TWs: Mention of kidnapping

CWs: None

AN: This was written by my co-author, Christina!  She's new to writing (this is her first project ever), so please feel free to leave feedback in the comments. Also, go give her a follow! Her user is @Kotlclover4life42. Edits are always welcome! Enjoy!

A slight, lukewarm breeze blew to the east as Melinda walked down the slightly elevated sidewalk to the market. It was ten a.m. on a Saturday, and while Hurricane was experiencing unusually pleasant weather for July (eighty-two degrees versus the usual ninety), Melinda would have preferred to be at home under the safety of her covers.

"You can't keep this up all summer, Mel," her mother had gently scolded her when she saw Melinda still sleeping at 9:15 in the morning. "I honestly don't know what's going on with you lately, but I do know I've let it go on quite long enough now."

Outwardly, Melinda only gave a tired, grouchy grumble in reply, but inwardly, she was screaming her lungs out. Seriously? After all our town has been through lately?

Even though it had been months, Melinda remembered every detail of how this disaster had started. She recalled how it had been unusually cloudy that day and how they had begun their Holocaust study in world history. Mel could even remember the exact flavor of the dreadful mystery chicken that the cafeteria lunch lady forced her to eat. But most importantly and devastatingly, she had memorized in her head, word for word, the breaking news coverage that had been on TV the day she had gotten home.

Two young siblings, neither of whom had turned ten yet, had mysteriously disappeared the previous evening. Melinda had sobbed in unison with their distraught mother on the TV screen as she explained in a trembling voice how she had only left them alone by themselves for a short time and had not anticipated that they would get any further than a few steps before becoming kidnapped.

She silently prayed to God in desperation as their mother continued to describe her children in great detail and expressed her willingness to do anything to have them back. This wasn't only because this was the first tragedy to ever happen in their small town. It was because she knew by heart the two names that kept appearing on the screen: Rachel Jacqueline Campbell (also known as RJ) and Julius Campbell, Jr. (named after his father).

Mel had been babysitting the two siblings since they were toddlers. They were like family to her. And now they were nowhere to be found. She had spent weeks and weeks doing whatever she could to find them, stayed well on top of the case underway to locate RJ and Julius, and stopped by every day after school to help the kids' crushed parents, who were barely getting by. Although they promised to keep track of all the missing reports and call if they received any updates, the investigators were ultimately forced to give up on the case after endless searches. The poor kids had been missing for so long that, even if they were still alive, their kidnapper could have transported them hundreds—or even thousands—of miles away by this point.

The Campbell family had not been seen or even heard from since the day the police declared the case closed. They packed the few things they needed into their old convertible car and drove off to the west, swearing they would never stop searching for them until they were located. They refused to wait for years, holding onto the hopeless dream that their children might return on their own someday.

Even though that was heartbreaking enough to make Mel want to search for the deepest, darkest cave she could find, crawl inside, and wait for her terrifying reality to end, Hurricane continued to suffer more pain. Four other kids, including one from her neighborhood, had gone missing in addition to the Campbell siblings. No one under the age of eighteen was exempt from the sudden disappearance without a trace, though. Along with the children, a few adults had vanished. Mrs. Rodriguez, their beloved vice principal at Desert Hills High School, had been one of the unusual few who could not be found near the end of the previous school year, sending everyone who attended and worked there into a complete frenzy.

Eleven people were missing in total, which was a lot given how few people lived around here and how only three, maybe four, months had passed since this unbelievable mess began. As Melinda slowly watched the false truth of the world around her being a trustworthy, willed, and peaceful place crumble away to nothing, leaving only the brutal honesty of what reality was like, she slowly lost the person she knew all her life and became an unrecognizable hollow shell. She felt like she was the only one who felt like this, which infuriated her.

At some point, just about everyone in the town had somehow made a silent agreement that whatever was not spoken of or acknowledged simply did not exist. One of those disgusting people happened to be her own mother. Melinda couldn't even begin to express her rage at the selfish stupidity of her town's idea of how a problem could go away if you just pretend it didn't exist. They were surrounded by families grieving every day over the likely death of their not-even-middle-school-age child, yet instead of helping them, everyone heartlessly turned away.

