I met Mira on the last day of 8th grade.
It was 2021, and everyone was dealing with the pandemic. The school I attended had just allowed us to come in person whenever we wanted and, as it was the last day, I thought it would be a great idea, as I would get to see my classmates and teachers face to face finally, something I had lacked the whole school year.
It was my first year at this new small charter school, and I didn’t know many people, but I thought it would be refreshing to see some new faces other than the same old ones of my family. I was also strongly tempted by the fact that my 1st-period teacher would be bringing cupcakes, and I’m always a sucker for some sweets.
Mira and I only shared our last-period class. I sat by myself and opened my computer to log into the class zoom call, as many people were still attending online when I heard a voice:
“Is this seat taken?”
It was Mira. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with long black hair that hung to her hips, naturally blushed lips, naturally tanned skin around my skin tone and large eyes that were the darkest shade of black. They were so black, I could barely see her pupils. Cupid’s arrow struck me for a moment until I realized I hadn’t replied to her yet.
“No, you can take it,” I replied, believing she may have needed the chair to join another group of joined desks.
To my surprise, she sat next to me and introduced herself. I had never seen her in the Zoom calls before, but I attributed that to not really paying attention to who all are there and her being rather quiet. She was indeed rather silent, never participating in class or talking to anyone other than me. Then, it made me feel special, that such a beautiful girl only spoke to me. The peculiarity only strikes me now.
Soon, the class was over and school ended, everyone walking haphazardly to the side exit to get on their bus. I stepped outside and only then did I realize I didn’t know my bus number. I asked many teachers frantically about which bus went to my address, but they obviously did not know. My hands were shaking, and I didn’t know what to do.
“Are you okay?”
Mira looked at me, her dark eyes showing concern. I would’ve normally dismissed her, but something about her made me immediately trust her. Maybe it was those eyes, those dark, black, cursed eyes.
I told her about my problem, and she asked where I lived. Turns out her stop was only a couple blocks away and she told me that I could get off at her stop and walk the rest of the way home. I don’t know what made me go along with it, maybe it was my underdeveloped middle-school brain or my lovestruck middle-school brain, but I went along with it. And the rest is history.
Mira and I shared many things, We shared the same birthday and were born at the same hospital. We both loved chocolate and did track. I was surprised when she mentioned that she too had lived in Bangalore and attended preschool and kindergarten there. I was even more surprised when we realized we had even gone to the same school there and attended the same elementary school back here, along with the same middle school I went to before this year.
“OMG, I literally cannot believe this is happening,” she had said, as we continued talking on the bus that first day. “It’s like we’re made for each other or something,”
I hate myself for not realizing how weird this all was. I’d only wondered if we had literally gone to the same school back then, how did I not remember her? My dismissal of this is among many things I regret not realizing.
For high school, I switched from the charter school to a local private school. I was surprised to see Mira sitting right next to me in my first block class. I don’t know why, maybe it was the loss of lovestruckness, or the many times mentally replaying that day finally getting to me, but seeing her slightly unsettled me. She had told me that she planned on attending high school at the charter school, so her appearance here was surprising. She smiled a bright white smile like from a Colgate commercial and I gave her a timid wave, but her eyes looked less … alive. They seemed empty and endless like if I looked into them for too long, I would get sucked in. I dismissed this as a figment of my imagination.
As the year continued on, I and Mira became closer and closer. We shared nearly every class with each other and when we saw that we didn’t have the same class for study hall, she transferred to mine. At first, I loved how she wanted to spend so much time with me, but eventually, I started getting sick of her. She only ever talked about one thing and one thing only. And that was me.
She constantly asked about my day and my family and my life. She seemed almost nosy and whenever I asked about her, she would reply with a bare minimum response and continue talking about me. It was as if she was obsessed with me.
She had come over to my house many times throughout the first semester, but soon, I asked if I could come over to her house. Her usual smile disappeared, and a neutral look appeared on her face. She stopped walking and stared off into space. I stepped in front of her and waved my hand over her face to break her trance. Her black eyes stared emptily, and I swear to God, the black seemed to be getting bigger.
“Mira?”
She broke out of her trance and looked back at me. She immediately plastered her usual smile on her face.
“Nah, you wouldn’t want to come over to my house.”
“Why not?”
“Erm, there isn’t a lot to do there,”
Sensing that she didn’t want to talk about it, I changed the topic. But, something in my mind, that had been here since I saw her the first day of freshman year was going off. I knew I needed to stop. That I needed to get rid of her. I didn’t know why, but I knew I needed to.
Slowly and slowly, I stopped texting her as often and speaking to her more occasionally. The second semester came and we shared fewer classes. I even started to discreetly ignore her in the hallways when she said hi, acting as if I didn’t see or hear her. But she wasn’t getting the hint. Soon, I began leaving her on read, unadding her from my socials, and flat-out ignoring her now. And it worked. She stopped talking to me and we moved seats. It was a relief that she was out of my personal life.
But she still was there, in the fringes. I would catch her glaring at me in class from her seat, her signature smile gone and her eyes now beady. She muttered whenever I walked past her, those eyes still boring into me. sometimes, I would see her walking across the hallways when I’m in a class she isn’t in, and she would stare into the room, into me, with the same lifeless black eyes. Those eyes seemed to follow me everywhere. On the bus, she would look over her seat to the back where I sat, me only seeing from the bridge of her nose up, and those eyes again glaring at me.
Soon the school year ended, and summer vacation started. I was glad that I was finally done with the first year of high school and especially done with Mira. No more of Mira and her obsession with me and her constant staring and especially no more of those beady black eyes.
