.
Jonah finally snapped out of it and nudged the ball with his foot.
"That was…not normal," he said, like saying it softer might make it less true.
A stiff shrug came out. "Wind, maybe".
"On a day like this?" Jonah jerked, looking at me like that was a crazy explanation for what just happened considering well, what just happened! Yeah, call me the crazy one for coming up with a logical explanation.
Neither of us laughed.
"I think that's enough practice for one day" he echoed from the far end.
"Yeah. Coach would kill us if we mess around before tryouts."
It was a weak excuse. We both knew it. But Jonah nodded anyway, like he was grateful for it.
"Yeah. Later."
He picked up his bad, slung it over his shoulder. I did the same, slower, eyes still on the ball between us expecting something bizarre to happen again. But it hadn't rolled. Not an ich.
I turned to walk away first.
I kept replaying the kick in my head on the walk home. Not what happened after though—just the second before it did, when everything still felt normal.
By the time I'd gotten to my room, I'd almost convinced myself we'd both just been tired.
I dumped my bag on the floor and sat on the edge of my bed, pulling my phone out of my pocket instinctively. No new notifications. That was fine. I didn't need Jonah bringing it back up.
I was about to set my phone when it buzzed.
"UNKNOWN NUMBER."
Annoying as it was, I still picked it up to check the message. Probably a spam anyway.
Don't go back to the field tomorrow.
I stared at the message, waiting for the rest to load. A second test. A follow-up. Maybe an 'lol' or even a question mark. Just something to make me understand that was some kind of prank.
Nothing came.
My first thought was Jonah. He'd pulled worse jokes before. I checked the number. Not saved. No picture. No preview history.
I typed Is this Jonah? Paused. Deleted it before hitting send. I looked at the timestamp, expecting it to say just now. It didn't.
Sent: Tomorrow, 3:14 PM
I blinked and checked the time at the top of my screen. 8:02 PM
That's when the message stopped being annoying and started seeming like something else.
I put the phone down and just sat there, face down on my bed like it hadn't done anything strange at all.
Leaning back, I stared at the ceiling, telling myself there were explanations. A time zone error. Or some dumb app bug I didn't understand. Still, I didn't pick the phone back up.
I tried do some homework. That didn't last long. Just read the same paragraph three times over and still couldn't tell you what it was about.
Eventually I gave up and set my alarm for the morning. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle around me right before into a world where paranormal stuff actually makes sense in.
School the next morning didn't feel different. That was the problem. Same hallways. Same noise. Same people moving like they always did. I kept waiting for something to be off—lights flickering, announcements cutting out, anything—but everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to. I didn't.
Jonah found me by my locker, already talking about the tryouts tomorrow like nothing had happened the day before. I nodded in the right places, laughed once when he expected it, but my timing was off. I could tell, and so could he.
"You're distracted," he said. "I am?" I asked, trying to pretend like it that wasn't the case.
"Yes," he reaffirmed. "Painfully".
Before I could come up with something clever, Mara's voice cut in. "Because he didn't sleep."
She was standing a locker behind, notebook tucked under her arm, watching me like she'd already reached a conclusion and was just waiting to see if I'd confirm her well thought out hypothesis.
"I slept," I said while tugging my books back into my locker.
"Sure," she replied. "That's why you're checking your pocket every thirty seconds."
I stopped myself too. My had was already in there.
Jonah frowned. "What's in there dude?" he asked. I yanked my hand back. "Nothing"
Mara stepped closer. Not invading my personal space, but close enough to lower her voice. "Did something happen yesterday?"
Jonah tensed up beside me.
I could've lied. A clean one. An easy one. Instead, what came out my mouth was way worse. A hint at the truth.
"Something weird," I said.
Mara's expression didn't change. But her attention sharpened.
"Okay see now you're making it sound—" Jonah tried pointing out. But she cut him off out of excitement. "Like the ball glitching mid-air?" she said.
Both of us turned to her at the same time like we'd practiced it before.
She tilted her head. "What?"
Before anything else could be revealed, the bell rang. Loud. Students started moving around us again. Mara stepped back, already blending into the crowd. "We'll talk later," she said as she disappeared into the sea teenagers.
Jonah stared at her. Then at me. "Dude," he said quietly "You haven't told me everything, have you?"
