I burst through the front door. “Hannah!” I shouted. “We won the game!”

  Mom walked in after me, looking a bit hassled. “Stop shouting, honey.”

  Ugh. Buzz Kill.

  “Hannah’s not back yet,” Dad said. “I didn’t see her bike in the garage.”

  Double ugh. I guessed I’d have to wait for her to get back from her project to give her a play-by-play recap of the win. Hannah was my number one supporter, and it’d felt weird for her not to be there.

  “Well, when does she get back?” Earnest asked. “She promised she’d help with my Halloween costume today.”

  Apparently, my parents didn’t know when Hannah was getting back so I decided to just take a shower and retire to my room to do some school stuff.

  Usually, I needed Hannah’s help for my geometry homework. And my biology homework. And my history homework. But she wasn’t home, so it gave me a good excuse to just text my friends instead.

  I messed around on my phone and tossed my volleyball around for two hours and Hannah still wasn’t back yet.

  I waited and waited and waited.

  Maybe I’d have to try some of my math homework alone after all. No way was I going to my parents for help. That always turned into a shouting session where I ended up fighting back tears and just generally feeling dumber than the average two-year-old.

  How long did it take four highschoolers to finish a poster board anyway?

  I sent her a text message asking when she was getting home, but it didn’t even deliver. Weird.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I was starting to get nervous. What if she’d fallen off her bike and gotten knocked out? I’m pretty sure she hadn’t touched a bike since she was twelve, so it was a real possibility. I could clearly picture her lying in a ditch somewhere. This could be serious.

  Another few hours passed and finally, there was a knock on my door. I sprang up from my desk, “Hannah! Oh, hey Earnest…”

  Earnest, my eight-year-old doofus of a brother, was poking his head into the room. “When’s Hannah getting home?”

  “Don’t know,” I muttered. It was so weird. You’d think Hannah would come back from any group activity as fast as humanly possible.

  The sun was going down as Earnest and I trooped down the stairs to ask out parents what was taking her so long. Surely, they knew.

  But on top of the landing, I heard Dad talking in a hushed voice. Dad being quiet? Weird.

  I gripped Earnest’s wrist and pulled him back on the landing so our parents couldn’t see us from the kitchen. I held a finger up to my lips. It was time for some snooping.

  “Yes sir,” Dad was saying. “She left around 11 this morning.”

  I went completely still.

  “Yes, 15-years-old. Wearing a plain white tee-shirt and I don’t remember what pants.”

  Oh. No.

  My grip on Earnest slackened and that was his cue to go racing down the stairs. I stayed put though.

  “Dad! Hey Dad, what’s going on? When is Hannah getting back?”

  Mom shushed him.

  Dad kept talking on the phone. I realized then that he must be talking to the police.

  It made no sense.

  I steeled myself and walked down the stairs. Earnest was sitting on Mom’s lap with a confused look on his face. Mom was frozen stiff. Dad’s face had turned to stone, and he held his cell in an iron grip.

  “Thank you. Keep us informed,” Dad was saying.

  “What’s going on?” I asked even though I had a pretty good idea of what was happening.

  “Cara,” Dad said, quietly. “Hannah’s gone missing.”

  I heard the words. But they made no sense.

  Hannah was missing? Impossible. There was some kind of mistake. Her phone probably just died, and she hadn’t been able to message us. Or maybe the poster board was taking longer than they’d thought.

  “But how can she be missing? How do you know?”

  “She and her groupmates went into the woods this morning and they never came out,” Dad said, his voice hushed.

  There was something stuck in my throat. I felt like I couldn’t speak around it.

  I managed a scratchy whisper. “She’s not missing. It-it-it…” It’s some sort of misunderstanding, is what I wanted to say. Stuttering. I hadn’t stuttered since I was seven.

  I bit my lip and Dad gripped my shoulders.

  I was startled to realize I was crying.