Note from the writer: This year’s yearbook is especially special for a good reason. It’s a [REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY] yearbook. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and this yearbook really does stand out among the others (and not just because this school year will never happen again).
As you may have seen on a few of the flyers around the school, if you do not buy the yearbook, you may be haunted by either a ghost who embodies multiple aspects of high school (and perhaps ones that you aren’t fond of, at that) or multiple ghosts who each embody one of the aforementioned aspects. I might add that these ghosts are very old and very hungry. They will eat all of your favorite snacks.
There may be people who say that the yearbook club is not serious about the ghosts (whose haunting practices, by the way, the club does not condone; they simply wish to warn you of the danger). So, we sent a delegate to travel through time to discover the fate of someone who did not buy a yearbook.
To purchase the 2023-2024 yearbook and avoid meeting the ghosts, click here. If you have any questions, contact [email protected].
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Phoebe Romero was walking down Grand Central backwards when she suddenly crashed. She heard papers falling just as she turned around.
“I am so sorry!” she said, helping the girl up. She started picking up the papers and stifled a scoff when she saw what was on them.
“Yearbook sales flyers?” Phoebe said skeptically.
“Yeah, this year’s yearbook is especially special,” the girl, who looked like a freshman, said. “Have you ordered one yet?”
“Nope,” Phoebe said. “I’m really good at procrastinating and really bad at remembering to buy things.”
“Well, make sure that you remember to buy it. Here, have a flyer,” the girl said, handing her a flyer with a mustached ghost on it. “If you lose it, you know where to find the link,” she added, gesturing to the giant collage of QR codes making up the word YEARBOOK. With a smile and a wave, the girl turned and continued on her way through Grand Central.
Phoebe smiled. She would have to remember to scan that QR code when she got home.
Let’s just say, dear readers, she did not remember.
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Phoebe sighed as she entered her apartment. She threw down her bag and threw herself on the bed. She was about to drag herself out of bed to write her report when she heard a creaking sound coming from the bathroom.
Cautiously, she stood up and tiptoed to the bathroom, opening the door with her toe and picking up the softball bat that was leaning against the wall. She looked around, but all she saw was that the medicine cabinet was open.
Scolding herself for being alarmed, she shut the cabinet and went to her desk, opening her laptop. As she began to type her report, she found that no matter which keys she pressed, all she could type was “To be, or not to be. That is the question”. No matter what she tried to type or how many times she closed and reopened the document, that was all she could type.
Frustrated, she slammed her hands on the keyboard, which only resulted in the famous Shakespeare quote generating itself all over her document. She switched tabs, deciding to analyze the statistics for the report instead, hoping that leaving the document alone for a while would fix it. However, when she tried to type her password to access the database, all she could type was Hamlet’s famous lines.
When she clicked “Reset your password”, the authenticator asked her to complete a proof on trigonometry. After failing to solve the problem, she clicked “Try another way”. However, this turned out to be another proof, this time about the circumference of circles, or something like that.
Phoebe groaned and slumped in her chair. She hadn’t read Shakespeare or done proofs since high school, and she certainly didn’t want to relearn proofs just to reset her password.
“I’ll just email the boss and tell him my computer isn’t working,” she mumbled to herself, opening her inbox.
As soon as her inbox loaded, about five separate messages appeared at the top from the College Board. What could they possibly want? She had graduated college seven years ago and was well into her career. She was not considering going back to school. She decided to see what the emails said, clicking open the first one.
The message read, “Hi Phoebe! Looks like we’re back to haunt you! Remember us?” No further explanation was added to the email. Just the greeting and the question. Taken aback, Phoebe deleted the message and read through the other four. All of them were extremely vague and read similarly to the first.
Without her doing anything, a new tab opened YouTube and played a video titled, “Creepy Laughing”. When she tried to exit the tab, her screen froze. Conveniently, the audio was still able to play. She continuously clicked the “X” and tried to restart her computer, but to no avail.
Fed up with the strange happenings of her computer, Phoebe slammed the lid and crashed back into bed. The report could wait a day, she supposed. After all, she wasn’t even going to work the next day on account of her dentist appointment. The boss would just have to understand that technology didn’t always work.
Considering he didn’t know how it worked in the first place, it wouldn’t be hard to convince him.
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“Hi!” the receptionist at the dentist’s office said as Phoebe walked up. “How can I help you today?”
