Since middle school, these girls have sat together at lunch. When they started high school, they found their table in the back corner of the cafeteria. They sat together every single day. Every Tuesday, the cafeteria served overcooked spaghetti, weird red sauce, and sometimes hard meatballs. Not one of them liked it. Freshman year, Ava was the first one to act strangely. On a pasta Tuesday, she barely spoke.  She finished her food quickly and just sat at the lunch table. Halfway through lunch, she got up to go to the bathroom, but Ava never came back. Her friend group never saw her again. They thought she ditched them. They called the cops. The town began searching. Missing person signs began appearing all over the town, pictures of Ava haunting everyone,  and the local news began covering the case. After weeks of searching, no one could find Ava. Ava was gone. Months passed, the seasons changed, and life kept moving. 

On a random Tuesday in February, another girl in the friend group, Ellie, went missing. Ellie ate the pasta and commented that the pasta with sauce tasted funky; she claimed it was rotten. She barely ate it. Only moved it around with a fork on her plate. The friend group finished lunch, and everyone headed their separate ways. Ellie and Sarah had math together, but they sat on separate sides of the classroom. Midway through the class, Ellie got up to get water from the water fountain, but she never returned to class. Ellie disappeared. Initially, everyone assumed she went home for the day. Ellie was the type of student to ditch class, but this wasn't the case. Ellie never returned. After Ellie disappeared, coincidentally, the cafeteria spaghetti was pulled from the menu for the rest of the year.

 The rest of freshman year for the friend group continued as normal, or as normal as it can be when two close friends have gone missing. When they returned as sophomores, pasta and red sauce were back on the weekly menu. They tried to ignore it and move on, claiming it was only food. The remaining 4 girls sat together every day. 

On a random Tuesday in March, the cafeteria had pasta and red sauce. Caroline was starving. She couldn't resist. She didn't care how bad it looked or how many bad memories were associated with the meal; nothing was stopping her from eating. Caroline ate the pasta. The friend group finished lunch. Caroline was fine. Everyone assumed everything was going to be fine. They walked to class together, but on the walk to class, Caroline vanished. They knew it wasn't a coincidence this time. That afternoon, no one could focus. The same thing happened again, news coverage from local news and missing posters filled the school, but Caroline never returned, just like Ava and Ellie.  

After that day, none of them went near the cafeteria on Tuesdays. They brought their lunches from home, stayed in classrooms, or skipped lunch altogether. But the disappearances didn’t stop. It was kids from all different groups and grades. No one knew why, but the kids always disappeared on Tuesdays after lunch. The only thing everyone knew for sure was to stop eating the pasta.