O N E

It had been a sweltering hot summer and even though I couldn't wait for evening, the sun was at least a sign that there was still time to get the job done; the darkness had not arrived yet.

When night fell, we'd have to stop. We'd have to give up on the search for the day.

I posted the flyer through the letterbox. Listened to it drop onto the mat. Tried my hardest to not look at the sombre face in the centre of the paper, below the bold "MISSING PERSON" caption at the top.

These actions felt like routine now.

Once you finished one road it was on to another. Doing the same thing every single time. I wondered how many people would read what I had gone to the effort of posting, how many would actually take a moment out of their lives to think about what we'd written on our flimsy flyers, and how many would just throw them into the bin without a second glance because it wasn't their problem.

And then I'd catch his eyes. The ones on the paper. The ones I had been trying to avoid. His green eyes, glistening from the flash of the camera. His face was contorted into a scowl that showed he clearly didn't want his photo taken at that moment. His dark brown hair, short and messy, fell onto his face.

Theo Lockhart. The boy no one at our school really knew – and the boy everyone now believed something awful had happened to.

There were other helpers waiting at the top of my tenth road, basking in the heat of the evening sun as they took a short break. Their eyes were closed as they rested, taking a few moments to let the fatigue wash over them before they got back to their search. I joined them on the small patch of grass they were lying on, finding my own spot and dropping down onto it.

My feet sang with joy as my weight was taken off them. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the soft breeze that brushed over my skin and blew the hair o my sticky face. But it wasn't long before the moment of peace was ruined, because Grace came bounding over, a frown on her face – that was a sign of bad news to come.

"Here," she said firmly, dumping a wad of paper down onto the ground next to me as she took a seat herself. "Johnny West had to go home, so they've given us the rest of his flyers to post."

She removed her jacket from her shoulders, revealing a black vest top tucked into her denim shorts.

I pushed myself up from the ground and eyed the stash of paper I already had. "But we haven't even made it halfway through our own flyers."

Grace shrugged, using her hand to fan herself in the heat. "I guess we'll just have to hand in the ones we haven't posted at the end."

"I suppose," I murmured, feeling the last burst of sunlight hit my face before it disappeared for the night. "Was Naya all right with you cancelling your date tonight?"

Grace smiled warmly as she thought of her girlfriend. They had been going out for two years, ever since Grace came out to her parents and me. "She understood how important it was. In fact, I think she might be helping out herself."

"Well, next time you see her, tell her she still owes me that chocolate muffn she stole from me at lunch yesterday."

Grace let out a peal of musical laughter, and I felt my own chest vibrate as I joined her. It was peaceful, just taking a moment to enjoy the last of the summer warmth before it started to turn colder in the next few months. I could hear the chatter of other students who had been helping out and the melody of birds singing in nearby trees. For a moment it was the perfect evening, until I remembered why it was that we were all there.

"I think Tristan wants to come over here." Grace's voice grabbed my attention a moment later. "He keeps looking at you."

And then, almost as if he had heard her speaking, Tristan Meyers called out, "Hey, Rose!" He broke away from his friends and jogged over to us, his face slightly red from the sunburn he'd got over the summer.

Grace shot me a knowing smile, which I chose to ignore. "Hey, Tristan. Everything all right?" I smiled up at him once he reached us. Grace cleared her throat and made to stand up.

"I think my break's over," she said, grabbing half of the papers from our stack.

"I'll catch you up in a minute," I responded. She nodded and, when Tristan wasn't looking, shot me a wink, much to my horror. Before I could reprimand her she was shooting off, making her way down another road.

Tristan let out a small cough, causing my eyes to snap back to him. "I just came over to say thanks for helping out. Not many others were willing to give up their time after school to do this, so it means a lot that you offered," he said, running his hand through his hair. Tristan was Head Boy at our school. It made sense; he was involved in every club our school offered, yet still managed to get brilliant results across the board. Grace always joked that he was going to become Prime Minister one day. Unsurprisingly, he thought he was the boss of Theo's search party.

I started to stand so that we were level in height, his bright blue eyes watching me intently. "It's honestly no problem, Tristan." I pulled my lips up into a small, forced smile. "Any updates?"

