The Graduating Class

(Note: very brief mentions of domestic violence, drugs/alcohol, and other poverty/trauma related events)

The counseling office at Fir Grove High School managed to feel both somber and chaotic. There were two counselors for about 400 students. They had the usual stress of managing class schedules and providing college and career advice. But five students in the senior class had gone missing since the school year started. 

Fir Grove was a small town on the edge of a forest in western Oregon. It was a tight-knit community, and five missing teenagers had put everyone on edge. Four young men and a young woman. 

Amber Katz, one of the counselors at the high school, knew all of the missing students. She tended to know students on either end of the academic spectrum. The really successful students, the ones who applied to STEM programs in private universities, ended up in her office out of a need for the perfect college application. The least successful students, the ones skipping and failing classes, were in her office under threats by parents or administrators to get their act together. Sadly, all of the missing students were in the latter group. 

She knew that the struggling students didn’t want to fail. Landon had undiagnosed dyslexia, and had been passed along over the years without anyone actually teaching him how to read. Carter was preoccupied with trying to keep his mother and younger siblings safe from his father’s violence. Wyatt was in foster care, his real parents either dead or in prison, but he ran away so often he was basically homeless. Tyler was the only source of income for his household, but it was by selling drugs. Leah was essentially raising her younger siblings while her mother drank her life away. 

Amber had become a counselor in order to help students. She realized too late that very few miracles actually occurred for students coming from poverty or trauma. Even the local news was barely acknowledging the missing students, especially since the police were putting minimal effort into looking for them. If the handsome quarterback or pretty head cheerleader had gone missing, the whole state would know about it. But high school seniors who weren’t going to graduate on time? Not as glamorous a headline. Amber had even overheard the principal make a callous joke to the administrative assistant about how the graduation rate will improve if the runaways don’t come back. A couple of the students were already 18, and it’s perfectly legal to run away from home at 18. But five students can’t be a coincidence. 

The counseling office had been busier than usual with the panic of missing classmates. Even students in different grade levels were worried they would be next to go missing, like it was contagious. Amber and Brian, the other counselor, each had a private office. There was also a large waiting area with an old couch and some chairs where students would sit. The friends of the missing students were obviously upset and would come to the counseling center to vent or console each other or just have a quiet space to be still.

Landon was the most recent student to disappear. His girlfriend, Grace, had refused to go to most of her classes the last few days since Landon was reported missing. She had practically been living on the counseling center couch. Grace fidgeted with her bracelet, handmade from hemp cord with a single music note charm hanging from it. Landon had an identical bracelet. Landon had taught himself how to play the guitar, hence the music charm. Amber’s heart broke for Grace. She knew they had talked about getting married after high school. It was romantic, even if getting married so young was a statistically terrible idea. 

The bell rang for the start of 7th period. Amber had been in her office all day, either meeting with anxious students or on the phone with concerned parents. She hadn’t had a proper lunch, but shoved snacks in her mouth in the seconds between meetings. Her office didn’t even have a window to the outside and she was starting to feel claustrophobic. She opened her office door and looked at the group of students sitting in the waiting area. No one immediately jumped up, which was a good sign.  

“Are any of you here to see me?” Amber asked the room. 

Most of them didn’t look up from their cell phones. 

“No,” Grace said, kindly. She had already been in Amber’s office that morning. 

Amber nodded and put the “Back Soon!” sign on her door. She wanted to sprint outside, but thought that might alarm the students, so she walked calmly out the back door to the faculty parking lot. 

Fir Grove High School was between two farms and backed up to a wooded area. The small faculty parking lot was behind the school. Amber found it relaxing to walk to the far edge of the lot and just stare into the huge evergreen trees. She could pretend, just for a minute, that a high school full of hormones wasn’t directly behind her. 

Amber felt the crunch of fallen pine needles under her professional shoes. She closed her eyes to smell the forest and hear the birds. 

She jumped when something rubbed against her ankle. 

“Mrrow,” chirped the black cat. 

“You scared me!” Amber scolded before softening. “What are you doing out here? Who do you even belong to?” 

Amber looked around, but no one else was in the parking lot. 

“Mrrow,” the cat said again. 

