As the Greyhound bus neared the station, my high school class president, Ben, suddenly called. “Maya! Tonight’s the ten-year high school reunion. We’re at that Tex-Mex place right across from the old campus. Mr. Miller is already here too.” I smiled and agreed to come. After hanging up, the elderly man sitting next to me on the bus casually asked, “Hey kid, where’d you graduate from?” Without thinking, I answered, “Lincoln High. Class of 2016.” Suddenly, several older passengers in the surrounding seats snapped their heads around to stare at me. “Class of 2016? Lincoln High burned to the ground in a massive fire in 2016. Every single teacher died. That school has been boarded up for a decade.” I assumed they were just misremembering and couldn’t help but argue back: “That’s impossible. I was a senior in 2016. There was never any fire at our school.” The old man next to me suddenly stood up, his face pale. “That senior class only had two homerooms. The lead teacher was Mr. Miller. Is that right?” Mr. Miller was my homeroom teacher! Before I could even process what was happening, tears began streaming down the old man’s face. “He was my son. He burned to death ten years ago!” The moment those words left his mouth, my phone rang again. It was Ben. I could hear the loud, raucous laughter of a party in the background. “How far away are you? Mr. Miller was just asking about you again. You were always his favorite student!” 1 “Alright, hurry up! See you soon!” Before I could ask him to clarify anything, Ben cheerfully hung up the phone. Listening to the dead dial tone, I felt a bizarre mix of confusion and amusement. I tried to call him back, but the automated voice kicked in: “The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.” Probably just spotty cell service in this rural county, I thought, slipping my phone back into my pocket. The old man next to me was still glaring at me with an intense, scrutinizing gaze. His wife gently patted his back to calm him down. “Miss… you… you must be remembering wrong. After all, it’s been so many years…” The other older passengers in the bus chimed in, echoing her sentiment. “Yeah, everyone in a fifty-mile radius knows about the Lincoln High fire.” “It was a complete tragedy. All those poor kids and teachers…” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice as calm and steady as possible. “Sir, I promise you, I’m not misremembering. David Miller, Mr. Miller, was my homeroom teacher. During my senior year, he had just gotten married, and his wife even came to our classroom to hand out wedding favors.” “The call I just took was from my high school class president. He literally just told me that Mr. Miller is at our reunion right now, waiting for me to get there.” Hearing this, the man claiming to be Mr. Miller’s father completely lost control. He lunged forward, his gnarled finger pointing inches from my face. “You little brat! Are you still talking?! Are you still running your mouth?!” “What reunion?! What Mr. Miller waiting for you?! My son is dead!” He was shaking violently, his voice cracking into a devastated, guttural roar. “Thanksgiving week, 2016! The school caught fire! My boy… he was trapped inside!” “It was me! I was the one who had to go to the morgue and identify his charred body!” The old man’s legs gave out. He collapsed back into his seat, sobbing uncontrollably. The atmosphere in the bus instantly plunged to absolute zero. “Young lady, you are completely out of line!” “Seriously! Joking about something like this? Do you have no conscience?” “Ripping open a grieving father’s wounds and pouring salt on them! You’re sick!” In an instant, the glaring, judgmental stares of everyone on the bus pierced into me like daggers. I was completely defenseless against the mob. I felt an intense, suffocating mix of panic and frustration. I am telling the absolute truth. How is this being twisted into a malicious joke?! I stood up, stepped into the aisle, and looked down at the old man with absolute, desperate sincerity. “Sir, please, try to calm down. I understand why you’re upset, but please believe me. I am not lying, and I would never, ever joke about your son’s life.” “If you don’t believe me, come with me.” I looked him dead in the eye, extending a genuine invitation. “My class president said the reunion is at the Tex-Mex place right across from the school. If we leave now, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.” “Come with me. Once you see Mr. Miller with your own eyes, once you see him standing there alive and breathing, you’ll know I’m not playing a sick joke on you.” 2 “You’re still trying to scam me!” Mr. Miller’s father suddenly erupted, raising his hand to slap me across the face. A younger guy in the row behind us quickly reached out and grabbed his arm. “Whoa, pops, take it easy. Use your words, no need to get physical.” The old man’s wrist was pinned, but he was still trembling with rage, spitting curses at me under his breath. Right at that moment, the Greyhound bus slowly pulled into the rural county transit center. The second the pneumatic doors hissed open, I bolted off the bus like I was running for my life. The group of older passengers