The tangle of emotions within her became an eternal scream, which eventually, with no other matters to deal with, led to her completely shutting down. Melinda wanted more than anything to do something about everything that was happening, but she had become suffocatingly overwhelmed by this dilemma that shouldn't even be real.

So there she sat in her room, wasting away the last summer she had before she turned sixteen, refusing to have anything to do with the outside world or anyone associated with it, until this morning at least.

She took a few slow breaths as she continued to climb up Birken Street. Luckily, she hadn't bumped into any of her neighbors yet, especially since Birken was usually pretty occupied. But that would change as soon as she walked through Lin's doors. Everybody shopped there on the weekends all day, so avoiding the people she knew was impossible. They would come up to her with fake concerned faces and ask in their pretend, well-rehearsed tones about her whereabouts over the last few months and the reasons behind them.

Mel wasn't sure how much of it she would be able to take before she most likely snapped and said something she was going to regret later. That was a horrible habit of hers. She continued to walk forward until she was right outside of the parking lot, where she briefly paused to take another quick look at the grocery list her mother gave her. Then, she proceeded to pull her hoodie around her face as tight as the strings let her while letting her semi-long blond hair hide most of her face.

Maybe if she kept her head down and moved quickly, she would be lucky enough to get in and out of there without anyone even recognizing who she was. It was a slim chance, but she knew it was also the only way she would be able to make herself go into the store, so she gave herself a second or so longer to stew in all her built-up vexation, then continued towards the front entrance of the store.

The problem with having your hair covering your eyes, though, while simultaneously trying to keep your head down, was that you couldn't see anything beyond a couple of feet ahead until you practically had a head-first collision with it. That was how Melinda ended up bumping into a girl with curly red hair carrying two full paper bags of groceries in her arms.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" Mel immediately exclaimed as groceries spilled out all over the area between them. "Here, let me help you get those."

The girl gave a small wave of her hand while she got down onto all fours. "Pfft. Don't worry about it. You're fine; you'd be surprised at how often I run into people. My mom even told me that she's gonna have to get a leash for me someday because I can never stand still for even thirty seconds."

"Well, it probably didn't help that I had let my hair cover my face to the point where I couldn't see anything." Mel tried to keep her tone light and semi-teasing.

She still felt bad that she didn't bother to pay attention to where she was going.

Oh my gosh, please, please, please tell me that I didn't wreck any of her groceries

As if she had read her thoughts, the girl's eyes traced over the rest of the unbagged food. "Well, as far as I can tell, all the groceries are still okay, at least. The only thing to probably be concerned about is the Graham crackers. Though, if worse comes to worse, we'll just make some makeshift ones by just using the chocolate and marshmallows. Me and my cousins did that once before, when they ran out of Graham crackers at their place. It wasn't quite the same as a normal s'more, but still delicious either way."

Once Mel put the last few items into the bag, she picked it up and looked the already-standing girl in the eyes for the first time. Even though a good portion of her sight was still blocked by her hair, she could tell that the girl was slightly taller than her, which was nothing new to Melinda. After all, she was extremely short for her age. She had seen plenty of gingers with freckled faces before, but this girl was something straight out of a fantasy novel. She had extremely long hair, at least three times the length of Mel's ragged hair, not to mention how perfectly tight her curls were, all layered on top of each other to the point where they were extremely fluffed out, but in a good way. Her skin was a soft pale color, and the smoothness of it seemed to suggest she had never suffered from dry skin or acne a day in her life. The brightness in her wildly eager, dark forest-colored eyes somehow matched perfectly with her freckles, which smattered all across from one side to another. There were so many freckles that, from that distance, it appeared that someone had made a giant paint stroke across the middle of this girl's face.

