All four high schoolers (Jake, Tyler, Ava, and most importantly Hannah) had been reported missing at various points on Saturday night or early Sunday morning. All the kids had gone to meet up at that Tyler kid’s house for the group project. According to Mrs. Tyler’s Mom, they went off into the woods to see an abandoned golf place, since that was what they were doing their project on.

  And they never came back.

  The police had someone assure all the kids’ parents that the proper measures were being taken to find their children, and explained to them what all was going on. They said the teens were being considered “at risk” because they were missing, and they were minors. I feel like that part was obvious. Frankly, Hannah was “at risk” the moment she got on that bike but that’s beside the point.

  Four sets of distressed parents had shown up at the Benjamin County police department looking for updates on Sunday. Me and Earnest tagged along because my parents weren’t too eager to leave us home alone or with a babysitter given the circumstances.

  “Do you think our children have been kidnapped?” One of the moms had blurted out at the start of the little meeting with the badgered looking officers.

  The policeman had looked steadily out at us, “We think foul play might be involved here.”

  The room went silent. Dead silent.

  And that pretty much concluded the worst weekend of my whole entire life.

  I’d gone to sleep on Sunday with the assumption that my parents would give me the day off school the next day but nope. Monday morning, Mom shook me awake at 7:30 and told me to get ready or else.

  After crawling out of bed and going about my usual morning routine, I stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen. I was trying to act as pitiful as possible so my parents would get the hint, but they hardly even glanced my way.

  I ate my cereal at the kitchen table as the local news played on the living room tv. Various pictures of the teens were displayed as the news lady spoke about their disappearance. I stopped chewing as a picture of Hannah showed on the screen. It was her yearbook picture from last year, when she was still wearing afro puffs instead of the twists she has now. She wasn’t smiling hardly at all but simply staring into the camera with absolutely no enthusiasm. I didn’t remember her ever looking so dismal.

  The picture switched to the white boy, and I resumed eating, but I couldn’t taste a thing. It felt wrong to just be sitting in my kitchen having breakfast when my sister was missing. Shouldn’t I be out there looking for her? Shouldn’t I be doing something to help? There was no way I could just sit around and act normal.

  Unfortunately, the rest of my idiot family did not share my sentiments. Dinner last night had gone along just the same as it always did except with slightly less talking. An outsider wouldn’t even think anything was wrong with our family if they’d watched us. No one cried or talked about Hannah, her chair just sat there sad and empty and forgotten. The only one who acknowledged something was wrong was Mocha. The cat had been hiding lately and not eating much. But as for my family and I… We just sat there and ate our food and then Mom washed the dishes and Earnest went and played with his Legos and Dad retreated to his office and it was like nothing ever happened at all.

  I’d wanted to scream at them or slap them across the face or just do something to let them know that none of it was okay, but I had no voice. How had I, Caraline Addington, become speechless. It was almost laughable since I talked so much usually.

  I was scowling at the memory and ended up dumping most of my cereal down the drain. My appetite was completely gone. Then I hoisted my backpack on and headed out to the car.

  Dad had decided to take me to school on his way to work. Usually, I rode the bus, but everything was different now. We didn’t talk the whole ride, which was also weird because me and him are the loudest people in our family. But now he just turned up the gospel station and didn’t say a word. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard I figured maybe he thought it was going to disappear too.

  Needless to say, I was happy when the ride was over. I flew out the car, swinging my backpack over my shoulder, and saying a quick “Bye, love you,” before rushing through the school entrance.

  I should’ve known school would suck.

  The news of the disappearance had spread like wildfire over the weekend. It seemed like every eighth grader at Benjamin Middle School had posted something about the missing kids on social media. It was odd seeing Hannah on the stories of kids that hadn’t even known she existed three days ago. I wasn’t too salty about the attention Hannah was suddenly getting though. If my classmates felt like showing they cared that was fine by me.

  The thing that really annoyed me was how my teachers started treating me. They’d pull me aside after class and say things like, “I’m so sorry to hear about your sister” and “If you want you can take the blahblahblah test on Friday instead of today”.

  Mr. Sears even made the mistake of calling Hannah ‘late’.

  “She’s not dead you know,” I snapped.

  He blinked in confusion.

  “She’s a missing person. That doesn’t mean she’s dead.” I said it really slow to get it through his dumb brain.

  “Oh, yes of course,” He smiled pityingly.

  Ugh. So much for thinking he was the hottest teacher in school.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  After lunch I retreated to the bathroom and remained there for the rest of the day. Usually, I loved school. I had a lot of friends, my classes were relatively fun, and my teachers were typically relaxed. Except Ms. Blem but thankfully she’s an outlier.

  But today was way different. Everyone was treating me like my sister had died and now I was some kind of fragile baby. Even Calli, my best friend in the world, didn’t seem to know what to say to me.

  So, I sat in a stall and scrolled mindlessly through my phone waiting for the bell to ring so I could escape to volleyball practice.

  As I was scrolling through my camera roll I found a family photo from a couple years ago. The summer of 2021, when Dad drove us out to a water park. I was clutching a towel around my skinny shoulders and smiling so hard it looked like it hurt. Hannah was beside me and she was smiling too while gripping a huge ice cream cone. The two of us were glancing at each other instead of the camera conspiratorially. It sent a pang through my heart, and I zoomed in on her face. When was the last time Hannah smiled like that?

  The events that happened leading up to that picture was taken are still fresh in my mind.