got off right behind me. I braced myself, fully expecting them to keep harassing me. But then, something incredibly bizarre happened. The moment their feet hit the pavement, the burning rage and intense emotion completely vanished from their faces. Even Mr. Miller’s father just casually glanced at me over his shoulder, his tone completely flat and unremarkable. “It’s getting late, miss. You should head home.” With that, they all dispersed, seamlessly blending into the bustling crowd outside the station. I stood frozen on the sidewalk, my brain completely short-circuiting. What the hell just happened? Why did their entire demeanor do a complete 180 the second they stepped off the bus? I doubted myself for a fraction of a second, but quickly rationalized it. They’re probably just old and suffering from dementia. They probably realized they had the wrong guy and were too embarrassed to apologize. Satisfied with that logic, I flagged down a passing taxi. “Driver, Lincoln High, please.” “You got it!” The driver answered cheerfully, throwing the car into drive. I sat in the back seat and casually asked: “Hey, let me ask you something. Did Lincoln High… ever have a massive fire about ten years ago?” The driver looked at me through the rearview mirror and chuckled. “A fire? Nah! You’re crazy, kid. Lincoln High is perfectly fine. It’s been the top-ranked public school in the county for years. Never had a fire.” Hearing those words, the massive knot of anxiety in my chest completely dissolved. I knew it! Those old people on the bus were just completely delusional! The taxi soon pulled up in front of “El Camino Grill,” right across the street from the high school. I pushed the doors open. The private back room was packed with people, loud and chaotic. “Maya! You finally made it! You’re late, you owe us a round of shots!” Ben, the class president, spotted me immediately and started hyping up the room. I walked over laughing, my eyes scanning the crowd. I quickly spotted a deeply familiar silhouette. Mr. Miller was wearing a crisp button-down shirt and his signature wire-rimmed glasses. He was laughing and chatting with a group of my old classmates. He looked a little heavier than he did in high school, but he looked fantastic. Seeing me, he waved me over. “Maya’s here! Come sit down!” In that single moment, all the lingering anxiety and frustration from the bus ride completely evaporated. During dinner, I told the table about the bizarre encounter on the bus as if it were a hilarious comedy sketch. “…and this old guy claimed he was Mr. Miller’s dad, and he swore up and down that Mr. Miller burned to death in a fire ten years ago!” The entire table burst into roaring laughter. “Maya, have you been watching too many sci-fi movies? Your imagination is wild.” “It was definitely a scammer! They were probably trying to extort money from you!” Mr. Miller chuckled, pushing his glasses up his nose. “My dad telling people I’m dead? That is a very dark joke.” The dinner was a massive, drunken success. All the strange clouds of doubt from the bus ride vanished into the laughter and the margaritas. After we paid the bill, someone suggested we walk across the street and visit the old campus. Mr. Miller smiled and led us through the front gates of Lincoln High. The campus at night was peaceful and nostalgic. We walked through the quad, passed the basketball courts where we used to sweat through gym class, and finally stopped right outside the door of Room 204—our old senior homeroom. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. As the night wound down, Ben suggested we make a new group chat to stay in touch. I specifically walked over to Mr. Miller. “Mr. Miller, let me get your number. Next time I’m back in town visiting my parents, I’ll take you out to lunch.” “Sure thing.” Mr. Miller smiled warmly, pulling out his phone. We exchanged numbers, and I saved his contact info. The reunion ended perfectly. We all hugged goodbye, and I went home completely satisfied. I spent the entire long weekend at my parents’ house, soaking up the rare, peaceful downtime. Three days later, I hauled a massive duffel bag stuffed with my mom’s homemade jerky, baked goods, and local snacks back to the bus station for the ride back to the city. The bus slowly pulled out of the terminal. I put my headphones on, ready to sleep through the ride. But when I looked up, the smile completely froze on my face. Sitting in the row directly in front of me were several deeply familiar silhouettes. It was the exact same group of elderly people from three days ago—the ones who swore the school had burned down. And right now, they were all slowly turning their heads in unison, locking their eyes onto me with a chilling, venomous glare. 