I was in 8th grade at the time. An ordinary school, an ordinary class. There were 28 of us — 18 boys and 10 girls. We weren't the closest class, but I definitely knew every single one of my classmates well, and I still remember them all. But there were 28 of us back then. Not anymore. Here's what happened. At the end of May 2025, our whole school went on a field trip, like we always do every spring — it's a tradition. We'd always go to a nearby grove. Each class would pick a clearing they liked and set up camp there. That day, 20 of us came. Some were sick, two were out of town, and a few just didn't feel like going. At first, everything was normal. We spread out a blanket, laid out food. Trail games, gathering firewood, just having fun. Then the boys wanted to head to the lake. Two other girls and I joined them. So ten of us set off toward the lake. It was supposed to be a 15-minute walk, but we kept walking and walking. It felt like we were going in circles. We'd been walking for about 40 minutes and still couldn't get there. I felt weirdly drowsy and exhausted. The girls and I started whining that we wanted to go back, that something weird was going on. The boys just laughed at us, though some of them looked uneasy too. After a brief argument, the three of us girls and two of the guys decided to turn back. Five boys refused to come back with us. Timur said it was a matter of principle now — he was going to reach that damn lake. Alex and Nikita were just joking around with each other, calling us cowards. Amir and Makar simply went along with them. The five of us made it back pretty quickly, though everyone said they felt unwell and really sleepy. We were back within 10 minutes. We breathed a sigh of relief. But an hour later, we started to worry that the boys hadn't come back from the lake. We told our teacher — maybe someone should go check on them, just in case? And that's when it started — what at first we took for a prank. Nobody understood who we were talking about. The teacher said our whole class was accounted for. Our classmates — the ones who hadn't come with us — said things like "Are you kidding?" and "We're all here, why are you making up extra classmates?" At first we were angry. Time was passing, the boys could be in trouble out there, and everyone was pulling this stupid joke on us. Then we started to panic. Nobody remembered them. Not the teacher, not the other classmates — no one except the five of us. After that, my memory gets hazy. I remember we refused to leave, we wouldn't abandon our friends in the grove. Someone went to get our parents. Then I remember being at home. My parents were sitting with me, showing me our class photo. Almost the whole class was in it. But Timur, Amir, Makar, Nikita, and Alex weren't. And I remember they used to be. They had vanished from every group photo we'd ever taken. No one remembered them. I went to Nikita's mother. She said to me, "Sweetie, my oldest is only 8. What Nikita are you talking about?" We couldn't even find Timur's and Makar's parents — it turned out their families didn't live in the houses where they had lived just the day before. Now I'm in 9th grade, and there are 22 of us. Those five boys never came back, and nobody remembers them, as if they had never existed. Only we remember — the five of us who parted ways with them on the path to the lake. At first we talked about it a lot. Tried to figure out what happened. An accident? Did they cross into another dimension? Now we don't talk about it at all. I think it's just too hard for each of us to deal with. One of the girls couldn't take it and her family moved away. As for me, at first I was terrified that I'd vanish too and no one would even remember me. I'm not afraid of that anymore. But I constantly wonder what's actually real, and what might have been completely different just yesterday. What if yesterday I had a sister, and today I don't remember her and don't even know she existed? Thoughts like that. It drives you crazy. So I've written their names here, and at least somewhere the memory of them will remain. That they existed. That they were young and full of life. That some of us still remember them.