However, it wasn't just this girl's Narnia-type looks that drew Mel in. It was almost as if this girl was taking a bucket filled with all the joy, love, and care she had ever felt in her life and was pouring it all over her, drenching her from head to toe. The fact, too, that this girl was talking to her as if she were a friend she had not seen in so long, trying to get her all caught up in what had all been going on in her life while she was away—even though she was a total stranger—made Melinda feel an unexpected warmth. She felt as if she were talking to the first real, unmasked person she had seen since the time of the first disappearance. Suddenly, Mel felt as if, even if she wanted to, she could not move from the spot she was in. It was almost as if an invisible anchor had taken her hostage, refusing to let go, or at least until she learned everything she could about this girl.

"Well, anyhow, I might need to get going here in a minute."

The words immediately snapped Mel out of her thoughts, startling her to the point where she almost caused the bag to drop to the ground again. Then that shock was replaced by embarrassment. She realized that not only was she still holding onto the girl's stuff, but she must have been blankly staring at her for so long that it had made her uncomfortable, most likely ruining the only chance she had at getting to know her better.

Great going, Mel. Now, she probably wants to get as far away from me as she possibly can

Yet if the girl felt uneasy about her, she did not show it. She went on to finish her statement by saying, "My mom's waiting for me all the way on the other side of the parking lot. She's probably started to wonder whether or not I got distracted and wandered off somewhere again, which I guess in a way I kinda did. Huh, weird how that always ends up happening to me."

As Mel finally handed over the bag to the girl, she rapidly tried to think of something else she could say to strike up a quick conversation. She had to at least learn the girl's name and whether or not she lived around here. She didn't have much time to think, though, because her thoughts got cut short again by the girl's words, this time coming out in the form of a question for Mel.

"Hey, before I go, I want to ask you something. This may be a bit personal. Like, if it is, I'll totally respect your privacy and be on my way. But... why did you have almost your entire face covered while keeping your head down low? Are you hiding from someone? If it's some creep, I'll more than happily go punch them in the face for you if you'd like. Wait, no, I know, I'll have my mom run them over! Would you like that?"

At first, the words had caught her so off guard that all she could do was stare at the girl in bewilderment, but she quickly regained herself. She couldn't let this opportunity slip past her. So she answered her as honestly as she could.

"Um, well, no, not exactly. It's kind of a long story. To put it short, I'm just trying to avoid some particular people I know who are...annoying, I guess you could say. Like, insufferably annoying. So, yeah, no real danger, well, except for the dangers within my social life, I guess." She laughed nervously.

She hoped that by throwing in a laugh at the end, the girl would stop worrying so that Mel wouldn't have to talk about the very touchy subject any longer. Even though Mel could somehow tell that this girl, whom she so desperately wanted to become friends with, had a heart filled with compassion, she would listen to her full story with no judgment whatsoever.

But in the interest of letting her keep her privacy, the girl gave her only a slight look of concern, then switched it to a sunshine-filled smile. Mel noticed that the girl's eye attention had shifted to where Mel's left arm was resting on her side.

"Well, alright, if you say so. I can totally get behind the whole 'insufferable annoying people not leaving you alone' thing though. Like, seriously, whoever thought family reunions were a good idea must have been raised by cute little gerbils or something like that instead of actual people! No, Aunt Susan, I don't want to hear about your son's honor roll for the tenth time, and yes, grandma, you've told both me and my mom a thousand times over how I'm 'wasting' my potential on 'silly little dances' instead of working towards something that will actually 'benefit future society'. Oh! And what is up with random little cousins that you don't even know constantly asking you to play Minecraft? My phone doesn't even have any installed apps, just the default ones that come with it, like Candy Crush!"

Mel listened to the girl's passionate and aggravated rant, both with great amusement and with a strong sense of gratitude that she had misunderstood what Mel was talking about. She gave a small chuckle before responding to the girl.

"Yeah, family reunions are actually the worst. Especially the little cousins." She was looking slightly to the right as she said it, to where the girl was at the outline of her vision. When she looked back, the girl was staring yet again at Mel's arm, seeming to be focusing in on it, especially at about where her hand was.