3 I was too exhausted to deal with their psychotic delusions again, so I just ignored them and stared out the window. The bus cruised smoothly down the highway. Suddenly, the old man who claimed to be Mr. Miller’s father stood up and slowly walked down the aisle toward me. He stopped right next to my seat, looking down at me with an intense, interrogating stare. “I wanted to ask you this the other day. What family do you belong to? I’ve lived in this county my entire life, and I have never seen your face before.” I frowned, deeply annoyed, but gave him my name anyway. “My last name is Quinn. Maya Quinn.” The moment those words left my mouth, an old woman sitting across the aisle shot up from her seat, pointing a shaking finger directly at my nose. “You malicious, evil little girl!” “You could have chosen to impersonate literally anyone else in the world, and you chose the Quinn family’s daughter?!” I stared at her, completely bewildered. “Impersonate who? I am Maya Quinn!” The old woman was trembling with absolute rage. “Liar! I live right next door to the Quinn family! They only had one child, a daughter named Maya, and she burned to death in that fire ten years ago!” “First you claim David Miller isn’t dead, and now you’re trying to impersonate a dead girl! What the hell is wrong with you?!” I was officially pushed past my breaking point. These people were absolutely, clinically insane! I violently stood up and yanked my phone out of my pocket. “I am so done arguing with you crazy people!” “I literally saw Mr. Miller three days ago at our high school reunion! He is alive and perfectly fine! I literally saved his phone number!” I opened my contacts and pulled up David Miller’s name. “I am calling him right now! I’m going to put it on speaker so you can hear his voice and realize how psychotic you sound!” I hit the call button and activated the speakerphone. Everyone on the bus held their breath. The phone rang. Beep… Beep… The call connected. I shot a triumphant, vindicated glare at the old people surrounding me. But the very next second, a sudden, jarring cell phone ringtone began blaring from right in front of me. The ringing was coming from the pocket of the old man claiming to be Mr. Miller’s father. He shakily reached into his pocket and pulled out an ancient, outdated flip phone. The screen was glowing brightly, displaying: [Incoming Call: Unknown Number] And the number displayed on his screen… was my exact cell phone number. How is this physically possible?! This was the exact number Mr. Miller had personally given me three days ago! I typed it into my phone myself! Why the hell was it ringing this crazy old man’s flip phone?! The second his phone rang, the bus erupted into absolute chaos. “Scammer! She’s a professional scammer! How else would she have David’s old phone number?!” “Impersonating dead kids to extort grieving parents! Scammers these days are pure, unadulterated evil!” “Driver! Lock the doors and drive this bus directly to the police precinct! We are handing her over to the cops!” The group of elderly passengers aggressively swarmed me, physically blocking me into my seat. My brain was a chaotic, swirling mess of static. I was completely incapable of processing what was happening. I literally just saw Mr. Miller. Why did his phone number dial his ‘father’?! I looked at the number on my screen, and then at the ringing flip phone in the old man’s trembling hand. A horrifying, profoundly absurd thought crept into my mind. Could it be… were the last three days… fake? Was the reunion a hallucination? Was the Mr. Miller I saw not real? I violently shook my head, desperately trying to physically throw the insane thoughts out of my brain. “I’m not a scammer! You have to listen to me!” But no one was listening. Yielding to the screaming demands of the passengers, the bus driver actually engaged his turn signal, took the next exit, and headed straight for the county police precinct. 4 Inside the interrogation room at the precinct, I sat at a metal table, feeling like a convicted felon. The elderly passengers were all talking over each other, aggressively accusing me of horrific crimes. “Officer, it’s her! She’s a professional con artist!” “She started out claiming my dead son was alive, and now she’s pretending to be a dead girl! She has to be part of an organized extortion ring!” Listening to their accusations, I felt an exhausting, paralyzing sense of helplessness. A young police officer frowned, listening to their frantic stories before finally turning to me. “Name. Date of Birth. Social Security Number.” I recited my information mechanically. The officer typed my details into his computer. After a few seconds, he looked up at me, his expression twisting into something deeply bizarre. “Your permanent address is in this county? Is your father’s name Richard Quinn?” “Yes! Officer, call my dad right now! He can verify my identity!” The officer nodded slowly. He pulled up the registered phone number for Richard Quinn and dialed it from his desk phone. The phone rang a few times and was picked up. “Hello? Is this Richard Quinn? This is the county police department…” The voice coming through the speakerphone was deeply, undeniably familiar. It was my dad! I eagerly leaned forward, shouting toward the phone on the desk: “Dad! It’s me! It’s Maya!” The line went dead silent for several agonizing seconds. Then, my dad’s voice came through the speaker, laced with profound confusion. “Officer… is this some kind of prank?” “My daughter… my daughter Maya died ten years ago in the fire at Lincoln High.” My brain instantly flatlined. White