Amber leaned down to pet the cat, who immediately began to purr almost loud enough to drown out the sound of the 9th grade band practice. 

“You’re very cute,” Amber told the cat, “But this is definitely not where you’re supposed to be.” She began wondering about the logistics of having an office cat.

Suddenly, the cat darted several feet into the woods. 

“Well, fine, be that way,” Amber said, mildly offended at the cat’s retreat. 

“Mrrow!” the cat called, quite loudly. 

“What do you want?” Amber asked the cat. “Why am I talking to a cat?” Amber asked herself. 

“Mrrow!” the cat yelled again, pacing and staring at Amber. 

Not wanting to go back inside yet, Amber decided to follow the cat into the trees. 

“If you just want to show off a dead bird, or dead baby squirrel, or dead mouse, or anything dead, I will not be happy,” Amber said, walking carefully toward the cat. 

Just as Amber was about to reach the cat, it ran several more yards into the woods before stopping again to stare at her. 

“Mrrow!”

“Is this a trick? Are you a fairy?” Amber asked. This was actually sort of fun, or at least better than crying teenagers. 

“Mrrow!” 

Amber followed the cat again, and again it ran away. But this time when the cat stopped, it hissed at something. 

Amber stopped walking and looked behind her. She wasn’t far enough that she could get lost in the woods; she could still tell that the way she came was brighter than deeper into the forest. But she couldn’t really see the parking lot anymore, so no one would know she was out here. 

She looked back at the cat, who had stopped hissing but was still staring angrily at something just out of Amber’s line of sight. 

“I’m already this far,” Amber mumbled to herself, resigned to see what the cat’s problem was. 

As Amber approached the cat, who didn’t run this time, she noticed something sticking out of the ground. At first, she thought it was some sort of large mushroom. The science teacher had a poster of all sorts of crazy-looking mushrooms. But…

It was a hand. 

Amber froze. She blinked hard, trying to reset the image in her mind. Nothing changed. 

It was definitely a hand. 

Maybe it’s a prank, she thought. We’re behind a high school. Halloween was last week. Maybe…

She noticed something wrapped around the wrist of the hand, still half in the dirt. A thin bracelet with a music note charm. 

Amber ran. She almost made it out of the trees before she vomited. 

She ran through the parking lot, passing a math teacher getting into his car to sneak out of school early. 

Amber ran back into the school and straight to her office, unlocking the door with all the grace of a slasher movie victim. The teenagers still didn’t look up from their phones. 

She closed the office door behind her and locked it. 

“Calm down,” she told herself. “No one is chasing you. No one was out there.” Except the hand…

Amber pulled out her cell phone and called 911. 

~~~

HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL KILLED FIVE STUDENTS

Reported by Martha Singleton

Fir Grove High School, ten miles west of Green Hill, has had five students go missing since the start of the school year. Their principal, Christopher Wolfe, has been arrested and charged with homicide in the first degree for all five students. 

As previously reported, high school guidance counselor Amber Katz discovered the body of one of the missing students buried in a shallow grave in the woods behind the school. Katz’s call to 911 put Fir Grove High School into lockdown while law enforcement responded. The school was later evacuated before a search and rescue team was brought in to search the woods for more victims. 

The five students were all seniors: Carter Carlisle, Landon James, Wyatt Lewis, Leah Noble, and Tyler Sanders. Their family and friends all reported that the students were not successful in school due to various academic and personal struggles. Despite being in 12th grade, none of them were on track to graduate by the end of the year. Bethel County District Attorney Eugenia Flores expects that this may have been Wolfe’s motivation for the murders. 

“We have testimonies and documents that indicate Principal Wolfe was highly concerned with improving the graduation rate at Fir Grove High School,” Flores shared at today’s press conference. “The Oregon Education Department evaluates high schools partly based on their 4-year graduation rate. We suspect that Mr. Wolfe, as a first-year principal, was trying to make a good impression for himself based on a marked increase in the school’s graduation numbers. Eliminating low-performing students was the worst possible route in which to accomplish that.” 

The District Attorney’s office has not released any information about how the crimes were committed, citing a need to keep evidence confidential before the trial.