“Hi, I’m here to see Dr. Preap?” Phoebe said uncertainly. This was a new dentist that she had never seen before, but Dr. Preap had quickly become renowned amongst the others in town as one of the best dentists in the area.
“Ah, yes, the 9 o’clock?” the receptionist asked to confirm. Phoebe nodded. “Head on in, you’re just in time.”
Phoebe thanked her and headed in, hoping Dr. Sarah Preap was as good as everyone had told her she was. She stared at a picture framed on the dentist’s wall of a group of high schoolers standing behind tables of books, one of them holding up a copy. She vaguely recognized the one holding up the book and squinted to see the title. Phoebe’s eyes widened. It was the cover of a 2024 yearbook, and it happened to be the one from her high school. Looking more closely at the picture, she recognized a few of the other faces in the picture.
Not long after her run-in with the girl from the yearbook club at Grand Central, Phoebe had learned that the 2024 yearbook really was special. It had been a [REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY]. However, by the time she went to buy it, they had sold out. Something from the yearbook promotions that year was nagging at her, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about the previous day’s strangeness had to do with why she was suddenly thinking about her senior year yearbook, she was sure.
Just as Phoebe was searching her memory, the door opened. “Hi!” the dentist said brightly. “I’m Dr. Preap. You’re…” Dr. Preap looked through her charts. “Phoebe Romero?”
“Yep, that’s me,” Phoebe said. Dr. Preap glanced at the picture that Phoebe had been looking at.
“That’s me when I was a freshman in high school,” Dr. Preap explained, pointing at the girl who was holding up the book. “That’s the yearbook club. That year’s yearbook took a lot of work, so I’ll probably never forget it. After all, it was a [REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY] book. I remember all the flyers and posters we put up that year, too.”
Finally, it clicked for Phoebe why the girl holding up the book looked so familiar. “I went to the same high school. I remember bumping into someone who was carrying a bunch of flyers, and they went ‘flying’ everywhere.”
Dr. Preap laughed. “That was probably me. Did you buy that year’s book?”
“No, I didn’t buy it,” Phoebe replied. “Not gonna lie, I kinda regret it now. I mean, who would’ve thought it would be as cool as a [REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY]?”
“Yeah,” Dr. Preap said. “You definitely missed out. I remember when we came up with the concept for the flyers that said, ‘Buy a yearbook, or you’ll be haunted by a ghost!’”
As Dr. Preap started preparing the tools and Phoebe sat down, the latter said, “Ghosts?”
“Yeah, remember those flyers that said Shakespeare’s ghost, a proof ghost, or the ghost of the College Board would haunt you? I laughed every time I saw those”
“Ghosts?” Phoebe muttered under her breath, feeling the blood drain from her face. “Please let it just be a computer bug.”
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Having looked up ways to get rid of ghosts, Phoebe took a deep breath before entering her apartment. Her eyes were closed and, slowly, she opened them. As soon as they were fully open, she froze.
The entire apartment had been turned inside out and a person was standing in the kitchen. The figure was draped in black, their head covered with a hood. The figure wasn’t exactly tall, but whoever it was must’ve been resourceful enough to break into Phoebe’s apartment, which was on the second floor.
“Wh-wh-wh-who are you?” Phoebe asked, voice trembling. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise and her heart beat faster.
Slowly, the figure turned around, face shrouded by the hood. The painstaking torpidity of the figure only gave Phoebe’s heart rate more time to accelerate. With the speed of a sloth, the figure lowered its hood to reveal that there was no head underneath.
Phoebe tried to scream, but an invisible force prevented her from opening her mouth. She heard a gravelly chuckling coming from the figure.
“You really should have bought that yearbook,” the rough, whispery voice said. “They tried to warn you about me.”
If only she had remembered to buy a 2023-2024 yearbook.
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If anyone named Phoebe Romero is reading this, don’t worry. You still have a chance.
Special thanks to Yearbook staffer Sarah Preap for agreeing to travel to the future and find out what happened to people who forgot to buy the Boro Yearbook this year. I would like to remind everyone one last time that the yearbook club does not condone ghostly activity. If you would like to file a complaint against being haunted, please contact the Haunting Hotline Department at [email protected]. Do not file your complaint with the yearbook club. We do not have the ability to communicate with apparitions.
And don’t forget to buy your yearbook!
