The First Puzzle

Kyle's hands trembled as he pulled out the contents of the envelope. Five photographs spilled onto the metal table, sliding across the smooth surface. Riley caught one before it fell to the floor.
Her breath caught in her throat.
It was a school photo. A teenage girl with mousy brown hair and braces, smiling awkwardly at the camera. The kind of forced smile every kid wore on picture day. At the bottom, in that generic yearbook font: *Lakewood Academy, Class of 2015.*
"Oh god," Nicole whispered. She was staring at another photo, her face drained of color.
"What?" Aaron snatched the photo from her hands. It showed the same girl, but older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She wasn't smiling in this one. She stood alone in a school hallway, books clutched to her chest, her head down. Someone had drawn a red circle around her in marker.
Riley looked at the photo in her own hand again. Something tugged at the back of her mind, like a word on the tip of her tongue. Lakewood Academy. Why did that sound familiar?
"I went to Lakewood," Paige said quietly. She'd picked up one of the other photos. "I graduated in 2015."
The room went silent.
Kyle's voice was barely audible. "So did I."
"What?" Riley's head snapped up. "That's impossible. That's—"
"Class of 2015," Nicole said, her voice shaking. "I was there too."
Aaron was staring at the photos like they were evidence in a murder trial. His lawyer brain was clearly working overtime, trying to piece together what this meant. "I graduated Lakewood in 2015. But I don't remember any of you. We had three hundred kids in our class."
"Three hundred and twelve," Paige corrected automatically. Then she stopped, looking surprised at herself. "I don't know how I remember that."
Riley's heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. She looked down at the photo again. The girl. The awkward smile. Lakewood Academy.
And suddenly, like a door opening in her mind, she remembered.
"Anna," she whispered.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"Her name was Anna Morrison." Riley's voice sounded distant, like it was coming from someone else. "She was... she was in our class."
"I don't remember her," Aaron said, but his face said otherwise. There was recognition there, buried deep, fighting its way to the surface.
"Yes, you do." Kyle had gone pale. He was holding another photo—this one showing Anna sitting alone in a cafeteria, empty tables all around her. "We all do."
Nicole made a small, choked sound. She'd sat down on the floor, her back against the wall, tears streaming down her face. "Oh god. Oh god, what did we do?"
"What are you talking about?" Riley demanded, but even as she said it, fragments were coming back. Whispers in hallways. A locker covered in cruel notes. A girl eating lunch alone, day after day after day.
Paige picked up the last photo with clinical precision, but Riley could see her hands shaking. This one was different from the others. It showed Anna in a hospital bed, her head bandaged, machines surrounding her. She looked broken.
"There's something else in the envelope," Aaron said. His lawyer voice was back, controlled and measured, but Riley could hear the panic underneath.
Kyle reached in and pulled out a folded piece of paper. When he opened it, his face went white.
"What does it say?" Riley asked.
Kyle's voice cracked as he read aloud: "Ten years ago, Anna Morrison trusted you. She came to each of you—the five of you—because you were the only ones who knew the truth. And you destroyed her. You didn't just stay silent. You made her the villain. You made everyone believe she was lying. You took a girl who needed help and you crushed her until she wanted to die. Now you have twelve hours to remember exactly what you did. Room One's puzzle: Match each photo to the person who hurt her the most in that moment. Get it right, and the door opens. Get it wrong..." He paused, his throat working. "Get it wrong, and you lose an hour off your clock."
Silence filled the room like water, drowning them all.
"This is insane," Aaron said finally. "This is absolutely insane. We can't—we don't even know if this is real. This could be some kind of sick joke or—"
"Does this look like a joke to you?" Paige snapped, gesturing at the locked door, the countdown clock. "We've been kidnapped and drugged. Someone went to enormous effort to bring us here. This is very, very real."
Riley was trying to breathe through the panic squeezing her chest. "I don't understand. What truth? What did Anna know?"
"You really don't remember?" Kyle asked, and there was something in his voice—accusation, maybe, or disbelief.
"No! I remember the school, I remember her face, but I don't—" Riley stopped. That wasn't entirely true. There were images coming back now, hazy and fragmented. A teacher. Mr. Harrison. Anna sitting in the guidance counselor's office, crying. Rumors spreading through school like wildfire.
"Mr. Harrison," Nicole said, so quietly they almost didn't hear her. "She said Mr. Harrison was... that he was inappropriate with students. That he touched her."
The memories were flooding back now, unwanted and undeniable.
"She told us," Paige said, her clinical mask finally cracking. "She told each of us separately because we'd all had him for English. She thought we'd back her up."
"But we didn't," Kyle finished. He sat down heavily on the floor, his head in his hands.
Aaron was pacing now, his expensive shoes squeaking on the white floor. "Okay. Okay, let's think about this logically. We were kids. Teenagers. We were scared—"
"We were cowards," Paige interrupted. "Let's not dress it up. Anna came to us for help and we made it worse."
Riley's mind was spinning, memories clicking into place like puzzle pieces she'd spent years trying to lose. She remembered now. Remembered sitting in the cafeteria with her friends, laughing about how Anna was "obsessed" with Mr. Harrison, how she was "making things up for attention." She remembered starting a rumor that Anna had a crush on the teacher, that she was just embarrassed he'd rejected her.
Oh god. She'd started that rumor. It had been her.
"I think I'm going to be sick," she said.
"We don't have time for that," Aaron said sharply. "We need to solve this puzzle and get out of here. We can deal with the guilt trip later."