One Saturday night, I was home alone. My parents and my sister had gone to a party till late and I stayed back since I was a little sick. I had downed some Tylenol and was watching TV when the Ring alarm system went off on my phone. I checked for the notification to say that something was detected in the driveway. I opened the camera on my phone to check what it was, thinking it was probably my parents finally pulling into the garage.
There, in the middle of the driveway, I saw a figure. I couldn’t see if it was a girl or a boy, but they had black baggy clothes on and seemed to be looking right at the camera. There was not a single light on nearby, as it was late and the neighbours had gone to sleep, and the figure was only lit by the moonlight. the moonlight outside was covered, presumably by a cloud, and the driveway was covered in darkness until the moonlight shone again and the figure was gone. I dismissed it as me eating too much Tylenol and focused back on the TV when the Ring alarm went off again. This time, the notification said something was on the front porch. I opened the camera and there I saw the figure again.
It was Mira.
Her hair was open and haphazard, her body stiff like she was tensed. Her breathing was visibly heavy and her eyes …
She looked directly into the camera with those haunting black eyes of hers, but this time, her whole eye was black. My conscience was telling me it was something with the camera, but my stiff and unmoving body showed I believed the opposite. I soon noticed her lips were moving and that she is saying something. Trembling, I turned on the microphone, but she was mumbling something, and I couldn’t quite get it, but soon, it started to become clearer and clearer, until she was articulating it in a crisp, deep, monstrous voice that was not like her gentle, soft voice.
“join me join me join me join me join me join me join me join me join me join me”
She soon lifted up her hand, showing a bloody butcher’s knife
I double-checked that the locks were on all the doors and grabbed a kitchen knife and called 911. I made sure she did not see me from the front window and hid in the pantry. 10 minutes later, the police showed up, but Mira was gone by then. My parents rushed back from the party and I was sobbing as I told them about Mira. They were confused about how Mira could do this since they also loved her, but they were glad I was safe. I showed them the video of Mira from the Ring camera, but the sound was not playing. Still, they were terrified when Mira pulled up the knife.
Mira had gone missing since that day. The police spent most of the week looking all over for her. They checked the address I gave them of her house, but the building was completely empty. No furniture, no pictures, not even a fridge or food. One room was locked from the inside, but when they broke it down, there was nothing inside. There was no sign of her at all or even her parents. She never mentioned her parents and I never talked too much about her family, since I had thought it was a sensitive topic for her, but it seemed like she never even existed outside of school. Her name was definitely on the school record, that’s for sure, or else how would she be attending my school?
Soon, summer ended, and the sophomore year began. the police stopped looking for her, and, I’ll admit, I pretty much forgot about that Mira stuff. I tried to put it behind me. She didn’t show up for the sophomore year at school, and I thought I was rid of her.
For one of my classes, I was asked to make a presentation about myself. I was supposed to find pictures of me from my childhood and show them to the class, as an extra-lengthy icebreaker, and it was worth a project grade, so I got really into it, as it was an easy A. I was looking through a couple of pictures of me from back in elementary school, of me with my family and on vacation and yearbooks of me all the way back to preschool. I soon found a class photo from preschool and kindergarten of everyone in my grade. I looked at the preschool one through the whole class, seeing if I recognized anyone when my eyes landed on a young boy. He had curly hair and his shirt was dishevelled. He had on his sports uniform and he smiled with his tiny teeth into the camera, but his eyes …
Black, beaky, empty, endless. like Mira. And even worse: he stood right next to me in the photo.
I tossed the picture aside and grabbed the kindergarten class photo and looked for myself. Right behind me was a cute dark-skinned girl with long straight hair in 2 plaits brought up into a loop tied with a ribbon. She smiled eagerly into the camera with the Colgate smile, but her eyes …
Black, beaky, empty, endless. like Mira. How do I not remember this?
I grabbed the yearbooks from elementary school and looked through the photos. Every photo, every single photo I was in, I saw Mira. It wasn’t her herself, but her eyes. One photo of me in class where the blonde boy who sat next to me had those eyes. another photo of me on the slide, but the girl behind me smiled and laughed at me with those eyes. Another, of me at the science fair, showing off my model of the inside of a cell, with a boy standing next to me, also smiling into the camera with those eyes. I looked at my middle school yearbook and the situation was the same. My 6th-grade lab partner, a girl with rainbow hair and those beady eyes. My 5th-grade teammate in basketball, a tall brunette with those same exact eyes. My goddamn 7th-grade history teacher, a kindly old man with those same eyes. How did I not realize this?
I failed that project.
Today was the first day of my second semester. I walked into my first block class, which was a completely new class, and sat in the very back corner. The class slowly filled up, and I kept my backpack on the seat next to me, making sure no one else sat there. As the trickle of students inside decreased, my tensions decreased too. Maybe she’s gone for good. Maybe she stopped trying. maybe she knew whatever she wanted to do, she didn’t stand a chance now that I knew her secret. I went on my phone, slightly convinced I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. soon, I saw through my peripheral vision, someone moving my backpack and sitting down next to me. I looked up from my phone, ready to protest.
It was a girl, placing the backpack between my chair and hers. Her hair was short, up to her earlobes, and ginger. She had on many silver chains and was wearing alt clothing. She looked up and gave me a sheepish smile. She had black braces and extremely graphic eyeliner. her face was rather pale, save for the abundant blush on her face, and her lips were pitch black. But all I saw were those eyes …
help me