"Well, we've searched most of the local area now," Tristan replied. "We've been trying to find any clues as to where he may have gone, but there's been nothing so far."

There was a pause as I took in his words. Not having any clues wasn't a good sign. To me, it was a sign of someone who didn't want to be found – a sign of someone who didn't want to come back.

"Do you think something's happened to him?" I blurted out a second later, my voice barely above a whisper.

Tristan's eyes caught my own, full of concern. "Theo's only been missing for two days, Rose. Let's just worry about looking for him right now."

And he was right. Theo Lockhart, my classmate and two-year chemistry partner, had only been missing for about forty-eight hours. No one had seen or spoken to him. No one knew why he had disappeared or where he might have gone. The school had asked anyone with more information to come forward, or o er any useful suggestions as to his possible whereabouts. No one did. As soon as he was gone, it became painfully clear that no one knew anything about Theo.

There weren't many ways to describe Theo when asked. He turned up to school. He kept his head down in lessons. I never had him pegged as one for trouble, but I'd heard about a few nasty trips to the head teacher's o ce that he'd made in the last year. Stupid fights, back-chatting teachers – but nothing out of the ordinary. And sometimes he went AWOL, bunking lessons or turning up late.

He seemed to like chemistry well enough. He'd never told me that, of course. He'd never said very much to me at all to be honest, but he always seemed to do his work on time, and he was helpful during experiments – even if he was pretty happy for me to take charge. It was perfect in a way, because I always wanted to be in charge. I never thought our chemistry lab rapport qualified as "useful information", though, and when Theo disappeared, I realised I couldn't actually think of one thing I really knew about him.

He was an enigma, to all of us, and it seemed that was just the way he liked it. Whoever you were, you wouldn't be able to get much of a conversation out of him; you wouldn't be able to persuade him to sit with you at lunch. It was as though he wanted to be alone. The only time I ever spoke to him was in our chemistry lessons.

Even so, his disappearance had caused some pretty dif- ferent reactions around the school. Some people posted desperate pleas for his return on Facebook and Twitter – but they tended to be the girls who fancied him, drawn to the drama. Others believed this was all part of some game he had made up, and that any moment he would come striding into one of the classrooms and watch all of our mouths drop open. And then people like me, who didn't know what to think, had o ered to carry out the proper search parties, knowing that this was our best shot at finding this mysterious boy.

But the truth was that no one had any idea where he might have gone. Theo wasn't one for making friends, so he didn't have any. And yet he could've had anything. Hell, if he wanted to be popular, his good looks alone would easily have got him there. But he never wanted any of that. He was never one for the attention.

And that was why most people were starting to say something awful had happened to him.

Ours isn't a large town. We are only an hour outside of London, but where we live is quiet, undisturbed, and people know each other. Which, consequently, means that they talk about one another. Theo's disappearance was the first time anyone had gone missing; it was the biggest news to hit our town in years, and it spread fast.

"Well, it's nice that we're able to try and make some sort of difference by doing this. I'm sure Theo's parents are grateful for the help," I said to Tristan, who just shrugged.

"Actually, they didn't seem too bothered about having a search party for him in the first place," he replied.

"What?" My jaw dropped open, and I shook my head in confusion. "Why would they not want a search party?"

Tristan clearly knew more than he was letting on, and I could tell he didn't want others to overhear what he was about to say – he kept turning his head to double-check no one was listening. "A group of us went over to their house a couple of hours ago, and they didn't seem that worried. Then, when the police came round, they were constantly talking in hushed voices so we couldn't listen in." Tristan's voice dropped a little lower. "I think they know something we don't. Like they were expecting Theo to go running o before this happened ... Or maybe they're in shock."

A thousand explanations crossed my mind – many of them hopeful, but a few desperate and dark. I had never met the rest of the Lockhart family. Perhaps they were a lot like Theo in that they kept themselves to themselves, but surely they should be more concerned about their son's disappearance?

"Maybe they know he's going to come back." I decided to voice one of my happier thoughts. "And that's why they don't want us wasting our time searching."

