Chapter 3
The counselor tried to comfort Connor, telling him it was just occupational stress and that he shouldn't blame himself.
But guilt wasn't the real issue.
The issue was that his students started avoiding him.
It wasn't intentional on their part.
It was just a very natural, instinctual distancing.
Whenever he walked into a room, the chatter immediately died down. When he called attendance, the kids took a second longer to respond.
When he tried to lecture about empathy, nobody looked up from their desks.
Then, one day, a student posted a single sentence on the school's anonymous confessions page.
[A girl in our class died. And when she was standing on that roof, our homeroom teacher was right there on the ground.]
There was no direct accusation in that post. But everyone knew exactly who it was about.
Connor took a medical leave that very same day. He never came back.
I stood on the landing of the main staircase, staring at the safety bulletin board.
Half of it had been torn down. The remaining half had a few words printed in bold letters.
[If you see something, say something.]
I let out a soft laugh.
Say something to who?
Weren't they the absolute best at seeing everything and doing absolutely nothing?
And now, it was their turn to be trapped on the edge.
*****
The nurse's office noticed it first.
Seven students came in within a single week. They only had one thing in common: they couldn't stand straight.
It wasn't fainting, low blood sugar, or anemia. Their stories were almost identical.
"I was at the top of the stairs, and suddenly it felt like the floor just disappeared," one said.
"The railing is right there, but I'm too scared to go near it," another claimed.
"I know I'm fine, I just can't stop backing away."
The nurse checked their blood pressure and heart rates. Everything was perfectly normal.
In the end, she could only diagnose it as a suspected acute stress response and send them home to rest.
But it didn't stop there.
By the third week, things spun out of control.
Kids were hugging the walls while walking down the second-floor hallway.
Someone in gym class refused to do box jumps because they thought they would fall into nothingness.
During study hall, a student randomly screamed that the building was swaying.
The teachers were losing patience.
"Why is everyone acting out lately?"
"Stop connecting everything to that incident."
"We know midterms are stressful, but you kids are just psyching yourselves out."
But the staff missed a crucial detail.
Every single kid having these episodes shared one common trait.
They were all down in the courtyard that day.
They might not have clapped. They might not have filmed it.
But they were there.
They all looked up at me. And they all heard that one shout. "If she actually jumps, I'll give her a standing ovation."
Whenever people brought up that day later, they played it off casually.
"I was just walking by."
"I only stood there for a second."
"It's not like I said anything."
Right. You didn't say a word. But you watched.
By the fourth week, the school posted a notice on the main board telling students to stop spreading rumors and to report any abnormal behavior immediately.
They didn't mention my name once. It was like I never existed.
But the harder they tried to bury it, the worse it got.
Posts started popping up on anonymous school forums.
[Has anyone noticed people complaining about the ground feeling hollow lately?]
[Me too. When I look down from the third floor, I get this crazy urge to step back.]
[I was in the courtyard that day. I thought I was in the clear, but now I have the exact same nightmare every night.]
The nightmares were all identical. Standing somewhere high up.
A freezing wind. A crowd of familiar faces staring from below.
Some were shouting. Some were laughing. Others were holding up their phones.
And they were standing right on the edge.
They didn't know whether to step forward or pull back.
Later that evening, I stood by the track and watched the lights flick on floor by floor across the main building.
They looked like glowing windows floating in the dark.
Students stood near the glass but were too terrified to touch it.
Others yanked their blinds shut to pretend everything was fine
I whispered into the night, "Take your time. You are all just starting to feel it. That crushing isolation I felt when I was standing up there."