Megan looked sick. She hovered over her plate of eggs like a stone, fork in hand, but made no move to eat them. Something happened since I last visited, it darkened every corner of the house and crept it’s way into every shared look between my parents. The once living house has gone eerily silent, daring not to speak a word.

“You still like eggs, right?” I asked when Megan pushed them around her plate. She looked up, as if startled.

“No, yeah. Uh, yeah. They’re good. Just, not that hungry.” She shuffled out of her seat and put the eggs on the counter, I finished my plate.

“So, what are we going to do today, Brain?” I joked. She flashed a tight smile but didn’t laugh.

“Let's just spend the day in. Movie?” I nodded.

When we started to build our usual pillow nests in the living room, I couldn’t shake the feeling of something being missing. All the furniture was the same, nothing moved, but my eyes still searched the room. Just as I was sliding in a copy of ‘Hellboy’ (Megan’s favorite), the doorbell chimed. Megan rolled of the couch with a groan and walked in the direction of the disturbance. Not thirty seconds later, she came back, looking white as a sheet.

“Who was it?” I asked gingerly. She started to say something, but was cut off by another chime of the bell. We moved at the same time.

I sprinted towards the door and Megan moved to block me. Before she could grab at my shirt, I ducked under her arms and ran to the door.

I knew Megan had been acting strange. Her demeanor was all off from the start, but I thought it was pre-college jitters. In Minnesota, all my upperclassmen friends had already sent out announcements of where they were going in the fall, but not Megan. Her whole family had been radio silent for the last couple of months. Not even a single facebook announcement to say ‘hey, Megan is graduating’. My parents had been pouring over finances, too. So much so that they got into a couple of arguments, but I couldn’t figure out where the money was going. Opening the door, looking at Alex and that weird guy, I finally realized what was missing from the living room. All of Megan’s track medals were gone.

My hand trembled on the door knob. It was all coming together. I looked up a Alex, with a trembling jaw.

“What did she do?” Alex seemed scared, looking between my flooding eyes and Megan’s quivering form. After an eternity, she shook her head.

“I think it’s better if she tells you.” We all turned to Megan expectantly. She was on the floor now, like a scared animal. I moved to her, but she scrambled backward. On her feet now, she started throwing things into a bag on the counter, muttering to herself ‘not here’ over and over again.

My cousin was not the same person she was last Christmas. Her presence felt like a ghostly breath of her old self, like she could have broken at any second. I didn’t know the person that lead us down a trail behind the backyard fence. Hell, I knew the shrinking house behind me better than I knew the girl trekking through the woods, plastic bag of water bottles and matches in hand. All I knew was this, I wasn't’ prepared to know what happened.