The summer night burned brighter than noon.
Laughter cracked through the air like static. The graduating class of the prestigious Brightway High School hosted their final summer night party as it throbbed with energy, pulsing lights, glittered bodies, and music that seemed one wrong beat from ripping the sky open. Girls draped in shimmer, boys shotgunning drinks like war gods.
It wasn’t just a party.
It was the last night any of us could pretend we were only high schoolers.
Tomorrow, the real world would come knocking. Jobs, debt, decisions, rent. But tonight? We danced like we could keep it away with volume and vodka.
I hovered near the pool, drink in hand, half-dazed. Everyone else looked like they were glowing. I just felt... unplugged.
That’s when she found me.
She didn’t walk up or flirt her way in. She just appeared, like a missing thought suddenly returning. Barefoot, calm, eyes like thunder held back. She handed me a melting popsicle without a word.
“Stole it from the cooler,” she said. “Swear loyalty and I’ll share it.”
I raised a brow. “Loyalty?”
“To the night. To vanishing before it does.”
I took the popsicle.
That was the yes.
The small one that echoed like a scream hours later.
We wandered away from the music, slipping through the side hallway toward the gym. It was cooler there, darker, like we’d stepped between pages of something forgotten.
She told me her name was Simeone Vale. I didn’t recognize her, but she spoke like someone who’d been here forever. She pointed out people as we passed:
“That one’s about to cry. That one’s about to cheat. That one? He won’t make it to morning.”
“Okay, who are you really?” I asked, nervous laugh already breaking.
She didn’t smile. “Someone who lived this night once, and didn’t leave in time.”
My throat tightened. “You’re messing with me.”
“Maybe.”
She looked at me then, really looked.
“You can stay. Finish your drink. Let it happen.” I paused in awe, the thoughts going through my head were:
"This girl's tryna kill me for sure."
I continued.
“Let what happen?”
She exhaled like she’d hoped I wouldn’t ask. “This party ends in panic. Sirens. Screams. Someone goes under. Someone flatlines. You get caught in it.”
A pause.
“Unless you leave, now. With me.”
Her hand extended, bare, cold, real. The courtyard pulsed behind us like a heartbeat speeding up.
Everything inside me warred.
But I said it anyway, in my heart,
“Yes.”
We slipped through the broken side gate and out into the night. That’s when it happened.
The courtyard behind us exploded in noise.
A scream. Glass shattering. Music glitching and blasting louder. Someone crying out for help. A splash.
I turned just in time to see bodies rushing toward the pool. A fistfight erupted near the drink table. Someone shoved someone else into the shallow end. People were running. Phones were filming, and before you know it, a thunderous crack split the air as part of the old gym wall gave out and crashed down, sending smoke, screams, and panic surging through the crowd.
And then silence, before the sirens started howling from far off.
Simeone didn’t look back. She gripped my wrist tighter and dragged me through the field, her braid whipping behind her like a comet’s tail. Her eyes were steel. Determined. Terrified.
By the time we reached the edge of the bleachers, the party behind us sounded like a riot drowning.
I turned to her, shaking.
“Why me?”
“Because you listened,” she whispered. “Because someone didn’t, when I was the one drowning.”
She leaned in and kissed my cheek, then slipped into the darkness behind the trees and was gone.
By morning, the group chat had bled out.
Hannah Riverle nearly drowned.
Mila had a breakdown.
twelve students were taken to the ER.
four was carried away, zipped.
Police. Firetrucks and ambulance.
The forensic division showed up by dawn.
The courtyard turned graveyard by dawn with shattered bottles, abandoned shoes, and questions no one dared answer; some bodies were never truly identified, and some truths stayed buried... till now.
The party that started like a dream ended as a graveyard of innocence.
A last light extinguished.
And just like that, our last night of pretending was over.
No more being high schoolers. No more hiding behind lockers and hormones.
No one remembered Simeone Vale.
No one… but me.
Later that week, I wandered through the school, not sure if I was looking for answers or just holding on to the last pieces of what we used to be. I asked the old night guard, Mr. Venn, if he knew her.
He squinted at me, voice dry and low.
“You saw her?”
I nodded.
“She died here. Five years ago. Same night."
And I thought: "And maybe same mistake.”
Sometimes I wonder how many lives she tries to save.
And how many never say yes.
But the more disturbing thought, the one that won’t let me sleep, is:
Why did she choose me?
What happens to me now?
And... was my yes really just a disguised no?
I should’ve let it end there.
But I didn’t.
That weekend, I broke into the old gym where wall was still collapsed, the scene half-boarded with yellow tape that fluttered like warning flags. I stood in the ruins, staring at the scorched floor and the forsaken school tiles and twisted lighting cables above. A shoe still lay in the corner, soaked and forgotten.
I imagined her here, five years ago.
Simeone, alone. Screaming, drowning,
And no one listening.
The air was colder than it should’ve been.
And for a second, I heard it again, music, faint and warped, drifting like it never really stopped. The pop song we’d danced to before the world broke.
I spun around but saw no one, just me.
Just me… and a memory that wouldn’t stay buried.
It haunted me as I packed for college. As I folded shirts into boxes and boxed memories into silence. My acceptance letter sat taped above my desk, but the future felt like a strange country I no longer had a passport for.
My parents talked like everything was fine. “Fresh start,” they said. “You’re lucky to be getting out.”
But something about leaving Brightway felt… unfinished.
The night before I left, I passed by the school again. Just to see it. Just to feel it.
The courtyard was still as empty, as it should, silent. A janitor swept cigarette butts into a pan like he was clearing away ghosts.
I walked the perimeter, hands in my pockets, pretending I wasn’t waiting for her.
For Simeone or even a sign.
There was nothing, until I reached the front gate.
Taped to the metal bars was a popsicle stick, just one. Split down the middle,
No note nor explanation.
But I knew.
I stared at it for a long time, longer than I should have.
Then I peeled it off and slipped it into my pocket.
On my first night in the dorms of college, the lights flickered when I walked in.
Nothing dramatic, but just a flicker.
But I froze anyway.
I’d said yes.
And maybe that wasn’t the end of it.
Maybe Simeone hadn’t saved me. Maybe she’d chosen me for something else entirely.
I slept with the popsicle stick under my pillow. And I Still do.
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