noise. Dad… what is he talking about? Why is he saying I’m dead? “No! That’s impossible!” I shook my head violently, practically lunging across the table toward the phone. “Dad! Listen to my voice! It’s me, Maya! I’m not dead! I was literally just at the house with you for Thanksgiving! You packed my bag this morning!” A heavy, suffocating sigh echoed through the speaker. “Miss, I don’t know who you are, or what kind of sick game you’re playing. But please, I am begging you. Leave my family alone.” Click. He hung up. The police officer’s face turned incredibly severe. He furiously typed a few commands into his keyboard. Ten minutes later, he grabbed his monitor and turned the screen around to face me. “Ms. Quinn. Look at this.” Displayed on the screen was an archived news article from ten years ago. The headline was a gut punch: [MASSIVE BLAZE AT LINCOLN HIGH. THANKSGIVING CELEBRATION TURNS TRAGIC. NO SURVIVORS REPORTED.] Below the article was a long, meticulously formatted list of the casualties. Amidst the dense block of text, I clearly saw the names… David Miller. Maya Quinn. 5 My blood turned to ice. The officer let out a heavy sigh and clicked on an incoming video call on his computer. “We just contacted the patrol units assigned to that district. We asked them to drive by the school and show us a live feed.” The video call connected. The camera feed was shaky and unstable. What appeared on the screen wasn’t the pristine, beautiful, academic campus I remembered from three days ago. It was a desolate, apocalyptic wasteland of charred ruins. Crumbling brick walls. Scorched foundations. The entire perimeter was sealed off by heavy chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire. A rusted metal sign hung on the gate: [DANGER: CONDEMNED PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING.] I stared at the screen, tears violently flooding my eyes. How is this happening? A few days ago, I was literally walking across that quad with my classmates. We took a group photo in front of Room 204. For the past three days, I had been sleeping in my childhood bed. My parents cooked me dinner, did my laundry, and literally packed my duffel bag full of snacks this morning. Why? Why did the school suddenly turn into a burned-out husk? Why was everyone dead? And why the hell was I considered a dead person? Who am I right now? Just as my sanity was about to completely fracture, just as I felt the entire reality of the universe collapsing around me… my eyes darted to the massive duffel bag sitting on the floor next to me. The bag stuffed with homemade food my parents had given me this morning. In a single, blinding flash of clarity, the panic evaporated. I violently threw my head up and grabbed the young police officer’s arm across the desk. “Officer! You have to take me back to my hometown! Right now!” “If you drive me back there, I can prove to you exactly what is happening!” My voice was shaking with pure, unadulterated adrenaline. The older, veteran detective standing in the corner frowned, waving me off with profound annoyance. “Kid, stop wasting our time. The evidence is conclusive. You’re facing serious fraud charges…” “Let her go.” The young officer suddenly spoke up, completely cutting his superior off. He looked down at me. On his young, slightly inexperienced face, I saw an incredibly complex, unreadable expression. “Start the car,” he said to another patrolman. “We’re driving to Lincoln.” He looked at me through the rearview mirror as I was placed in the back seat. His voice was incredibly low. “You better be able to prove whatever insane theory you’re holding onto.” I nodded heavily, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. I didn’t know if my theory was right. But the duffel bag of food sitting next to me had just transformed from a snack into absolute, undeniable physical evidence. My brain was running at a million miles an hour, desperately trying to assemble the shattered, impossible puzzle pieces. Two entirely different versions of “Me.” One alive, one dead. Two entirely different versions of Lincoln High. One filled with students, one reduced to ash. Two entirely different versions of my father. One who packed my bags this morning, and one who confirmed my death to a police officer. They were like two parallel timelines that were never supposed to intersect. But because of my physical existence, they had somehow, grotesquely bled into each other. Under my frantic directions, the police cruiser pulled up directly in front of the main gates of Lincoln High. Towering oak trees. Pristine red-brick academic buildings. Students running across the manicured lawns playing frisbee. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. Peaceful, vibrant, and alive. It was as if the catastrophic fire that supposedly burned this place to the ground was nothing more than a nightmare from a parallel dimension. I shoved the door open and stepped out, taking a deep breath of the crisp, familiar air. “Look. This is my school.” I turned around and looked at the police officers sitting in the cruiser. They were completely, utterly paralyzed by shock.
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