Starting to feel both a bit curious and uncomfortable, she decided to look down and examine her arm to try to find what seemed to be very fixated on.

"Um, is there something you're, um, still curious about...?"

The girl seemed to finally snap out of what must have been some deep thinking as Mel lifted her arm and addressed her about her kind of uneasy stare. She was startled by the sound of her voice, which quickly changed to an apologetic embarrassment as well as some other emotion that Mel couldn't quite figure out what it was.

"Uh, sorry, I didn't mean to weird you out. It's just that... that's a wristband for Desert Hills High School, isn't it? I thought you looked familiar."

Familiar? What did the girl mean?

The girl answered her question before she even had to ask it. "I also go to Desert Hills! I'm usually with the group of girls that tends to get quite chaotic. You could probably hear us down at Zion National Park with the volumes we can reach. I'm sure we've almost made you go deaf multiple times, 'cuz I'm pretty sure you sit at that table under the oak tree right by our usual spot, right?"

Mel's eyes widened. How did she not recognize this girl before? Not only had she sat right by her friend group practically every day last year, but she now remembered seeing her in most of her classes. She could also now recall how both fellow students and teachers alike took a strong liking to her due to her very outgoing personality. Mel started to feel very ashamed. She let herself become so deeply sucked into the darkest parts of her head that she failed to recognize the girl, who was essentially one of the most popular girls at school. In fact, she probably wouldn't have noticed until long after their conversation if it hadn't been her bringing it up.

She was so overwhelmed by embarrassment that the only thing she could think of to respond with was, "Um, yeah, that would be me." She also wanted to add something along the lines of remembering her too, but something about the awkwardness surrounding her wouldn't let her slip the words out.

During the silence that followed, the girl gave her a very sympathetic look filled with benevolence, and it felt like she was fully examining Mel, from her outwardly anxious face to the most profound and unknown parts of her heart.

Finally, the girl let her in on what she was thinking. Her tone was innocently attentive and slightly cautious. "You don't have a lot of friends, do you?"

Mel didn't know how to respond, but she didn't have to. The girl moved on with more of her ponderments before she could even think of one.

"I get that a lot of people are shy. I've been shy sometimes myself. And I know some people prefer to be by themselves, but you... I don't know. You don't come off to me as one of those people. You seem to keep yourself quiet and reserved for...different reasons."

Mel started to wonder how bold this girl usually was when talking to strangers and how often she felt the need to be blunt with them about how they came across her. Starting to get very mixed feelings about how she felt about this girl's observations, she just stood there in silence and hoped that the girl would say something to fill the void.

Thankfully, she put down her bags and stepped closer to Mel, partially crossing her arms around the front of her chest. "Welp, I guess I don't really know any of that for sure, but I can feel something in my gut that you could use a friend or two. And let me tell you, I've always been one to follow my gut—it's how I know I'm going to be a professional dancer someday. Just like my idol, Sylvie Guillem. Both she and dancing were practically made for each other. I am too, though. Even my mom said so."

Mel rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and tried not to give her a puzzling look.

"Oh, um, y-yeah, I'm sure you're a great dancer. You definitely give off that type of energy to me."

She ran a hand down her face. "Ugh, sorry, I tend to rant on and on about random stuff a lot. The whole dancing thing wasn't the point I was trying to make, though. Thanks! I appreciate it. What I'm trying to say is that I think it could do some good for you to have some people that you would actually enjoy talking to instead of, you know, walking around everywhere with a covered-up face as if you're a wanted criminal. I feel like once you reach the point of bumping into a wall for, like, the ten-zillionth time, you're going to get very tired of the "attempting to hide from people" thing. So, unless, like, your favorite thing to do in your free time is to run headfirst into cement brick walls, which, because your full face is still intact, seems unlikely to me, why don't you instead let someone help you avoid what is currently a very bruise-filled future for you?"

