"What on earth, Dream," Zac said, his teeth chattering. They were outside their cabin, trudging in the three foot snow.

"Marc is never going to intentionally harm us," Dream protested. "He said to get out, and our lives are in danger."

"Look Dream," Savannah said, a sad look on her face. "We haven't really been hanging out much because we were arguing about Francesca. I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have been mad at you like that and I should have given you a chance. You're one of my closest friends now, could you please forgive me?"

Dream was slightly taken aback, but she nodded. "Yeah, of course. You're one of my closest friends too."

"Enough with the sappy sappy," Chloe snapped. "I don't want to die! Especially on Christmas!"

"Oh yeah," Sawyer frowned. "It looks like we all forgot that today is Christmas. I mean, maybe we would've remembered if we hadn't all been woken up at 6am to flee for our lives. What are we even fleeing from?"

"I have no idea," Dream said. "But I trust Marc."

"I guess..."

"Well, this is the worst Christmas ever," Chloe huffed. "Where are we even going, anyways? We can't get far by walking, and there's no way of transportation."

"Actually there is," Dream pointed out. "It's about two to three miles away, there's a bunch of buses."

"And we had to abandon all our stuff," Axel grunted.

"Yeah, like my precious hair gel," Zac shot Dream a glare. "You owe me two hundred bucks, by the way, because that's how much it cost."

"How much hair gel did you bring?"

"A tiny traveling container."

"And you want two hundred bucks because...?"

"That tiny traveling container of hair gel costs two hundred bucks. Do you know how hard it is to get my hair to be this perfect?" Zac said.

"Um, you're wearing an earflap beanie, I have no clue what your hair currently looks like."

Zac scowled.

"Well, do we just keep walking forward until our legs freeze solid and then just die? Because there's no way we're going to be able to walk two to three miles in this weather," Chloe pointed out.

"Yeah, in soccer I run around all the time, but even I don't think I can walk that much. My legs feel like they're slowly turning to ice already," Axel agreed.

"We just...need...to keep...going," Dream said, panting. Usually, she would have been soaked with sweat at this point, but it was kind of hard to sweat when she was about to freeze to death.

"Keep going where?" a preppy voice came behind them. The group turned to see Francesca - it had to be Francesca because of the way she dressed, and the way her hair was done - stepping out of a car.

"We're trying to get to that bus," Chloe said quickly. "Before our legs freeze up."

"Why?" Francesca asked.

"Because Marc told us to run, he said our lives were in danger," Dream explained.

Something in Francesca's eyes sparkled when she heard that. "Of course, would you guys like a ride? You guys look so cold," she said sympathetically. Well, there was something suspiciously fake about her voice, the way it was dripping with honey, but no one in the group seemed to pay attention to it. Immediately, they all piled into the backseats of the car, leaving Dream to sit in the passenger seat.

"You don't need to buckle your seatbelt," Francesca said. "Come on, hurry," she said, slightly impatiently. Dream frowned, buckling her seatbelt anyway.

"No," she said, unbuckling Dream's seatbelt.

What the heck was that for, Dream thought, feeling suspicious.

"Just do what she says," Zac said, sounding indifferent. "This is better than dying of cold."

"Yeah. Much, much, much better," Francesca grinned.

This is definitely weird. Dream thought, her suspicion growing by the second.

"Wait, Francesca," Dream said, frowning, "We're trying to go in the other direction."

"I know a shortcut," Francesca snapped.

Dream turned to look at her friends in the backseats to see if they found anything suspicious, but they were drowsy and didn't seem to be paying much attention.

Suddenly, Dream felt a hand push her side, and she fell out of the car, onto a thin sheet of ice. .

"What the heck!?" she screamed. Why was the door even open?

...Was this why Francesca didn't want her to buckle her seatbelt?

Dream's eyes widened with realization as the ice underneath her broke and she fell through the water. She heard a female voice say, "Oops", and as she cried for help, the car sped off.

That wasn't Francesca. It was Fatima, most likely pretending to be Francesca. She had everyone fooled. No wonder she was acting so suspicious.

She flailed her arms and tried to swim, but the icy cold water prevented her from moving her legs much. The last thing she saw was black as her head hit something, and then all was silent. 

---

A/N

Dun dun dunnnn!!

Ok, story time now XD. Mainly because I'm bored.

So basically, like 2 years ago, my best friends and I made this group chat for seemingly no reason at all. And we were bored, so we were like, "Why don't we use this group chat to do some role playing?"

And that's what we ended up doing. And because we got bored of just chatting normally, except calling each other by different names, we were like, "What if we added a villain? Let's call her...Mrs. Woods. She'll be...a mean teacher!"

I'm sure you guys can all see where this is going haha.

Even though most of this role-playing was us complaining about how horrible it was to have a teacher like Mrs. Woods, eventually, I had an idea: "What if someone wrote down the story of Mrs. Woods into a book?"

Thus, "The Mrs. Woods Mystery" was born. 

Oh and yes, I did have my friends' permission to write and publish a story about Mrs. Woods XD. I did significantly alter her character, appearance, etc., and I did not use the same characters we originally made up for the role-playing chat lol. But that's where the basic concept of this book came from.

The story is much longer and a lot more comical than that XD, but that's the basic information lol!

Anyways, back to the actual book. What do you guys think is going to happen next? O_O

Please vote, comment, and share! Your support means so much to me. I could not get here without you guys! <3

Next update: Wednesday! :)

(p.s. sorry for the very long author's note lol)

💙, Stella Rose