When Mr. Draven, the substitute science teacher, showed up Monday morning, no one questioned his strange suit, chalk-dry skin, or the rattling sound when he walked. Most subs were weird.

But Olivia noticed things. He never blinked. He didn’t eat. And when she dropped her pencil near his desk, she saw something tucked beneath his pant leg—a white, bony ankle joint.

By Wednesday, the class’s worst troublemakers were missing. One kid vanished in the bathroom. Another during gym. All that remained were their textbooks—open to the chapters they hated most.

Thursday morning, Olivia came in early and found Mr. Draven in the lab, pulling skeletal hands from a filing cabinet. She gasped, and he turned—empty eye sockets glowed red.

“You should be grateful,” he rasped. “I’m molding scholars from slackers. Skeletons never skip class.”

She bolted, heart pounding, and ran straight to the principal’s office. But the principal was already under his spell—literally. He sat rigidly at his desk, mouthing the Pythagorean Theorem over and over.

Olivia had only one idea. She sprinted to the auditorium and yanked the fire alarm. Sirens howled. Bells clanged. Lockers burst open, spewing books and papers as students poured into the halls like a tidal wave of life. The entire building shook with the stampede of returning life.

Mr. Draven cracked apart in the chaos, bones scattering like a dropped Halloween prop. The missing kids stumbled out of closets, bleary-eyed but breathing.

Later that day, Olivia spotted a janitor wheeling a cart of “anatomy class models” out the back door. One skull turned and winked.

Still, school felt different afterward. Brighter. Safer.

“I used to hate coming back,” Olivia said to her friend Mia. “But after today, school might be the only place that can actually save us.”