Chapter 10

"Beck, did you have to hit me with a snowball just now?" I brushed the snow from my hair, giving her an exasperated look.

"You looked like you were deep in a daydream. I had to wake you up—Mawhaha!" she said with a mischievous laugh.

"Daydreaming, don’t you technically mean nightdreaming? Is it 7 pm at night?"

"Whatever, I just couldn’t let you be so spacey. I was afraid you might fly off to outer space." Beck, teased.  "So what's on your mind that has you zoning out?" 

"I was thinking about how fast time flies by, that is all."

"I understand what you mean. I feel the same way, and soon, we will be adults in the real world before we know it." Beck sighed.

"Ha. Beck, what even is the ‘real world,’ anyway?"

She rolled her eyes at me. “Only you would ask that, nightdreamer." She teased me! 

I laughed. "Well, my brother’s home early tonight, so he’ll take you home. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Beck."

"Oh—and Beck, one last thing," I added, "Would you like to walk to school in the morning?" 

"Are you crazy?  More walking? In the snow?" 

"Is there anything prettier than the overnight, freshly fallen snow at sunrise?" 

"Ha, you are too sentimental, Kaysi. You sound like an old woman."

"Sure, I do," I said in an old lady's voice, joking with her.  Why not go for a walk? We need to stay fit even in the wintertime." 

Beck groaned playfully. "Sounds great," she said with sarcastic cheer. “I’ll see you at 7 a.m. sharp.”

"Goodnight, Beck!" I called as she left with my brother in the car.

After meeting Becks at her house the following day, I told her I had called and asked Micah to join us before I went to bed.  When we got close to Micah’s house, she wasn’t standing outside waiting for us like she said she would.

"Hey, Beck, do you notice she’s still not out here? That’s not like her."

"Yeah, she’s usually early to school. Maybe we just missed her."

"Oh, right, I remember! You're telling me that you two usually walk together at this time.  Should we go up the porch stairs and knock and see if she is there?

"Yeah, I could be wrong. If she's not there, we can go to school to see if she has a head start ahead of us." 

"Alright then. Let’s go!" I elbowed her playfully as we jogged up the stairs.

Knock knock knock.

"Mrs. Monk? Is Micah home?"

"No, Honey, she left earlier for school, and you just missed her," Micah's mom told us.

"I guess we can start walking and see if we bump into her. I turned to Beck. "Weird that she’d head out so early when she knew we were coming."

"Maybe she got the time wrong and thought she was late, but Beck struggled.

I felt off about everything but had an idea we could use. "If she felt like she was running late, she would have taken a shortcut through the park," Micah’s mom told us this information once before.

I frowned. "I remember Micah’s mom telling us she takes a shortcut through the park when she’s in a rush. We could check there."

Just then, I noticed something. "Hey, look—tracks in the snow. Let’s follow these."

We walked through the sparkling morning snow, following the fresh footprints. The rays of light kissing the earth made the snow sparkle in different colors like diamonds.

"It sure is pretty, isn't it?" I asked Beck.

"Yeah, it really is." She said, reflecting the shimmers of the sun and snow.

"See, Beck? I’m not just a dreamer."

"Nah, you must be rubbing off on me," she teased, bumping my arm.

"Now, back on track.“ Like I said before... she’s been dodging us. Now she’s walking to school without us? Something must be up.”

"Kaysi, I told you she’s okay. She must have thought she was late because of the time."

"If you say so..." I still felt uneasy.

"She might be trying to catch up with us, considering we missed her."

"Well, let's cut through the park, follow her shortcut, and try to catch her. Maybe we’ll find her."

"But we still didn’t see Micah there either, so we moved on to school, hoping to meet up. 

When we arrived, the campus was crawling with new guards everywhere.

"What's going on around here? I whispered to a group of girls nearby".

"There had been an attack. There's a missing girl in our school, one of the girls whispered to us".

My heart sank.  I was worried about Micah being hurt.  We also still have not found her.

When they posted the missing girl’s poster the "next day" with an explanation, it was safe to say Micah wasn’t the one. The girl was found in the park the morning before.

But we still had yet to see Micah at school, not at the lunch table or in the class we shared. She was nowhere to be found.  Somehow, neither Beck nor I saw her that day.

