Who is in Class?

2

"Someone's dead" Aleks texted me. I was eating spaghetti at ten at night scrolling through some dumb as shit apps when it announced itself as a banner at the top of the screen. I quirked a brow at it and laughed. Someone needed to teach that guy how to text.

Then he sent me a link. I clicked it and blanched. The headline reading:

"Girl Found at Carmac Bay Cliffwalk Six Hours After Missing Persons Report Filed"

And it continued with a large photo of a very familiar girl. I scrolled through it.

"Shelby Westbrook, 17, and a senior at North Carmac Academy, body was identified and recovered by the local police after a jogger..."

Goddamn joggers.

"Holy shit" I texted back. "She wasn't in class Thursday"

"I know" he messaged back.

I looked over the article a bit more.

"I don't know man, it's weird af and some scary shit"

My phone then dinged rapidly:

"She went to our elementary school!"

"I had a crush on her!!!"

"I can't ducking believe this!!"

"Fucking*"

I read through them all with a lazy finger, laughing slightly at the inappropriately timed autocorrect fail. It was a little disconcerting but none of the details are being released.

I twirled a few pieces of spaghetti around my fork, mindless.

"SO..." I started, entering homeroom and taking my seat beside Kiersten, "did you hear?"

"Yeah," Kelly answered.

"Aleks?" I asked, probably needlessly.

"Yeah." Kelly eyed me, "Aleks told you too then?"

"Yeah, he should've just done a group text," I yawned, pulling out the textbook. "So, are we really starting in Unit 3 now?"

"Fuck, I guess," Kiersten opened his own textbook.

"Did you hear?" Jasmine's twin sister, Jaylyn suddenly approached us. The twins and I came from the same fifth grade class. We had been close friends when we were all targeted by Shelby and her mooks but it eventually petered out.

"I don't know," I said. "Be specific."

"You know how Cory's dad is a cop?" she began her spiel of gossip.

"Sure," I replied.

Cory had been in our elementary school as well. He transferred in on the first day of second grade and cried so hard he pissed himself. Poor kid. I was always nice to him but we were never close. Amicable though, if Friday and the pen incident was anything to go by.

"What about it?" Kelly inquired from beside me.

"He's absent, isn't he?" I asked after eyeing the empty desk.

"The late bell hasn't even rung yet," Rebecca, who apparently had been eavesdropping, piped up from her seat behind Jasmine.

Jasmine turned around then and frowned at us all, "Just leave it, Jaylyn."

Jaylyn rolled her eyes and cupped my shoulder, "Well, he is absent today. Good guess, Noah."

"Hardly a guess," I muttered.

"The point?" Kiersten tried to hurry it all along as the second hand whizzed around the clock. He even had begun to tap his foot.

"Cory's dad made him stay home apparently," Jaylyn whispered conspiringly.