I swallowed. "I didn't think I had to."
He stared at me in suspicion then nodded, as if signaling to me that this wasn't over before also following the bell's instruction.
I took a minute to think about the whole thing. Trying to understand what was going on. Then I thought Mara would have the answers to my question and decided to hold off until we met later.
We never actually met.
First it was chemistry. Mara caught my eye from across the lab, lifted her notebook slight— "after class". I nodded.
Except Mr. Hammond kept us late. Some last-minute lecture about lab safety that no one was listening to. By the time the bell rang, the hallway outside was flooding. By the time I stepped out, Mara was gone.
I told myself that wad fine.
At lunch, Jonah slid into the seat across from me, dropping his tray harder than necessary. "So," he said, "are we just not gonna talk about yesterday?
"Talk about what?" I said in an effort to avoid the conversation until I could get some answers later.
He stared at me for a second, then scoffed. "Okay. Cool. Just checking." He stood up before I could stop him.
I spotted Mara again near the vending machines. She didn't say a word. Not even a gesture. She just looked at me, then at my pocket, like she mentally building a case file. Cool. So, she was psychic now.
The bell rang again before either us made a move.
After lunch break, it didn't matter that we hadn't talked. Johan was upset with me. Mara wanted to perform a psychological autopsy on me. Yet somehow, without a single conversation being concluded. They both knew the same thing. Something bizarre happened yesterday, and it wasn't over. And whatever it was, I was right in the middle of it.
I never saw Mara after lunch. Not in the halls. Not in the courtyard. Not even when the final bell rang and everyone spilled outside like gravity had suddenly doubled. I told it was alright. That it didn't mean much. I'd figure it out eventually. And as a bonus nothing crazy happened in school today. I stopped by my locker to grab my jacket before heading the main hall.
I was already halfway down the hall when I decided to go home. Bag tucked, head down, going through the normal exit. I mean that was the plan. Whatever happened yesterday didn't need more attention. I'd given it enough already.
The air outside felt heavy again. Not stormy. Not cold. Just…there. I crossed the courtyard, aiming for the gate. Then I saw the field behind the gym. I slowed down and eventually came to a standstill. Staring at the grassy plain. There was nothing happening. No movement. No sound. Just the grass stretched out the way it always was after hours.
It was instinctive the way my feet starting hurling me towards the pitch my eyes were gazed ib. One second I was walking toward the gate, the next I was cutting through the side path, like my body had skipped the part where it was supposed to ask my permission.
The gate was open. Of course it was. It always is.
Anxiety started creeping in the moment I stepped onto the field and immediately, I felt stupid for expecting something to happen. The place looked exactly the way it always does.
I began recalling the events that unfolded here yesterday. Not as images, but as that familiar irritating sense that I'd missed something important.
That's when I saw the ball. I stared at it longer than I needed to, trying to recall if we'd left it like that. I couldn't.
I lifted my gaze and scanned around for anything else. I found someone whose presence didn't surprise me in the slightest even though it should have.
Jonah stood a few yards away near the sideline with his hands shoved in his pockets, staring at the grass like he was waiting for it to do something. He finally lifted his gaze noticed me but he too didn't look surprised in the slightest.
"You too huh?" he said as we stood face to face. "Figured you'd show up eventually"
I stared a bit confused "How did you—"
"Because," he cut in, "you don't just walk from stuff like that." He nudged the ball with his foot, then pulled it back immediately. "And neither do I"
We stood there for a second, the space between us filled with things neither of us would want to say.
Jonah broke the silence, "You get anything…weird last night?" he asked casually like it was about homework.
I hesitated. That was the exact moment. I could feel it. I thought about the message from last night. The time that didn't make sense. The warning I hadn't followed.
"…Yeah," I said. "Something".
He exhaled, slowly "Okay. So It's not just me."
That was when it finally clicked—not all at once, not smoothly. It was a quiet realization that I'd run out of excuses. This wasn't bad timing or tired eyes or my brain reaching for patterns that weren't there. Too many things had lined up, one after another, each easy to dismiss on its own, impossible to ignore together.
Whatever started yesterday wasn't random. And standing there, watching the field hold its breath, I knew it wasn't over.