"Yes, but then why wouldn't they tell us why he's gone missing?"

It was like my hope was a candle and Tristan had just chucked a whole bucket of water all over it. He must have noticed any glimmer of hope leave my eyes, because he smiled sympathetically at me and gently grasped my shoulder.

"It'll be all right," he murmured. "We'll find him."

"Yeah," I replied, my voice emotionless. My eyes drifted back to Theo's face on the flyer. It captured his essence per- fectly – brooding, aloof – and yet there was an unreadable emotion in his eyes that, no matter how hard I studied the photo, was impossible for me to decipher. It was something like sadness. "I'm sure we will."

The town was covered in a blanket of darkness by the time I arrived home. I shrugged on my jacket and placed it on the coat rack, making sure to switch on all the lights as I walked through the house.

It was empty, of course – my house was practically always empty. Both of my parents had extremely demanding jobs. They both worked at the same law firm – it's a pretty cute story actually because that's where they met and fell in love – and they were made partners a few years ago, which means long days with early morning starts and late finishes. When they weren't at work, they were always checking their emails and calling their clients, or shut away in their study, so I barely saw them anyway. It's busy, it's isolating and it's tiring; there wasn't a time I could remember since I turned sixteen that they came home and we had dinner together like a normal family. I was used to spending most of my evenings alone.

It didn't bother me any more though. I was fine being on my own, and had grown used to my brother being the one who was always there for me, rather than my parents. I knew that if he could, Brent would be home all the time to be with me, but it just wasn't possible with him at university.

There was a stack of homework due the next day waiting on my desk for me when I entered my bedroom, but I chose to ignore it and instead headed straight for the shower to wash the day away. I took my time in there, enjoying the feel of the cool water hitting my face, running down my skin, reinvigorating me. I could have been in there for hours without knowing or caring.

I couldn't block everything out entirely, though. I knew that things were still dark – the fact that we had no links whatsoever as to where Theo could be, the idea that he may not be coming back for good. It troubled me to think that something bad might have happened to him. I caught my expression in the mirror as I got out of the shower; my concerned brown eyes stared back at me. My freckles had become even more prominent over the summer holiday, and my naturally straight hair had grown longer, now hanging past my chin and reaching to the top of my shoulders. At a first glance, I looked sun-kissed and healthy. But there were bags resting under my eyes and I was hunched with the fatigue of the search as I stared back at my reflection.

But for now I had to stop thinking about the darkness, forget my confusion about Theo, and start afresh for tomorrow. There was a bowl of yesterday's leftover spaghetti bolognese waiting for me in the fridge. I was quick to reheat it, my stomach rumbling in anticipation as I stirred the pot on the stove. As soon as it was done I devoured it, burning my tongue. I still felt empty. Why was I so drained by the last few days?

A glance at my watch as I ate told me that there was no possible way that I could get my homework done for tomorrow without being up the entire night. I cursed out loud and decided to give up, figuring my teachers might be a little lenient once they heard I was out looking for Theo all evening. Instead, I headed back upstairs to throw on my pyjamas and get some much-needed sleep.

But I didn't exactly get what I wanted, because as soon as I got into my bedroom the doorbell rang. I glanced at my clock, disapproval bubbling up inside me as I noticed how late it was. We often had neighbours popping over to have a quick chat, but never at this time of night.

"Coming!" I shouted, hurriedly throwing on the shorts and T-shirt I had been wearing earlier.

The doorbell rang again. And again. And again. Whoever was waiting on the other side of the door sure was impatient. "I said I'm coming!" I yelled angrily. I padded down the stairs, reaching up to pull my hair into a ponytail as I headed straight for the door.

My hand was on the handle, pushing it down and yanking the door open before I even got the chance to gather my thoughts. I briefly regretted not grabbing a jumper as a cold blast of air hit my body and I shivered involuntarily. But then I looked up, and the thought was wiped clean from my mind. In fact, all thoughts were wiped clean from my mind as I stood there, eyes wide, mouth dropped open.

"Rose Valentine," said Theo Lockhart in a whisper, his eyes filled with an intense, desperate panic. "I need your help."

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