Writers 
The Door at 7:17
At exactly 7:17 every evening, the lights in Room 14 came on.
Nobody knew why.
The school had been abandoned for three years, ever since a fire destroyed half the building. The windows were boarded up, the classrooms were empty, and weeds covered the playground.
Yet every evening, at 7:17, a pale yellow light appeared behind the second-floor window of Room 14.
Seventeen-year-old Maya noticed it for the first time while walking home.
She stopped.
The light disappeared.
The next evening, she returned.
7:16.
Nothing.
7:17.
The light appeared.
Maya's curiosity defeated her common sense, which was unfortunate because common sense had clearly been trying its best.
She pushed through a gap in the fence and entered the abandoned building.
Dust covered the floor. Broken chairs lay scattered across the hallway. Every step echoed through the darkness.
Then she heard a sound.
A chair scraping across the floor.
Room 14.
Maya reached the door and slowly pushed it open.
Inside, everything looked untouched.
A wooden desk sat beneath the window. On it was a small digital clock.
7:17.
Beside the clock was a photograph.
Maya picked it up.
It showed a group of students standing outside the school.
She recognized one of them.
Her mother.
Maya's hands went cold.
Her mother had always said she had never attended this school.
Behind the photograph was a handwritten message.
YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO FIND THIS.
Maya immediately called her mother.
No answer.
She tried again.
Nothing.
Then the classroom door slammed shut.
Maya spun around.
A voice whispered from the darkness.
“Your mother lied to you.”
Maya backed away.
A figure stepped into the moonlight.
It was an elderly woman wearing a faded school uniform.
“You know my mother?” Maya asked.
The woman nodded.
“She was here the night of the fire.”
“What happened?”
The woman looked toward the photograph.
“The fire wasn't an accident.”
Maya stared at her.
“Then what was it?”
Before the woman could answer, footsteps thundered down the hallway.
Someone else was coming.
The woman grabbed Maya's hand.
“You have to leave. Now.”
They rushed through a side door and escaped into the courtyard.
When Maya finally reached home, her mother was waiting.
She looked terrified.
“You went to the school.”
It wasn't a question.
Maya said nothing.
Her mother closed her eyes.
“I knew this day would come.”
She walked to a drawer and removed an old photograph.
It was the same photograph Maya had found in Room 14.
But there was one difference.
In the photograph, Maya's mother was standing beside another girl.
A girl who looked exactly like Maya.
Maya stared at the image.
“Who is she?”
Her mother's voice broke.
“Your twin sister.”
The room fell silent.
“She died in the fire,” her mother whispered.
Maya looked again at the photograph.
Then she noticed something she hadn't seen before.
The girl was wearing a necklace.
The exact necklace Maya had been wearing since childhood.
And suddenly, somewhere outside the house, a digital clock changed to 7:17.