There were moments when silence felt heavier than noise—when it pressed into your skin like ice, leaving goosebumps even in the heat of summer. That was how it felt the first time I saw him.
(Random name i haven’t decided)
He was the kind of boy you never expected to speak. The kind who sat in the back row, hoodie up even in June, eyes cast downward like the world was too loud for him. People didn’t talk to him. They glanced, sometimes stared, then looked away just as fast—like if you met his eyes too long, something inside you might break.
I remember thinking he looked like a bruise.
Not fresh and purple, but fading, sickly yellow and green—something that had once been pain and was now just a ghost of it. Something that never really left.
He transferred halfway through junior year. No one knew where from. No one asked. And he didn’t offer.
I had a seat two rows up and one to the left. Close enough to feel the chill he seemed to drag around with him like a shadow. Every time I looked over, he was still. Too still. Like he was waiting for something.
Maybe I was, too.
—
It started with a sound. Not a word. Not even a whisper. Just a sound—a scratch of his pen across the paper. It was the only thing he ever seemed to do: write. Long, endless scrawls of ink in a battered black notebook, the pages dog-eared and worn. I caught glimpses sometimes. Scribbled lines. Symbols. Names. Once, I thought I saw mine.
But when I asked, he didn’t answer. He just looked at me like I’d peeled away a layer of him he hadn’t meant to show.
And then he looked away.
—
People said he was trouble. That he’d been expelled from his last school. That he had a record. That he didn’t talk because he was dangerous.
But I didn’t believe that.
Because sometimes, when I wasn’t looking directly at him, I could feel his eyes on me. And they didn’t feel dangerous.
They felt sad.
—
The week before it happened, everything felt off.
The sky hung low and gray. The halls were too quiet. A girl I barely knew started crying in the middle of algebra and couldn’t say why.
And (Name)… he looked different.
Tighter. More wound-up. Like the strings holding him together were starting to snap.
I wanted to say something. I don’t know what. Just something.
But I didn’t.
And then it was too late.
—
It happened on a Thursday.
Ten minutes into third period.
Ten minutes before I would’ve seen him again.
Ten minutes before our world cracked open and swallowed us whole.
I don’t remember the screams. I don’t remember the blood. I only remember the sound of the gunshots—sharp and final—and the way the light seemed to flicker like a dying bulb.
And (name)… God, (name)…
He died saving someone else.
He died before I could ask him why my name was in his notebook.
—
I didn’t sleep after that. Not for days. Not really.
And when I finally did, he was there.
Standing at the foot of my bed, soaked in moonlight and silence.
Watching me with those storm-gray eyes.
Like he’d never left.
Like he couldn’t.
And that was when it began.
The haunting.
The unraveling.
The slow, terrible fall into love with a ghost I barely knew—
But somehow I had always felt.
Author’s Note:
This story was inspired by Ana Neu’s Book “Ghostcide” I liked the use of ghosts so my upcoming story is similar to it but with my own twist.
Jadaja Jones | 13 | Bloomfield, CT | @ccelebsvx on TikTok
