It was a story, at first. A story we'd think about, talk about, even dream about, but always just a story, safely inside a book. It was never meant to become our life.
One minute, the English teacher was standing there, lecturing about the terrible essays that the class had written. Then, suddenly, she wasn't there.
Gone.
Aaron blinked. That couldn't have just happened. He turned, and saw the shocked expressions on Elizabeth and Esther behind him. No. It couldn't be true...
On the other side of the room, Yasmin dropped her pen.
Mary squeezed Theo's hand suddenly under the desk.
Everywhere across the room, the surprise was spreading, rippling outwards. It was very quiet, very still.
"Did that… did she just poof?"Sophie managed to say.
Laura burst in from the next classroom. "Mr Evans just disappeared!" she yelled. "What the hell's going on?"
Aaron regained his breath, and started to speak. "It was the list … like we were talking about… I think it just started. We need to get out of here."
Someone at the back of the room yelled, "Wait, like that book you were going on about?"
Someone else caught on to what had happened. "You mean no more adults, for, like, a whole year?"
The first someone stood up, and ran out the room.
Everyone else stood up, and the chaos truly started.
Books had always been an important part of The Gang, and just then it was the Gone series that had captured their attention. They were all part-way through or finished reading the series and discussed almost nothing else. The latest idea had been to match up every character in the book to a person that they knew. It worked really well to start with, many of the characters matching up almost exactly, and it made for some very interesting discussions once they reached the later books. "Diana" took ages to choose a person to be "Caine", and would get annoyed if you ever talked about the two of them and those scenes on the island in Plague together, but mostly it worked; until we reached the end of the list. That's when it happened.
One minute, the list was incomplete and it was all a game. The next, both of those changed.