  That day I’d walked up to the high dive, determined to jump off it at least once before we left. Hannah was next to me and was explaining how the high dive looked really scary but honestly wasn’t that bad. But I remember, the more stairs we walked up, the faster my heart began to beat and the more her words faded into the background.

  When we finally reached the top of the platform, there were three high-school aged guys lounging near the spot that people were jumping from. They were spectating each person as they jumped and commenting rudely. A girl lifeguard sat in a high chair sighing and tossing her blonde hair around. It looked like if anyone were to drown, she would certainly not jump in and save them.

  My stomach curled. I’d turned to Hannah and tried to tell her I didn’t want to jump anymore but I started stuttering and could hardly get the sentence out. That’s when the boys on the edge began taunting me.

  “It’s alright, Cara,” Hannah said, her face squinched up a little because of how bright it was out. “We can go back down.”

  “What a babyyy,” one of the guys said in a sing-song voice.

  His buddies around him smirked at me and made faces. I could feel the embarrassment like it was a physical thing, crushing me.

  Hannah glanced from my face to the faces of the boys and before anyone on the platform could catch her, she’d stepped over to the guy who’d teased me and shoved him.

  There was a scary moment just as the guy was in the air where it looked like he was going to pull Hannah in with him. But he just missed. His fingers grasped at the air near her wrist and then he was freefalling.

  He landed with a huge splash, sending a spray of water all the way back to us at the top of the high dive.

  There was a moment of silence where his friends turned to look at us and the lifeguard pushed her whistle to the other side of her mouth. I’d thought the other boys were going to chase us or try to throw us over the edge, but they just shrugged and went back to lazily grinning.

  One guy shouted down at his friend, “You just got shit-rocked by a little girl!”

  The lifeguard sighed and said: “No horseplay. Pool rules.”

  Hannah turned and grabbed my arm, gently leading me down the stairs.

  I finally, regained my voice. “That was so cool!”

  Hannah smiled, “Come on, let’s go get ice cream or something. The high dive is lame anyway, trust me.”

  I caught myself grinning in the bathroom stall. It’d been a while since I’d seen Hannah act like that. Now it seemed like she was always a little sad. But she was still full of life. She still laughed sometimes, right. Still smiled. How could anyone think she was dead? Someone like Hannah didn’t just get like, kidnapped and killed. Fifteen-year-old girls who cursed like middle school boys didn’t just die. Big sisters weren’t supposed to disappear…

  I’d thought volleyball practice after school would make me feel better but it just didn’t feel the same. Why was that? I thought in an offhand sort of way.

  It was the way I talked to myself in practice. Why am I moving slower today? Why do my legs feel tight today? Why am I not hitting the ball well today? Constantly, I would ask myself questions and mull over their answers. There were always a million possible reasons as to why I was feeling a certain way and usually, it took me a while to figure out what one answer was correct. But not today.

  Why did practice feel off? Easy, my sister had disappeared off planet earth. Duh.

  While I’d waited out school in the bathroom, I’d started looking up statistics. Missing people were generally found within the first seventy-two hours of their report. Meaning: Hannah and the others should’ve been found by now. Or the police should have at least had a clue about where she was. We were approaching that benchmark now and a heavy feeling settled deep in my stomach. I’d been stalking the Benjamin County Police Department Instagram page and there were no updates. Anything could be happening to Hannah. What if she’d gotten kidnapped by creepy pedophiles? Or what if she’d been tricked into some sort of death games? Oh no! There was no way Hannah was getting out of any sort of death game ali-

  “CARA!” The scream ripped me from my thoughts just in time for me to get slammed in the face with a volleyball. I was knocked flat on my back.

  Stars. I saw stars weaving in and out of my peripherals.

  “Honey? Are you okay?” Coach Jenkins’ voice floated across my mind, but the words didn’t register for a moment.

  “Stars so pretty,” I mumbled.

  I think that little comment pushed Coach’s Danger Alert up a notch.

  She led me over to the bench and asked me a series of questions. After failing to answer any correctly, in true Cara fashion, Coach called my mom.

  Ugh.

  When my mom got there, she looked terrified and just so small. She asked Coach about a trillion questions. I wanted to go and tell her she could relax and that I was fine, but I was pretty sure if I stood, I’d fall flat on my face.

  Finally, my mom came over: “Caraline, we’re thinking it would be better if you took a break from practice for a while.”

  Huh? It was just one lousy bump. Nothing to be worried about. I wanted to argue but I was afraid to open my mouth. Projectile vomiting everywhere wouldn’t really have been the best proof that I was a healthy girl, ready to get back on the court.

  So, I just shrugged.

  The car ride home from school felt longer than usual. It rained the whole way. The raindrops clouded the window and reduced the trees beyond to dark green blurs. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on steady breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

  I was off the team. For now, at least. It was temporary, Mom had said over and over until I wanted to grab the word ‘temporary’ and gouge my eyes out with it.

  Bye bye old life. No more Hannah. No more volleyball.

  What was left for me? School?

  I’d never been too good in school. My English teacher, Ms. Blem, once told me I was simple minded. When I’d confided in Hannah about it afterwards, she told me that simple minds were sometimes the best minds. Obviously, I didn’t believe her at the time. It just seemed to be one of those lies you tell to comfort someone. But that day, I caught myself thinking maybe Hannah had been right. I had exactly one thing on my mind the whole way home. Where was Hannah? And I made a simple promise to myself: I’d get her back.