I’m a math teacher in a small-town high school. Among my students, there was one unusual boy named Tommy. He was quiet, never spoke, and didn’t mingle with other students. Yet, he always scored perfect in all tests.
One day, out of curiosity, I tried to engage Tommy in a chat. But he quickly walked away without saying a word. He had a certain coldness about him, which was quite off-putting.
I decided to get in touch with his parents. However, the school records had no contact information for them. I found it strange but shrugged it off as a clerical error.
Cryptic aura around Tommy piqued my curiosity. I tried asking around town about him. Everyone’s answer was surprisingly the same: no one knew him or his family.
One day, at a local diner, Old Martha, an aging, longtime resident known for her sharp memory, overheard me talking about Tommy. She beckoned me over, a worried expression on her face.
She claimed that there was a Tommy fitting my description who used to live in town, but he had died in a car crash fifteen years ago. My blood ran cold, everything around me began to spin. Was it possible that my student was a ghost?
I returned to school the next day with a lump of fear in my throat. I kept my distance from Tommy, who appeared normal as ever, acing his math test. Somehow, this normalcy sent shivers down my spine.
I started digging through the old school records, which were in a chaotic state. After days of searching, I found what I was looking for: a yearbook from fifteen years ago. There was Tommy, looking identical. The caption under his picture read, “In loving memory of Tommy, who left us too soon.”
I was scared but decided to confront Tommy. After the class, I asked him to stay back. He didn’t move or speak. He was just there, standing, looking at me with blank eyes. I asked if he had died fifteen years ago. Tommy smiled a sad, chilling smile and said, “Yes, but I had never been good at math. I wanted to learn it properly.”
Frightened and speechless, I saw him walk out of the room, disappearing into the crowd of students in the hallway. He never came to my class after that day.
I told my story to a few colleagues. Some thought I was joking, others believed I was hallucinating. But Old Martha believed me. We decided to hold a small memorial for Tommy by the tree in the school grounds. It was our way of telling him, it was okay to move on.
Since then, I’ve never encountered anything supernatural. But Tommy’s incident etched a lasting impression on me. In silent nights, when I’m all alone, grading papers, I can still feel a cold breeze and see a faint reflection of a boy smiling at me from the empty desks. The experience was a grim reminder; not all our students carry the weight of their backpacks, some of them carry the weight of their souls, caught between worlds, unready for the adventure ahead.