I think I might be next.
This started at the end of last year before I graduated. I kept my head low all throughout high school and though I had some friends, no one would call me popular. That’s why I’ve always hated signing yearbooks. People can be so fake. Especially in the lead up to graduating, as if we all went through it together. Don’t pretend that you hope we will keep in touch, you never talked to me. So when we had a ‘signing party’ during third period we all swapped yearbooks and exchanged hollow words on cheap pages. I lost track of mine almost until the bell rang. I quickly leafed through the pages and saw bubbly writing from some of the girls and the doodles of dicks that inevitably end up in all year books. But more than anything was ‘have a great summer!’ or worse, H.A.G.S. Total waste of time.
Over the summer I worked at the theme park close to where I live. In the warehouse I unpack loads of stuffed prizes, knock off cartoon characters filled with shredded Styrofoam. My buddy Paul got me the job and graduated with me. He’s off to college soon. I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. But then he asks me if I heard that Jarred got killed. What? Apparently he was murdered. I don’t think I remember a Jarred. He describes him, tells me we were all in physics together. I don’t remember him. But I guess it was pretty gruesome.
I go home and pull out my yearbook. I flip through the pages. Finally I find the page Jarred is on. He’s got a fat black X through his face. It was a thick sharpie, you can tell whoever marked it pressed hard on the pages.
I start to look more closely at the pages. Jarred isn’t the only person with an X through his face. In fact, I find two more the further I go. And then I find my own picture. That same fat black X across my face. Below in the margin, in think handwriting, it simply says ‘HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!”
I wasn’t sure this had anything to do with the murder. But a few weeks later there was a freak accident, someone fell off a parking garage and died. It was a girl from our high school. I’m sick to my stomach because the X across her face was jagged and you can almost feel the hate when you touch it.
It’s now October and summer is over. The other person marked in my yearbook has gone missing. No one has heard from him. They think he may have just run away and since he’s eighteen no one gives a shit. But I’m afraid they’re going to find him soon. I’ve looked for clues, a pattern in the yearbook— something that ties us all together. If I go to the police I’m afraid they’ll think it’s me. All day I’ve had the feeling of someone watching me. I’m looking out my window as I’m typing this and I can’t tell, but it looks like someone is out there. Just standing there in the dark.
I don’t know why, but I opened the year book again just now. I see something I didn’t see before. I was too focused on the thick black lettering of HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!
Below it, in smaller writing, it simply reads, ‘see you next fall.’