But the next day, the missing girl’s poster went up. It wasn’t Micah. The girl had been found in the park, and though she survived, she had amnesia. People were saying it wasn’t even the first attack this year. Rumors spread like wildfire throughout the school.

Still, Micah didn’t show up—no sign of her in class, not at lunch. She was nowhere.

Whispers echoed through the halls:
“They say the girl didn’t die, but she doesn’t remember anything.”
“And it’s not the first time this happened...”

Could there be more soulless people around? I accidentally said it out loud. My mind spun with worry.

This wasn’t Spencer Ball Park, where Beck had her scare from the boar demon—it was the city park, much larger, full of hidden trails.

A couple of days later, we finally saw Micah. "Girl," we shouted as we ran up to her. She sat with her head down at the lunchroom table.

She had a poor excuse when we asked her where she had been.

Days passed. Then, finally, we saw her.

"Micah!" we called out, rushing to her. She sat with her head down at the lunch table.

"Where have you been?" Beck asked.

Her response to our questions was... strange.

"I’ve been here. You must’ve just not seen me," she mumbled. "I had a doctor’s appointment all this week."

We didn’t press her further. She was moody and seemed off today—distant even.

After talking to Beck about this strange feeling with Micah, Beck and I agreed to follow her today. 

We would report to each other if we found anything odd had happened. We didn’t want to ask her upfront or accuse her.

She may have been suspicious, but she was still our friend.

Later, we discovered that she had been at the park.  When police came to our school and asked her questions, someone in the area had spotted her around the same time. 

We knew it was odd; she must have gone much earlier than we did that day.

When the police left, they deemed her a witness, but witnesses were still suspects—she needed to watch herself.

The third week into the investigation, another girl disappeared. Later found dead in a different area very close to the city park.

That is when Micah's behavior started to become more suspicious.  She skipped shared classes and avoided us completely. I once saw her in the bathroom—she bolted the moment she saw me.

"I just can’t believe it, my long-time friend could ever hurt someone," Beck said. "Micah has always been a good-natured person, so kind…very calm. I can’t imagine her hurting anyone."

We were torn; what else could we think?  Was she in the middle of all of this somehow?

We decided to talk to our guardian, Baby. Maybe she’d know what to do. But her answer chilled me, making me ask more questions.

Baby told us more spirits have been popping out lately, and someone may have summoned them. This was the first time we had heard that someone could call them.

"Someone can call them?" Beck asked, shocked.

"We need answers," I said. "We have to confront her face-to-face."

That weekend, we went to her house. Her mom answered the door and said Micah had gone to the store. Of course—we just missed her again.

But then we saw something.

Sure enough, the car was missing. She was a bit older and knew how to drive. 

Bloody footprints were tracking where the car once was, thanks to the snow.

The puzzle pieces began to fall into place, but I still had several unsolved questions. 

It became evident that we must locate Micah fast!

Beck and I didn't have a vehicle, so trying to locate her would be rather difficult if she were driving around.

We went back to our houses and grabbed our bikes. We started looking in all the areas that we could think she was in, starting with the grocery store that her mother said she was at first.

After arriving at the grocery store, we talked to some cashiers and asked them if they had seen anybody who fit Micah's description.

"Unfortunately, you just missed her." One of the ladies told us. She left with a small bag of groceries.

"Well, was there anything funny about her? Beck asked. 

Not really, she replied; she bought groceries… and camping supplies. Bandages, too."

"Camping supplies?" Beck looked at me, puzzled.

After hearing that, we returned to her house to see what her mother had to say. 

We didn't want to alarm her if she was planning anything; we just wanted to ask where she was going.

Mrs. Monk said that Micah was not there and that she was going to one of her friend's houses for a sleepover and study session for a couple of days.

As we thanked her and left, we realized Micah had no other friends besides us.

Things kept getting stranger and stranger by the minute. There were not too many areas with woods; we lived somewhat in the suburbs.

She’d left the car behind so that she couldn’t have gone far. There were only two nearby wooded areas. One was an official campground.

Beck and I devised a plan to tell our parents: we were having a sleepover. 

We ensured Baby came with us for protection and to help us search.

We packed supplies, grabbed our gear, and headed for the park that night. We would comb the trails starting at the bottom and work our way up the mountain.

We were going to find Micah.

No matter what.