Vanish

“That’s just what I think, how I feel. What do you think?” I breathed out hard, finishing my rant with a loud exhale. I turned to my Jessica, my eyes wide, eager to hear her opinion. 
She was gone.
“Jess?” I whipped my head around the table. Did she walk away? I looked around the crowded cafeteria and didn’t see her. Maybe she went to the bathroom. “Where did Jess go?” I asked Mark who was sitting across the table from me. 
“Jess who?” he asked. 
“What do you mean Jess who? Jessica, our friend, she was right here!” What the hell? 
“There’s no one else here Clare, we just came to get lunch together remember? Before class this afternoon,” Mark replied. He seemed so sure—not like he was joking or fucking with me.
“Are you high?” I asked, incredulous. “She was right here like one minute ago.” 
“Are you?” he asked in return. He reached across the table and patted my hand like I was a dangerous psychopath that might go off at any moment. “Clare, I have to go, but seriously maybe just skip class and go get some sleep?” Mark stood from the table and weaved his way through the crowd until I lost sight of him. 
I sat staring after him until he was gone, mouth gaping open. Maybe I do need to get some sleep, I thought. Midterms were a rough time in the semester for everyone, and it only got worse as the years went on and the classes got more intense. But I was sure she was here with us. 
I headed back to my dorm and crashed out, catching up on some much needed rest. I’ll text Jess when I get up, to check on her just in case. By the time I was drifting off, I had convinced myself that I must’ve had a momentary hallucination caused by sleep deprivation. What else could possibly have happened?
I woke up a few hours later, and immediately dug around under my pillow for my cell phone. I opened the messages app and my thumb moved of its own accord to click Jessica’s name. Except our conversation didn’t appear in my recent contacts, even though I’d been texting with her just that morning. 
I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and crouched over my phone, scrolling frantically through every conversation I had saved. By the time I reached the oldest ones—long forgotten from a year or two ago—I was hyperventilating. My heart pounded in my chest. With trembling fingers, I tapped the screen until I reached the main contacts app, tucked away in a rarely used folder. I scrolled through every contact I’d ever added to my phone, and despite still having the phone numbers of people I’d spoken to exactly once in my life, I could not find Jessica’s information anywhere. 
I flipped back over to the messages app, standing up off the bed and pacing the small room as best I could to burn off my nervous energy and try to calm down. I looked for Mark’s name to text him for help, or possibly a xanax—or both. My condition only worsened when I realized that Mark’s name wasn’t displayed anywhere on my screen either. 
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod... I wheezed desperately trying to catch my breath. How is this happening? I flung open the door, half expecting to see mass panic in the hallways, until I realized that my phone had probably been hacked, and I was finally able to inhale enough oxygen to stop my head from spinning. I slowly closed the door and clicked the latch into place. I sank into my desk chair, and pulled up the keypad on my phone manually typing in Jessica’s number from memory. 
Ring Ring the sound echoed in my ear, ring ring, familiar and comforting. Eventually a woman’s voice interrupted the zen palace I was sinking into in my mind. 
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jess?” I asked. 
“Uhm no, sorry I think you might have the wrong number hun,” she answered. 
It wasn’t Jessca’s voice, but I clung to my last shred of hope that whatever was happening to me could be easily explained. 
“This...isn’t Jessica?” I asked. “Jessica Warner?” 
“Nope, sorry. What number did you enter cause I’ve had this one for about three years now,” the stranger replied, dashing my hopes like shattered glass and triggering that awful wheezing again as I gulped oxygen instead of breathing it like a functioning human. “Are you okay?” came the voice of the person who wasn’t Jessica. “Listen I’ve gotta go, I hope you track down your friend,” she said, and the line went dead. 
I didn’t know Mark’s number to try him, but at this point I was certain I wouldn’t be able to get a hold of him either. I could try Jess’s dorm room, her roommate must know where she went. I seized on this thought like a life raft in the open ocean of panic and fear I was adrift in. I snatched my purse off the desk, shoved my phone—useless though it was at the moment—into my pocket and headed out, half walking, half jogging down the hallway towards the outdoor exit.
I made it across campus in record time—panic is a good motivator. Am I imagining it or is there less people out than usual? I sprinted up the stairs to the third floor when I reached Jess’s building and skidded to a halt in front of her door. I tried to restrain myself from banging hysterically on the wood as I lifted my fist to knock. While I waited for an answer, I noticed that the white board hanging in front of my face said: “Lisa’s Place!” with several smileys and some notes written underneath. That used to say “Lisa and Jess’s Place”, I thought just as the sign swung away and Lisa herself stood in front of me. 
“Hey Clare,” she said brightly, her signature smile beaming, short brown hair bouncing around her face as she cocked her head to the side. “What’s up?” 
“Where’s Jessica?” I demanded. 
“Uh...Jessica who?” she asked. 
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I screamed, emotions exploding out of me in a loud vocal outburst. 
“Listen Clare, don’t scream at me cause you got day drunk or something during midterms okay? I don’t know any Jessica and I have studying to do. If you wanna talk I’m here for you, but if you’re gonna scream at me then you can just piss off.” And she slammed the door in my face, the white board full of lies swinging wildly in response. 
Okay. Okay. That whole world has gone crazy but me. That’s the only explanation. I headed back outside, slower this time compared to my early frantic sprint. I stepped out into the crisp fall air and took a deep, cleansing breath. I inhaled the lovely smell of leaves and the rain that was sure to fall later that afternoon. I glanced around after centering myself and noticed that there were even less people out now than when I had gone inside. Way less. 
Where is everyone? Was there an evacuation order or something I didn’t hear about? I headed back to my own dorm, only because I didn’t really know where else to go or what else to do. The rising panic I had been suffering through since I’d woken from my nap had given way to a creeping sense of dread and impending doom. At least it was calmer than the hyperventilating. 
I made my way across the slowly dying grass, autumn leaves crunching beneath my feet. I felt like I was walking through a thick fog—something was happening, something big, and for some reason I was the only person who seemed to realize it. A burst of movement caught my eye and I whipped my head around just in time to see a group of joggers round the corner of a building before they suddenly weren’t. 
They didn’t disappear, they just suddenly ceased to exist. I don’t know how else to explain it. It wasn’t like I watched them vanish; it was like they had never been there in the first place, even though I had just seen them. What the fuck?! Oh, and the panic was back. 
I picked up my pace quickly, shifting from walking to a flat out run in the direction of my building faster than I had since I was about five years old. As I weaved between the buildings, the ground beneath my feet alternated between grass, pavement, sidewalk and gravel, and all I registered was that there was no one. No one left. 
I slammed into the door, I was running too fast to stop in time. “Fuck!” I shouted as my forehead bounced off the double paned glass window. I stepped back and yanked it open, rushing headlong up the stairs and down the hall to my room—everywhere I went was empty. No evidence that people had ever been there except the mere existence of the buildings themselves. 
I made it to my room, fumbled with the keys, and managed after a few frantic moments to get inside. I dropped my purse on the floor as soon as I crossed the threshold, and slammed the door behind me. I leaned my back hard against the wood and jerked my phone out of my pocket, desperately hoping I was wrong, but I already knew what I was going to find. 
I pulled up the contacts app and found nothing—every contact I had programmed into my phone over the years was gone. Every conversation had ceased to exist. 
I was alone.