The Girl Who Erased Herself

The Girl Who Erased Herself

By [Horan Fatima]

It started with a school photo.

Madison was brushing her teeth when she heard her mother call from the kitchen, “I finally got your Year 9 pictures printed!”

She wandered downstairs, toothbrush still in her mouth, and peered over her mom’s shoulder. The photos were scattered on the counter—shots of her class standing in neat rows, awkward smiles, arms stiff at their sides.

But something was wrong.

“Where am I?” she asked.

Her mom squinted. “You’re right there,” she said, pointing to the space between Alyssa and Jacob. Madison leaned closer. The spot her mother was pointing to was… empty. The two students stood side by side, with just enough of a gap that someone had clearly been edited out—or had never been there in the first place.

“That's not me,” Madison said slowly.

Her mom laughed, brushing it off. “You’re probably just blending in with the background. These school photos always look weird.” She slid the photo into a folder. “Anyway, I’m late for work. Be good.”

But Madison didn’t forget.

That night, she dug through the family photo albums. Christmas, 2022—gone. She remembered wearing a red sweater and standing beside the tree. But in the photo, only the tree remained. Her brother held up a gift where she should’ve been, smiling at someone invisible. Her father’s arm was wrapped around empty space.

Birthday party, age 12—gone.

Beach vacation, age 10—gone.

In every photo, she was missing.

Like she’d never existed.

She confronted her dad the next day, hoping maybe it was some cruel joke, a badly timed glitch in their cloud storage.

But he just frowned. “Maddie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You were at those things. I remember.”

“Then why aren’t I in the pictures?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a filter issue. Try not to overthink it.”

But she was overthinking it. Because when she looked in the mirror, her reflection flickered. Just for a moment—blink and you’d miss it—but her outline shimmered like a poorly rendered video game character, unstable at the edges.

The next day at school, she asked her best friend Zoe for help.

“Look,” she said, flipping through the photos on her phone. “I was there. But now I’m not.”

Zoe stared. “You’re kidding, right? You weren’t at my birthday last month.”

Madison’s throat dried up. “Yes, I was.”

Zoe shook her head. “No, you weren’t. I remember. I even texted you asking where you were.”

“No… I was there. I helped you blow out your candles. We made that stupid TikTok together…”

Zoe frowned. “I made that with Ava.”

Madison felt a chill crawl down her spine. Her phone buzzed. It was her school ID app.

“User not recognized.”

She tried logging in again. And again. Her name was gone.

Her attendance history? Gone. Assignments? Erased.

She wasn’t fading.

She was being deleted.

That night, she sat on her bed, scrolling back through everything—her social media, her family chat, her phone’s camera roll. Piece by piece, like sand slipping through her fingers, she saw herself vanish from her own life.

Then she opened a folder on her laptop she hadn’t noticed before.

“Backups - Do Not Delete.”

Inside were dozens of photos. Originals. The ones before the glitch.

And there she was. Smiling. Alive. Fully present. At the beach. At Christmas. At Zoe’s party. Laughing. Dancing. Being.

Beneath each file was metadata. And a name.

"Editor: M.J."

Madison Jane.

Her own initials.

She clicked into the editing history. A shiver ran through her as she saw the timestamps—most from late nights. Around the same time she remembered crying, hating herself, calling herself worthless.

Lines like:

• "Remove subject."

• "Lower exposure on subject face."

• "Erase from frame."

She had done it. Not with intent. Not consciously. But in moments of pain and self-hate, she’d erased herself—one pixel at a time.

And now the world had followed.

Madison stared at the mirror again. Her outline flickered.

“No,” she whispered.

She opened her editing software. Found a photo—her with her brother at the lake. She restored it. Painted herself back in, color by color. Freckles. Shirt. Eyes.

The next morning, her brother casually said, “Hey, remember that lake trip? You made us all laugh so hard I snorted root beer.”

Her name was back on the school ID.

One photo. One step. It was enough to ripple the memory back into reality.

She spent the week restoring herself.

She re-added her name to family albums, posted throwbacks on social media with #tbt, forced herself to belong again, digitally, emotionally.

People started to remember.

Because maybe the world forgets you when you forget yourself.

And maybe it remembers—if you do too.