She held out her hand and gave her the most genuine and friendly smile Mel had seen since the beginning of the disappearances, and probably the longest thing someone had said to her in quite a while, if ever.

Man, this girl can talk.

"My name is Belle. Belle Higgins."

Mel attempted a terrible British accent. "Well, Lady Higgins, it is quite an honor to make your acquaintance. I have to say there are very few among our court who are as quick as you are to sacrifice themselves. As a lowly council member myself, I greatly appreciate the offer."

Both she and Belle had a good laugh before they became a bit more serious again.

"I have to say, I'm glad now that I bumped into you, Belle. My name's Melinda Bennet, though I mostly just go by Mel."

"Well, Lady Bennet," she said in a much better accent, "I'm honestly really glad I got into a full head-on collision with you too. I—"

She was interrupted by the sound of a car horn honking. Mel couldn't see the car, but judging by the sound, it was relatively close by.

"Oh no, that's my mom. We were supposed to leave a long time ago. Now, we'll probably be late for rehearsal. Oh, man, Mrs. Laurier isn't gonna be happy."

She reached down to grab her bags, much to Mel's disappointment, but stopped herself.

"Wait, there's one more thing I have to do before I go." She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. "Hey Mel, listen, I know I just met you literally ten to fifteen minutes ago. But this weekend I'm having a pool and sleepover party at my house to kick off summer and celebrate my birthday. My mom said I could bring over as many girls as I liked. Most of my friends aren't going to be able to make it, though. The only people coming right now are my cousins and their friend, who's visiting from Phoenix. You should totally come! I bought a bunch of new pool floaties. Oh, and of course, there are gonna be s'mores—like, tons of s'mores! Do you have a phone number I can use to contact you?"

She stood there absolutely baffled, trying to grapple with how fast things were moving. There was something unique about Belle that made it seem more than worth getting to know her, but she never expected to be invited to what seemed like a very personal event after barely getting to know who she was. Yet she knew there was no way she could turn down the offer, especially if it meant getting Belle's number. Plus, she knew her mom would have no reservations about letting her go. She would most likely be overly relieved that Mel was finally participating in what she would probably call "normal teenage activities."

Just let it be. If she wants me out of the house, maybe I should start giving her more than enough of it.

Outwardly, though, she just replaced her look of shock with an enthusiastic smile. "Wow, I mean, that's, like, really nice of you. I haven't been swimming in, like, years, and I kinda do miss it. And of course, s'mores sound amazing. And, um, you know, I, uh..." She took a deep breath. "What I mean to say is yes. I would love to go. Can I see your phone?"

Belle clicked on a few things before handing her phone to her. It was already opened to a new contact, so Mel simply had to enter her name and number. She handed it back to her, and she saved it on her phone before putting it back in her pocket.

"Awesome! I'll shoot you a text later with all the info. Well, I have to really get going now. I'm pretty sure my dance teacher is going to have me clean the mirrors for, like, the next several lifetimes, but totally worth it if it means you get to come this Saturday."

Just then, a car horn went off again. A car door flew open and banged shut.

"Isabelle Christine Higgins, if you don't get in the car within the next thirty seconds, you won't see your phone for the next week!" a woman's voice yelled.

"Coming, Mom!" Belle yelled back. "Bye, Mel, see you this Saturday!"

Mel watched her disappear around the corner. She stood there for a few more moments, fully taking in everything that had just happened, then fully turned around and headed towards the store.

Just a few hours ago, Mel thought no hope was left for her town. Now, her spirits had fully sprung to their peaks, wanting to propel her into a full-on sprint of joy. However, she settled for a speed walk. Her quickened pace caused her hoodie to fall, but she didn't bother to fix it. She even pulled back every single strand of her hair tightly around her ears so that her full face was in view. She didn't care who saw her today. She also didn't give any second thought to the unbearable conversations she would most likely have to be a part of.

Because today it would be bearable.

Because for what seemed like the first time in eternity, Melinda knew she wasn't alone.