There would always a feeling of weirdness, and that came from something really ordinary.
A substitute teacher.
Sam noticed first, which was unfair because no one ever believes me when I say that.
She stood at the front of the room with a clipboard and a smile that tried very hard to be harmless. Mid-thirties. Brown jacket. Hair pulled back like she didn't want it remembered.
"Good morning," she said. "I'm Ms. Reed. I'll be covering attendance for the week."
Attendance.
That word hit wrong.
I leaned toward Alex. "Why does that sound like a threat?"
Alex didn't answer.
---
Ms. Reed called names.
Normal names. Normal voices answering back.
Then....
"Maya Verma."
Maya froze.
The room felt… tighter.
"Yes?" she said.
Ms. Reed looked up, met Maya's eyes, and smiled wider.
"There you are," she said. "I was hoping you hadn't moved."
I dropped my pen.
That wasn't how attendance worked.
---
At lunch, Maya barely touched her food.
"She's not from here," Maya said quietly.
Jordan frowned. "How do you know?"
"She's listening wrong," Maya replied. "Like she's pretending not to hear something."
Alex asked the question none of us wanted to. "Is she with them?"
Maya hesitated.
"No," she said slowly. "She's older than them."
We all stared.
Sam...me...laughed once, sharp and nervous. "I'm sorry, older than the government?"
Maya's voice dropped. "Older than the agreement."
---
That afternoon, the announcements came late.
The bell rang twice.
And when Ms. Reed passed Sam's desk, she whispered without looking at him.
"Three minutes isn't much time, is it?"
I stopped breathing.
---
They cornered her after school near the music rooms, where sound got swallowed and no one liked to linger.
Ms. Reed didn't pretend to be surprised.
"I was wondering when you'd connect the dots," she said, setting her clipboard down. "You're earlier than the last group."
Alex's heart slammed. "Last group?"
Ms. Reed studied him carefully. "You don't remember them?"
Silence.
She nodded. "Of course you don't."
Maya stepped forward. "What are you?"
Ms. Reed considered that.
"I'm what happens," she said, "when a town survives something it shouldn't."
Jordan's voice shook. "You helped build the containment."
"No," she corrected. "I helped choose 'who would forget'."
That landed like a bomb.
Sam swallowed. "We didn't forget."
Ms. Reed smiled at him...sad, proud, terrified.
"Exactly."
---
She walked to the window and looked out at Marrow.
"This town has broken before," she said. "Not loudly. Quietly.
People vanished.
Streets rearranged.
Names stopped being spoken because no one remembered why they mattered."
Alex clenched his fists. "So you erased them."
"I saved what I could," she said. "By teaching the rest not to look."
Maya's voice cracked. "And now?"
Ms. Reed turned back.
"Now the thing beneath Marrow has decided forgetting isn't enough."
Sam felt cold all over.
"What does it want?"
Ms. Reed picked up her clipboard.
"It wants continuity," she said. "A future that doesn't reset."
Alex frowned. "That doesn't sound evil."
"No," she agreed. "That's why this time is worse."
---
She moved toward the door, then paused.
"Oh," she added lightly. "One more thing."
They all leaned in.
"You weren't the first teenagers to notice," she said. "You're just the first ones it chose not to erase."
Maya's breath hitched.
"Why us?" Alex asked.
Ms. Reed looked directly at Maya.
"Because," she said softly, "one of you doesn't belong entirely to this version of Marrow."
And then she left.
The hallway lights flickered.
Somewhere deep underground, something shifted, not reacting, not hiding...
Recognizing.
And for the first time, the future of Marrow stopped being a loop.
It became a fork.