I had always felt like there was something wrong with the neighbourhood I’d moved into. Ever since I was about six years old, I have lived there my entire life. How I felt about it never changed, and I don’t know why. There were always birds chirping, children laughing, Mr. and Mrs. Addison next door always had a big smile and pink cheeks on their faces. I thought I was insane, especially as Adam, my younger brother, was enthusiastic to go. Was I just the doubtful older sister? If someone wasn’t as skeptical as I, they would’ve thought it was a lovely and peaceful town, even though it was relatively small. But my skepticism didn’t allow such thought to pass.
I thought I was just not used to this new hometown, even though I’d lived in it longer than most people. I hoped that this lack of knowledge had given birth to my nagging doubt. Desperate to discover more about the place, I started to investigate my school gym, eventually hoping to find our pool. Yet, I heard a rumour that it didn’t exist and was merely a myth. I was confused to hear that since my mum, previously employed at the school, knew about the pool’s existence too. When Mr. David first told me about this mystery, the way he murmured the fact made it very obvious to me that it was ‘classified info’, or something of the like. Even weirder was that the existence of the pool was unknown to newer staff too.
Later that year, I joined the environmental club, where we would need to collect pieces of garbage across the school. The eventual goal was to construct a large statue of the school made from all the pieces of discarded materials we found. My group and I were headed to the gym room, when I somehow got separated from them. I figured they had gone past me, but when I made it to the room, no one was there. After waiting around for a bit, I decided to find out what was going on with the pool that supposedly never existed.
I was searching for any kind of clue for a while, when I noticed the brick wall on one end of the room was a slightly different shade of white. It was pristine compared to the rest of the old, musty wall, almost as if it was built later than the rest of the wall, almost as if it was covering something up. I quickly grabbed the largest object I could find that would still make a dent in the wall, a heavy dumbbell, and after a few violent throws, the brick wall went down relatively easily.
When descending into the deeper part of the gym, I couldn’t help but notice all the old furniture around. It was all clearly untouched for a few years, and, by the looks of the posters promoting the vintage yearbooks along the stairwell, it was likely abandoned for decades now. But why? Although it was unrealistic to crack the code in 30 minutes, I was determined to discover at least a part of the mystery.
When looking at some old supplies left here by the students, it was clear that whatever led to the abandonment that took place here was caused by year 8s, obvious by the stacks of books branding the words YEAR GROUP 8. I had a gut instinct that it perhaps involved some kind of war. I was trying to make mental notes of things that might help me find out what happened when I briefly saw the name ‘Nancy Groves’ on a backpack that was covered in cobwebs and moss.
Just as I was going to open it up to find more clues, I heard a voice beckon from behind me. “What brought you down here?” Mr. David’s voice echoed, cutting through the glacial air, like an excavator to stone.