"Guilt trip?" Nicole's voice was shrill. "A girl tried to kill herself because of us and you're calling it a guilt trip?"
"I'm calling it survival!" Aaron shot back. "Whatever happened ten years ago, it's done. We can't change it. But we can get out of this room and go to the police and—"
"And what?" Kyle looked up at him. "Tell them we were kidnapped by someone we traumatized so badly she ended up in a hospital? You really think we're the victims here?"
"I think we were seventeen years old!"
"That's not an excuse!"
"Enough!" Paige's voice cut through the argument like a scalpel. "Fighting won't help. We need to focus. The puzzle says we have to match each photo to the person who hurt her most in that moment. So let's figure it out."
Riley looked at the five photos spread across the table. Five moments of Anna's suffering. Five people responsible.
The first photo: Anna's school picture, smiling. Innocent. Before everything fell apart.
The second: Anna alone in the hallway, head down, isolated.
The third: Anna in the cafeteria, sitting by herself.
The fourth: Anna covered in what looked like paint or food, standing in front of her locker.
The fifth: Anna in the hospital.
"How are we supposed to know which of us did what?" Nicole asked. "I mean, we all... we all participated, didn't we?"
"The puzzle must mean something specific," Paige said. She was studying the photos with intense concentration. "Specific incidents. Things that stand out."
Kyle picked up the cafeteria photo. "I remember this day," he said slowly. "It was a few weeks after Anna first went to the administration. The rumor about her having a crush on Harrison was everywhere by then. I was writing for the school paper. I..." He swallowed hard. "I wrote an editorial about false accusations. I didn't name Anna, but everyone knew who I meant. After it published, no one would sit with her at lunch anymore. Even the kids who'd been neutral before wouldn't go near her."
He put the photo down in front of himself, his hand shaking.
"That's one," Paige said quietly.
Aaron was staring at the photo of Anna in front of her locker, covered in something dark and sticky. "I was student body president," he said. His voice had lost its aggressive edge, gone flat and hollow. "Anna tried to file a formal complaint through student government. I was supposed to bring it to the faculty advisor. Instead, I..." He closed his eyes. "I leaked it to the guys on the basketball team. They were the ones who dumped trash on her locker. But I'm the one who told them which locker was hers."
He placed that photo in front of himself.
Paige picked up the hospital photo with steady hands, but Riley could see the muscle jumping in her jaw. "I was a peer counselor," she said. "Anna came to me after she'd been turned away by everyone else. She was having panic attacks, couldn't sleep. She asked me to go with her to talk to the school psychologist." Paige's voice was clinical, detached, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I told the school psychologist that Anna had been acting erratic, that I was worried she was having a mental breakdown. I made them think she was unstable. When she finally tried to... when she took those pills... they said she'd been showing signs of mental illness for weeks. Because I'd planted that seed."
She set the hospital photo in front of herself.
Nicole was crying openly now, looking at the photo of Anna alone in the hallway. "I was her friend," she whispered. "Before everything happened, we were friends. After she went public about Harrison, I told her I believed her. I promised I'd stick by her. And then..." She wiped her eyes roughly. "And then people started targeting anyone who associated with her. They called me Anna's 'girlfriend,' started rumors about me too. So I... I stopped talking to her. I walked past her in the halls like she didn't exist. She tried to talk to me once, and I told her to leave me alone. That she was a liar and I wanted nothing to do with her."
She placed the hallway photo in front of herself, her hands shaking so badly she almost dropped it.
That left one photo. Anna's school picture. The before picture. The girl who'd walked into Lakewood Academy full of hope, before they'd all systematically destroyed her.
Riley picked it up with numb fingers.
"I started the rumor," she said. Her voice sounded far away. "About Anna having a crush on Harrison. I was the first one. I told two people at lunch one day, just gossiping, and it spread from there. Within a week, the whole school was talking about how Anna was obsessed with the teacher, how she was making up lies because he'd rejected her. Every horrible thing that happened to her after that... it all stemmed from that first lie. The lie I started."
She placed the school photo in front of herself.
For a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke. They just sat there, five people who'd been strangers an hour ago, now bound together by a shared sin they'd buried for a decade.
The clock above them showed 11:07:23. They'd already lost almost an hour.
Then, with a mechanical click that made them all jump, the door swung open.
Beyond it was a dark corridor.
And from the speaker, that distorted voice: "Very good. You're beginning to remember. But remembering isn't the same as understanding. Room Two will help with that. Oh, and one more thing—Anna survived her suicide attempt. But survival isn't the same as living, is it? You'll understand what I mean soon enough."
The speaker clicked off.
Riley stared into the dark corridor, her heart pounding. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to refuse to go forward, to demand to be let out.
But there was no other way out. The door behind them was still sealed. The only way was forward, deeper into whatever nightmare Anna—or someone working for her—had constructed.
"We have to go," Paige said. She was already on her feet, collecting the water bottles from the table. Ever practical. Ever prepared.
Kyle stood too, pocketing the flip phone and the first-aid kit. "She's right. Standing here won't help."
Aaron looked like he wanted to argue, but even his lawyer brain couldn't find a loophole in their situation. He nodded stiffly.
Nicole was still crying, but she got up too, wrapping her arms around herself like she was trying to hold herself together.
Riley took a deep breath. Then another. The corridor ahead was pitch black, but she could hear something in the distance. Water dripping, maybe. Or footsteps.
"Together?" Kyle asked, looking at the others.
"Together," Paige agreed.
One by one, they stepped through the door and into the darkness of Room Two.