R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

I Finally Got A Date To The Prom

By: u/DarkenedPages

"Sorry, Wade. I've already got a date." Annabeth gave me an awkward smile and turned to quickly flee the empty hall, leaving me alone and forlorn at my locker. She was the fifth girl who turned me down for prom. I grabbed my books and headed off to my next class, bracing myself for the inevitable chastising I would receive for showing up late again.

When school finally ended, I returned home and went straight to my room. I logged into Facebook and started my daily ritual of browsing the profiles of my classmates, envying the digital evidence of the lives they got to live. My own profile was sparse, as I had no friends and no social life. The avatars and NPCs in the games I played were my only companions, but they weren't my friends. Not like the relationships my classmates displayed on Facebook.

I searched through their pictures for hours, imagining what it would be like if I was there with them at the beach or the park or a house party. I saw myself laughing and goofing around with them, holding up a red Solo cup triumphantly or standing with my arms around the others at the edge of a lake. This consumed me for hours, but eventually I found a picture that made me cease my fantasies as I became curious about what I saw.

There was a picture on Annie Williams' page that showed her and her friends sitting at their usual table in the cafeteria during lunch, but there was a girl with them that I didn't recognize. She was beautiful - dark brown hair, a cute little nose, and soft, pale skin. But there was something in her light blue eyes that was incongruent with the smile plastered on her face. They looked sad. More than sad, really. I could see a crippling sense of hopelessness in her eyes. I recognized it as the same look I've often seen when I look in the mirror.

I moved the mouse cursor over her face and clicked on it, hoping Annie had tagged her in the picture so I could find out who she was. I racked my brain trying to recall if I'd seen her in the hallways or in one of my classes, but as far as I could remember, I'd never seen her before in my life. To my surprise, a name did pop up over the mystery girl: Gretchen Harlow. That was definitely not a name I'd ever heard. I clicked it and Facebook took me to her profile.

As soon as Gretchen's page popped up on the screen, the website crashed, giving me a 404 error. Annoyed, I hit refresh, and the page returned. At the top was Gretchen's profile picture, a shot of her sitting on a porch with her head turned to the side, as though she was looking at something. I scrolled down and checked her info. It said she attended my high school, but I couldn't believe I would have somehow overlooked someone like her. Searching further, I thought maybe she was a new transfer, but the only place she posted as having lived was our town.

Going to Gretchen's pictures, I was astonished to see just how many she had. It looked like she had an extremely active social life, as many of her photos showed her with numerous different groups of friends, even ones I knew didn't mix outside of school. It was like she somehow floated between the social cliques, neatly slotting into their circles and moving seamlessly from one to another. This made it seem even stranger that I didn't know who she was. Surely someone who was such a social butterfly would have landed on my radar, even if just overhearing someone mention her in passing. The more I saw, the less I understood how this was possible.

I'd gone through several dozen pictures before I noticed something odd - there was one photo I'd seen earlier of Jake Travers, Diane Smith, and Jessica Watson perched beneath a tree while they smoked a joint together. However, I now saw Gretchen sitting amongst them, her head resting on Jessica's shoulder as they laughed and watched the thick smoke billowing out of Jake's mouth. I opened a new tab and brought up Diane's profile, quickly scrolling through her pictures until I found that same shot in her album. When I brought it up, Gretchen was there. But I know for a fact she wasn't in it before. I would have noticed.